Hi. could a vet with experience in piracy please explain how piracy is handled in this game, and wether its a profitable profession.

Currently, piracy doesn't work very well because of an imbalance in the engine/battery combinations that makes it nearly impossible to chase down a player who has a head start.

Before that happenned though, the tradition mode of piracy worked like this:

Scenario 1:
Pirate: YAR!! Drop ye cargo or be destroyed ye lilly livered roid farmer!!
Trader: Go screw yourself!
Pirate: AVAST!!
*Rockets fly, trader blows up, pirate takes cargo.*
Trader: Fsck!
Pirate: Ye were warned!!

Scenario 2:
Pirate: YAR!! Drop ye cargo or be destroyed ye lilly livered roid farmer!!
Trader: Whatever you say pirate sir.
*Jetissons cargo, pirate takes what he can fit. Trader goes on his merry way.*
Pirate: Pleasure doin' business with ye.
Trader: *mutters*Go screw yourself.*mutters*

Scenario 3:
Pirate: YAR!! Drop ye cargo or be destroyed ye lilly livered roid farmer!!
Trader: Make me.
Pirate: Yar!
*Rockets fly, pirate ship goes boom.*
Trader: Ha ha!

As far as profit goes, piracy is not very good. It takes a very smart and patient pirate to actually make a profit from it, and even then it pales in comparison to what a good trader can get. You have to choose your targets wisely and pick the fights you know you can win.

piracy has mostly just been used for fun and cause of boredom in the old days.

WRONG. I have been a pirate for 2 years. You just need to know how and where to do it properly. Pirating can be very profiting and great combat experience. If you don't want to get kicked out of certain factions....kill players in neutral or unmonitored areas....such as Corvus for example. Also with the "semi-new" navigation system....running is a lot easier than it was from before. So if you're not very experienced make sure you kill off your prey quickly.

Yeah, once you know how to fly, and learn some piracy tactics, it can make you one of the richest players in the galaxy.

I love what you have written abour pirating Magus. May I use it in my FAQ file?

Please do.

Piracy works as simple.

Just shoot down a cargo ship and collect the cargo.

Well you need 1 combat ship and a cargo ship to do it.

One to shoot down a cargo ship, the other cargo ship to collect it.

Magus, you forgot the stealth strike form of piracy;

Scenario 4:
Pirate: <silence>
*Afterburners engaged, Rockets flying
Trader: WTF is tha.....
*trader blows up, pirate takes cargo.*
Trader: Fsck, you suck!

ahh yes i remember those wonderful days when pirates would just attack everybody.

-Pyrodude

Need a reminder?

Yeah. There I was, just peacefully scanning roids in Odia M14, when suddenly out of the blue, I explode. Not knowing what was up, I look up to the upper left corner of my screen, and it says "Icarus destroyed green cactus". Then he took my (nonexistent) cargo and claimed he had taken my (not-able-to-be-taken) scanner, and proceeded to attempt to sell it to me for 14k. Fortunately for me, I played along, and eventually ended up only losing two busses and I got a piece of Aquean Ore out of it!

Sure it was just the two buses you lost? ;-)

alright, so the million dollar question is if you can just destroy a target to collect its goods...why do you bother asking them to drop it in the first place? i mean, yeah, it sounds cool, but why give them the moment to think, hey i'm in trouble here...do i fight, run or hide? genrally things are much more in your favor if your already drilling your target before he even knows he has a hostile.

wouldnt it make a bit more sence for pirates to disable a ship...then loot it, then destroy it? this was a pilot can avoid damage by complying with a pirate, and the pirate saves allot of time crippling a ship and slowly getting cargo one unit at a time from a ship. this also makes escort ships nessary, making pirates having to deal with them first to get their riches instead of run in, blast, scoop and run out.

because right now, i dont see the point of the drop cargo command at the moment? its gona drop regardless when they go boom. :)

Because traders think they have a right to life. There were a lot of fun debates over the past year about piracy - pirates correctly pointed out that 9 out of 10 times if they ask for a cargo drop the trader will just run away. Traders demanded that pirates ask for a cargo drop to "not ruin their fun." Basically they want to be kicked awake so they can react before the attack.

It's asinine, yes, but that's the way the trading community views the situation. For a pirate to make a kill, especially now that a trader can run so incredibly easily, he has to attack with overwhelming speed and suprise. Pirates in the new universe aren't going to be asking for drops very often, if at all.

If someone calls you a griefer, just ignore them. If they think you can make a living as a pirate by warning people and watching them zoom off like jackrabbits then they are on the wrong end of the Darwinian trader scale when it comes to intelligence.

okay, thats pretty much how i figured. running away appears to me, to be very easy in this game. no frankly...i dont so much care about the option of looting other players. i do want to be able to kill them however. :)

though hopefuly, stuff like this will be given some thought. heh, and no offence to the traders but uh...thats just plain silly to try and make that an unwritten rule.

Melark, if you are up for some killing, then goto the less stable regions of space ie. Sedina, Odia...

Exactly!

Let me assure you, the first three scenarios rarely ever happen, rather its more like this.

trader: "man what a hual, hehe I'm rich bee-autch..."

system: "traderx was killed by evil pirate"

pirate: "Haha... I powned your arrz... hahaha all your nanties belong to me!"

So there you go, any questions?

>>mutorcs<<

Isn't that what I said in Scenario 4?

Yah, but mines is prettier :p

>>mutorcs<<