First time you attacked a pirate station?

[Lone_Puppy]

My first time was on single player and was painfully slow and arduous to say the least. It was the old disk shaped stations with purple blocks.
I modified an Isanth and picked off the turrets long range one by one.
I then moved in to take out the faction block, but when I got there realised I had no clew what I was looking for.
After mistakingly shooting the station, pirate ships spawned in and took me out.
Once I knew what I was looking for it was pretty straight forward since there were no defenses. Only issue I had was the pirate ships spawning, but I just did a hit and run and came back when they were gone and took another pot shot.

 

[Gasboy]

The first pirate station I stumbled upon was one of the old purple ones. I got out after it put a few holes in my ship. Figured out in that first fight that I had to take out the turrets. When I came back with a bigger ship, the station was soon mine. Not a long or hard fight and the loot wasn't all that good. The glass, however, that I got from it bankrolled my next ship. Didn't have to mine for some time after that.

I think my favourite fight was against a newer station after some big updates. This station was dark and mean looking. And fired red missiles that packed a mean punch. I missed just one of those missiles, and it hit while my shields were down. I heard a great bloody BANG, and wondered wtf was that? My main cannons became split pea shooters, and I got out of there. There was a huge hole in the front of my ship, the explosion had severed my cannons in half. I overhauled that ship, and went back with a vengence...

 

[EricBlank]

First time way back when, decided to scout the pirate station that kept sending isanths after me. In-sector, I found that my fighter was woefully under-shielded and very quickly killed because the core was vulnerable (Back then hitting the core was an insta-kill, and all other blocks didn't matter) I did manage to hit a few of the turrets, but it took a couple more tries to actually do away with them and the faction module and collect my loot.

 

[Tamren Shade]

My first real attempt at taking out a pirate station was with one of my first ships, a 4K mass "light cruiser" made primarily out of grey hull, had maybe 20K shields, 4x 50 Block Missile Turrets, and a power setup that could barely move the thing, let alone support the 500 or so block Cannon-Cannon-Overdrive system that would gut Isanths VERY quickly and drained my power reserves almost as fast.

I was going up against the Night Bane Station, the black and red foreboding thing with beam turrets everywhere. I took out most of it's shields in one strafing run, then got lit up by the beam turrets as I was passing, my shields went down in a few seconds , both my charged jump systems took a hit and lost the charge , and my ship went into complete power failure as I braked and reversed. So there I am, drifting backwards at roughly 5 m/s and getting shot the whole way.

I started to panic as I was desperate not to lose the ship I had been piloting for a couple weeks and had spent oh so much time gathering resources for. I got out of the core, left the ship drifting ever so slowly backwards, and I ran to the hangar where I had this 3x3x3 block ship the vaguely resembled a suit of power armor, if said armor was drawn by a 4 year old, that I had slapped together for killing space spiders a few stations back. It had maybe 4 blocks of weapons total, but a fantastic speed, I flew out of the hangar and offered myself up as a living decoy to save my ship. I flew a very fast orbit around the station drawing the fire off the station and giving my main ship a chance to recharge shields and get out of range. I only got tagged once by a beam turret which dropped my 3 block shield system, but didn't do any damage, thank Schema for the damage multiplier system , and made it back to my ship which had finally recovered power and I jumped out of there to assess the damage.

That's when I found out what piercing meant.

Every. Single. System. had a hole cut through it, even groups of systems enclosed in still intact rooms.

I decided it was too much effort to repair my poor ship, and started working on a larger harvester, which led to my first combat and power effective ship. A very heavily armored purple thing I called a Panther class Corvette. This was back when different colors of armor were tied to different resource types and I just happened to have a giant pile of resources for generating purple AA. This was also the ship I was building when I figured out how to make proper reactors.

The Panther variant I settled on had a pair of 50 block Missile Launchers turrets, 3 AMS turrets which had just been incorporated into the game, a truly pathetic cannon turret that couldn't even destroy a hull block with 15 seconds of sustained fire, and a prow mounted 600 block twin Cannon-Cannon-Punch array. I then went back to that station, took out a few turrets the hard way and then used the blind spots to kill the rest of the turrets, handled the waves of Isanths easily, and eventually found and killed the faction block.

Exploring and looting that neutered station was one of the most satisfying things I had done up to the point in SM. :D

 

[MythrilJelly]

I went in with a fighter made of purple rocks and barely any firepower and no shields against a Beta station, thinking my ship was a titan because it was fairly big. (Big as in frigate shell sized and not even smoothed out) and tried to get sneaky with turrets, thinking they were ships that would give chase. After I quickly blew up, I grabbed the "gunship" (Large turret) off a derelict Eta station and rammed it in, blasting the heck out of all of it. I didn't know you had to destroy the faction block so it continued to send Isanths to plow my little "station" nearby to the ground.

