Piracy

[Killing Joke]

I was browsing through the forums trying to find some insight into piracy and starting out as a pirate. I've been engaging in Bounty Hunting through the course of the beta events and some trading just to get a flavour for it.

My query is what advice would people have for those looking to pursue piracy? I've enjoyed the Bounty Hunting as the combat and tracking targets is very enjoyable, however, my current ship (eagle) is woefully unsuitable for the task at hand in my eyes. If I am mistaken please by all means correct me. One thing I have noticed so far from my experience bounty hunting is that there are very few players who appear to be carrying bounty's. I don't object to my primary source of income being from AI bounty's but there is a bigger thrill to engaging a human opponent.

So the long and short of it, how would people suggest beginning a successful pirate career? Thank you for your insight and hope to see you all in space.

Regards,

KJ

 

[Mr_Jim]

Cargo scanner, learn to target the cargo hatch, get alone with your prey (many USS have a lone Lakon-9 aka Space Cow, they usually drops alot, but be quick before the blue force gets there). Watch out for zee authorities
Limpets cost to much and are not working most of the time. Its pretty hard to find the right stuff to sell to the pirate fences on the BBS. Good luck, you´ll need it

 

[Toxic_Waster]

As anything in Elite, piracy is very underdeveloped. The main issue with piracy is that is absolutely not profitable. Munition and repairs will cost more than the rare occasion of acquiring the cargo. Players will not submit to the pirate demands preferring to lose ship and cargo hoping to escape. They don't realize that it's much harder for trader to get away after being pulled from supercruise than for a pirate to blow defenseless ship into pieces. Nevertheless to afford piracy a player needs to have the additional source of income such trading and/or mission running. Hence so far piracy can't be considered the stand-alone profession.

SHIP

Considering the expensive nature of piracy a player may want to have a separate dedicated ship for this activity. The will help to regain the wealth in case of the ship loss. Piracy is dangerous and violent endeavor and investing everything to the last penny will not be the wise choice. Even if a player has enough money to cover 2-3 insurance payouts it may not be enough to avoid finding yourself in sidewinder with the perspective to repeat the previous grind.

MODULES

In a pirate ship a player will need as many utility slots as possible. First and foremost any respected pirate needs the interdiction module. Anything else is secondary, but adds to the pirate experience. The next important module will be the shield bank. Don't forget to hotkey this lifesaver. The outlaw nature of pirate activity dictates to minimize the need of docking. The fuel scoop is also important. This module will allow to conduct the attacks away from expected pirate locations. At this point cargo scanner is nice, but not necessary. The target will try to escape first thing after dropping from supercruise, so there will be absolutely no time to do any sort of scanning until the target is immobilized. In most of the cases the fragile trading vessel will be destroyed before its engines. So it does not really matter what kind of cargo it has. The wake scanner will add some flexibility to the pirate gameplay allowing to trace the juicy target, wait for the unsuspecting poor soul to undock and follow him just after his cargo was filled in with superconductors. And to top the pirate setup off get some limpets. In theory they can bring some profit with expensive cargo, but the limpet cost is higher then most of goods in ED space making this tool to be more of the emotional satisfaction than the practical use. Limpets will add to the thrill when the immobilized or subdued ship is " strip-searched and probed".

The true pirate imho is not only the one who goes after easy targets, but the one who attacks any neutral ship on sight and totally dominates the area. If a player decides to follow the dark path he would need to be ready to face some resistance. To ensure the resistance is futile 3 ships characteristics must be addressed: firepower, tank and speed. Military grade armor plates are highly recommended and will allow more room for an error. Speed is important for any successful predator not only to be able to keep up with the target, but also to bail if needed. To satisfy the speed a pirate needs both the top-tier thrusters and power generator. Weapons depends on player's preferences. I personally prefer multicannons over lasers.

Time to wrap up, regardless of profitability piracy is the fun and emotionally rewarding activity that brightens ED unavoidable grind.

 

[Joe nose]

Limpets cost 100 cr or thereabouts, so cost-wise they are no longer expensive (they used to be). I've only just started using them, but my initial experience was very successful. Of course, the authorities then showed up before I'd scooped no more than a couple of cans.

Biggest difficulty apart from that was interdicted targets jumping away again...seemed to be much quicker than the 40 second FSD delay which has apparently been implemented...

 

[starman]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_74DDNu0W-0 Space pirates ahoy

 

[Toxic_Waster]

Limpets cost 100 cr or thereabouts, so cost-wise they are no longer expensive (they used to be). I've only just started using them, but my initial experience was very successful. Of course, the authorities then showed up before I'd scooped no more than a couple of cans.

Biggest difficulty apart from that was interdicted targets jumping away again...seemed to be much quicker than the 40 second FSD delay which has apparently been implemented...

With the rapid updates I'm afraid my Elite knowledge base may not be up to date. My past experience showed that the prevention of re-entering into supercruise depends on the ship mass. It's easier for a heavier ship to distract FSD.

 

[rciq]

My experience with pirating in Gamma is OK-ish so far. I do make profits, not nearly as much as I would with trading, but at least I don't die from boredom.

