If next X4 DLC focuses on piracy...

[Falcrack]

Let's talk about ways that piracy could be improved upon in X4! Here are a few ideas:

1. NPCs that are capable of boarding other NPC ships, including player owned ships
2. Boarding and capture of stations
3. Mechanisms to prevent pirates from hacking stations
4. Ability to comm hostile ships to tell them to surrender (currently if ship is hostile ,they won't even allow you to comm them)
5. Faster, more effective cargo drones to allow pirates to more quickly scoop up loot.
6. Pirate economy sustained by captured loot
7. Instead of pirates demanding dropped cargo, they can demand credit transfer instead in exchange for not blowing up your ships
8. Better disguised pirate ships (drop the name "marauder" or "plunderer" so it is not so obvious)
9. Ability to set up sector patrols that will automatically scan ships using police scanner to uncover pirates
10. More robust response of patrols to uncovered pirates

[Raptor34]

1. Boarding sounds like one of those things that will break the game.
2. No opinion, I'll wait and see how it goes. Could be interesting if you can land there beforehand if friendly to prep the station.
3. Yes, actually imo they should do an overhaul for station defenses anyway, but that's not piracy related.
4. Yes, or ask them to drop cargo.
5. That should be done regardless of piracy, they don't work well now.
6. Teladi already feeds them and actually pirate economy is more like trading, they grab loot and sell to stations. And apparently they buy ships from faction shipyards. I note after blocking ARG/TEL shipyards that I no longer see Vanguard variants flying around.
7. Sure, though they should fix some of the bugs around that too. Like not being able to comply when docking. And also make it reasonable. Though a thought is that it could be an unintentional and dangerous drain on your personal account.
8. Eh, they are already fairly hard to spot. Or easy depending on what you do.
9. Like how police keep bothering your miners? Actually does the police behavior automatically scan ships? I've never used it before.
10. Patrols should be overhauled regardless.

[Maebius]

4. Ability to comm hostile ships to tell them to surrender (currently if ship is hostile ,they won't even allow you to comm them)

They talk to you again 30ish seconds after their last communication (and sometimes they bail if they're in low hull when asked to surrender).

[ZaphodBeeblebrox]

I would like an option whereby I pay the pirates a wodge of cash and they leave my ships and stations alone
for 1/2 and hour so that I can get on with playing the rest of the game.

[Clownmug]

I would like an option whereby I pay the pirates a wodge of cash and they leave my ships and stations alone
for 1/2 and hour so that I can get on with playing the rest of the game.

I'd prefer an option where if I hunt down and kill so many pirates, it scares them off from messing with my ships. Or simply a bounty system where I can kill the top bounties and gain the notoriety not to be messed with.

[Axeface]

Everyone is always talking about pirates as if they are a single unit/faction As if doing something for 'them' will please all of them, or make 'them' not plunder your stuff. If the pirate dlc just adds more factions that work like all the rest I really dont think it will add much to the game. Shouldnt most of them be malcolm reynolds type characters? Independent/factionless please, not just cartels like sca.

Also. Make scanning cargo not 100% accurate. By default make a 10% chance that cargo (of all types including legal) will not get discovered during a scan. Sometimes if you are suspicious of a ship you might scan multiple times.
Add 'scan scrambler/cargo masking device' that pushes this chance much higher, like something like 75%. Add this device to some of the spawning pirates/smugglers/''independent trader folk' etc.

Let's talk about ways that piracy could be improved upon in X4! Here are a few ideas:

1. NPCs that are capable of boarding other NPC ships, including player owned ships
2. Boarding and capture of stations
3. Mechanisms to prevent pirates from hacking stations
4. Ability to comm hostile ships to tell them to surrender (currently if ship is hostile ,they won't even allow you to comm them)
5. Faster, more effective cargo drones to allow pirates to more quickly scoop up loot.
6. Pirate economy sustained by captured loot
7. Instead of pirates demanding dropped cargo, they can demand credit transfer instead in exchange for not blowing up your ships
8. Better disguised pirate ships (drop the name "marauder" or "plunderer" so it is not so obvious)
9. Ability to set up sector patrols that will automatically scan ships using police scanner to uncover pirates
10. More robust response of patrols to uncovered pirates

1. Yeh that would be awesome.
2. That would be awesome too (I think this is planned).
3. This would indeed be nice.
4. You can comm them? Not sure what you mean about not being able to.
5. Yes, cargo drones are too slow. They do not work at all because they are so slow. Loot will despawn before they get there, and god forbid you told a capital to pick something up without first moving it to the crate.....
6. Yaki work like this right? and yeh it could be nice. Not sure though, I feel like pirates could be seperate from the simulation a bit, kind of like the khaak.
7. That would be very cool.
8. There are already pirates like that, called things like 'intermediate trader'. I do think plunderer/marauder should go, its silly.
9. Can already do this?
10. Yeh we need a better sector patrol script.