These days I can take out anything short of an Alpha station out with a heavy fighter and some dodging, I like to clear out a system before I take up residence there. I usually have to leave Alphas and come back for them when I have more firepower.

 

[Dr. Whammy]

My first attempt at a deliberate attack on a pirate station was with this.

Spoiler

This was long before the weapons update and before they started giving pirates shields. So I just circled the station picked off the turrets one by one.

 

[Xacktar]

First time I found a pirate station, I was flying in a ship that was sideways because I didn't see the little direction arrow on the core before I built it.

It was also where the phrase 'Red triangles are BAD TRIANGLES!' was first uttered in great distress.

 

[Gasboy]

My first attempt at a deliberate attack on a pirate station was with this.

Spoiler

View attachment 32968

This was long before the weapons update and before they started giving pirates shields. So I just circled the station picked off the turrets one by one.

It's like going to see the USS Constitution. Ancient armor and weaponry...

 

[Top 4ce]

The first time I attacked a pirate station, I was convinced that all I needed to do was destroy the faction block and place my own to claim the station....

To bypass the problem of shields, I decided to use the Torch. So, I had my buddy drop me off in a cloaked ship, and entered the station on foot.. as a SPACE COMMANDO.

I used a rocket launcher to take down a turret,


By the way, no, you do not get to claim the station if you destroy it's faction block (IF it has a faction block...)

This actually works, if you replace the faction block and claim it, you have to leave for a bit and then comeback and you now have your own pirate station! This is currently how i deal with pirate stations, why destroy when you can steal?

As for my first time, it was old stations with a tiny ship and missiles and I used blind spots to knock out the turrets and then grab the loot before the reinforcements took me out.

I like going in commando...

 

[gregolegomonkey]

I fought one of the new-er pirate stations in a few spawned in (undershielded) Defiants that I downloaded. This was when core shots were still a thing... let's just say that neither of the first two overheated; I died from missile splash damage while inside the core. The third time, I decided that I might shoot the turrets off before shooting the main station mass; although, I was still a noob, and died anyways to the fighters. At which point I promptly said "Screw this" and went to play with a planet in an Isanth Zero.

 

[Grimson]

The first station I took on was the original type with purple tentacles. My cousin and I were playing and building a new station. In moving we discovered a pirate station that wiped us out. After several failed attempts to attack with the fighters we had my cousin came up with a unique idea. He suggested that we take single cores to board the station. Surprisingly this work most of the time. If you got into the station far enough you were in a dead spot. We then preceded to use the hand weapon to destroy the docking modules and let the turrets drain their batteries as they floated out into space. After the turrets were gone we brought in faction module busting ship. This was an attempted miniature Death Star that was nothing but a single AMC system and the power to run it.

This plan worked very well until we encountered several stations that had accidentally spawned turrets inside of the hallways. We never really could capture those stations.

 

[EricBlank]

gods, that glitch was annoying, yeah. I tried to take on several stations on foot only to realize I would have to retreat because two of the turrets were facing inwards and could hit me from any angle.

Getting aboard those older stations via a core or thruster stick was easy business. Sometimes.

 

[Anubis Evo]

Ooooh, the first time I fought a pirate station was back when I think Starmade first exploded in popularity! Or at least it seemed to for me because I discovered it right then lol. I was with a friend and we were playing on the NASS server together and both had scrapped together ships from what we could scrounge together either from shops or enemy Isanth ships that we were lucky enough to destroy (I recall they were rather terrifying when you would first start off...) Anyways, I think my friend and I had gotten our ships to roughly 15m in length which felt pretty large at the time and decided to get balsy enough to attack a station we found while exploring. we probably had 150 sheild hit points split between the two of us and spent about 30 going in to attack and retreating after we took a lot of damage. After that first station though there was a bunch of loot that you could sell to shops which basically maxed out your money.

Starmade was a lot different 3 years ago than what it is today and that is one of my most fond memories of starting out in this game.

 

[Dr. Whammy]

Ooooh, the first time I fought a pirate station was back when I think Starmade first exploded in popularity! Or at least it seemed to for me because I discovered it right then lol. I was with a friend and we were playing on the NASS server together and both had scrapped together ships from what we could scrounge together either from shops or enemy Isanth ships that we were lucky enough to destroy (I recall they were rather terrifying when you would first start off...) Anyways, I think my friend and I had gotten our ships to roughly 15m in length which felt pretty large at the time and decided to get balsy enough to attack a station we found while exploring. we probably had 150 sheild hit points split between the two of us and spent about 30 going in to attack and retreating after we took a lot of damage. After that first station though there was a bunch of loot that you could sell to shops which basically maxed out your money.