From what I've seen limpets are most effective on a badly damaged ship. With NPCs you usually don't even have to use them. Just pewpew the trader down to below 50% hull and he should start dropping cargo by himself. Sometimes you need to "incentivise" them a tad more. If he's near 0% and still refuses to drop goods, then use limpets. At this point they should be 100% successful. If you need to be quick (you probably will against a human pilot) then I think best is to skip the foreplay and bring him to near 0% as fast as possible, then siphon as much as you can until he jumps away. I'm still not sure whether the damaged NPCs drop loot because they "decide" to, or simply because their cargo hatch malfunctions. I also didn't have enough human encounters to determine that. I use anarchy systems exclusively. Not much traffic there, but you get no crimes recorded, no authorities showing up or other "complications".

In short, here's my recipe (using a poorly equipped Cobra):
1. Go to an anarchy system.
2. Find a Hauler/Lakon/Asp in SC.
3. Interdict.
4. Lock onto his cargo hatch and blast away all you have until his hull is near 0% (on anything smaller than an Asp you will rarely see the hatch itself anywhere near 0% before the entire ship is wrecked). If you're lucky, there will be enough time for scanning the cargo during the process.
5. Unless the hatch has broken open, spam limpets until the victim jumps away. NPCs will often stay and fight with 1% hull. Your choice what to do with them.
6. Profit

In regards to #4, of course, against a human pilot an honorable pirate would go for a ransom, but my current opinion is that trying to talk your victim into any kind of a deal will fail 99.9% of the time. You will only give them more time for escape. Needless to say, so far I found no way of preventing ships from going back to SC very soon after dropping out. Now when I think about it, I imagine that shooting someone's drives could do it. I haven't tried it yet. It would probably be even more difficult than damaging the cargo hatch, which currently requires lots of luck, but who knows? It would be great if someone could confirm whether this works or not.

 

[mnemon]

Limpets cost 100 cr or thereabouts, so cost-wise they are no longer expensive (they used to be). I've only just started using them, but my initial experience was very successful. Of course, the authorities then showed up before I'd scooped no more than a couple of cans.

Biggest difficulty apart from that was interdicted targets jumping away again...seemed to be much quicker than the 40 second FSD delay which has apparently been implemented...

I think gamma 1.02 might have unfixed some NPC FSD bugs ... they definitely get away faster now than before.

As for the feds, be sure to check that you don't have "report crimes against me" on, you might accidentally call the feds yourself when pirating some smuggler

Low sec systems(Don't see it in the description anymore but low pop systems is usually a good guess) had a lot slower response time/ fewer cops in general at least in betas.

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I'm still not sure whether the damaged NPCs drop loot because they "decide" to, or simply because their cargo hatch malfunctions. .

I don't kill traders but pirates and smugglers only seem to drop cargo when you hit the hatch ... usually happens just by accident for me when they show you their belly while circling.

 

[Oppenheimer]

Pirates should work as a group, wolfpack tactics like in the tutorial, and bring along a friend with a Lakon.

 

[rciq]

Pirates should work as a group, wolfpack tactics like in the tutorial, and bring along a friend with a Lakon.

Definitely, however in the current version of the game you can only hope to do this at nav beacons, asteroid clusters and stations. Interdicting as a group is technically not possible yet. One from your pack needs to interdict, then others could follow his wake, theoretically... quite a hassle in any case.

 

[mnemon]

Definitely, however in the current version of the game you can only hope to do this at nav beacons, asteroid clusters and stations. Interdicting as a group is technically not possible yet. One from your pack needs to interdict, then others could follow his wake, theoretically... quite a hassle in any case.

It's a hassle but doable even with interdictions ... and tbh, you'll probably rake in a lot more loot by hitting some points of interest and with a group one can keep the cops occupied while the others scoop up the loot

 

[King Hrothgar]

I've done a mix of piracy and bounty hunting with very little exploration and trading mixed in so far in gamma. The only ship I've pirated with in gamma is the eagle. I find it fairly straight forwards tbh. I have 6 units of cargo (last two internal slots), 2x beam lasers and a rocket launcher. I very rarely use the rockets, normally only for clearing out hostiles so I can scoop some high value loot. Due to a lack of low end upgrades for the internal slots, it's almost stock other than the guns and cargo racks.

My method is fairly simple. To start, I go to an anarchy system with reliable cargo ship traffic. Not all of them have that, but finding such systems is not difficult. Once there, I target the weaker ships and go straight for the cargo hatch typically. Haulers are the main target but I'll go after sidewinders, lakon 6's and cobra's too. I've only found class A cargo scanners at 1M credits, about 5 times my total asset and cash value, so I'm just shooting everything that I think might drop something.

Honestly the hardest part of all this is knowing when to let a potential target go. Many of the haulers have escorts or other random npc's will join in against you if you attack near them. So I will go for an isolated target whenever possible. Going after something an npc pirate is already attacking can also be helpful as the victim npc's generally focus their defensive maneuvering on the initial attacker. Getting a belly shot at the cargo hatch tends to require a mix of patience and fancy flying. I do an awful lot of flying with my vertical thrusters maxed in one direction or the other trying to get that shot off. Beam lasers are very helpful here as they can be fired at the exact moment you need them for as long as you need them. Projectile weapons have no place in this type of piracy I find.

Edit: I should point out I'm using fixed weapons exclusively. Gimballed and turreted weapons lack the accuracy required to make the high precision shots required. With the fixed beam lasers, range is actually your friend. I find about 1.5km to be optimal. Above that and damage starts dropping, below that and their angular accelerations are too high in addition to weapon convergence issues.