Pirate

Light from the red star was little more than a flicker in the background this far out from the centre of the system. Small rocks and icy dust was the only company to be found for light minutes in all directions. A lone ship hung in space, not that it could be seen without the use of a battery of sensors. For two days the pirate ship Remorseless scanned the region of space patiently waiting.
A flicker on the sensors revealed the presence of interspatial resonance, a ship was about to arrive from another system. Slowly space distorted and peeled back to reveal the presence of a freighter, rich pickings indeed. The Remorseless having been ready for this moved to intercept, closing the gap and preventing the freighter from engaging ISR drives. The freighter suddenly aware of their predicament knew that the only way to survive was to get sufficient distance to engage ISR drives. A torpedo with a vanguard of missiles left the pirate vessel on a direct course for the freighter. In a desperate bid for freedom though the captain had ordered the cargo dumped. The sudden drop in inertia along with the weak engine thrust vectored the freighter in a spinning roll causing the torpedo to fly clear along with most of the missiles. Of the few that were able to correct in time three burst into flames, the targets of gatling laser defences leaving just two to score direct hits. These though caused a searing line of explosions along the spine of the freighter. Gases erupted along with twisted metal fragments. All this had occurred in the complete silence of space. The freighter however had survived and been thrown clear allowing it to time to activate its ISR drives before the Remorseless could engage a second time.
Having chased off the freighter the Remorseless slowly manoeuvred towards the various transport pods spinning in space and rushing away at thousands of kilometres per hour. With practiced ease the ship matched vectors and grappled them aboard. While still midway through this procedure though ripples in subspace alerted the ship, just not quick enough. Four Nebulon class Capital ships materialised in close formation, weapons powered up and ready to engage….
- Somewhere in the Cluster Periphery

Introduction

Pirates are defined as ships that act independently of any authority. This distinction separates them from Independent ships (IND) as Independent ships abide by common law, this being not to initiate any aggressive actions. Aggressive action is defined by the use of enemy lists. While starbases, ground parties and outposts can also be classified as pirates, this is normally only done to shield their true controllers.
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What can pirates do?

Pirates can add anyone to their enemy list. This means that they can attack anything they want. They do not need to be of a specific rank, the do not even need to carry a posted list. Each pirate ship is effectively an admiral.
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What are the drawbacks?

Anyone can attack pirates. They can be added to any ship’s enemy lists irrespective of the ship’s rank or posted list. Many starbases will have pirates on their enemy lists at all times and they are generally not welcome anywhere. Also, once a ship has been declared a pirate, it will normally remain pirate status forever. One important point is to note that any positions captured by pirate positions themselves become pirate positions. If you were thinking of using pirate ships to capture ships from an enemy and seed them into your affiliation, think again.
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How do you become a pirate?

This is simply a matter of issuing a special action to change to a position from its current affiliation to pirate. The position must be player owned i.e. it could not be owned by the affiliation. In most circumstances this will be sufficient, but as with all special actions the Referee has final say.
If a player has a political position, the position will still be under the political position. This is important as game mechanics prevent a player from accidentally attacking their own positions.
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Why run pirates with affiliation positions?

If you control affiliation assets, using them to attack other affiliations often draws unwanted attention to the rest of the affiliation. As such the capability of performing acts of skulduggery are limited. By converting some of your ships to pirate class, especially if they are ubiquitous classes such as the Broadsword you can aggravate the enemy without them being able to pin it on your affiliation. You can, should you wish, even use insider knowledge to steal cargo from allies should you so desire. As your positions will never attack pirate positions under the same political position, you can feel free to pick-up and deliver to the pirate ships as you see fit, provided that nobody knows what you are up to.
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What are the best tactics?