Starmade was a lot different 3 years ago than what it is today and that is one of my most fond memories of starting out in this game.

Yeah. Remember the good old days of "plex glass"? Now THAT was how you maxed out your money. Salvaging one station could give you all the money you'd ever need.

 

[Anubis Evo]

Yeah. Remember the good old days of "plex glass"? Now THAT was how you maxed out your money. Salvaging one station could give you all the money you'd ever need.

That and the super high tier minerals. Just a few of those and you would be pretty much set for life! I never did try to sell Plex Glass though.. I always found my money through the loot drops of pirate stations of roughly 100+ of the tier 5 minerals of which ever flavor

 

[StarWars1981]

Lol, my first station ... I'm not sure. Sometime after establishing a HB - a built-up thingy off a red planet. Made of red rock and such. Built two floors, all sorts of crap. Isanths ... oh, the Isanths. After a LOT of time spent on a 25-m crappy-in-every-way basic hull suicide tin can, Madman and I (myself in a turret, had not discovered the difficulties of operating a turret from a fast-moving object to hit a fast-moving object) flew into the great frontier, to ... find ONE Isanth-Zero not even CLOSE to the station. After a five-minute long combat involving lots of running for it (station was not HB at this time, it was barely even shielded if at all) ... I've hit exactly ONCE ... did nothing. Then I'm suddenly free-floating. Turret's been shot off, crap -- but wait, I'll BOARD him! It's a PERFECT idea, right? I get within 50 m twice ... second time all the way in to 25 or 15. And he shoots once and goes back to absolutely disassembling our prime combat vessel. It was severely reduced before it came home. So we built better ones on creative and came back to that survival. Of course, now I've got tons of ships that can take down stations. My corvette, the Vengeance (missile cruiser), the Republic Frigate (fast destroyer, more like) (even pre-armaments refit), several of our fighters, the other corvette ... yeah, now I've got options. However, they're not very challenging whatsoever. Not anymore.
EDIT: Right, the station. Eventually we went back and ... I believe ... just gunned it inside and I bailed out to find the faction mod. Took forever, but I think I had a torch ... one of the times. Thought we'd gotten a station, but nope, just decayed crud. I was unhappy.

 

[IKindaCrashAlot]

Being an old star made player and just coming back recently, I didn't know on how to properly attack a station. After about a week of picking off pirates and selling their loot clouds, I made a station with a massive shipyard and a few turrets to deter pirates from attacking me while I was building. I built a light battleship with 1mil e/sec over 1 mil shields and a lock on missile system that delivered 3.5 million damage per missile and costed over 30 million power to fire them both. I also made a corvette for the Pirates to use to make it somewhat of a fair fight against this battleship. I charged into a delta station blasting away at the turrets. I noticed there were about 50 incoming red marks on the minimap.(I didn't know stations called in reinforcements yet). Within 10 seconds the 50 corvettes and what remained of the station's turrets has dropped my 1 mil+ shields and we're now making big holes in my battleship! I escaped back to my ship yard were I repaired the ship. I attacked much more cautiously the next time and eventually claimed the station even though I don't care to spend 95 million credits to repair it.

 

[kurosawa]

i see zombies

 

[yoyo2901]

what did i do when i first attacked a pirate station.. hmm.....

 

[splatthecat]

The first time I encountered a pirate station I began to wonder what the fuss was about. That was until I got within range of the beam turrets! I died, very, very quickly!

The first time I set out to take on a pirate station was one of the beta ones. The turrets were easy to take out but I had massively underestimated my ships firepower and I was simply unable to keep the shields down long enough to do much damage. I then found it easier to fly in, take down the shields enough for them to request backup and then pull back and take out the defence Isanths and loot clouds before attacking the station again.

My first successful attack was against an alpha. Two "big guns" from two separate eta derelict stations in a fleet and sent to attack sector. A modified Isanth type zero with a small salvage array, better power and shields, an ams turret and a couple of repaired Isanth type VI with extra power and shields flying in formation with me.

It started badly, the nuke hit one of the Type VIs and that was pretty much it for that one. I managed to take out the missile turret before it was able to fire again. The eta turrets just pounded the station relentlessly while I took care of the fighters. After about 20 minutes of hard slog the faction module was destroyed and no more fighters came. The remaining fighters were polished off and I then flew to about 5 different shops to sell most of the loot.