Quick tips
- No cargo, no pirates: they only come for ships carrying trade goods. Fuel and cryogens don't count.
- They only strike while you fly between planets. Orbit, the ground and warp are safe, except in Enlie.
- For loot, hunt in lawless systems (Woremed): tougher pirates drop cargo more often, but there's no bounty.
- For bounties, fight where the law is high: they pay into your bank account in that system.
- Jettisoning a hold makes them leave. It's certain if your other hold is then empty.
When pirates attack
Pirate attacks look random, but every attack has to pass the same chain of checks. The game runs them on each ship-update tick (update_movement):
- You're flying between planets inside a system. Never in orbit, on the ground, during a warp jump, or parked in space. In Enlie the check runs the whole time you're there.
- No pirate is already engaged.
- A flat 10% roll passes.
- You carry cargo: a hold with any trade good from type 2 to 30. Fuel (type 1) and cryogens (type 31) don't count. Enlie ignores this rule.
- The law roll passes, with odds of (18 − law) ÷ 18.
- The system's cooldown roll passes. Every pirate you destroy adds 1 to that system's cooldown, up to 15. While the cooldown is above a random 0–9, there's no attack, and each such miss lowers the cooldown by 1.
Pirate strength
Level = 1 − (law − 1) ÷ 4, plus random 0–3, 0–2 and 0–1, kept between 0 and 5. In Enlie they're always level 6. Hull is a random value from 120 + 20 × level up to 255.
Loot
Only from a pirate you destroy. Cargo drops with a chance of level ÷ 8: a random trade good from type 1 to 30. To collect it, use the tractor beam, which needs an empty hold and fuel; it burns fuel until the wreck is pulled in.
Bounty
You're paid when law + level beats a random 12–17. The amount is (level + 1) × wealth ÷ 8 thousand credits, with a minimum of 1,000 Cr, paid into your bank account in that system. Lawless systems never pay.
Buying them off
Jettisoning a hold of cargo makes the pirate leave. It's certain if your other hold is then empty, and a 50% chance otherwise. It resets the system's cooldown to 0 and never works in Enlie.
System by system
| System | Law | Average level | Cargo drop | Bounty paid | Best bounty |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Glory | 15 | 1.2 | 8,000 Cr | ||
| KalManDaa | 14 | 1.2 | 5,000 Cr | ||
| Jadul | 13 | 1.2 | 8,000 Cr | ||
| New Shoot | 12 | 2.0 | 3,000 Cr | ||
| Jondd | 12 | 2.0 | 6,000 Cr | ||
| Shoot | 10 | 2.0 | 5,000 Cr | ||
| Hepa | 9 | 2.0 | 6,000 Cr | ||
| Ferr | 8 | 2.9 | 6,000 Cr | ||
| Enlie | 1 | 6.0 | never | ||
| Sosai | 6 | 3.0 | never | ||
| Lafser | 4 | 3.8 | never | ||
| Woremed | 1 | 3.8 | never |
Rates come from running the game's rules 40,000 times per system. Safe systems have rare, weak pirates that usually pay a bounty. Lawless ones have frequent, tougher pirates that drop more loot and never pay.
Pirate ships
Every pirate level is a fixed ship class with its own name, stats and wireframe, the one the tactical display draws beside ID:. There are seven, all stored on the disk's copy-protected track and drawn here from the game's own point data.
VW-69
level 0| Damage | |
|---|---|
| Armour | |
| Accuracy | |
| Fire rate | |
| Hit chance | 19% far · 100% close |
| Hull | 120–255 |
| Cargo drop | 0% |
Z1 Vector
level 1| Damage | |
|---|---|
| Armour | |
| Accuracy | |
| Fire rate | |
| Hit chance | 19% far · 100% close |
| Hull | 140–255 |
| Cargo drop | 12% |
Annihilator
level 2| Damage | |
|---|---|
| Armour | |
| Accuracy | |
| Fire rate | |
| Hit chance | 8% far · 69% close |
| Hull | 160–255 |
| Cargo drop | 25% |
Voton Mk IV
level 3| Damage | |
|---|---|
| Armour | |
| Accuracy | |
| Fire rate | |
| Hit chance | 22% far · 100% close |
| Hull | 180–255 |
| Cargo drop | 38% |
Voton Mk X
level 4| Damage | |
|---|---|
| Armour | |
| Accuracy | |
| Fire rate | |
| Hit chance | 15% far · 100% close |
| Hull | 200–255 |
| Cargo drop | 50% |
Phantom UL
level 5| Damage | |
|---|---|
| Armour | |
| Accuracy | |
| Fire rate | |
| Hit chance | 12% far · 99% close |
| Hull | 220–255 |
| Cargo drop | 62% |
The top of the normal range, mostly met in lawless systems.
