Pirates

a pirate base

Pirate Raiders are an independent faction present in every match unless specified otherwise in the map creator. Pirates can be used to attack an opposing player via the bounty page, though credits used on the page cannot be reclaimed once added to the bounty. The other players can do this as well. Placing bounties is completely anonymous.

Pirates frequently attack players with raiding fleets that vary in size the more powerful the pirates are. The fleets start out small, and grow in size. Each Pirate base is a small asteroid surrounded by a large fleet and a large number of Pirate Defense Platforms. All pirate structures and ships are shown to have various spiky attachments, blinking green lights and a flat hologram of a skull. Pirate bases are usually defended by the same number of ships and structures, 14 Corsairs, 1 Rogue, 3 Pillagers, 9 Reapers and 6 Cutthroats, along with 19 Pirate defense platforms. When defending their base their primary tactic is to swarm around you and send small groups of ships to harass you behind your line of fire and attack support ships. If they have already formed a swarm, such as around a trade route or where a scout ship moved through, phase jumping into it with a good sized fleet can cause them to scatter allowing you to pick them off one by one as they flee, but they will eventually reorganize so you need to act quickly. There is also the possibility that your fleet is too small and they will just destroy you, so caution is nessesary.

Pirates will generally target the weakest ships first, similar to the militia that guard planets early in the game. They will attack capital ships with strong support abilities such as the Dunov Battlecruiser with its Shield Restore  ability, the Skirantra Carrier with its Repair Cloud ability, the Progenitor Mothership with its Shield Regeneration ability, and even some less effective ships with abilities that hamper the Pirate's efforts. Generally they will wait for quite a while before figuring this out, so if their fleet is not unusually large you should still be fine. The Vasari are particularly capable at fighting the Pirates, although its an expensive tactic, you can destroy all of the ships smaller than a Corsair if you hit the base with 20 Kostura Cannon warheads. A less expensive method is to get a fleet of four or five Kortul Devastators upgraded with the Volatile Nanites ability, as well as plenty of support ships, or a few support capital ships. After the Pirates have swarmed around you in a tight knit group, fire the nanites into the middle of the group, it might take a while but this should destroy the entire group. This tactic is particularly helpful if you are cleaning up, and the local AI or player decided to allow all the pirate raids to attack a single worthless planet repeatedly, removing danger of actual damage to their empire. This slightly irresponsible tactic results in a massive swarm of hundreds of ships in a small area, conventionally they are very difficult to beat, but this tactic can eliminate them very quickly.

To get the Pirate Baron achievement, you must colonize a pirate base. An easy way to destroy a pirate base with minimal losses is to first destroy the pirate ships, then punch a hole in the defense line using your bombers. Finally, you bomb the planet safe from the Pirate Defense Platforms, and once the planet is defeated you can easily destroy the now harmless defenses.

The Diplomacy expansion pack introduced vastly more powerful pirates that grow more powerful as the game goes on. As of version 1.00 they continue to grow more powerful without limit, leading to situations where the pirates are utterly unstoppable 10 or 12 hours into the game. Developer comments have indicated this will be fixed next version.

Ships

Pirate ships are entirely TEC vessels, most likely stolen from a certain faction. The ships are shieldless, but their numbers and strengthened hulls more than make up for the shields. The ships are almost all frigates and cruisers, though they only possess one kind of the latter.

The types of ships are as follows:

• Pirate Cutthroat - TEC trade ships without the cargo bays, Cutthroats are the mainstay of all pirate fleets. They are armed with lasers and do not have shields. Cutthroats also possess an often overlooked ability that allows them to steal resources from a player, Plunder.
• Pirate Pillager - Krosov Siege Frigates without shields.
• Pirate Reaper - Garda Flak Frigates without shields.
• Pirate Rogue - Cobalt Light Frigates without shields or lasers.
• Pirate Corsair - Kodiak Heavy Cruisers without shields.

Anti-Pirate Strategies

Pirates have three big weaknesses. They lack shields (meaning no Shield Mitigation), they don't have any support cruisers or carrier cruisers, and they just charge straight at the enemy like the militia do. You can use these to your advantage to beat the pirates much more easily. In the original game and Entrenchment, they are so easy to defeat that many players don't even bother to place bounty.

• Using repair bays to keep turrets, capital ships, or starbases alive, you can defeat vastly larger pirate forces without taking any casualties. This is no longer quite so easy in the Diplomacy expansion pack because pirates are much stronger.
• Mines are a great way to kill pirates. They can easily be lured through minefields over and over again. A couple scouts (to act as bait) and a minelayer can defeat large pirate forces.
• If you have two Novalith Cannons as TEC, you can destroy the pirate base from a distance, ending the pirate threat once and for all.
• The pirates lack long-range units and strike craft. Using the Advent Iconus Guardian and its Repulsion ability, you can keep the pirates out of weapon range while still being able to shoot them with long-range units of your own (such as the Illuminator Vessel).
• Pirate units are easily distracted by scouts. You can often send pirates on a long wild goose chase while you do something underhanded, like lay mines or build a starbase or attack them with carriers (or all three at once!).

The pirate base is unaffected by culture as they have no population. You cannot use culture or Deliverance Engines to turn them neutral, the same as with neutral colonies in custom games.

Pirate Base Shortcut

Many players use the pirate base as a defense, counting on the pirates to prevent enemies from attacking their rear flanks. This is true for the AI, but human players will often take a shortcut through the pirate base. The easiest way to do this is to send in a scout first. The pirate defenders will all chase the scout. Now send in your main fleet to quickly run through while the pirates are distracted. This is a very effective way to get the drop on an enemy.