Can you make all the pirates friendly?

[ali-stool]

I have nearly every single pirate base friendly towards me, either through hacking stations or simply because I have decent reputation trough trade and missions. However about half of the pirates in the game are still hostile towards me and it can get fairly annoying after a while. Like half the pirates in one particular sector will be friendly but the other half will want to kill me and when i shoot back at them everyone then turns on me.
Thanks! Notable areas include Dukes haven, mealstrom/Gian star area. The only pirate base i can think of which is red is the one in acquisition repository.

[kurush]

No, some amount of red pirates will be spawned regardless of your reputation.

[pref]

I had a scan in pirate sectors mission, not sure which sector i went into (around Maelstrom), but the whole sector was red for me, and as i started scanning all of them turned friendly again. Might worth it to clear hostile ships from each pirate sector once.

Since then i usually jump in when i see pirate ships near my complexes, and scan them to avoid notoriety loss. Sometimes those pirates i scanned turn neutral too, and stay in the sector for quite a long time.
I start to think i don't even get more hostile pirate patrols until the previous is still there.

I wish i knew an easier workaround for this..

[Bill Huntington]

ali-stool, there will always be red pirates, even from blue pirate stations.

It all starts with you pirate rating. You can even check that rating. If it is above zero, things should be okay. You can get it to 10,000 +. If it is 100 - 300, you have a cushion, for the pirates that you have to kill.

If you have a positive pirate rating, there will be red pirates but they will usually not be aggressive to you. When they are, I first scan them and then kill them if they don't turn blue. If you have another ship do it, the only choice is to kill them. Then do pirate missions if you have to, to get your rating back.

Most pirates have a life cycle, and fly routes. At the end of the route, they disappear. And new ones spawn. With a higher pirate rating, more blue pirates spawn, and less red ones. But there will always be some red ones.

You can check your pirate rating with the Script Editor. Save first, then type "Thereshallbewings" into the Change Name spot. Then access the Command Console, scroll down to Script Editor with the blue S. Hit return, then 2 more times, and look for Additional Info. Change it to Yes,
then access any pirate or Yaki, and you get your rating by scrolling down to the bottom of their Info. If you don't reload, you get tagged as "Modified". So I just reload.

Obviously, you improve your rating by doing their missions. Build missions seem to give you the most rep.

Good Luck !

[zapza]

I've given up on trying to be 'friendly' with Pirates. These days, if they want their weed and booze they can come and get it themselves.

I simply ignore them now, unless they deliberately attack me. The majority of Pirate Bases are open to me but I don't visit them all that often.

That said, I still loose the odd trader, but the number of traders lost to pirates hasn't shown any significant increase (despite me regularly kicking the shoot out of Duke's escorts and almost hourly capping of a Duke's Zeus)


All of my assets are well-protected so most of the "Attention, one of your ships is under attack ... " messages I receive I can also ignore.


Have to say that despite much capping of Brigantines, Galleons & Carracks over the past few weeks the pirate response has been pretty pathetic. I rarely bother now to jump into a sector under attack as, most times, all of the pirates have been wiped out before I arrive.


They are certainly a major pain in the backside during the early part of the game but, my own experience in mid & late game is that the majority of pirates are pussies ....



By all means take their missions and take their cash but, if and when it suits your purpose, don't be afraid to squash the vermin wherever you find them.

[StarSword]

My policy is to set up several boozeplexes in strategic locations such as Heretic's End, Elysium of Light, the US east of Montalaar, etc. My ships trading space fuel to the pirate bases keeps attacks down. At the same time, I don't trust them as far as I can throw them*, because they're freaking pirates. Any attack on one of my ships or stations gets a swift and lethal response from my warfleet (mainly because if it shot at you once, it'll shoot at you again). I once even sent a Boreas after a pirate base that attacked one of my complexes.

* You try bench-pressing a Blastclaw sometime, see how well you do.

EDIT: Correction based on reread. Thanks Alan; missed that on my first pass.

[pref]

You can check your pirate rating with the Script Editor. ... If you don't reload, you get tagged as "Modified". So I just reload.

Obviously, you improve your rating by doing their missions. Build missions seem to give you the most rep.

Nice, thanks for sharing!

[ali-stool]

Thanks for all these replies! I was not expecting so many responses. The scanning thing did actually work wonders, even though it's pretty tedious after a while. Do all pirate ships belong to a pirate base or are some pirates just completely randomly generated?

[Bill Huntington]

From my observation, it seems like almost all or maybe all pirates belong to a base. This doesn't apply to those spawned for a particular mission, or part of a plot. All ships in TC have a number. A regular pirate has a number beginning with "I". If it doesn't have the "I" beginning its number, you can kill or cap it without any rep loss. Even a pirate in a mission counts against rep loss if it has "I" beginning its number.

There is just one pirate rating. But there are pirate clans, based on a pirate base. If you hack a red pirate base, most of that pirate clan will turn blue too. If you attack a blue pirate, the whole clan including the base will turn red. If you attack a red pirate from a base, it doesn't change anything else, not the base or other ships.

