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Author Topic: Any tips for a pirate playthrough please?  (Read 12902 times)

Ali

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Any tips for a pirate playthrough please?
« on: January 30, 2019, 11:25:33 AM »

As mentioned, any tips for a pirate playthrough please?

I'm guessing there's no associated comission for pirates?

Cheers
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Euphytose

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Re: Any tips for a pirate playthrough please?
« Reply #1 on: January 30, 2019, 11:36:48 AM »

Get the industry skill that reduces the maintenance cost per d-mod, as well as the effectiveness of those d-mods.

Also you should note that it's strictly inferior to a standard playthrough considering those skill points could be spent somewhere else, like the combat skills. Pirates currently don't sell capital ships, and the bounties you get are against pirates, despite showing the flag of the faction they previously belonged to. So it limits what you can do on top of the rest.
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Ali

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Re: Any tips for a pirate playthrough please?
« Reply #2 on: January 30, 2019, 02:59:59 PM »

ah cheers..

just gone through a loada pirate markets, does suck a bit that 95% their ships are dmoded to death fresh off the market  :-\

Even when the dmods are removed ( at a crazy price! ) your still left with a ship that not as good as it's faction counterpart, not that it should be but would be better if could at least buy ships in relativly decent condition..

& yea shame a pirate playthrough doesn't yet appear to be as well supported as the standard factions  :-\
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DatonKallandor

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Re: Any tips for a pirate playthrough please?
« Reply #3 on: January 30, 2019, 03:50:48 PM »

Run missions for the pirates to raise rep with them. Choose a pirate base you like the look of (and that has heavy industries) and sell them blueprint packs on the black market to make them add them to their tech base. Sell them nanoforges to help them produce better ships.
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Euphytose

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Re: Any tips for a pirate playthrough please?
« Reply #4 on: January 30, 2019, 03:58:55 PM »

Using Nexerelin makes playing Pirate much easier by the way.
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MajorTheRed

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Re: Any tips for a pirate playthrough please?
« Reply #5 on: January 30, 2019, 04:20:27 PM »

I would suggest the 4 four industrial skills to get a zombie fleet with many D-mods.
Your game can be divided in several parts
In the first one, the most difficult, is to a fine rep with pirate. Accept pirate missions, avoid combat with them. Sneaky skills can be useful also.
Once you get a inhospitable rep with pirate, one other way to improve your rep is to find a system with pirates and their enemy (Corvus for example). Attack the other faction, and then try to help pirate in combat to get rep bonus for assistance. Try to not become enemy with neutral at this moment.
Once you have progress enough, you can sell them anything found in ambushing convoys or in salvage mission.
Please also note that once they are inhospitable with you, pirate will still trade with your colonies, it can help because I suspect they have a significant market share. If you're still friend with neutral, it means you will not get too much reduction in accessibility for your colonies.
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Flying Birdy

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Re: Any tips for a pirate playthrough please?
« Reply #6 on: January 30, 2019, 06:15:50 PM »

I do full-on pirate mode playthrough very often, -100 relations with everyone pirates included, here's some tips.

Skills

You need safety procedures and field repairs in the industry tree. Maxing those two branches makes raiding much more profitable, as 1. E-burn costs no supplies 2. lower maintenance 3. recovered ships have a significant amount of hull + CR when recovered which means they scuttle for ALOT more.

Your starting skills should definitely be at least 1 point into field repairs, as that effectively doubles the supply loot from a single recovered ship.

Some other things that are essential. Navigation + Sensor skills are super important. Navigation level 3 is huge, as it allows you to fly faster and also transverse jump. 11 burn is actually really important because it means you are at the same speed as most AI fleets (due to their nav relays in the campaign). Simultaneously, transverse jump means you can jump in and out of a system from anywhere. A lot of systems have inner jump points that are well guarded so transverse jump is basically a requirement for systems like Sindria.

Sensor skill level 2 is extremely powerful. Go Dark basically makes you invisible with sensor 2.

Making Money and getting ships

You basically want to stick to frigates until you can find a market to buy augmented engines from. Stick to systems with tri-tachyon free ports, independents, or pirate bases, because they won't care if you have beacon on or off. Even if you are hostile to them, they will not chase you unless you turn beacon on. Typically, I like to base out of Cethelen and farm tr-tech fleets for carriers and organ smugglers. Alternatively, basing out of the abandoned station near Salamanca is great, because the league fleets there are basically free farm. Supplies are also relatively cheap at Cethelen, because they don't get shortages like pirates do. And if you intercept a drug smuggler, you can dump your wares right at Qaras for a huge 150k payday.

