Help with Playing as Pirates.
 

I need some tips on playing as Pirates. I keep running out of resources, and I am losing ships because of it. I've scraped captured ships and I have a few mining operations going, but I'm still having problems.

Re: Help with Playing as Pirates.
 

Trade and Research alliance with someone who's to far to raid, maybe? Maybe build as many mining operations as you can?

Only played P&N a little.

Re: Help with Playing as Pirates.
 

Have you used the Chop Shops? 99% return on scrapped ships... Pirates are supposed to be hard, though...

Also try to capture colony ships and use Pirate's Intel Centers; then you can build colonies and steal resources through bribery http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Re: Help with Playing as Pirates.
 

Wasn't the advice 'Use every gamey trick. You'll need to!'

What sort of fleet size have you got? More than half a dozen and you have to be damn lucky/good.

Or of course just play as a Pirate and Nomad. Less of a challenge, but those maintence reduction bonuses of the Nomad make life so much easier... Some may consider it not quiet in the spirit of the mod though. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: Help with Playing as Pirates.
 

Make sure to use Civilian Cruisers, NOT the largest ships you have. They pay only 20% normal maintenance rates (5% ship cost) and have undetectable cloaking capabilities. Sneak a Civilian Freighter or two with SY components into enemy territory and use boarding parties on your Civilian Cruisers to capture ships to gain tech and resources from.

Re: Help with Playing as Pirates.
 

Civilian Cruisers?? I'm guessing I've got a bit to go before I can access those. That brings me to another question. Is there any way to speed up my own research? So far I've only run into one Race, and I haven't been able to get any technology from their ships. They seem to be developing slowly, maybe because they are at war with me, but I am actually more advanced then they are......

Re: Help with Playing as Pirates.
 

Civillian ships should be listed with the other hulls in the ship design screen.

Re: Help with Playing as Pirates.
 

When you say "listed with the other hulls" do you mean where its says ships isze? If so all I see there is Escort, Frigate, Destroyer, Colony ship, and Small Transport. I've only got lvl 3 in ship construction.

Re: Help with Playing as Pirates.
 

The Civilian Cruiser and Civilian Transport should be the top two ships available in the design screen. You may have an older version of P&N, though.

Using units can help a lot; no maintenance on them.
You definitely won't be able to build many ships, though, and the ships you capture will be pricey... scrap or analyse them as soon as possible.

One of the best things you can do is capture a planet with troops. If it is a high mineral value world, the AI will probably have built miners on it, and you'll be instantly rolling in resources from your slaves.
The AI will quickly come to glass it though, so loot then pilliage and then run away http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

And do throw the cheap tricks:
One or two weapon-destroying mines can cripple enemy targets so you can capture them without resistance.

Re: Help with Playing as Pirates.
 

Actually now that I remember it... Civilian Cruisers are only available in the "PBW Only" versions of P&N. Hint, hint Mr. SJ. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Re: Help with Playing as Pirates.
 

Ah well that explains why I haven't run across them. As for capturing a planet, how do you do that? Do you need troops?

Re: Help with Playing as Pirates.
 

Yes. Research Construction 1, then Troops. You will need a ship with lots of cargo bays. Build a bunch of troops, load them on, and drop them on the target planet in combat. If you use strategic combat, you will need to assign the "Capture Planet" strategy to the ship design carrying the troops. This is done in the ship designs window (F3).

Re: Help with Playing as Pirates.
 

As I recall, you were looking at an older version there, when we discussed this last time on IRC, Fyron. Maybe from the geocities list or something.

Visit imagemodserver.mine.nu to get the latest stuff.
I'm fairly sure the v3.2+ stuff has 'em.

Something seems to be wrong with the DNS to imagemod, though. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/frown.gif
No easy way to fix it from Amsterdam...

Re: Help with Playing as Pirates.
 

I don't recall seeing a 3.2 on there the last time we discussed this, which was quite some time ago. Did you sneak a new version on there?

Re: Help with Playing as Pirates.
 

What website are you taling about Suicide?

Re: Help with Playing as Pirates.
 

http://imagemodserver.mine.nu , which is currently offline.

Re: Help with Playing as Pirates.
 

Do empires still get angry with you when you break a treaty?
In my game, currently, I have contact with only 3 empires(the other 2 having been wiped from the face of the universe), and I have treaties with all 3. I noticed a while back, before I had the patch, that when I broke a treaty with one empire and went to war, it pissed of the others I had treaties with. Does it still do that, or am I free to break relations and start raiding?