[Driltan]

Let's talk about ways that piracy could be improved upon in X4! Here are a few ideas:

1. NPCs that are capable of boarding other NPC ships, including player owned ships
2. Boarding and capture of stations
3. Mechanisms to prevent pirates from hacking stations
4. Ability to comm hostile ships to tell them to surrender (currently if ship is hostile ,they won't even allow you to comm them)
5. Faster, more effective cargo drones to allow pirates to more quickly scoop up loot.
6. Pirate economy sustained by captured loot
7. Instead of pirates demanding dropped cargo, they can demand credit transfer instead in exchange for not blowing up your ships
8. Better disguised pirate ships (drop the name "marauder" or "plunderer" so it is not so obvious)
9. Ability to set up sector patrols that will automatically scan ships using police scanner to uncover pirates
10. More robust response of patrols to uncovered pirates

1. A pain but not a bad idea.
3. Would be too easy I guess.
4. You can, just spam, they say "I don't talk to you." and after a while, when they have a low hull they say "What do you want ?" and you can ask them to surrrend, they either refuse or leave their S/M ship. It would be too easy to make surrend the L/XL ones
7. I can imagine them asking for 5 billions xD

[NightmareNight91]

Would love to see NPC boarding take place...even if i am the target.

Station boarding would be cool, but should be difficult.

More ship variations for pirates, combat L frieghters and such. Maybe a dedicated pirate designed destroyer and carrier.

A shipyard AND equipment dock that belongs to pirates that is present at game start and not require me to build it for christs sake.

More pirate sectors

Bring back slave trade, would love to scoop up bailed crew and sell them for profits.

[Raevyan]

Don‘t interpret too much into it because you might get disappointed.

[grapedog]

All i want is...

More ships for pirates

Ways to meaningfully increase or decrease rep with each pirate faction

Each pirate faction offers missions, they also have shipyards which they rebuild.

The ability to masquerade stations, so pirate stations, and my own stations if im playing as a pirate can still conduct business. Somehow tied to rank maybe, so you can't hide them all, but as you get more axcomplished you can hide more. Or perhaps you csn only hide one per sector... something along those lines.

[Falcrack]

Couple more really important things I forgot for a pirate play through.

11. Ability to get blueprints for ships and equipment without needing to purchase from a faction (ie some reverse engineering function)
12. Ability to get ship production and maintenance modules without paying a faction (expensive research option).

[Panos]

Let's talk about ways that piracy could be improved upon in X4! Here are a few ideas:

1. NPCs that are capable of boarding other NPC ships, including player owned ships
2. Boarding and capture of stations
3. Mechanisms to prevent pirates from hacking stations
4. Ability to comm hostile ships to tell them to surrender (currently if ship is hostile ,they won't even allow you to comm them)
5. Faster, more effective cargo drones to allow pirates to more quickly scoop up loot.
6. Pirate economy sustained by captured loot
7. Instead of pirates demanding dropped cargo, they can demand credit transfer instead in exchange for not blowing up your ships
8. Better disguised pirate ships (drop the name "marauder" or "plunderer" so it is not so obvious)
9. Ability to set up sector patrols that will automatically scan ships using police scanner to uncover pirates
10. More robust response of patrols to uncovered pirates

1, 2. Hell no.
3. Yes.
4, 5, 8
6. It will be stagnant like pre 1.1 patch.
7. No
9, 10. There is a Police behaviour for your ships, just equip them with scanners

[NightmareNight91]

Introduce old x3 era boron ships as pirate modified variants...i really just want borons lol...

[Karvat]

It is really ridiculus that at this point of the game both SCA and Yaki don't own a single sector, shipyard, wharf.
Yaki ships literally just last 5 minutes into the game, they fly around enemy territories and they die stupidly.

Sca only have a minimum quantity of ships that just disturb the player during his trading operations, they have no sectors where to go, they don't even look like a proper faction.
There's not even an empty area of the universe where there are several empty sectors that could be full of pirates.

HAT is even more ridiculus, they just sit in the middle of the argon space, continuosly invaded by Xenons, they basically don't have ships, don't do anything.

3 wasted chances to actually create something cool so far.

Piracy in X4 is so poor at the moment.
Literally every time you want to board a ship you need to go against bigger factions, and there's no other way.

I really hope the next Dlc will at least give these 3 factions their own territory, and ideally create a dangerous area of sectors full of pirates.
As well as add new factions, new sectors, and especially give these pirates a shipyard, a wharf, and some territories, as well as finally, a pirate gamestart that everyone has been waiting for years.

[rubahax4]

I think that pirates should not have new ships, but converted from cargo ships to military ones. It would be more logical. And in many films about space this is so.
Take for example the same Taranis from XR.

Boarding the player's ships is probably difficult to implement, but it's like in life, which means it's interesting.

Station boarding using combat robots is incomparable,
but probably not in this century.

I think the activity of pirates should be similar to the activity of the animal kingdom. Where there is more food, there are more pirates, in the form of a pirate base on the outskirts.

[Flippi]

If I had to guess, Egosoft will add a couple of old well-known pirate sectors like LooManckstrat's Legacy, Hatikvah's Faith (not related to Hatikvah's Choice), Weaver's Tempest and others. Complete with some new pirate factions. This could boost the Yaki for example, if they get some or all of their old systems back.

But there is also a chance for a few new pirate factions popping up. And Egosoft can then add a few pirate unique ships. You know, Pirates and Yaki used to have their own, custom made ships. In terms of Lore, those were built by the Teladi for the most part. Except for the Yaki, as they had an actual shipyard. They did not rely completely on captured ships.