There are a number of strategies and tactics that can be employed by pirates. Some of these will work only under special circumstances. Becoming a successful pirate is not easy. It is better to have a chain of contacts, preferably amongst neutral people. If you prefer to go solo then it is advisable to have a squadron of sneaky ships. These need to have a high sensor power and a low sensor profile.
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Hidden Base

There are many small asteroids in the outer edges of every system. These are near impossible to find, so when you do, it is good to make use of them. Use ships that you own (ones that will not show up on affiliation political reports) to outfit a pirate base on one of these. This should have a few complexes covering the basics for ship repairs and maintenance plus weaponry and ammunition. This can then be used as a base of operations away from prying eyes. The base can remain an outpost, thereby requiring only the occasional update.
A hidden base has other uses such as developing special pirate ships. This is important, as more often than not a design of ship is associated with either an affiliation or a technique that in turn is associated with an affiliation. By creating a range of ships based on EEM techs or even new ship techs, a pirate can completely separate his clandestine activities and identity from more legitimate enterprises.
EEM techs and blueprints can be purchased from EEM starbases through the use of a special action. The price though is not cheap and the EEM do not have an endless supply.
Techs can generally be bought for $150,000 plus $50,000 per supporting principle.
EEM Courier Ships (supporting designs of any ship up to 25 hulls) - $200,000
EEM Standard Freighters (supporting designs of light hull ships up to 50 hulls) - $250,000
EEM Warships (supporting designs of heavy hull ships between 51 and 75 hulls) - $300,000
Blueprints are usually a quarter of the tech price.
EEM Courier blueprint - $50,000
EEM Broadsword blueprint - $75,000
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Hit and Run

This tactic requires that the type of position being targeted is a merchant ship. Basically go in hard and try to destroy the ship. Freighters are normally built from lighter hulls that cannot withstand a pounding. The use of missiles and torpedoes is often sufficient to destroy them in a single day. Presuming that the battle is over in a single day, the pirate will be classified as having completed combat and allowed to move prior to any attempt to block it. Here comes the sneaky bit; if the target has been destroyed or has dumped cargo, providing that the pirate does not spend longer than the available TU’s picking it up, it can move on even if an entire warfleet turns up…. Grab the stuff and run. It is important not to use the ‘pick-up item type’ order for everything as a plethora of item types could keep the ship in the same location beyond the length of available TU’s; don’t be greedy if time is of the essence.
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Mercenaries

As long as you have contacts that are willing to pay you stellars, items and such, there is nothing stopping a pirate from hitting targets for a third party. The advantage of this is that you do not need to worry about cargo space within your fleet to pick-up the spoils. You can effectively enter a skirmish totally tooled up, hit hard and fast and be gone before the cavalry arrives. The choice of weapons for this sort of manoeuvre depends largely on the type of target. For heavy hull ships with armour, weapons with a high damage are required in order to penetrate the armour. Photon cannons, torpedoes and kinetic missiles are advisable. For freighters, as they do not have much in the way of armour, photon guns and light photon guns as well as missiles are the weapons of choice. Light photon guns are excellent as they can pack a hell of a punch and do incredibly high damage to mass ratio that without the effects of armour absorption will punch holes in a freighter. When attacking outposts, missiles and rail guns are extremely useful. Rail guns, while not as damaging as missiles, have the benefit of not being affected by point defence. This will allow the pirate to indirectly target an outpost and hammer it safe in the knowledge that beam weapons such as photon guns will not be able to shoot back.
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Disable and board

This requires some precision from the attacker so should only be conducted if the attacker has extremely accurate weapons such as space fighters or beam weapons and a high base accuracy. The pirate should really be aiming to get a total targeting bonus of around 18 is possible. The tactic requires that the ship attempt to disable the target, preventing it from getting away. The use of tractor beams is also quite handy. If you are flying blind i.e. with an entire affiliation on the enemy list, then it is best you will have to try and pin the ship until the next day. When you receive your turn results for the first day, you will know the number of the position you are attacking. That night send in orders to board the ship the next day. This is risky as on the next day, help may come to the aid of the ship in question. You can presume that you board the ship in question and issue orders to deliver items to it. Obviously, if the boarding action fails, so too will the deliver orders thus preventing you from giving items to the enemy. You cannot however put in orders for the ship that you intend to board. This is because at the start of the day when the orders are checked, you will not own the ship so the orders will be rejected. By the same token though, should the other player put in orders for the ship, they will be deleted if your boarding action is successful.
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Specific Boarding

