Playing against the Privateers in VGAP4

May 2003. | Suggestions welcome | More VGAP4 tips | Back to main Race page

New bits in red

Introduction

Unlike my other "How To Play Race X" guides, I am not going to explain how to play Privateers, hereafter referred to as The Scum, better. The reason is simple. I despise The Scum and all who play them. I view VGAP4 as a war game. The Scum are parasites, played by people who enjoy upsetting other players by stealing their stuff and never fighting. I am sure, then, they will see the humour of a guide devoted totally to making their lives miserable.

Oh, and lest you wonder, up to now I've not had much trouble with Privateers. In my VGAP3 days I grasped their fundamental nature instantly and targeted them wherever possible before they could be a problem. I once inherited a doomed position in a VGAP3 game where the original player dropped out from despair after Privateers began carving him up and he felt there was no point continuing. My opinion of the VGAP4 variety is as low as it ever was of the VGAP3 type. I decided I had better make some notes on how to handle this extremely dangerous race if I came across them, so here they are. If the page seems kind of rough and ready, it's because it was thrown together in a hurry.

Perhaps oddly, I quite like a game with an element of treachery and deceit. That's a different kind of honour where everyone is on a level playing field - like a game of poker.

Many thanks to Tim, Drew Sullivan, "Pete", Ben Shaffer, Jon Nunn and David Ouimet for their comments    8)

Know the enemy - Scum-related rules

Their ships have big evasive bonuses, so Stormers are probably their worst nightmare.
They can steal your hoards of contraband without even landing on a planet, with a ship device.
Privateer Pirates' Coves steal food from enemy bases
Pirates' Cove ground structure steals contraband from enemy bases, causes unhappiness and has a 200ly range.
Money Tap has a 50LY range, steals all money from ships and pods. Will steal all money a base has over 10000mc. ( The first 10000mc is protected )
The Meteor class takes 2X damage from detonating Barbitic minefields, (Normal damage if it hits one)
When a Privateer base is destroyed in a ground combat action ALL the bases that belong to the Privateer's enemies within 400LY will have a little party (get a happiness bonus) This bonus can be as high as a +200 point bonus if you take out 200,000 or more at once. You get 1 point per 1000 you take out.
Blasting a Privateer base from orbit will uncover their hidden cache of booty. Cash, fuel, ord and repair units. For every 300 privateer colonists you blast you get 6mc, 2fuel, 12ord, 3repair.
Large populations of Privateers (Bases over 1 million) make 3x sensor noise.
Privateer Gondolas report success in the base logs
Privateer River Royale:
Income = (Colonists / 1000000) * RiverRoyale * 100 * (ColonistHappy / 300)
Happiness drop = 5 + RiverRoyales
Privateer fuel stealing device takes 50kt from any one enemy ship per turn. Ship can steal 50 KT from many ships at once. Fuel robber has a 50LY range. The device will not take Solorian fuel.
Privateer ships can steal up to 200kt of fuel from an ship enemy using transporters
Can transfer any standard cargo from any ship without having to match friendly codes. Yes, these scum can steal ALL your ord.
Cargo Grappler has a 50LY range and can steal Metals, Food, Med and Supplies from any ship.
Privateers' 4X weapons bonus when the ships attacking have the target's hull plans only is given to PRIVATEER hulls. All captured alien hulls fight as normal ships.
All weapons have a 400% kill bonus
Scum ships get a 400% shield drain bonus and a 400% armor drain bonus if they have the plans of the target ship on one of their own ships taking part in a battle
Native dust off device. Removes all natives from a PLANET and places them in a native pod on the ship. Works AFTER movement and does not work on bases. Jon Nunn mentions: Native Dust Off limited to 400K natives a turn (per Meteor). Appears to draw in order that native types are listed on the datapad. (Chups are last.) Recent rule changes block this device from working if there is an enemy base on the planet.
Contraband dust off device. Removes all contraband from a PLANET and places them in a gold pod on the ship. Works AFTER movement and does not work on bases. Jon Nunn adds: Contraband Dust Off limited to 1000 contraband a turn (per Meteor). Appears to be in order that the contraband types are listed on the datapad. I think recent rule changes block this device from working if there is an enemy base on the planet.
Hull plan [kid]Napper, steals and deletes one enemy ship plan. Has a range of 50. Works after movement. Works on bases, ships and pods. Causes bases to become unhappy about the theft of the plans. I wasn't sure how this worked. Drew Sullivan helpfully explained: The Privateer Hull Plan Napper steals plans from bases, ships and (I think) pods. It ONLY steals plans that are alien to the race that has them (if the Fed have a Loki Plan in a ship data bank the Privs can't steal that; if the Privs have a Firestorm Plan the Privs _can_ steal that plan).
Party Skiff. Produces 1 mc income each. Requires 1 kt of contraband and 100 colonists each to work. (Contraband is not used up.)
River Royale: Produces 100mc for every 1,000,000 colonists belonging to another empire within 200 LY. Causes a 5 point happiness drop in the victim race's colonists. Cyborg immune.
Assault Gondala. 200ly range. Kills enemy colonists (10 each). Raid shelter protects 1000000 colonists and undercities protect 100000 colonists. (Yes, those numbers are correct.) Cyborg immune.
The colonists of most races and natives detest Privateer scum and grow unhappy if the Privateers build a base within 200 LY of them. They loose 10 happy points per base in the area.
Ships that are captured with plans have their plans deleted 95% of the time
Advanced boarding laser: Kills up to 15% crew, 50% colonists, 20% troops
If a Privateers ship has the plans of the ship it is using a boarding laser on it can kill up to 20% crew, 60% colonists and 40% troops
If you share ANY data with a Privateer scum his spies will know your universal friendly code
If a BR4, BR5, Meteor, Dwarfstar, or Bloodfang is owned by a non-privateer race any Privateers can set that ship as a capture target and have the enemy crew instantly spaced and take control of the ship, from any range.

