Complexes = you can never be on good terms with pirates?

[GlassDeviant]

As I understand it, the only way to make sure your complexes are properly defended is to have ships patrolling the sector for hostile entities, which pretty much means that random pirate spawns will get blown away (hopefully), thus ruining any pirate reputation you may have acquired, plus you cannot distinguish between hostile and not-really-hostile pirate ships like Duke's transports, ruining any chance of having pirates come for your wares on a drive-in basis.

Is this really WAI, or is it as broken as it seems?

[Nyito]

If you build your first complexes in safe areas, the local police/military will usually take care of pirates for you; preserving your rep. It can be a problem if you're already on poor terms with pirates, so many of them are hostile; I would say the best thing to do is get on good terms with the pirates first, so there's very few hostile ships, that way any trading you do with them will offset the occasional morons you have to kill, who attack your complexes. I find build missions are the best to do for pirate rep, because it also increases the opportunities you have to further increase your rep; it snowballs nicely in your favor. Though you may have to just do some taxi/fetch missions for them to get on their good side before they offer you build missions.

You also don't need to patrol the entire sector; I usually use the defend position command, which limits them to a 10km radius; which typically encompasses my complex, so they don't go hunting down every pirate that crosses the sector; and the patrol command tends to time out after awhile as well. Unsure why on that one.

[DrBullwinkle]

It isn't that black and white, Deviant. Small pilot patrols may take pot-shots at your complex, but they probably will not do any damage. You can let them do it or try to scan them to get them to stop. If you build your complex in a race-owned sector, then the local police will probably chase the pirates away for you.

Even if you destroy a few fighters, it will not entirely ruin your reputation. Pirates are more "sensitive" than other races, so they may become temporarily upset, but doing a few missions for them usually fixes things.

However, pirates do not make for good allies. I tried being friends with them in one game, and the universe became full of pirates. A few were still hostile, and could cause some troubles, so I wound up having to do missions for them more often than I preferred.

In the end, it was kind of boring. You can always buy a station hack so that you can purchase things from pirates, even if they are enemies, so there is no need to keep them as friends.

Bottom Line: In my experience pirates are better enemies than friends.

Yaki, on the other hand, are better friends than they are enemies. They tend to be weak enemies = too easy, and they behave more like a normal race so they do not have randomly-hostile ships. Furthermore, Yaki vigorously defend their space. If you are friends with them, then Yaki space is the best place to build.

[GlassDeviant]

I don't even remember my original goal with being friends to pirates was, possibly to buy that scan blocking software/device or whatever it was from Duke's? Not sure.

I was hoping to rely on my complexes in sectors with pirate stations to improve my pirate rep, as I make space weed, space fuel, etc. but I am not sure if that is helping or not. At least some pirate stations are not red to me, but sometimes it's ones in sectors where I don't have such complexes, while the ones in the same sectors as my complexes are still red.

* BoGgLe * O,o

[Bill Huntington]

I value a good pirate reputation, and go to great lengths to keep it. Many corporation missions have you kill pirate enemies. I don't refuse these missions, but I kill as few pirates as possible. For Defend Station missions, I will take down the shields of a pirate, and then take down the hull to below 10%. Usually the local forces will get around to killing them. Sometimes I'll have these weakened pirates follow me and I'll lead them to the local forces or an Orbital Platform. If there are no local forces, I'll bring in my missile ship and do the Tomahawk technique on them,

For Assassination missions, I'll usually ram them. They are usually blue, so the ramming involves perhaps one - third the rep loss. If you tried the missile trick here, you would just get 'Mission failed', since you don't get the credit for killing them.

A Patrol mission or even a Defend Station mission will target red pirates. So will Lasertowers. Many red pirates are not going to attack you. So I wait until I'm attacked, then send my garrison M6 after them. Every station and most complexes can take a lot of attacking before there is a serious problem, so immediate response is not a problem. If I'm not busy at the moment, I'll go there myself and scan them first. If I have to, I will kill them, but as a last resort. If you kill a few pirates, then do a pirate mission.

[DrBullwinkle]

I don't even remember my original goal with being friends to pirates was, possibly to buy that scan blocking software/device or whatever it was from Duke's? Not sure.

Duke's is not a real pirate faction, although they are somewhat aligned with pirates. You can get a station hack for the Duke's HQ, which will allow you to buy Software Signature Scrambler (which *is* important, IMHO, but you only need it on your personal ship(s)).

Note that only the HQ needs to be friendly. If the Duke's ships in the sector are hostile, then use a fast ship to "run the blockade".

Overall, there is nothing the pirates have that they will not sell to you if you get the right station hacks.

Yes, a space-fuel and/or -weed complex will raise your rep with pirates over time. However, as I said above, it is not worth the effort, in my experience. Just shoot pirates, and run their blockades if you need to buy something from a (hacked) station.

[jkjklkl]

Note that your stations and complexes will always be harassed by pirates, no matter how good your rep is. In my main TC game, I have enough rep to be able to waltz into Gaian Star in an unshielded with 1% hull M5, but my booze complex by Montalaar still gets random fighters attacking it occasionally.

No, getting friendly with the pirates doesn't do much, but with about 100 MkIII traders running around and my love of placing AdvSats everywhere, it has its small-but-not-entirely-useless perks.

Seriously though, I love being able to see whatever I want, wherever I want, whenever I want with AdvSats, and not having to worry about pirates taking them out every couple minutes is great

[GlassDeviant]

I love being able to see whatever I want, wherever I want, whenever I want with AdvSats, and not having to worry about pirates taking them out every couple minutes is great

I love that too, but I place them at the top or bottom of the system where nothing ever attacks them, nearly as far above or below the plane of the x,z axis as you can go when zoomed out fully.

I can't see going quite that far with complexes, but who knows. Is there an actual point to filling an entire sector so completely with stations that you can barely enter them, much less move around in them? I have seen this in screenshots but other than the Mt. Everest Excuse ("because it's there"/"because I can"), is there any reason for doing it?

[zazie]

I play similar to jkjklkl. I always park a Hyperion in Danna's Chance as "Rapid Intervention Force" for those rare cases when a random pirate patrol attacks one of the stations in one of my complexes.

I have never seen that local police took pirates out that were already attacking my station. I think, they ignore them. But it is no problem for my reputation with the pirates if my RIF-Hyp shoots down a pirate patrol.

Only problem I had: some of those pirate patrols can be unbelievably effective against station-shields so that the Hyperion is to slow. In such a rare case I jump in in my ship, use the Split-Turbo Booster and clean the sector by myself.

[Wraith_Magus]

There is a point to good pirate rep - it lowers the chance of pirates attacking your stations, although they still do.

One place where I built a complex near a pirate base recently had over a dozen pirate fighters fly by, with only 3 being actually hostile, and a couple turning hostile when I shot down his buddies. If I didn't keep rep up, they'd all be hostile.

I build a laser tower factory as one of my complex components, and then deploy four or so in close proximity to one another in the likely direction pirates will attack, which makes it take less management.

Like the advanced satellites, you can also try just plain building your whole complex where no portion of the complex is less than 15 km "above" the gates, and it's unlikely (but still possible) for any pirate to come within range of your station, even if it is hostile.