CommonSenseOTB wrote:Cost is the main thing that prevents most merchant ships from deploying cargo container boobytraps. Make the cost 300 to 500 credits and have a script that replaces 1 in 500 cargo containers with a booby trap as they are spawned. Case closed. Just needs to be written.
I don't know why anyone would buy one, though. It's a lot of money to spend, for the offchance that you might destroy some of one group of pirates. What if you dump the thing, and they ignore it? Or one of them goes for it and the rest stay on your tail? For 300Cr you'd be better off with a hardhead.
It's an entertaining idea but I'm not sure it has any practical implications. Plus if you make it deployable by NPCs you introduce a bang-you're-dead element to the game, where if the player isn't Clean, and they get unlucky on a dice roll, they die.
Personally, I think a distress beacon would have more in-game application: something that summons any unengaged police, navy and bounty-hunters within 100K, say. It would be free to fit but using it would cost you something like 100Cr for every ship that responds until you turn it off (by re-scooping it) or it goes dead (say, after 5 minutes).