Pirating

Pirating

One of the activities you can enjoy while playing Vendetta is pirating. Pirating is an accepted aspect of Vendetta. Pirating people in a nations space is not wise, as this will cause your standing to plummet. Pirating happens most often in sectors that have a wormhole but don't have a station. When you partake in pirating, you need to consider what ships to pirate, and what ship to pirate in.

Ships to Pirate

There are many ships in the world of Vendetta. Some are multi-purposed, some made for fighting, and some made to transport cargo. The ships you want to pirate are, of course, the transport classes. There are several transport ships out there and aspects of them that need to be put into consideration when pirating. But beware, when a transport vessel has at least one large port, there is the possibility of a gatling turret or mines that needs to be taken into consideration. There are several types of mines out there that can, and most likely will come your way eventually.

• A proximity mine is your basic mine. It will sit in space happily until its short range sensors detect something, at which point it will detonate itself, causing your ship damage and to be pushed off course. The range of its sensors is quite short, about 80 meters.
• A concussion mine is never used for damaging a player, as it causes 0 damage. Instead, the concussion mine will, when detonated, exert a very large amount of force on all ships within the blast radius, causing the ships to be thrown off course. The force exerted is the same on all ships, except ships with more mass will take longer to recover from it.
• A lightning mine is very dangerous and can kill ships who decide to hang around it. The lightning mine is equipped with a large battery and much more sophisticated sensors than the other mines. The sensors are able to determine whether or not ships within range are hostile. The lightning mine utilizes a weapon that causes pure energy to arc from itself to an enemy ship at a rate of 1000 damage per second and will keep firing until the ship is out of range, the mine is destroyed, or the mine's energy is depleted and self-destructs. The lightning mine is somewhat easier to spot than proximity and concussion mines due to the electrical arcs that surround it.

Atlas

First, we have the Atlas, this is the first transport class ship that players get access to. The main variant can contain 32 cargo and other variants can hold up to 38. The atlas is outfitted with one small weapon port and one large weapon port. There really is not much to say about the Atlas except that it is a low level trading vessel and fairly easy prey, there are much bigger space fish to fry..

Centaur

The next ship is the Centaur, this transport vessel can hold 48 units of cargo and the other variants can hold up to 50 units of cargo. The Centaur is constructed with one small port and two large ports, allowing it to launch two mines at once. A popular configuration with transport vessels that have two or more large weapon ports is to launch a concussion mine to get you disorientated and to launch swarmer missiles. Swarmer missiles are a type of missile that carry a small payload individually, but the launcher launches 8 missiles per round. This increases the chance of a missile hitting you, if all missiles hit you it can cause large amounts of damage.

Marauder

The third transport ship is the Marauder, one of the best transport ships that retains agility. The standard Marauder is no better than the Centaur, except for its superior agility. Of course, there are other variants of the Marauder that increase its cargo space up to 60. Most variants are outfitted with three small ports, but there is one variant, the Tunguska Mineral Marauder, that is outfitted with one small port and one large port which is designed for mining. This variant is also the one with the largest cargo capacity of the Marauder class transports. The Marauder can hold its own in battle when wielded by the right people, so be sure you aren't attacking a person who is known for their superior skill in fighting with a heavy ship.

Behemoth

Pirate's Piñata

The last transport ship is the appropriately named Behemoth. This ship is indeed a huge transport; with space for 120 cargo units, it can barely fit into a dock. This transport class is an easy-to-hit target, but it has a very thick hull which can take large amounts of damage. The Behemoth does not come with superior weapons capacity, as all of its space has been dedicated to its massive cargo holds, thick armor, and very powerful engines. In fact, its capacity for weaponry is lower than the Centaur, as it comes with two large ports. Destroying this ship without a partner has proven quite difficult, as its huge amounts of armor allows it to take considerable amounts of damage while its very efficient engines can be powered indefinitely by a Fast Charge Battery as it reaches top speed and flees the sector. It is possible to take out the Behemoth by yourself though; one tactic has proven fairly effective. This tactic uses a Warthog class attack ship, in the large port goes a jackhammer (or screamer) class rocket launcher and the small port has a Neutron MkII (preferably MkIII). You use the rocket launcher to knock the Behemoth off course. It will need to drop out of turbo in order to readjust, and this is when you use your Neutron blaster to attack it. When it is about ready to turbo again, fire another rocket, rinse and repeat until desired effect is obtained.

Ships to Pirate With

While we have covered what ships to beat up like a piñata, we have yet to cover which ships to beat them up with. You can pirate in any ship, as long as it has a weapon port. Instead of going over every ship, we will go over the highlights of the ships.

Vulture

The Vulture is one of the most popular fighter class ships used, with its thin design it makes for a very good dodger. There are many variants that are far superior than the basic one. Most notable of the variants is the Corvus Vulturius, this ship is one of the fastest fighters when in turbo, up to 240m/s. The Vulturius makes a great ship for chasing down ships that are running, of course this high speed comes at a cost, while in turbo the Vulturius will deplete the battery very quickly. All variants of the Vulture comes equipped with two small weapon ports, which is usually equipped with Neutron or Gauss cannons, depending on whether you want quantity over accuracy, or accuracy over quantity.

Warthog

The Warthog is very good for destroying the heavier transport ships, just place a rocket launcher into either the small weapon port or the large weapon port, and your energy weapon of choice in the other weapon port. You should, of course, never use the basic variant and explore the other options the universe has to offer. If you can fight quite well, then you should use the cargo transport or mining variants, as these will let you take back more of your goods from the remains of the ship. Also keep in mind turbo speed and the turbo's energy consumption, you want to be able to catch your prey, but you also want to be able to attack it.

Behemoth

Surprise! The Behemoth is good for pirating. When hunting down a Behemoth, having a partner along in a Behemoth is quite useful. He can add support fire, and when the enemy Behemoth explodes, he can pick up all the cargo and split the profit.

Valkyrie

With the newer addtion of drain to many lighter ships, the Valkyrie (Valk) is fast becoming the mark of pro-pirates. Known for alone time as more of a status symbol more then any thing else due to the fact that it took such high levels to get it was long over looked as a good fighter ship due to it's shape which can make it easy to hit.

That was all changed when an unknown pirate started using it to chase down moths. (Behemoth) It was then discovered that it's low drain cupeled with it's three small ports made it ideal for running down traders who just wanted to get to the next port alive.

Common configurations are: Three sunflairs due to the flaires not using any energy this ship is made for running down infi-boost ships and stopping them.

One Sunflair, and two gauss. Or two flair one gauss, this ship is more of a fighter used to run down and then pummel fleeing ships. It's rockets are used to cause the fleeing ship to tumble around then it closes in and uses it's gauss/es to inflict heavy damage before the trader can recover.

Lastly two ion or phase and one gauss, or one ion or phase and two neutrons 1-3. This ship is often used in conjunction with the first tri-sun valk to great effect. The tri-sun will hit the target and this ship will then fly in close and inflict damage before the trader can regain he bearings. Or this ship will engage the trader and the tri-sun will fly around behind the trader filling him full of rockets.

Borb's Pirate tip: It often helps if you are using any kind of rockets with a buddy to make sure you are of the same nation and both have good faction. Rockets tend to not care if you are friend or not.