Piracy is a great way to gain credits or specific commodities in Avorion. While not even close to the profit margin of trading, it allows for a much faster gain of money and does not need the player to have a large start capital. As with trading, the basic procedure - destroy freighters and sell the loot - is a nobrainer, this guide will introduce new players into the basics of more organized (and profitable) piracy.
What you need
The ship
Just as a trading ship or any other craft that has the purpose to transport commodities, the pirate's ship will need cargo space to collect any loot. The material for the cargo space does not matter and the player may choose it by the different properties of the available materials (Iron for its very low cost or other ones for their weight). Note that one or a few large blocks will provide more cargo space then the same volume of smaller ones. Designing a modular ship to have it growing along with the players capabilities is useful, but not as necessary as in trading (See trading guide for more details on this).
Depending to the distance from the core, the ship needs to be armed appropriately to defend itself against the raided faction as well as to "convince" the victim to hand over their cargo. On some occasions armor can be useful as well, as it allows to "push around" other ships without damage to the own craft.
Preconditions
It is helpful to have a trading upgrade of the level of at least rare (blue color) when the player is looking for a place to sell the loot. In addition to this, it is highly recommended to have a scanner upgrade equipped, for this will allow to display the cargo a freighter has over larger distances.
A friendly smugglers hideout is required to sell the stolen cargo.
The victims
It is recommended to search for a faction or a specific region of the galaxy to make it the area of piracy for the player as there will be significant and quick loss of reputation with any faction represented in a sector where piracy takes place. An example for a good area of action is a region at the edge of the galaxy (weak faction ships) that is connected to a more central position on the galaxy chart by a wormhole. This allows for easy raiding while the player will still be enabled to travel back to a more advanced region where the loot can be sold.
Raiding freighters and selling loot
Target selection and proper raiding
Note that the option to pick up stolen cargo needs to be enabled in the ships cargo menu to allow for loot pickup. Note also that patrol ships will hunt the player for transporting stolen cargo as they would with other illegal freight.
When exploring the area a player has chosen to make his field of interest (in terms of piracy) a player should look for specific stations in order to estimate the goods that will be sold to or by those. While looting low-price-commodities is possible, it is more profitable to look for the most valuable goods in the game. A single freighter headed for a mine containing mining robots will for example allow for a profit of more than 100 Million Credits.
To raid a freighter the player needs to simply start a dialogue and tell the freighter to hand over all of his freight. Note that simply destroying the ship will reward a lot less loot than having the ship drop it by dialogue. When successful, the freighter will drop all commodities and continue its predetermined path, in some cases it will simply stop moving (which is dangerous because it will have the ability to pick up some loot again), where the player can simply "push" it away with the own ship. The other possibility is denial of the players request, in which case the ship will either continue its path (if the players ship is simply to weak, this can be changed by damaging the freighter) or immediately jump out of the sector. The second option will result in a loss of all potential profit, but can be prevented by the following strategies (in all scenarios it is necessary to skip through the dialogues very fast, so taking a look at the options before is recommended):
- The player uses powerful rocket launchers and fires them from a long distance before starting the dialogue. When the freighter refuses the player simply waits in the last dialogue stage to allow the destruction of the freighter by the rockets.
- The player uses independent targeting turrets (turned on) and sets the ship flying towards the freighter at high speed when starting the dialogue. As in option 1, the freighter will be destroyed by the ships weapons as soon as they get in range, which prevents the total loss of all loot.
What to do with the loot
If the player is extremely short in credits the loot can be sold directly at any friendly smugglers hideout. In any other case it is highly recommended to simply remove the "stolen" mark from any loot and sell it to a friendly faction as this will ensure large profit (especially with high priced commodities). As there was no price paid to gather the loot, the player does not even have to look for especially profitable places to sell the loot (even though this will obviously still guarantee the highest amount of credits per raid).