Pirate Exploration and Map/Info Strategy

[Keston]

1. Pirate explorers and warships can't investigate ruins. I assume this is for play balance. Can they find and use the derelict bases/ships etc if they can find them?

2. What is the best strategy to explore, just set explorers to explore the unexplored?

3. How to use the information? Buy maps and info, sell maps and info, profit as much as possible on the theory that if you don't then other pirates will sell it first?

[Tcby]

Pirates can use derelict ships/bases like a normal empire.

Best exploration strategy depends on how far into manual play you want to go. Technically it is best to control every explorer manually, especially once you are outside the radius that you want to have mines. Once you are exploring systems that you aren't interested in mining, you should micro the explorers to only look at planets that have the potential to house super luxuries. Of course you also micro straight to planets with ruins.

I did that for a total of one game, but found it way too tiresome. So now I automate all explorers and make sure I get to advanced resource exploration asap, so they are reasonably efficient. I still check up on them to make sure they are investigating ruins. And I manually order them to check out areas that have been provided by discovering navigational coordinates.

As for using the info, do you mean when playing as a pirate? Yeah, just sell.

Edit: I see in the title you said it was specific to pirates. Then ignore what I said about ruins. The rest stands.

[Nanaki]

1. Yes. Infact in my current pirate game my entire fleet is based off derelict ships, a 110+ fleet of derelicts, I salvaged every derelict field in the game.

2. The default explorers are worthless. I highly recommend, as your first action, refitting your explorer ships to be exactly the same but with 14-15 fuel cells (basically as many as you can cram without having to upgrade the lifesupport). With the extra fuel your explorers stay out there a LOT longer and do more actual exploring as opposed to RTBs for more fuel.

3. Derelict information you want to keep to yourself, after all, you probably want to send your own constructors out there to fix em up. Colony info I would keep to myself as you want to keep them indie as long as possible. Ruin info I usually sell unless they are in the same system as a derelict field. Usually, though, I never sell information because by the time I make contact with empires willing to buy, I already have more money than I know what to do with.

[NephilimNexus]

#1: Fine a debris field/world destroyer

#2: Plant a defense platform at the location with lots of fighters.

#3: Sell the location to Empires.

#4: Laugh when their construction ships get nuked by your platform.

[Aeson]

NephilimNexus, since it's relatively difficult for pirates to acquire construction ships, you'd probably be better off going heavy on the boarding parties than on the nukes. At least until you get to the stage of the game where you can build your own construction ships.

[NephilimNexus]

Are you kidding? Pirates can rack up literally dozens of construction ships in just a few years!

1) Design a miniature Space Station with 1 construction bay, 1 each of the tech assemblers, and about 5 cargo bays.

2) Find an Empire world.

3) Garrison it with ships that carry Assault Pods.

Every time they start building a new construction ship your raiders will automatically move in and capture it.

Then you just repair/finish construction with your original construction ship.

Move the now finished ship directly to your in-system refurbishing yard so as to make it warp capable.

Profit!