Access: Pirate
Additional Access: Any place a block of 4X will open! Difficulty: Hard Supervisors: The Pirate Captain Duties: Listen to 1700s sea shanties, steal everything valuable, rattle your bones. Guides: This page. Quote: Yarr harr fiddlie dee. So, those station-lubbers don't wanna give us our cut huh? Well, I guess we'll just go over there and take it!
Contents 1 You Are A Pirate 1.1 Human Pirates 1.2 Silverscale Elite Royalty 1.3 Skeleton Pirates 1.4 Data Siphon You Are A Pirate There's a low chance of the pirate event occurring during a game. The station receives a demand from the pirates for 80% of the cargo points present when the event triggers. If the crew cough up the money via the command consoles (typically in the Bridge), nothing happens.
If the crew refuses or stays silent, however, a ship of pirates spawns somewhere in space. If there aren't enough ghosts that initially ready up to become pirates, then the pirate ship still spawns, along with sleepers that ghosts can late-join into. (wouldn't make sense for the crew to be rewarded for not paying the ransom, huh?) They can then pilot their ship to a location next to the station, and board.
The goal of the pirates is to loot the station of anything valuable. The minimum target is 50000 credits, with the figure scaling with the relative prosperity of the crew. Generally, in order of importance, this means breaking into the vault and siphoning the station's credits, as well as all of their mined materials, killing people and looting the money from their IDs, and finally just carrying anything not bolted to the ground back to your ship.
There are three types of pirate crews:
Human Pirates Your run of the mill motley crew of Syndicate deserters, civilian renegades, and all-around scoundrels. The human pirate crew consists of two pirates, led by a single captain (who gets slightly better gear). They get a modestly equipped ship, which comes along with a small armory, but its really nothing to be impressed about. They generally carry around energy scimitars, laser guns, and a small selection of explosives. The first thing typically on their agenda is C4-ing into the armory, in order to acquire enough weaponry to take the crew on a prolonged fight.
Silverscale Elite Royalty A group of stuck-up lizard nobles have come out to the station, seeking tribute! (yes, they exist!) I mean, they come in a shuttle made completely out of silver, god knows what they need that tribute for. When in danger, they can harden up into a silver statue, which'll require you to spear to death rather than baton to death! They'll most likely use it to get the jump on you, however.
Skeleton Pirates Yarr harr harr! The skeleton pirates now command THE FLYING DUTCHMAN, complete with ghastly inhabitants! The ship is armed with four cannons, which can be loaded with various cannonballs, found onboard the ship. Once 15u of gunpowder are put into the cannon, and exposed to a fiery device (anything that can light a cigarette will work, from cheap lighters to plasma cutters), the gun will fire, with considerable impact.
The standard cannonball instantly puts an unarmored person from full health to critical, assuming that they are hit in the chest or in the head. If it impacts a limb, it will most certainly delimb! Upon impact, it will spray shrapnel around in a radius. Most of the time though, you'll use it to barrage an opening into the station. Speaking of creating breaches, there are explosive cannonballs, which make quite a big boom upon impact. The vastly unspectral human pirates have to C4 their way into the station, all you need to do is fire your cannon vaguely at security, and boom, the armory is now yours to loot! Sometimes the crew fights back with these newfangled things, mechs and borgs, I think they call them. Well, they're no problem now, if you use the malfunction shot, which generates a large EMP upon impact. Of course, these can also be used to shell the station, disabling APCs, breaking lights, and rendering much of security's energy weapons useless! When you've given up on looting an area, fire THE BIGGEST ONE! Quite rare, given their propensity for sinking their discharger's ship rather than their intended recipient. Simply put, it is a toxins maxcap. Better not fire this at the armory, given that there won't be any guns remaining for you to loot! Oh yeah, did I note, you're completely immune to temperature, pressure, radiation, disease and embedded items, on top of not needing to eat or breathe and having no blood. The other lowly pirates might need EVA suits, but not you! This enables you to break into the station from unusual locations, and keep up a brisk pace in space, whilst the landlubbers have to don bulky hardsuits. That's not to say that life as a skeleton is all flowers and sunshine. Your biggest downside is your complete inability to process chemicals, meaning that much of the medicine that you can loot from the station is completely useless. Thankfully, you can drink milk to heal. Remember to take some from the fridge onboard your ship, and if you've ran out, to loot the station's kitchen. If you've really ran out, there's typically a cow within the station's garden that you can milk, and barring that, you can order milk (or cows) via cargo. (but jeez, what a waste of your hard-earned credits…) Take care to differentiate between space milk and soy milk, however!
Data Siphon Piratedominator.png
The data siphon is an optional means of looting the station. When turned on, this heap of machinery automatically starts siphoning credits from cargo, tech levels from the RnD network, and also creates a “hostile environment”, preventing the cargo and emergency shuttle from entering or leaving. Meanwhile, it also locks RnD and supply consoles from being accessed altogether, so science can't research new technologies and cargo can't order stuff.
However, the data siphon also broadcasts a GPS signal (“Nautical Signal”), alerts the entire crew when it's been turned on, and can't be turned back off once activated. If you choose to use it, the entire station will be able to find your ship, and they'll be coming to destroy the siphon, so be ready for a fight if you turn it on!