Category:Pirates

While not a united Faction in any sense, the actions of the individuals representative of this particular group have sufficient in common with each other to be given their own category.

If they are given the opportunity, you will be boarded.

In a realm where ships are expensive and NOT ubiquitous...a pirate who establishes a rep for ONLY being interested in the cargo and leaves the ship behind, has a MUCH easier time getting people to surrender without a shot.

Ships operating in heavy "disappearance" zones...assume that crews are being killed and ships taken.

Mercy is not the issue...good business sense is sometimes...a crew who thinks they will live will NOT shoot back...space is dangerous...ship to ship weapons are dangerous...and even a feeble weapon can get lucky and ruin a pirates whole day.

Pirates are pack hunters. If you look at the natural world, pack hunters have a deeply ingrained cost/benefit instinct. Losing half your pack to bring down a full grown moose is much less optimal than waiting a bit longer for a calf to trip and fall. So a pirate with a full on battle cruiser can probably take and kill as much as he wants till the navy shows up...a small operator can't afford to lose half his ship for what may be 5 tons of recycled batteries. So piracy will run the gamut from berserkers to dashing highwaymen.

You can bet the pirate with the battle cruiser becomes a target of priority for every naval ship in that arm.

As for the result of boarding actions, to the victor, the spoils. On the other hand don't expect pirates to be mindless game props. They are aware of how expensive a ship is as well. Should things go badly they are just as likely to figure out that coughing up a few boarders is much better than losing their own ship... and break off.

There may be escorts to hire but to be honest there are not a lot of heavily armed civilian ships laying about.

However the Q–Ship is once again making an appearance.