Un-pirate. Struggling with game concepts.

[karry299]

I must say, for a game that has a "pirate" career for a player, it's one of the least "piratey" pirate games i've seen.
What do pirates do ? They rob, capture, and pillage. Can you do it in this game ? Well...no pillaging for one. As for the others...

You cannot intentionally rob someone. Due to the fact that you cannot force a desired kind of a ship encounter. It's all random. Too random. And even then, you encounter a merchant - your only option is to intimidate it for 500 creds (at the start of the game). Meaning - worthless waste of time.

You cannot intentionally board the merchant ship and steal their cargo. It's entirely random whether you disable the engines or destroy the entire ship. Apparently your gunner crew is utterly blind, they cannot target any system. There is no talent in the game (that i've seen) that allows to DELIBERATELY disable a certain ship system. All random. There is no way to disable a ship. Why ? And boarding...i dont quite understand the point of it. You board, injure four of enemy crew...and escape. With very little in the way of consequences for the enemy. That's not what the word "boarding" generally means. That's, i dunno, "sabotage" maybe. If i had a strong-enough crew - why cant i just STAY ON THE DAMN SHIP and cut down the enemy crew one by one until there is nobody left, then take the ship for myself

You cannot intentionally capture a ship either, without jumping through a LOT of hoops and acting within a very small window of opportunity. I'm a big bad pirate, i just beat this tiny scout...and i cant do anything with it. Why is there no ability to capture a ship ANYTIME, ANYWHERE ? Just WHAT is the point of being a pirate Cant rob, cant steal, cant capture...and when you get some illegal goods you cant even sell them, because accessing the black market is an incredible pain, and again, entirely random. So you almost always get stuck with a cache of high-price goods for a long, long, LONG time. One would think that if you are a very high level smuggler or something, that you could get a talent for a surefire way to get into black market - but no, still very, very, VERY random.
Same problem with explorer career, actually, you spend two hours digging for maybe 20000 worth of artefacts, but have no way to sell them. Again, a waste of time and effort.

Ugh.

[sallowjoe]

You can board the ship during combat. At ranges 3 with a talent or at range 1. During boarding at range 3 your combat crew can steal intel with talents, at range 1 you can use your non-combat crew to steal as well. You can also demoralize or kill all the crew so that eventually the ship is left intact and you can loot the cargo freely. There are talents that let you disable ships by boarding such as Thrown Wrench. Boarding is actually very strong in ship combat. You can then ransom or destroy an intact ship.

You can intimidate merchants for cargo as well, with a talent.

Much of the randomness can be reduced with the right talents and skills. There are ways to get better cards and to manipulate the cards for the black market. Smugglers have talents that help, and Blade Dancers can reduce the risk as well.

Take a look at your Pirate talents. At rank 1 -

Unlawful Loot: When attempting to access a Black Market, reroll a risk card

Corsair's Eye :During a Blockade of a system, replace a risk card with a Merchant card

At rank 5 -

Terrifying Extortion: Frighten non-violent merchants into turning over their cargo in return for a promise of being unharmed at cost of Reputation loss

There are more on other classes that can help you as well.


Some of the limitations are for game balance - capturing ships would kind of be insanely easy money and progression. I admit some activities don't have favorable risk vs. reward ratio though, and being a pirate early in the game isn't great. Most things require some leveling up and acquisition of status and specialist crew and so forth. The one thing you can kind of make bank on with few strings attached is missions - this may be for a reason though, so that players can get their bearings and so that a failure or two doesn't become a point of no return death spiral.

[fallen]

You should try Blockading and the Talents that force merchant encounters.

Also Blockade into Conflicts like Trade Ban and Trade War.