Some players are rather cavalier in their approach to running ships. They will issue orders to move great distances. As a result of this, their ships tend to end up in orbital ring 10 of a system while they stack TU’s for another week’s pending orders. During this time they are often scanned by passing ships. With the right contacts, you can specifically target a ship for a boarding action without the day’s worry of trying to pin it and possibly changing from predator to prey when reinforcements arrive.
All that you need to do is turn up and issue the boarding action. Providing that your ship is fast enough, you will be able to board.
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Spies and Scanning

There are two methods of initiating specific engagements i.e. attempting to engage one specific ship. The first is through direct scanning and the second is through reliable sources of information.
A ship with a very low or negative sensor profile will often evade detection. Large freighters however tend to have large sensor profiles. A small heavy hulled ship is often able to scan positions while remaining undetected. They can therefore be used as patrol ships, sniffing around likely locations such as orbital ring 10 of a system looking for ships. This information can then be used to launch attacks on sitting ducks. The information should be used with haste as even the next day could mean that the scanned position moves on.
Other players can pass on information to whomever they like. Should they scan positions belonging to rivals, there is nothing to stop them passing this information on to pirates or players that know players that control pirates. If however it becomes clear that there are always pirate attacks following ‘innocent’ encounters with a certain ship or affiliation, players will start to add things up.
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Notes on Boarding

A boarding action can be conducted as many times as desired providing that the boarder has sufficient TU’s. They only drawback is that first of all, the boarder has to run the gauntlet of four rounds of directed fire from the vessel to be boarded. This barrage is completely one-sided and can, if sufficient weapons are present, cripple the boarder before contact has even been made. As this is outside the standard battle performed at the end of a day’s run, it can lead to some interesting encounters. Just make sure that you have set up the boarding party for your ship so as not badly reduce the ship’s crew factors should everything go pear-shaped.
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Capture of outposts

Outposts, especially those specialising in mining are rarely adequately defended. This is because they are hard to find and wages are high. Once they have been constructed they are often ignored by the player for weeks and sometimes months, left to plod along gathering ores and stockpiling them for occasional pick-ups. They rarely have platforms in orbit so do not even get reconnaissance reports on the occasionally requested update. This makes them excellent targets for ground assaults. Once you have found one, land near it and scout it. Then you probably have plenty of time to trundle back and forth, bringing in troops. Only choose weak outposts, as the last thing you want is to get involved in a prolonged ground battle. On the day of the battle, you want to ensure that you have at least two days if possible to complete the attack and get away with as much as you can. A delaying tactic is to position a ship in the tenth orbital of the same quadrant. One of the old highly visible freighters you have previously captured and have no real use for is excellent for this. Make sure that the ship has little of value beyond a load of sensors and appropriate affiliations on the enemy list. As ships generally move to the appropriate orbital quadrant of the planet they are moving to, it is often the case that they will arrive along a predictable root. The freighter will often snare ships desperate to arrive as they approach the planet. This may be sufficient for your ships to get out of trouble without being caught by the cavalry.
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What to do with the Spoils?

There is no point in risking ships if there is nothing to do with the spoils. If you are a player with affiliation ships as well as pirate ones, this becomes easier. All that you need to do is simply deliver the items to your other ships and let them disseminate the items through your affiliation, or even sell them on the open market.
First of all, debris from ships will come in handy building new ships or selling them on. Items installed on ships can also be stripped out and used to as replacements where appropriate on pirate ships.
Captured ships are another issue entirely. The boarded ship retains its pirate status. There are limited uses for pirate freighters. One option is to use the freighters to pick-up debris or dumped cargoes or only transport items between your ships stationed in the outer edges of systems, thus reducing the chance of being attacked. Another option is to allow the freighter to fall to pieces and then collect the remaining hulls left after integrity breakdown. This latter option can be speeded up by the use of uninstall order to remove items. It is best to undertake this option in an out of the way location such as a hidden starbase.
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Game Designer’s Notes

Pirates have been included to allow players to indulge their evil side. They are as much about throwing a spanner in other players’ carefully made plans as well as being a little bit of light relief. This said, they can, with some thought become more than just a thorn in a rival’s side. There is nothing stopping them becoming a threatening presence and a bane to traders.
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