Rookie Buccaneer Start - Reputation

[StaRio]

I've recently tried the 'Rookie Buccaneer' start in X3FL. I was hoping to play pure pirate, living out of pirate sectors, trading at their stations etc. Strangely on reaching pirate space I found most of the pirates still hated me. In one sector I found a pirate capital ship which was red and attacked me, but the swarm of pirates around it showed as blue and didn't attack.

I get that pirates aren't really trustworthy, I like the idea that there will always be some risk in these sectors, but pirates don't ever seem to target eachother, only the player, and the player gets punished with rep loss if they fight back which makes using these sectors almost impossible. Is there a certain level of reputation needed before pirates no longer target the player at all?

It would be nice if there was some agreed on code that prevented pirate on pirate attacks, if "Deck Hand" reputation or higher, in sectors containing a pirate base... Kind of don't kill in the continental . Or maybe a way to pay off the pirates via protection money if your reputation is high enough (a protection promissory which you have to re-buy regularly from a pirate base).

Maybe there's a mod for this?

[Gween]

I've recently tried the 'Rookie Buccaneer' start in X3FL. I was hoping to play pure pirate, living out of pirate sectors, trading at their stations etc. Strangely on reaching pirate space I found most of the pirates still hated me. In one sector I found a pirate capital ship which was red and attacked me, but the swarm of pirates around it showed as blue and didn't attack.

I get that pirates aren't really trustworthy, I like the idea that there will always be some risk in these sectors, but pirates don't ever seem to target eachother, only the player, and the player gets punished with rep loss if they fight back which makes using these sectors almost impossible. Is there a certain level of reputation needed before pirates no longer target the player at all?

It would be nice if there was some agreed on code that prevented pirate on pirate attacks, if "Deck Hand" reputation or higher, in sectors containing a pirate base... Kind of don't kill in the continental . Or maybe a way to pay off the pirates via protection money if your reputation is high enough (a protection promissory which you have to re-buy regularly from a pirate base).

Maybe there's a mod for this?

I did a pirate run a few weeks ago (my goals was to buy a pirate destroyer with only money I got from stolen wares/ships) and from my experience, enemy pirate stations will stay red until you either hack them via an agent or if you stumble upon a hacker when looking for lightbulb missions. The pirate capitalship probably has a homebase and it's probably some station that is red to you at the moment. Once you hacked the station, ship should turn friendly too. I don't think there's a way to make all pirate stations friendly from the beginning without modding. (But I don't know a mod since I always play vanilla.

[StaRio]

Thanks for the advice, I'll try the station hack to see if it makes the capital ships friendly too. Beyond that I guess I'll just work on increasing reputation with the pirates to see what effect it has on stations and ships. Still enjoying the playthrough regardless.

[Sovereign01]

I think Pirate notoriety works differently to others. I've found in my game that hostility of ships is based on whatever your pirate notoriety was when the ships spawned and don't update when your notoriety changes. I don't know if that's a bug or feature but it means that ships that spawn hostile to you remain hostile regardless of what you do. Only when they're destroyed and replacements spawn do they take current notoriety into account.

[Cycrow]

In the game, ships/stations all have a separate relation to each other, which essentially overrides any notoriety level. This is why you can sometimes get ships/stations showing as enemy when you have high notoriety with them. The individual ships see you as an enemy even if the whole race doesn't.

For pirates, in previous game they didn't really use the notoriety like other races, and as a result they were set to be enemies to the various races rather than relying on the notoriety level.

This was largely changed in FL but some of the old behaviour was deeply embedded and still remains.

For stations you can hack them, and using the diplomacy hack will also apply to any owned ships as well (although this mostly only effect military based).

if you dont mind modding, my Diplomacy Extensions mod will allow you to revert these sector wide

[rudi_pioneer]

I think Pirate notoriety works differently to others. I've found in my game that hostility of ships is based on whatever your pirate notoriety was when the ships spawned and don't update when your notoriety changes. I don't know if that's a bug or feature but it means that ships that spawn hostile to you remain hostile regardless of what you do. Only when they're destroyed and replacements spawn do they take current notoriety into account.

There's a trick that helps - send one of your ships to the sector with pirate ships while you're not in that sector, and in 95% of cases for me they turned friendly when I looked at the map. I did this for my pirate play through because pirates were overwhelmingly red.

[Agimar]

I think Pirate notoriety works differently to others. I've found in my game that hostility of ships is based on whatever your pirate notoriety was when the ships spawned and don't update when your notoriety changes. I don't know if that's a bug or feature but it means that ships that spawn hostile to you remain hostile regardless of what you do. Only when they're destroyed and replacements spawn do they take current notoriety into account.

There's a trick that helps - send one of your ships to the sector with pirate ships while you're not in that sector, and in 95% of cases for me they turned friendly when I looked at the map. I did this for my pirate play through because pirates were overwhelmingly red.

This works very good. Except with Orbital Weapon Platforms. These are very tricky and I‘m trying allways different , but still have no clue, how it works exactly.

[rudi_pioneer]

I think Pirate notoriety works differently to others. I've found in my game that hostility of ships is based on whatever your pirate notoriety was when the ships spawned and don't update when your notoriety changes. I don't know if that's a bug or feature but it means that ships that spawn hostile to you remain hostile regardless of what you do. Only when they're destroyed and replacements spawn do they take current notoriety into account.

There's a trick that helps - send one of your ships to the sector with pirate ships while you're not in that sector, and in 95% of cases for me they turned friendly when I looked at the map. I did this for my pirate play through because pirates were overwhelmingly red.

This works very good. Except with Orbital Weapon Platforms. These are very tricky and I‘m trying allways different , but still have no clue, how it works exactly.

Ugh yea I remember few worked, but once in a rare while I had to send M2 to destroy one that won’t turn back