Can't make friends with the pirates

[Curtis Cook]

Six days ago I hit 2000 hours played, and I'm still figuring this game out. Among the goals I've never reached are allying with the Combine, with Liao and with the Concordat, so I wanted to achieve them in this career. So far (300+ days in) I've made little progress, though I hope to soon begin making headway with the Concordat.

The biggest problem is the Pirates. I tried a career as a pirate once before and went broke within 100 days. This time money isn't the problem; reputation is. Every time a Pirate mission comes up I do it for free in order to get the most influence possible with them, but I'm still losing ground. My rep is so bad they're no longer offering me 2 1/2 skull missions (not that I could complete one anyway, but it's the thought that counts). To add insult to injury, the Pirate missions are invariably the ones with the most valuable salvage… none of which I receive because I've bargained it away.

Does anyone know where to go to find Pirate missions? I went to a planet that was listed as a pirate stronghold, and every mission was against the Pirates, so I lost more ground. I've just started going to 1 1/2 skull planets, and of the first three there were only 2 pro-pirate missions out of 21. The Black Market is just too damn expensive because the Pirates hate me!

Advice, please?

 

[MarkDey]

Every planet will have a mission where the pirates are present. The challenge is finding missions where they are your employer instead of your target.

If you want to get to 100 reputation with the Pirates, I'd recommend starting out by not doing any missions against them at all. This way, when you find missions to increase your reputation, they aren't offset by missions where they dislike you. It will take longer, but odds are that you'll be able to avoid bankruptcy by doing missions against other targets while you travel around, looking for pro-pirate missions.

 

[Curtis Cook]

Well, it kinda/sorta worked. I'm having to skip a lot of missions now, and even doing the Pirate missions for free really isn't working out. I have managed to increase my relationship with them to 'only' -4, but indifferent is better than it was, so thank you.

As an example of how it's not working, my most recent Pirate mission was escorting a convoy. As usual, I was working for 'free' (nominally for 98,000 and no salvage, which was as low as I could bargain), and as usual the Pirate representative grossly underestimated the opposition. While it occasionally happens with other factions, it seems to always happen with the Pirates. This was a 2 1/2 skull mission that I was facing with a Shadow Hawk, Vindicator, Black Jack and Vulcan. I impressed myself with how neatly (not easily) I dealt with the first wave, but then my map problems recurred. I've played this map close to a hundred times, but this time it actually showed me where we were going, and because I couldn't reconcile that with the map in my head, I thought there was a new destination that was on the other side of a large bay, so I maneuvered three of the escorts toward the bay while the fourth stayed with the convoy to keep it moving.

Only they weren't going across the bay; they were going the way they always go (although with a lot less cluster-fucking than usual; apparently they could read the map), so now everybody's out of place when the bad guys hit. It was an extremely long fight for an escort mission, and by the end two of my mechs were internal and another had lost two body parts, half his weapons, and was internal in the center torso. And then the third wave hit.

The convoy took no damage and got away clean, but there were two Trebuchets and two Javelins between me and the pickup point (of course). I spent one round firing at them to no effect, then withdrew. The asshole Pirate representative gave me the whole 'you have failed your mission' speech, which really grated because I'd succeeded in the MISSION… I just couldn't manage the post-mission evac. So he stiffed me out of most of the 98,000 credits (losses exceeded 200,000 in repairs AND I lost 3 LosTech weapons), of course I didn't get much experience from it, and I don't think I got the whole relationship bump I was expecting, either.

A pirate life is a hard life, and no mistake.

 

[MarkDey]

A pirate life is a hard life, and no mistake.

It is indeed! Hopefully the next drop goes better.

 

[Major Jeff]

Just my experience, but trying to align with a single faction at the expense of all others is ineffective and not how the game was setup to be played. When you click on a faction’s icon, you see who its enemies are. This then tells you who their friends are as well. The typical approach is to select one of these “friendly” groups, and work in their areas of space. Take any jumps that support your friends, if if you’re not aligned, a lesser number of jobs against them, with t(e goal of maintaining Honored status.

The typical approach to building an initial status base is to start in “free space”. That’s the area to the left of the map. Any planet that indicated that Local Government is active is a target. Job’s against the Local Government have no negative status consequences.

Pirates are a special case, in that they are the enemy of every faction. However, they are active everywhere. The approach to gaining status with the pirates is to move slowly, taking no jobs against them. As you gain negative status with your unfriendly factions, these areas become easy pickings for pro-Pirate jobs, since the maximum skull level is only associated with the Pirates, and any additional negative status to your enemies is irrelevant.