Why Hunt pirates?

[Ratbert]

New player here, loving the game so far. A question about pirates: why kill them beside to protect yourself? I've read about loot clouds but never seen any. Do they still exist?

//Your friendly space rat

 

[PietBergen]

It is my understanding that a pirate ship with storage on it, whether it has contents or not will generate a loot cloud. So if you have a load of blueprints in your ship list and your game is generating pirates using your ships rather than default Isanthe, unless they have storage on board they may not generate a loot cloud.

 

[faiyde]

If your playing on a server they might actually have the loot clouds disabled.

 

[ZektorSK]

They are nice practice target for your ultra prankster gangster ship

 

[Ratbert]

I'm not sure the ships I've killed have been large enough to have any storage aboard, so I'll check that out tonight.

Thanks!

 

[sayerulz]

Of course, 99% of the time pirate loot clouds will drop 99999999999999999999999999999 of whatever block you have the least use for.

 

[Ratbert]

Of course, 99% of the time pirate loot clouds will drop 99999999999999999999999999999 of whatever block you have the least use for.

Tell me about it. I got one (1) Teal Standard Armor... But now I know how it works

 

[rcmustain]

Other than loot, pirates are a good measuring stick for your own weapons and defenses. If you are on a server dominated by pvp, though, they aren't useful in determining your effectiveness (except that if you can't kill them, you aren't ready to fight players).

 

[Benevolent27]

On some servers, the pirates are large enough that farming them can be a good source of shields and advanced armor. On servers with tiny pirates and big mining bonuses, on the other hand, this is kind of pointless. I see loot clouds as a sort of extra bonus normally, because even with a tiny mining bonus, they aren't really that valuable. Sure they provide a lot of random blocks you don't need, but sometimes you'll get 400 cannon computers, which isn't a bad haul. What I like about loot clouds is that you can get blocks normally not available, like grassy rock. They can also provide you with a nice sampling of random blocks, which you can use when you're creating some random decorations.

Personally, one of the first things I do on a server (which does not have insane mining bonuses, and decent size priates) is mine enough to build a decent turret, then I create a home base next to a pirate station. Then I use the turret to kill pirates, which I then farm. This allows me to get a quick start. But for servers with giant planets and crazy mining bonuses, I don't bother. I just mine.

 

[Crimson-Artist]

unless they changed this recently loot cloud sizes are based on the mass of the pirate ship. Larger pirate ships will spawn larger loot clouds. in fact some massive pirate ships have been known to spawn such incredibly large loot clouds that it lags the server.

a ship doesnt need cargo space or a storage block for it to spawn a loot cloud. If you having trouble finding them its because they spawn from the ship core at the exact point where the pirate ship's core overheated. If they were flying then the loot cloud would probably be some where behind it.

 

[Bladeriker]

^^^
yeah hated this issue, where the ship was half turned, but the loot cloud was not directly behind it in a line based on the front of the ship.

This is why I have a Pirate destroyer to hunter them and a salvager to get the loots when they die.

in the course of a week of hunting Pirates I have several full stacks of blocks,

 

[StarWars1981]

Hunting pirates is an excellently rapid way to max out all the storage you've brought along on a modest fighter craft. And that's all it takes to bring down the Isanths. Just a little thing and a decent pilot with some reflexes and quick thinking and you can bring them down one at a time for all eternity. xD. But then, yeah, you've gotta FIND the loot cloud. That's a pain unless you've cut out their thrusters.

 

[KiloZulu]

I have a friend who built a station near void space so that he could farm pirates. This way, he could have the material come to him rather than having to go out and mine it.

 

[StarWars1981]

How do you farm out of void space? Do they spawn out there?

 

[KiloZulu]

Pirates spawn with greater frequency in void space, and the more void systems you have adjacent to your current system. Thus, it's safer to build near the center of a galaxy than out on the spiral arms. He also wanted to put his station within firing range of a pirate station. His hope was to be under near-constant attack.

 

[Dr. Whammy]

I don't find hunting pirates to be particularly beneficial resource-wise. As others state; loot clouds don't offer much of what you need and station assaults lead to nothing but scrap unless you want to pay to repair them in order to get their blocks.

Personally, I don't go looking for pirates until they attack my base. ...then it's time for extermination.

 

[Madman198237]

One of my goals before joining an MP server (If I ever do) is to make a set of decent turrets to polish off all the darn pirates that keep spawning in waves of 20 Isanths....right on top of my exposed planet-side base.

Darn you, missiles!

 

[StarWars1981]

One of my goals is to create a ship that can kill off Isanths at a terrific rate, yet is affordable for insanely-basic-bases.
So far I've created some early midgame pieces that, though effective, need retrofitting now that I am wiser (several minutes of firing on Isanths later xD; the ion effect was not a good idea) about killing pirates.
Also, I need a good destroyer. Something with turrets bad enough to kick Isanths all around me while I go take a break from the boring process of shoot, move, shoot, shoot, shoot, die already, shoot, go away!, shoot some more, fire, fire, fire, DIE ALREADY!!!!
I've got one in the works now, however, that should come out to be effective yet not terribly expensive.
It's gonna have capacity to drop a set of Power Armor suits/hovertanks/what-have-you off the tail, rather like the Pelican. Indeed, that was the inspiration for the drop hatch. However, its main objective is to kill Isanths well enough to use, without using too many weapons/armor blocks.
Because if you can pick up the loot cloud, you can sell it. All of it. Especially if your base is near a Trade Guild station .

 

[KiloZulu]

If you're only dealing with Isanths, guided missiles with explosive effect work well. A single missile hit could knock one out. Until I started playing on servers with custom pirates, most of my ships used missile turrets. Battles using cannon turrets could take 30 minutes or more, while missile turrets ended fights with a volley or two.

 

[Madman198237]

Yeah. Mostly because there's just nothing critical to knock out on an Isanth, unless you aim at the computers. With larger warships, cannon can be fairly effective. Not so on smaller warships, which will watch overpenetrations fly through everywhere.

But you also have to worry about guided missiles' inability to do serious damage to armor. It takes multiple hits to punch through armor effectively because of damage dispersion.
Best to soften up the armor value with a cannon volley or three first.