To sum up Robbing: Privs can take cargo off your ships in 2 ways: Cargo Grappler (automatic within 50 LY) and transporters (which can take all of it but they have to target yours ship explicitly.)
"You cannot leave your units on the base as they become robbed there. You cannot xfer them to a ship, they become robbed ON THE WAY also - and this is
[most irritating] since they become robbed to 100 PERCENT. And I cannot leave some units on a ship (even with HG and troops) because it gets stolen there, too." - "Pete"
"Privateers need quite a lot of Meteors to rob you all the time. MBR has not such a big cargo bay". - "Pete"

I believe the Privateers can live happily on asteroid belts. I'm not sure if this gives them any special advantages except obscurity. However, just because there are very few races that can live in the asteroid belts, don't forget to occasionally check out the asteroid belts to ensure they haven't set up shop there.

Here's everyone's favourite ship, the Version 4 MBR:
Vulnerable to mines; its stats are: Signature 70, Tow 5000 [easily powerful enough to steal Starbases] , Max speed 380(!) with gravitonic accelerator on, plus big hyperdrive range(!!), Scan 150, Grav Acc, Cargo Grappler, Broading Laser, Fuel Grabber. Several people have pointed out it has a gravitonic mine dropper, and with 3000 ord capacity it can lay 6 small fields before having to head back for more ord (or steal it off you!) so it can be used to drop surprise minefields in your space. Its cloak burn is 80, which is VERY expensive especially considering the ship can NEVER fully cloak. It can carry 4000 cargo, which makes it a thieving run quite devastating.

Anti Privateer tricks

General -
Since Privateers can steal your Ord, it may be better to use energy (ord-less) weapons on them. - Drew Sullivan comments: Not sure this is worth the distinction. Yes, the Priv MBR will steal your ord (the other ships need to see you a turn ahead and use their transporters to move the Ord off your ship). I would say that in general non-Ord Weapons have a bit of an advantage, though. I still think it is worth bearing in mind since many races - Stormers, say - have hulls with very low Ord capacities. If I were playing EE with their monstrous capacities, though, I wouldn't worry 8)
EE specific tricks -

Fed / Lizard / Enforcer / Rebel trick -

Crystals -

David Ouimet on anti-Scum tactics:
 Many of their ground unit specials affect colonists, not crew/troops/hg. So if you're sharing a border with them, you can setup outposts of just a few troops and limit the damage they can do to you over all.

   I dont believe they can steal from cloaked ships any more. There was a bug where they could hit solarian and cloaked ships but in theory this has been fixed. I have not tested it recently though.

   Note that the dust-off (native) only works on natives outside of a base, once they are in the base the privs have to transport them as normal. Can be annoying for chumps, but its hard to actually get them into a priv base that matters.

   There is no real defence against the priv theft attempts, spend it or lose it. Lots and lots of minefields too.

Tim advises on his Privateer page:

Most Privateer ships have very few point defense systems so it is pretty easy to overwhelm them with photon torpedoes in large numbers. Maybe true. Their ships tend to do very poorly against fighter wings. Not true, Privateer players have evolved reasonable anti-fighter strategies, for example their own fighters are reasonably good and they have the mc to buy lots of them.

If you ever capture a Meteor Class Blockade Runner hit the self destruct at once, you must do this before the Privateers can auto capture the ship back. Definitely true.

The best strategy for dealing with the Privateers is to send out scouts to find their populated worlds and then send a large fleet in to crash it as quickly as possible. True. Remove their population centers and they will fall. Unlike most races they can not field a very strong fleet and can be destroyed easily by a medium sized fleet.

