Help with Playing as Pirates.

[Emperor's Child]

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.