Re: Help with Playing as Pirates.
 

I don´t think that breaking a treaty with one race has any direct effect on the others, but AIs aren´t exactly my strong suit either.

PS:
Imagemodserver is back up; my bro handled it from home.

Re: Help with Playing as Pirates.
 

Ah, thats good to hear about Imagemod, thx SJ.

Re: Help with Playing as Pirates.
 

I'm also currently going through a P&N learning phase, but think I've got them figured out.

You will need mining ships...lots of them. That is what will get you over the hump with your construction.

I have made alliances with everybody but a "target" weaker player, then camped out a fleet close by that weaker one and then just started collecting his ships. You should have a shipyard ship in a supporting fleet close by so you don't waste maintenance while ferrying a beat-up captured ship to a shipyard.

With troops, as a pirate you will have a long time actually getting the technology researched in the first place and then it takes even more time building enough troopers to capture anything. I've found that my first capture of a homeworld with 150 troops packed onto a light cruiser troop transport actually trashed all of the on-ground factories since the fight ground on for six turns. Part of this is due to my troops are pretty poor since I’ve set my racial physical strength to – 50%. Nevertheless, they will eventually grind down just about anybody, especially if you pepper the planet with bombardment until the weapon platforms and defensive troops are gone. I'd recommend a more decisive force if I were to do it again. (around 300 or so).

Another trick I learned to get ground combat to resolve faster is to attack with your regular force and include 1-2 spaceyard ships in the attack. On the turn you drop your troops, begin building troops with your spaceyard ships. If the attack does not take the planet in your turn or in your opponents turn, you will get yet another chance to force the game to fight another turn of combat by dropping the 1 or 2 new units. When they hit the planet another round of combat is fought.

If you really wanted to play the system, you could have a cargo ship with about 10-15 extra troops in a cargo hold that would not deploy them in an attack. Once your main attack is underway, you could transfer a single unit from your cargo ship to a boarding ship, then attack the planet again to drop the single troop, which will force another round of ground combat. You could repeat this until you capture the planet. This will capture the planet more quickly, but will also avoid the loss of a facility each turn that a stalemated combat is processed. Since you are a pirate, you are trying to capture these facilities undamaged because you can’t build them yourself.

Re: Help with Playing as Pirates.
 

Good advice Emperor's Child.

Are you playing a turn based game, or a simultaneous game? I've been trying to get my tactics down for a silmultaneous game since I was going to play in a PBW game, which still needs players btw. And in the simultaneous game I've tried using troops, but I've had problems getting them through the defense of any given planet, and now have resorted to fighters to try to soften their defense(you may have noticed my thread on fighter issues). Apparently there is a bug in simultaneous games, where fighters won't ram a planet, and either just hang around and be destroyed or flee if there are no ships to ram. So now I'm using fighters with rocket pods to soften the defense before I move my troops in.

I ran into a small timing issue at first, when my troop ship would aproach the planet to quickly and be destroyed before my ships could deal with its defense, but I've since delt with that by having my attack fleet arrive and attack then move a square off and return to attack a second time to take up any slack before my troop ship arrives to take over.

I also have been using mining ships alot, and just recently replaced most of them with destroyers so I could get minerals and radioactives from the same ships. I am thinking of making Light cruisers and putting 2 remote mineral miners and 1 radioactive on it, but so far I am doing good with what I've got.

My gorund combat is average at 100, and so far I've been able to take planets over in 1 turn with as little as 50 troops, though I have'nt tried taking over any Homeworlds yet.

Re: Help with Playing as Pirates.
 

Well I started a new game with the 3.2 mod, and already I have a question http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/tongue.gif. What is the smugglers hold and how is it used? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...s/confused.gif

Re: Help with Playing as Pirates.
 

Turn based. I have yet to play a PBW game.

On the mining ships, I'd suggest you go all one type on a single ship for the long haul. If you have one or 100 remote miners on a single ship, it will drop the minerals percentage by one percent per turn. Same thing for the raidoactives. If you put one of each on each ship, you will reduce the square with only minimal output to show for it. Going the other way, you get a lot more production per ship (you can swap locations of radioactive miners and mineral miners when appropriate)

Re: Help with Playing as Pirates.
 

Ah, thx for the advice.

Re: Help with Playing as Pirates.
 

When scrapping ships in the same sector as a ship with those components, you should get full price for it instead of the normal, smaller amount.