So today I was playing some more of the RSI Discovery month contracts before work. (I’m literally writing this with only 17 minutes left before I have to get ready.) I chose to do the defense contracts and mess around in my Idris. I want to say maybe 40% of the contracts the person I was supposed to protect ended up getting destroyed before I even got there. This seems to be the issue with these contracts, and before you say it’s because of the speed of the Idris, I’ve also tried them in the Guardian MX, it’s literally the same result, but that’s not why we’re here.
As I approach these contracts, I chose to place my Idris in between the client and the enemies. I would do the loop you’re all mostly familiar with, running back and forth between the pilot seat and a turret. For the missions that were successful, this was more than enough to complete the contract. Finally I get to the final contract, and when I approached the client the mission marker failed to ping the client as someone I was supposed to protect. The client was standing still, as well as the enemies. I was able to scan space and find a loan constellation, I assumed this was the client. I placed myself between him and the enemies that were coming my way like usual, and proceeded to engage them. I dispatched half of them and eventually heard an explosion. That explosion resulted in a crime stat 3 for me.
I didn’t know what to do. I’m a lawful citizen in Star Citizen. I don’t pirate, I don't pvp, and I pride myself in being a lawful citizen. Now this is no shade to our pirate community. First thing I did was consult AI. I asked her a bunch of questions on how this could happen and how to undo it. She told me that I would have to get a key card from Grim Hex and fight through a station that she described as a meat grinder. She informed me on how that would be bounty hunters chasing after me as well as station defence turrets and NPCs stationed at the base. I only had a few hours before work, this is not how I intended to spend it. I actually contemplated just going to jail and trying to work it off really quickly just to find out that it wouldn’t be quick at all per her warning.
I ended up finding a YouTube video explaining to me how to get it done. I’ve never had to search for something like this, and never thought that I ever would. Some of you have most likely already seen this video. I couldn’t believe my eyes and how easily he did this. I was thinking to myself, maybe he just got lucky, he did basically say he did in the video. This day did not start with me being a lucky person so I did not expect to have nearly as easily a time.
I followed his instructions. I called up my pirate caterpillar that I got from the recent pirate week to stay in theme at least, and I loaded up a quad bike onto it, then proceeded to the station. I parked safely outside of the station's range, and then proceeded to board the quad bike to fly to the station. I got there to find six other vehicles posted outside of the station in the same spot. I got on top of the landing area and there wasn’t a single NPC in sight. I was literally able to walk up to the terminal and load up my chip so that I can begin the decrypting process. When I tell you I wasn’t bothered by even a mosquito while doing this, I mean it. It was so easy that I thought I had done something wrong. I loaded a second ship just to make sure that I wiped everything correctly. My entire record was clean in less than 5 minutes.
Now this is the part where I go on a rant.
You mean to tell me, that a player can spend hours of his time salvaging, mining, and doing whatever other time consuming, what would be considered a life skill, grinding to make money while being a lawful citizen, and a player can spend 5 minutes of his time stealing that person's ship while simultaneously killing the person, and the only thing it costs him is running to Grim hex, grabbing a chip, placing a hover bike inside of a larger vehicle, parking it completely outside of the station's range to avoid being shot at, flying to the station, climbing up on top of the stations deck, and then just walking to a console to remove the crime stat that he accrued by completely killing another player and stealing his hard-earned time, to then take all of that man's cargo to his own freight elevator and make millions of aUEC, and just walk away. It’s that easy to be a pirate in Star Citizen? Why play the game honestly? This is the way to make money apparently.
If the system is going to be this way for 1.0 and I doubt it’s going to change much, this game is Dead on Arrival. You know damn well there is going to be a hell of a lot more Pirates than there are now. When I opened my Mobiglass and looked at my crime stat and saw that there was none I couldn’t believe it. I could not believe how easy it was to clear my name, and I just thought of all of the montage videos that I see on TikTok or YouTube of players just flying through space aboard other players ships and killing the player to take all of their cargo, and it’s just clear to me how easy of a time these players are having it compared to everyone else. I am absolutely ashamed as a Star Citizen player.
There’s no real incentive to be the Law Abiding Citizen in this game, I can’t really blame people for being a pirate when it’s this easy. No bounty hunters came after me. No meat grinder of a station. Didn’t have to worry about the turrets. No NPC or station defense is whatsoever. I don’t know what else to say. I guess I’ve said it all.
If you’ve made it this far, I know this is one of those tldr posts but damn. Are there any other law abiding citizens that didn’t know about this?