If you suspect the Privateers are laying a stack of cloaked gravitonic mines as a trap it might be best to scout ahead with a small mine layer and lay a barbitic minefield and blow it to clear the area of any cloaked gravitonic minefield traps. Yeah, but you need to be a pretty careful player to spot that and take countermeasures. NB blowing the barbitic minefield wil probably kil any lurking Scum ships - hurrah! Also note that Loki class ships (or any other ship with Tachyon Scanners) will probably unmask the minefields and pinpoint a trap.

If they build jump gates take the gates from them. Lay minefields around the gates, but not on the gate. Place the mines between the gate and something interesting. Buy the stealth mine exotic tech to make it even harder to see your minefields. Hopefully the Privateer will come out of the gate, sweep for mines, not destroy any or see any and thinking the coast is all clear go flying away from the gate at full speed and hopefully into your mines. Lay small fields about in areas that you think the Privateers will be moving about.

If you find them, but can't act immediately yourself, send a general anonymous message to everyone letting them know where the enemy Privateers have a great deal of wealth and suggest that they attack it at once.


Drew Sullivan's comments on Privateers:

The most important advice in my opinion is that you CAN'T defend against the Privateers. You also can't defend against the Borg. Nor the EE. Nor the Stormers, Centaurs nor Smurfs. If you sit there, let them come at you, let them pick the time and the ambush you will lose.

So the way to handle the Privateers is to attack and eliminate them. And that you can do in a variety of ways. I particularly recommend going after their scanning ships (Outriders mostly) since they are nearly blind. Don't let a lot of Outriders hang around you snooping. Kill them quickly.

And kill the Priv bases that have the highest concentration of Priv population. That will not only cripple them in RPs, but will get you that lovely bounty for killing them from orbit. (You can make a nice economy out of Privateer Blasting. Until you run out of Privateers).

On reflection, my best success against Privs has been by going after their larger bases (most population). These bases are easeist to scan (the Priv can make stuff on 1 Priv bases with MC and metal and those are hard to see) but if you kill his population his resource Points go way down and his goose is cooked.

The nice bounty you get killing these bases is a bonus of this tactic.

So I council: Find his bases and kill them from orbit in order of population, largest first.

In my experience the Minefields are a nuisance more than a game-deciding nightmare:

a) No one takes the time to lay mines properly (they put 5 MFs all with the same center and that center over one of their bases. These can all be blown at once. Put your MFs with the centers OFF the planet (it surprises the heck out of people to find the standard 16 LY radius MF has been planted 5 LY south of the planet. You run with GA on to 18 LY south of the planet  expecting to use all your devices and SURPRISE! a minefield extends that far. If they are not all concentric they are harder to blow with Barb Mines. (That is general advice, not just anti-Priv)

b) don’t count on the Privs not having Minesweeper plans. With their frequent spy attacks and Hull Plan Napper they will likely have a lot of different Hull Plans and Barb Minelaying (the best way to sweep mines) and Minesweeping are such common devices they likely have both by turn 25 or 35 or so.

Their bases are just plain vulnerable. Pro Priv advice: spread thin, don’t have all your eggs in one basket. Anti Priv Advice: Pound them from orbit for the bounty (fuel and MC and ord etc.

And actually I think AA (and just about every other Structure Defense) is nearly worthless. I defend with Fighters (the Privs have pretty good fighters). Those do everything to foil an attack the AAA should do, and they can be moved/reconcentrated elsewhere as the need presents itself.

Q: Can they Rob etc ships they can't see? ie if you trundle a cloaker up to their planets for some nefarious purpose, do you end up with a ship with no ord, fuel etc?

A: The Privs are not supposed to be able to steal from a ship that is fully cloaked. However I am routinely stealing from ships I don’t have a scan on. The difference is a ship may have a signature of 1000, and I just didn’t scan it. In that case I seem able to steal from it (the automatic steal with the fuel grabber, cargo grappler etc, not the “transport off the ship” type of steal. For that I need to know the ship ID #. But if the ship is cloaked to signature 0 I don’t think the Priv’s can steal from you.

I routinely have EVERY BR4, BR5, Meteor, Dwarfstar, or Bloodfang set on capture. So it is a waste of time to try to board them vs a conscientious Priv player. Trap? I don’t know about that (I do lose the ship so I can’t see any advantage to the Priv losing the ship)

Q:  They can steal all stored contraband and all money in excess of 10,000mc on a base - is there a defence against this?

a) don’t end any turn with > 10,000 MC on any base (buy Contraband to lower your MC). If you are moving MC to the Central Bank that is OK (If you are moving 10,000 to the CB and have 19,000 on the base the Priv can’t steal from you, the CB transfer (and just about everything else on the base) is before ship devices which is at tick 200

b) The Priv can steal the Contra, but only a fraction every turn and only with a base and Cove, not with just a ship.