UNKNOWN
level 6| Damage | |
|---|---|
| Armour | |
| Accuracy | |
| Fire rate | |
| Hit chance | 22% far · 100% close |
| Hull | 240–255 |
| Cargo drop | 75% |
Only in Enlie, where every pirate is this one.
Fire rate
After each shot the pirate waits a random 5–10, and each attack tick takes its fire rate off that wait. A VW-69 fires almost every tick; a Voton Mk IV only every 5–10.
Accuracy
A shot hits when (accuracy + 100) ÷ (range ÷ 8) beats a random 1–100. Fights start at range 127, where most shots miss ("far"). By range 16 ("close") most land, and closer than that every shot hits.
Damage
(damage + 100) × min(90, (hull ÷ 20 + 4)²) ÷ (range ÷ 3 + random 25–50). It hits your shields first, and anything left over damages a random ship system. The pirate's own hull is in the formula, so shooting it also weakens its shots.
Armour
Divides the damage your shots do; see Ship guns. The Voton Mk IV (level 3) is softer than the Annihilator a level below it, but it hits harder and aims far better.
Which class you meet comes from the pirate level, set by the system's law; see Pirates. Bars are scaled to the strongest ship in each stat.
Ship guns
The GUNS menu has two modes, LASER and CANNON. The firing code (fire_it) treats them very differently.
In practice: with low Dexterity, use the cannon and let the pirate close in. With high Dexterity, or after a Dexboost, the laser kills in about half the shots. Always let the guns gauge fill before you fire: a full-charge shot does about 3.5 times the damage of a snap shot.
Laser
Hard to aim, hard-hitting. It does about twice the cannon's damage up close and over three times at long range. Below about Dexterity 25 it only hits at long range with a dead-centre shot.
Cannon
Its target window is about four times wider, so it's far easier to hit with. It loses power with range, so let the pirate come to you.
The concentrator
A black-market part for the guns' special slot. It adds 40% to the laser, and 25–44% to the cannon. One is enough: extra ones don't add damage, though each still counts as a working gun row, and working rows charge the guns faster.
Average shots to kill at full charge
| Weapon | VW-69 | Z1 Vector | Annihilator | Voton Mk IV | Voton Mk X | Phantom UL | UNKNOWN |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Laser | 3.8 | 6.9 | 10.7 | 5.7 | 16.6 | 13.9 | 15.6 |
| Laser + concentrator | 2.9 | 5.1 | 7.7 | 4.3 | 11.9 | 10.0 | 11.2 |
| Cannon, close | 6.5 | 12.4 | 19.6 | 10.3 | 30.9 | 25.9 | 29.0 |
| Cannon, close + concentrator | 5.3 | 9.9 | 15.6 | 8.2 | 24.6 | 20.5 | 23.0 |
| Cannon, far | 11.3 | 22.4 | 36.6 | 18.2 | 57.3 | 47.9 | 52.5 |
| Cannon, far + concentrator | 7.9 | 15.2 | 24.0 | 12.6 | 38.4 | 31.7 | 35.8 |
How it works
A shot hits when the target's offset from your crosshair, |dx| + |dy| on the game's 0–1023 aim scale, is within a window set by Dexterity and range:
cannon = 4×(15+DX)÷10 − range÷12
| Dexterity | Laser, far | Laser, close | Cannon, far | Cannon, close |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 20 | 0 | 3 | 2 | 12 |
| 30 | 1 | 4 | 6 | 16 |
| 50 | 3 | 6 | 14 | 24 |
| 75 | 6 | 9 | 26 | 36 |
| 100 | 8 | 11 | 34 | 44 |
"Far" is range 127, where a fight starts; "close" is 1. A window of 0 needs a dead-centre shot.
Damage per hit, kept between 1 and 80. Charge is the guns gauge, 0–255, and every shot empties it:
Power: laser 30, or 42 with a concentrator. Cannon 16 − range÷17, or 20 − range÷17 with one. Pirate armour by level: 0: 15, 1: 28, 2: 42, 3: 21, 4: 60, 5: 48, 6: 52.