Pirate Guide? @Guide Writers..

[jamesthesecond]

Any thoughts of creating a pirate guide? Seem to be a forgotten career, except as add on job.....

Also, as side point, maybe use a pirate in the monthly challenge themes.

[Trese Brothers]

A pirate guide would be great. Very profitable and popular career

[davea]

Huh. I haven't played pirates much, but I can write guides well enough. What should go in there?

[jamesthesecond]

Starting Captain template
Best starting ship
Best crew type
Best crew selection
Best talents focus
Starting contacts
Best missions for profits

Focus on survivability on higher difficulty. (Hard.....impossible)

Ask advice and suggestions from experience players.

You can open a seperate post requesting input for the guide you will write.

[davea]

Thanks for the suggested outline. Most of the guides follow that outline. I guess I was asking for the information that should go into the sections, for players who have it. This seems like a good enough thread to collect it.

[jamesthesecond]

Happy to help, but I struggle on higher difficulties..I guess it my playing style.

[Trese Brothers]

Rumors and Conflicts to exploit
How to blockade for riches
How to sell your stolen goods

[jamesthesecond]

Pirete have a nice level 8 RTG talent. Used it to reach the specialty acquisition achievement. Very profitable, except for the xeno.....lol. With the right combat crew they can be profitable to, they leave behind artifacts.

[jamesthesecond]

Originally posted by dave:

Thanks for the suggested outline. Most of the guides follow that outline. I guess I was asking for the information that should go into the sections, for players who have it. This seems like a good enough thread to collect it.

If you like I change the post and add your name as the guide writer...

[JimmysTheBestCop]

There are some different ways to handle pirates and pirating.....

1 is to just use the pirate talent to have merchants turn over their goods and focus on blockading and patrolling to get merchant cards. Pretty much avoiding most combats. Usually requires some smugglers to make high profit selling goods you claim on the black market. Smugglers and pirates can also get you out of other less then favorable ship encounters without combat.

Then there is the scrapper pirates who heads straight to ship combat looking to loot and/or destroy the enemy ship to make that sweet scrap money. Mostly ship combat here as the goal is usually to destroy the ship and scrap and not worry about disabling and getting cargo. Salvage bay is a must. You will actually need a lot of command/tactics aboard the ship so military officers and commanders or zealots for blockading card talents. Still a good idea to blockade/patrol.

Then their is the boarding pirates whose goal is to claim prize ships during conflict for huge paydays. Even simple ships is over 500k profit with some of the 9000m ships getting you a couple million in space bucks profit. This one you might need to focus on patrol/spying/blockade if you want to outfit your combat team in contact weapons/armors/gear.

I would say as far as contacts that you will need at start are the pirate and smuggler if you are focusing on selling captured cargo. Anything with ship combat I would take the military officer contact. Maybe zealot contact for a couple zealots on boards for blockading talents on any of the pirate play troughs..

The biggest thing is deciding what kind of play through you want and what you want your captain to do. He can be your biggest weapon in ship combat or crew combat or your biggest money maker in the black market. As long as you aren't fighting Xeno orbital/exploring in crew combat you can multitask your captain for a couple roles.

You could go something like Pirate/Military Officer/Pistoleer if you wanted your captain to help in ship and crew combat. Or drop Pirate and add Smuggler and start with 10 negotiate if your looking to make black market profit. If not using in crew combat then drop pistoleer and you could go Pirate/Military Officer/Smuggler.

hope those ideas help you

[davea]

I had never thought of a combat-averse pirate, relying on Terrifying Extortion. I may have to try that. Lots of pirates, a few smugglers, big cargo space, lots of nav assist 4.

[davea]

I started a run with the blackheart and smuggler contacts and a cargo ship, to try out this Terrifying Extortion build. It works, but it seems like a "get rich slow" scheme. I have 7 terrifying extortion and some other blockade related talents; I show up and blockade until my cargo hold is full of terrified droppings; then I go sell it. But, the droppings aren't that valuable and they require selling at all different places.

Maybe I am picking low value planets to blockade? Clearly low military + government and high econ + starport planets; my stats are decent (24 resil, 26 cha) and my pools seem decent for 10th level (pilot 72, intim 57).

I have a few smugglers so I'll compare the income to selling rtg in my next few years.

[Trese Brothers]

Think it's always important to mix income streams. Be sure to hunt worlds in Trade Ban and Wars, which adds big $$ profit cards too.

[JimmysTheBestCop]

Yeah you want those pirate tithe cards for $$$ from the zealot talent. Good idea to have some of them on board as well.

The system you are in and what systems you are near is also key. Farfallen Rim system is the perfect pirate/smuggling system.

2 Indy planets to dump most goods. If you play your starting contacts right you can get 2 faction permits for factions that are in that system.

I go for De valtos and javat. The javat planet is high economy and hi tech and can dump to the Indy mining. 2 de valtos lux pop and 1 hi tech planet.

Plus the 2 Indy planets trade with each other. And early game no matter the job if you can pick up 20k-50k for a couple of quick in systems trades then do it.

The system above farfallen is the Alta mess starting system and it has Indy planet. And the system to the right has an Indy population planet so does the Javat system to the right of that one.

Smuggling and black market are great. But you can get unlucky with which planets they spawn on. Needs to be the right planet type but also a good economy if you want to buy goods And you'll either need to do missions or spy and sell Intel to boost black market access.

So better for a non merchant-smuggling run to skip it for the most part and focus on Indy planets. Until you start getting lucky with the contacts.

Cause early game straight pirate runs have no way to farm contacts until e-techs and navs level up to get contact talents.

Plus you can prey on Indy planets and ships for zero faction penalty. And once you build a combat ship you can salvage their military ships for $$$ again at no rep hit.

[Trese Brothers]

Hah, honestly a good pirate should keep a merchant officer on board ;)

[davea]

Thanks for the suggestions about farfallen. It does have almost everything.

I have a midsize ship with high crip, and I'm having trouble deciding which gets higher credits per play hour: aiming carefully to avoid 100% damage and boarding a few times, to get cargo; or just shooting like crazy and getting salvage from the remnants. Salvage doesn't require cargo space, or traveling around afterwards to sell stuff.

There are a few talents that add bonus cargo (pirate looter's instinct on merchants; pirate's rigorous search and mil of strict search on smugglers). Those are good, plus I am switching over all my Terrifying Extortion to Raider's Scrutiny so I won't bother fighting ships without rare, or at least manufactured cargo.

Does anybody know how to pick planets with a higher number of smuggler encounters? So far those seem much more valuable to loot, but I can't get them to appear regularly.