The pirates spawned at a particular base have a regular route that they follow. At the end of that route, they disappear. Then new pirates spawn at the base, and start on that route again. If your pirate rating is high, the new pirates will probably be blue. If your pirate rating is low, then there is a greater chance the new pirates will be red.

Good Luck !

[ali-stool]

Thanks Bill, that helped a lot! Does anyone know how I would be able to destroy something without actually attacking it and taking a rep loss? This goes for some pirates blocking certain trade routes and also the laser towers in loomancstrats legacy as even though the stations are blue the towers aren't and it means I can't trade with them without getting attacked.

[Alan Phipps]

The unattributed missile trick. Launch enough missiles to kill the target from a fair distance. Before any missiles hit you have do all of: transfer to another ship or eject from the launch ship and get it to actually jump anywhere (even the same sector). That is why you need the stand-off launch distance. You personally must stay IS throughout or the missiles will vanish. That way when the missiles hit they don't belong to anyone and so there is no credit or rep lost for the kill.

[StarSword]

For the lasertowers, a second option if you don't have a missile frigate or bomber available is to get into a capital ship (corvette or tough TM at minimum) and run them over. They'll end up like bugs on the windshield, and ramming causes very little rep loss.

[Alan Phipps]

Yes ramming is lower rep-loss than with weapons but you dont really need an M8/M7M for the missile trick. You can take out LTs with enough of the heavier-damage fighter-based missiles getting through to the target - I don't think the LTs will even shoot at dumbfires launched straight at them. The trick works well on M3 ship targets, especially if they have no turrets. For the big ship targets, you will probably need an M8 or M7M for the trick to work, but if you have the M7M then boarding is a lower rep loss than killing with weapons.

[Old Drullo321]

The unattributed missile trick. Launch enough missiles to kill the target from a fair distance. Before any missiles hit you have do all of: transfer to another ship or eject from the launch ship and get it to actually jump anywhere (even the same sector). That is why you need the stand-off launch distance. You personally must stay IS throughout or the missiles will vanish. That way when the missiles hit they don't belong to anyone and so there is no credit or rep lost for the kill.

I wouldn't be sure (vanilla AP). I read about this trick but did it wrong. I had a M7M Cobra with torpedos and a M6 Hyperion (and iirc a satellite in the system). My target were some left red lasertowers and police forces from the PP start.

I launched some torpedos froma safe distance (>20km), transfered to my Hyperion and I (for sure, and iirc my AI cobra too) jumped out of sector and the funny thing was, when i immediately looked at the sector map, the lasertowers/police forces weren't destroyed but turned blue

[Snafu_X3]

A quick question: has anyone determined if the 'auto-aim' feature works for dumbfire missiles?

[oddgit]

Im pretty close to max rep with the Pirates and Yaki in AP, and was in a similar spot in TC. I would get the random pirate ship that was red, but i just figured that someone took the jam out of their donut and let them be. I very rarely loose a ship due to pirate activity now. Now if i could just talk some sense in to those pesky Xenon, blowing them up is just a chore i would rather not have to deal with.

[Snafu_X3]

I launched some torpedos froma safe distance (>20km), transfered to my Hyperion and I (for sure, and iirc my AI cobra too) jumped out of sector and the funny thing was, when i immediately looked at the sector map, the lasertowers/police forces weren't destroyed but turned blue

If the ship firing missiles isn't <playership> you will lose rep (but not licence) if it remains IS when the missiles destroy the target. If the ship firing missiles insn't <playership> but jumps OOS before the target is destroyed the missiles have 'no owner' & there is no rep loss (or gain, if it's an assasination mission target). If <playership> jumps OOS any missiles are instantly destroyed (ie wasted), as there's no missile combat OOS.

I'm unsure as to what happens if <playership> makes an IS jump while missiles are outbound (ie heading toward target)

[DrBullwinkle]

has anyone determined if the 'auto-aim' feature works for dumbfire missiles?

Auto-aim is for lasers. Most missiles have their own guidance systems.

The term "dumbfire" is used inconsistently in the game. A few missiles are, truly, dumbfire and have no guidance at all: Firelance, Firefly, Aurora, Tornado, and Windstalker come to mind.

Dragonfly and Rapier are called "dumbfire" but are actually guided missiles.

Most missiles in X3 seek the player's selected target (like "image recognition" missiles in other games). No missiles require time to "lock" onto a target.

Some are Friend-or-Foe missiles which can only be launched against enemy targets. FoF missiles have the added advantage that they will re-acquire a new target if the original target is destroyed while they are in-flight. Tempest, Remote Guided Warhead, Wildfire, Poltergeist, Tomahawk, Hammer, Flail, Phantom, Shadow, and Ghoul are all FoF missiles. (So many?! Yeah, that surprised me, too. )

i just figured that someone took the jam out of their donut

Yes, exactly that.

[ali-stool]

Ok, i just rammed a pirate ship which has being causing me a few problems and the whole sector turned red haha. Maybe I will stick with the ownerless missile approach.

[Alan Phipps]

@ Old Drullo321: " and I (for sure, and iirc my AI cobra too) jumped out of sector " There you are, you did exactly what I said not to do and you personally if briefly left the sector by jumping, even if to the same sector. Hence all your launched missiles disappeared.