Make sure YOU HACK NAV RELAYS!!!! IF YOU DON'T, AI WILL BURN FASTER THAN YOU. YOU WILL DIE!

Also, you can run drugs and organs between free ports and Qaras. Tends to be pretty profitable albeit boring.

You'll want to be really attentive to smugglers. Kill them with impunity to get money.

You don't need to have actual friendly relations with any pirates. Their military markets are worthless so don't bother. Kill pirate convoys as well for farm.

Key Progression points

Getting augmented drive field is basically game-winning, as it allows you to fly cruisers at 10 burn. From that point on its just a matter of spamming a bunch of carriers you stole from battles.

Make sure you develop a habit of looking at every single black market you can find. Buy a ton of the weapons you like to have for your ships at every opportunity. Also, don't sell all the weapons you recover from battles; build up an arsenal by storing them in Abandoned station near Salamanca. You'll want to reach a point where your storage station has every type of weapon available.

You're going to find that money will not be a challenge. The biggest challenges are getting good ships that you can pilot because you have no access to any markets. Personally, I use a restored luddic path lasher, then a hammerhead (or a medusa if I get lucky with a tri-tech fleet that has it), then a typically a conquest as they are readily available. You can pick one easily visiting any nearby Sindria Diktat system and destroying their out-of-system patrol. Conquests are great because with augmented drives, they still fly at 10 burn. Meaning you can still run a 10 burn fleet. If you get lucky with d-mods, like having structural problems or unreliable subsystems, your conquest will even be extra cheap to fly as well.

Once you are confident enough to build your own colony, do so in a core system. because the -60% accessibility from hostile plus -30% from distance really hurts. Cool strategy is to burn an AI colony to the ground and build your own. Great targets are Luddic path colonies, good habitability. Do not orbital bombard the planet, as pollution penalty is severe. Raid the planet repeatedly until it decivilizes, then colonize it, then abandone it (to remove decivilized), then colonize it again for a pristine condition core system planet.

After your first colony game is basically won.
« Last Edit: January 30, 2019, 06:24:09 PM by Flying Birdy »
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Euphytose

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Re: Any tips for a pirate playthrough please?
« Reply #7 on: January 30, 2019, 06:24:08 PM »

After your first colony game is basically won.

Unfortunately, this is correct.
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Flying Birdy

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Re: Any tips for a pirate playthrough please?
« Reply #8 on: January 30, 2019, 06:24:58 PM »

After your first colony game is basically won.

Unfortunately, this is correct.

Yea I stopped building colonies in my pirate runs because of it. The game is far too easy with it.
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Ali

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Re: Any tips for a pirate playthrough please?
« Reply #9 on: January 31, 2019, 12:51:08 PM »

Thank so much for the tips guys!!!

Most appreciated!!  ;D
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RawCode

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Re: Any tips for a pirate playthrough please?
« Reply #10 on: February 03, 2019, 06:29:19 AM »

91a will fix imba colonies

IMHO pirate run is waste of time and quite frustrating, mostly because pirates have no special content behind.
Unlike tritach or hegemony, that award player with powerful ships, pirates just neh.
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DatonKallandor

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Re: Any tips for a pirate playthrough please?
« Reply #11 on: February 03, 2019, 07:36:57 AM »

Pirate Falcon for life though.
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Toxcity

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Re: Any tips for a pirate playthrough please?
« Reply #12 on: February 03, 2019, 12:31:21 PM »

Pirates will also be getting the Atlas Mk II next version (though don't know how strong that is).
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RawCode

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Re: Any tips for a pirate playthrough please?
« Reply #13 on: February 04, 2019, 01:59:09 AM »

it will be "vendor trash" and just inferior version of conquest.

ATM pirates are only useful to grind reputation for normal factions
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Euphytose

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Re: Any tips for a pirate playthrough please?
« Reply #14 on: February 04, 2019, 05:55:37 AM »

Yeah I think the new pirate capitals won't be much of a problem. I understand that it's supposed to be the inferior faction but in my opinion they should just get different versions of existing ships that are sidegrades, not strictly worse. The Falcon is a good example.
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