i would like to point out that the idea was pirate corpses not pirate ships, so in theory we only have to kill a fraction of the ships! Quick MATH again to the rescue.
Lets see, first we need the ships pirates use and their crew ( assuming no extra crew)
Frigates
Cerberus: 20
Hound: 10
Lasher:25
Dram:5
Destroyers
Buffalo MK II: 40
Condor: 65
Enforcer :60
Mule:40
Tarsus: 30
Cruisers
Dominator: 200
Venture: 125
Capitals
Fighters
Broadsword: 3
Talon:4
Piranha:6
Warthog:6
Please note, these are ships i remember pirates using, i haven't played in well over 6 months at this point so my memory may be sketchy, but i fired up the game to check the numbers against the codex. if i forgot any ships let me know. Oh and D variants use the same crew numbers.
Alright next we need to keep in mind this number 239,291,696,578.1287 because that is how many pirates we have to kill. Now assuming we got this perfectly and got a fleet comprised entirely of non combat ready dominators, ( thus we suffered no losses ourselves and faced no resistance)
In that situation we only have to kill 1,196,458,482.89 dominators. Personally I think that sounds much more doable. Again for those of you who don't like large numbers that is 1 billion, 196 million, 458 thousand, and 482 and 9 tenths dominator cruisers. Keeping in mind this is still the number EACH of us have to kill, all 4,197 members of this forum that have ever been, on this forum, Including any bots left in the system, and we can't rely on them to kill pirate scum.
So recalculating for the once prized pinatas of the pirate fleets
At 40 crew per buffalo that's 5,982,292,414.45 ships. That's 5 billion, 982 million, 292 thousand, and 414 and a half buffalos.
Thinking of something else here, if we allow ourselves the handicap of going back in time to previous installs we need to get a bunch of condors, versus something with high levels of energy weapon PD capability, say... an odyssey ( or several) have them hold position and just go AFK while the condors throw infinite fighter craft at us. although if we go back too far the condors may commit suicide and run into the odysseys, Also there is the small matter of not letting the odysseys roam freely to attack the condors, in theory an escort order solves that, but just like the condor's AI we all know how reliable that used to be. ( okay maybe not all of us, but MOST of us)
Although one final wrinkle, if we were able to spend 1 second killing each buffalo ( which is not even remotely going to happen) And we never slept, EVER again, and took no breaks for food, water, loved ones, or bodily reasons. 5 billion seconds is 158 years. ( the full number btw is 189.57 years for all them buffalo)
Also keep in mind that this does NOT account for escape pods. or captured pirates, ( and we can't jettison them anymore)
Okay so that isn't going to happen unless we quadruple our player base1 ( preferably more if we want to get this done this decade)
What if we throw the MAXIMUM amount of crew onto each ship? does that help at all? Well the only ones i'm going to bother listing here are the buffalo and the Venture, because it has the highest max crew of all pirate ships, coming in at an incredibly small 350. As for the buffalo? well it's maximum is 40. Yep, no extra room there! so the venture is the only number here that matters.
So once again we recalculate for the venture stuffed full of pirates. And the number of the hour is... * drumroll* 683,690,561.65
Hey look! we're no longer in the billions! yay. So 683 million, 690 thousand, and 561 and 6 tenth ventures. Now if we can kill each of them in 1 second a piece with no downtime between we're only looking at 21.6 years!
You know what though? i don't like it. we can do better! hmm.. what if we took all the boxes out of the ventures cargo holds and stuffed it full of more pirates2? So assuming we can just pack them all in there getting 1 pirate per cargo unit that is another 500 pirates for a total of 850 pirates per venture!
So once again we calculate for that, and we get 281,519,643.03 OR 281 million, 519 thousand, 643 ventures Hooray we finally got it under decade! coming in at 8.9 years if the same restrictions apply.
I'm incapable of thinking up any new ways to get that number lower. i mean i already broke the game's rules by replacing cargo for crew. and we're also breaking the speed record for killing a venture by a nearly infinite amount. We're also going for broke with our biggest, possible ship for the pirates. Now if they use Atlas freighters that is a different story, but to my knowledge pirates have no capital ships.
1: This is based on the forum's total members, the only way to know for sure how many players we have at our disposal is for alex to tell us the exact number of copies of SS sold. and he won't do that. ( i assume he won't that would probably give away too much personal info about his finances)
2: yes i know this breaks the game's rules.