Pirate
| GIMME YARR STAFF | |
 Pirate |
Access: Pirate Additional Access: Any place a block of 4X will open! Difficulty: Hard Supervisors: The Pirate Captain Duties: Listen to 1700s sea shanties, steal everything valuable, rattle your bones. Guides: This page. Quote: Yarr harr fiddlie dee. |
So, those station-lubbers don't wanna give us our cut huh? Well, I guess we'll just go over there and take it!
You Are A Pirate
There's a low chance of the pirate event occurring during a game. The station receives a demand from the pirates for 80% of the cargo points present when the event triggers. If the crew cough up the money via the command consoles (typically in the Bridge), nothing happens.
If the crew refuses or stays silent, however, a ship of pirates spawns somewhere in space. If there aren't enough ghosts that initially ready up to become pirates, then the pirate ship still spawns, along with sleepers that ghosts can late-join into. (wouldn't make sense for the crew to be rewarded for not paying the ransom, huh?) They can then pilot their ship to a location next to the station, and board.
The goal of the pirates is to loot the station of anything valuable. The minimum target is 50000 credits, with the figure scaling with the relative prosperity of the crew. Generally, in order of importance, this means breaking into the vault and siphoning the station's credits, as well as all of their mined materials, killing people and looting the money from their IDs, and finally just carrying anything not bolted to the ground back to your ship.
There are currently five types of pirate crews, divided into the categories normal and dangerous:
Normal Pirates
Human Rogues
- Flavor Text: "The station refused to pay for your protection. Protect the ship, siphon the credits from the station, and raid it for even more loot."
Your run of the mill motley crew of Nanotrasen and Syndicate deserters, civilian renegades, and all-around scoundrels. The human pirate crew consists of two pirates, led by a single captain (who gets slightly better gear). They get a modestly equipped ship, which comes along with a small armory, but its really nothing to be impressed about. They generally carry around energy scimitars, laser guns, and a small selection of explosives. The first thing typically on their agenda is C4-ing into the armory, in order to acquire enough weaponry to take the crew on a prolonged fight.
Silverscale Elite Royalty
- Flavor Text: "This is the Casus Beli. The Silver Scales wish for some tribute from your plebeian lizards. 10,000 credits should do the trick."
Silverscales are pressure-proof lizardmen who are slightly hardier do not need to breathe, however they are NOT temperature proof and will freeze after prolonged exposure to space! When in danger, they can harden up into a silver statue, which'll require you to spear to death rather than baton to death! They'll most likely use it to get the jump on you, however. They have a modest set of equipment, e-swords and regal mosins not-mosins.
The Grey Tide
- Flavor Text: "There's nothing a toolbox can't whack in the head enough times to spill blood, or in this case money. Loot everything!"
What they lack in armor, weapons or anything resembling a proper ship, they make up for by having double the manpower of any other pirate crew. Playing them is not dissimilar to being a fugitive, but this time, they have free rein to murder as they please.
Lustrous Geode Dwellers
- Flavor Text: "The station has denied you your bluespace crystals, the sweet ambrosia of the fifth-dimension. Strike the earth!."
A gang of mutant Ethereals packed into a hollowed-out bluespace asteroid, hellbent on demonstrating what happens to your brain on bluespace crystals.
They have the same space resistances as Silverscales, with the added bonus of having an innate Bluespace Prophecy brain trauma to offset their weakness to brute damage. Their ship, while lacking in turrets, comes equipped with a suite of mining tools; leftover bluespace crystals, PKA pressure kits, jump boots and even a bluespace launchpad! This equipment and physiology is especially effective when combined with a hit-and-run playstyle..
It should be noted that PKA pressure kits stack with two allowing you to put out enough damage to put traditional guns to shame.
Dangerous Pirates
Skeletons
- Flavor Text: "Ahoy! This be the Flying Dutchman! Cough up 10,000 credits or you'll walk the plank!"
Yarr harr harr! The skeleton pirates now command THE FLYING DUTCHMAN, complete with ghastly inhabitants! The ship is armed with several cannons, which can be loaded with various cannonballs, found onboard the ship. Once 15u of gunpowder are put into the cannon, and exposed to a fiery device (anything that can light a cigarette will work, from cheap lighters to plasma cutters), the gun will fire, with considerable impact.
