Matrix Games Forums

From the beginning, pirates have minus income because of the spaceport.
But that is too painful because you have to influence a dozen of colonies or raid 10000 credits to make economy stable.
Empire protection agreements will be broken even before empires research hyperdrive, and the amount of money is so small.

For raiding, there are a lot of competition and drop pods generate every 3 mins, so you won't even have successful raid for months.
For smuggling, pirate resources are too scarce and you will run short of resources. Building mining station is painful and they will immediately get destroyed.
For mercenary, early game missions are just defending independent colonies which always fails, and you will have trouble for fuel.

After empires finish hyperdrives and establish a colony, your pirate base will soon get destroyed by a large fleet you cannot stop.
So you should build or find another station somewhere.

At those time, empires assign attack missions and have vulnerable colonies with no spaceport
But smuggling demand diminishes quickly.

When empires build spaceports in their colonies, your raid will always be loss
So you have to build about 30 large ships which can destroy spaceports, but I haven't seen a single pirate faction which has those fleet.

Also, space creatures annoy so much
If you send some raiding ships at early time, they will soon engage space creatures and some will be destroyed.
Playing as an empire, pirate always appear while constructing a new spaceport in homeworld, but I laugh because they soon engage space creatures and get their ships crippled or destroyed(Protection agreement seems joke because they protected my early mining ships from those space creatures haha)


Pirate economy should be balanced like
"a single small spaceport should not have upkeep"
otherwise, you have no other option but play "cheating" pirate by sending two escorts and a resupply ship immediately from the beginning to an empire's homeworld.

From my point:

Pirate is a hard job, and yes it is harder and difficulter then a regular Empire play.
BUT you need to play different then an Empire. Don't forget regular Empire's are just a resource for you, not your enemys. Only other Pirates can Win.

Empire Protection fee is nice, but most empire reject them soon, except your raise Military Power, and this cost much maintance later.
When you got a homeworld in range, you should send your Resupply Ship there, and take control of these World. Don't raid the planet until you got a few more assault pod's at orbit. Try to reach a Homeworld before they could build a Spaceport, or you have a hard time to beat this Spaceport down.

Maybe design a Raiding ship, 1 weapon many Pod's.
Take 100% control of this Homeworld with Raids, Build Hidden Base and Fortress, and your Cashflow should work well.

Don't forget to take control of nearly Independent Colonies too.

I never build any Mining/Gas mining stations, i set all on (Gas) Mining Ships. 2-3 Extractors, 4 Cargo Bays, more Engines and enough Energy for Max. Hyperspeed.
Since your Spaceport is allways on a Gas Giant with Fuel, you don't need much Gas Mining ship at beginning.
Don't forget your Small Freighter might need extra Energy for max. Hyperspeed too, some extra Cargo and Fuel cells wouldn't hurt.

So now try a new game, and play different then you played before.