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[Serenitis]

0.65 was pretty much peak fun for me, as it was possible to play on 'team red' and actually stand a decent chance of making a rolling ball of death - if you were careful enough.

Starting by jumping on small trade fleets in Askonia and gambling on captures, working your way up to a set of ships with at least burn 8 and then hanging around busy markets playing chicken with the patrols, trying to get them to chase you and leave the traders vulnerable.
Then it was just a matter of checking the status of the various trade fleets and jumping on any that were 'unloading supplies'.

Repeat until your fleet is made out of captured Lion's Guard Tempests and you have a pile of supplies on Umbra so big you can see it from orbit, then just keep going for more and more outrageous targets. Carry on until the next update rolls round then start over.

Now, obviously since 0.7 was released none of this works anymore and will get you killed into tiny pieces with much swiftness.
Which leaves an interesting problem for aspiring babby pierats: Wat do?

Hanging around markets will now get you roflstomped by E-Burn patrols, so you can't really go anywhere near them for a long while.
But markets are now the only places you know trade fleets will be.
Hanging around jump points is marginally safer, but also very very dull. And you will get sqaushed by a patrol coming through eventually.
Lurking in hyperspace is also quite dull, and far far too expensive for a babby pierat - fuel costs way too much to 'waste' on derping around and hoping a suitable target shows up.

And then there is the 'Emergency Burn' again, trade fleets will waltz off into the distance on and infinite burn conga if a red/unidentified fleet approaches them.
And again, fuel is way too precious to burn on maybe catching that fleet.

Spoiler

For ref:
With the following mods - SS+, BRDY, Imperium
The average prices for supplies and fuel are, 65 and 250 respectively

[close]

tl;dr - Emergency Burn ruined piracy

So. How do you play pirate since 0.7 rolled around and dropped all these things into play?
Teach me senpai!

[HELMUT]

So. How do you play pirate since 0.7 rolled around and dropped all these things into play?

Like this :



Running dark and staying immobile in dust rings makes you more or less invisible to preys and predators. Of course, you have to know the right spots first. The area around Salus in Askonia have quite a lot of freighters, but also patrols, so you have to be quick with the emergency burn and make uses of asteroids fields to lose pursuers. Hybrasil is fairly easy to lose patrols due to the numerous nebulas, but it can plays against you too. Magec is probably the easiest for piracy, due to the limited patrols and the huge dust (and asteroid) ring spawning the whole the system, the presence of Kanta's Den is also a plus.

Hunting in hyperspace is a bit expensive on fuel, but also much safer due to the lack of patrols, and can get you a hefty amount of ressources by camping the Askonia/Eos Exodus road. You can also lure enemies in hyperspace storms if things get too hot.

Staying hidden (no civilian hulls), mobile (frigates) and exploiting space environnement are the keys for early game piracy. Also, retreating tactical repositioning is never a bad idea when things looks scary, as the engaged fleet will be immobilized for a few moments after a successful escape.

It's still hard mode, most of the time you'll be poor, hated and outnumbered. It plays like old Uomoz corvus mod, but with a blindfold.

[Thaago]

Another thing you can do is join the large battles - on the pirate side. The loot is surprisingly good.

If you are hiding in a ring with your transponder off, your active sensors will see farther than you are seen. So if you know that no one is close, you can ping with impunity.

Also, I believe the 'infinite burn conga' (I like that) is fixed now - I haven't seen nearly as much emergency burning in .7.2

[Serenitis]

Right so, hiding and ambushing.
Which as it turns out is a pretty boring way to play, which is why I never bothered trying it due to not wanting to be bored.
I tried it, and was not terribly enthused by the.... well, lack of any apprieciable gameplay.
And also frigates. Being limited to frigates is such a huge turn-off. Too fast, too twitchy, too squishy, too dead.

So, piracy is pretty much 'not for you anymore' if you actively don't like the infinite waiting, and frigate friends 4eva methods of gameplay?
Lovely.

It's still hard mode, most of the time you'll be poor, hated and outnumbered.

Exactly how it was before, and that was never a huge problem. Now instead of being merely hard it is now not-quite-impossible but rather locked behind a mechanic induced boredom barrier.
Which I suppose is the game's way of saying You are not supposed to be a pirate.

*insert sad catface here*

Another thing you can do is join the large battles - on the pirate side. The loot is surprisingly good.

Although.... I never tried joining any battles. Mostly because I could never find any that weren't hopelessly lopsided in the favour of a faction.
Maybe that's what I need to do.

[Alex]

I seem to remember trying it myself for a bit during some 0.7.2a playtesting... or it might have been for 0.7a. My takeaway at the time was that it's really hard to get started, since it takes a while to find good targets and you might not have the operational time to do it (i.e. you'll run out of supplies) but if you wait until you have a better fleet, then it's more workable.

Going transponder-off in hyperspace in particular is good - you don't get hassled, and if you stay in the open areas, you can get the jump on fleets in the deep areas because you have as sensor advantage, and you don't need to stay still. Plus, you can make use of storms to chase other fleets down - there's just a lot more "terrain" in hyperspace that can be used to advantage pretty much everywhere, where chasing someone EB'ing away from you in open space inside a system isn't going to work very well.

Basically, it's a question of having enough of a resource buffer to survive any dry spells of not finding juicy targets, and having your fleet be strong enough that enough targets qualify as "juicy".

Been a little while though, so please take with a grain of salt. And I probably wouldn't care to do it in iron mode, at the moment.

[Weltall]

Whenever I go for piracy, it is always after I establish myself a bit economically and with some good ships. I have to admit piracy is too "hard" to go for, but that is in all games. The whole galaxy ends up hating me, afar from the handful pirates and the gains are small. I do thought end up always being hater by almost all, if not all, factions eventually, save for independents maybe. But in Nexerelin I did paint a small map red, in 0.7.2a. Again though I did not start as a pirate, but rather independent. I did trader jobs, avoiding to get extra hate from pirates and when I felt I was ready to take on the universe, I sided with them. Although there are factions to fight in a modded game, that are hated from pirates too, so I guess that is not fair for anyone trying to do it vanilla.

[VuNut]

The quickest way to get into piracy is to pick a faction and only prey on them to begin with.

Expect to get wiped out (or at least reduced to nearly nothing) from time to time; limit how many 'good' ships you have, exploit D-grade ships whenever possible (and be fine with losing them on a regular basis - quantity over quality), and always dump loot to market or storage as soon as you can.

As mentioned you can run around transponder off in hyperspace to your heart's content without patrols harassing you. The safety comes at the cost of needing fuel, but you can sit stationary there effectively forever.

Also, sitting still in a dust ring or asteroid belt and going dark renders you almost (literally if you have insulated engines on everything) invisible to fleets that are any threat to you, abuse the hell out of it.

Pay close attention in-system to notice the sensor lines sweep over your fleet if a patrol pings, have a plan on where you can lay low to evade them, and you'll do just fine.

Oh, and marines. Always have marines. Capture - and use - everything.

[HellFire]

I'd also add totally ignore the open markets, sell everything on black markets and use the price demands to get super bank off your raids. Supply convoys can make you really, REALLY big money. Oh, and the planets with very low stability have really cheap supplies, fuel and dirt cheap marines. Specifically Maxios in Magec and Killa in Yma are the ones i hit up often. Even if you anger the independents, you can still get to both relatively easy for resupply.