- The standard cannonball instantly puts an unarmored person from full health to critical, assuming that they are hit in the chest or in the head. If it impacts a limb, it will most certainly delimb! Upon impact, it will spray shrapnel around in a radius. Most of the time though, you'll use it to barrage an opening into the station.
- Speaking of creating breaches, there are explosive cannonballs, which make quite a big boom upon impact. The vastly unspectral human pirates have to C4 their way into the station, all you need to do is fire your cannon vaguely at security, and boom, the armory is now yours to loot!
- Sometimes the crew fights back with these newfangled things, mechs and borgs, I think they call them. Well, they're no problem now, if you use the malfunction shot, which generates a large EMP upon impact. Of course, these can also be used to shell the station, disabling APCs, breaking lights, and rendering much of security's energy weapons useless!
- When you've given up on looting an area, fire THE BIGGEST ONE! Quite rare, given their propensity for sinking their discharger's ship rather than their intended recipient. Simply put, it is a toxins maxcap. Better not fire this at the armory, given that there won't be any guns remaining for you to loot!
Oh yeah, did I note, you're completely immune to temperature, pressure, radiation, disease and embedded items, on top of not needing to eat or breathe and having no blood. The other lowly pirates might need EVA suits, but not you! This enables you to break into the station from unusual locations, and keep up a brisk pace in space, whilst the landlubbers have to don bulky hardsuits. That's not to say that life as a skeleton is all flowers and sunshine. Your biggest downside is your complete inability to process chemicals, meaning that much of the medicine that you can loot from the station is completely useless. Thankfully, you can drink milk to heal. Remember to take some from the fridge onboard your ship, and if you've ran out, to loot the station's kitchen. If you've really ran out, there's typically a cow within the station's garden that you can milk, and barring that, you can order milk (or cows) via cargo. (but jeez, what a waste of your hard-earned credits...) Take care to differentiate between space milk and soy milk, however!
Ex-Pharmacists (Or Harmacists)
- Flavor Text: "The station has refused to fund your research, so you will 'convince' them to donate to your charitable cause."
While they are human like the standard rogues, ex-pharmacists have a wide array of biohazards at their disposal, enough to make them rival even a small nuclear operative force.
- Fungal Tuberculosis Grenade: An exceedingly dangerous virus bomb normally only available to nuclear operatives. Comes with a pack of vaccines for your buddies, use them.
- Biohazardous Chemical Sprayer: A ranged chemical weapon similar to a spray bottle, but capable of knocking down and poisoning crew.with a special toxin cocktail.
- Poison Kit: The same kit available to traitors, experiment with chemical grenades!
- Interdyne Modsuits: Special medical modsuits supplied with extra modules.
In addition to the above, the ship is also equipped with full chemistry and virology labs, and even a working cryotube! With such a wide array of equipment, it is recommended that you experiment to get the most out of your bioweapon arsenal.
Space IRS
- Flavor Text: "Not even in the expanse of the expanding universe can someone evade the tax man! Whether you are just a well disciplined and professional pirate gang or an actual agent from a local polity. You will squeeze the station dry of it's income regardless! Through peaceful means or otherwise..."
Specializing in ship combat, these pirates are at their strongest on the station, and their weakest in space.
Overall, their arsenal shines in ranged combat, coming equipped with autorifles, pistols, breaching shotguns, and other nonlethal incapacitation methods like telescoping batons and a grenade launcher with flashbangs and smoke bombs.
Defensively, they come with tactical vests and a ship heavily defended by ballistic turrets, though excessive reliance on the ship is inadvisable.
Data Siphon
The data siphon is an optional means of looting the station. When turned on, this heap of machinery automatically starts siphoning credits from cargo, tech levels from the RnD network, and also creates a "hostile environment", preventing the cargo and emergency shuttle from entering or leaving. Meanwhile, it also locks RnD and supply consoles from being accessed altogether, so science can't research new technologies and cargo can't order stuff.
However, the data siphon also broadcasts a GPS signal ("Nautical Signal"), alerts the entire crew when it's been turned on, and can't be turned back off once activated. If you choose to use it, the entire station will be able to find your ship, and they'll be coming to destroy the siphon, so be ready for a fight if you turn it on!