...On further reflection on how to fight the Privs:
 
Don't try to defend against the Privs. You can't defend against them (nor just about anyone else in this game). Take the offensive against them. You need to kill them before they can hurt you. To do that you need to be "about as mobile or more so" than they are. They can Hyp so you had better have chunneling or hyping or Jumpgates or you likely are just a Large Slow Target.
 
The Privs are nearly blind. So kill their scout ships (typically Outriders.) Don't let your area get a couple of Outriders in it. They are just casing the joint (american slang for what a burglar does to study the bank or jewelry store the day before robbing it).
 
And as I said, kill their population (the bases with the largest population). I discussed why in another post. That of course requires you to scout them. (Scouting the other guy while screening/killing off his scouts is a large and generally overlooked part of this game).

I shouldn't mention this with all these primates listening, but the cloaked Scavenger HalFlint is invisible and can mount a Cargo Grappler too . . . of course since most Big Lumbering Primates don't remember that Scavs can have that device too, the Priv usually gets blamed for what the Rodent has stolen <G>

Pete from Finland writes -

A few things that I have noticed whilst playing Privateer in Quixotes's Jumpgate Jubilee.
 
If you know a Privateers home base, try to destroy it using ground attack. Privateers don't have Training Centers and with only those two start ships, can train more troops but not HGs. But mostly they are needed to explore and dust-off any natives and contraband what they can find. So privateer home base will be quite vulnerable to GA. Those privateers' low tech ships and fighters don't help so much to defend the base. It takes only a few turns and you have more than enough Ground Units, troops and HGs to conquer Privateer base. (Now that colonists don't take part in GA, it seems that Privateer home base is too weak.)
 
Lay gravitonic minefields over the important bases so that Privateer ships cannot jump+move nearer than 62ly without chance to hit the minefield. So plenty of minefields are needed to defend only the one base! It is not so important to Privateer to get your money, it is more important that you lose them. It will be too late if Meteor is nearer than 50ly from your base. You can detonate a minefield and destroy the Meteor, but - so what - says the Privateer.
 
Autointercept doesn't help if Privateer knows what to do, so don't count on that.
 
Put only enough fuel to fuel tanks. Transfer fuel using pods (and others too) which are docked to ships.
 
You can try to keep your money in cloaked ships or Gold Pods. Many times it will be better than keep them on the base.
 
As David and Drew has said - there are no defence against Privateer.Only way to "defend", is to attack (GA) and so early than possible before Privateer can build more Meteors.

 Drew Sullivan remarked:
The Privateers can transport fuel and cargo off any enemy ship. This is a
race ability, not a ship ability, i.e. the Privs can do this even when using
a ship design alien to the Privs.

Playing as the Privs I have been using Migs to suck fuel from all my
opponents with truly devastating effect. The other players have most of
their ships stranded out of fuel. They can't prevent this as I can hype on
them from up to 750 LY before they get to move from their starting position.

They could carry lots of fuel to avoid being stranded but it's impractical
to need 450 fuel 300 LY (at 120/turn you will spend 2 turns in between stars
and lose 400 fuel total). If I do see a ship with 350 fuel I just hit it two
turns in a row and it is stranded. The enemy fleets ships are useless,
strewn all over the map with no hope of getting refueled.

I can do this because the Migs are a) dirt cheap and therefore available in
enormous numbers, b) can hype (so they can hit thier target without having
to guess its planned move) and c) have large fuel tanks. The Peep Dirk
(although with a smaller fuel tank) is even cheaper and would probably be
worse if used like this. There are other dirt cheap hyperjumpers here and
there in the ship lists.

This seems way too easy and I can't see any practical defense.

I will cut the limit to 50 kt of fuel for non-privateer hulls. - Tim

Since I wrote this article, there have been numerous changes to Host affecting the Privateers. I don't have time to edit them in properly, but here's a list of the raw changes.

Privateers have become much more dangerous and specialised. As Drew Sullivan put it, in response to a Newsgroup query:

> Are Privateer forever pariah?

 Yup!

With the new rules particularly.

The other races exterminate their enemies. Now (more than before even) the Privateers want to "feed off them" instead.. Not  actually kill people, just steal all their ships and destroy their structures, then steal food from them (for the experience) and park LRs over those planets for the gambling income (not to mention the River Royales)

Did you see the part in the Sopranos (about 3 years ago) when Tony started milking that Sporting Goods Company? He didn't want them out of business. He wanted to use them day in and day out to suck on their credit rating, their insurance their suppliers etc.

Don't kill the goose that lays the golden egg. Just sadistically suck blood from it every turn. Tony Soprano don't make a very good business partner. Ya know what I mean, Right?

Oct 15th, 2002

What is new in Host.exe Version 4.000.115

New: Most ships hyper jump at movement phase 100 and come to a complete stop after the jump, they do their normal warp movement before the jump

New: Meteor Class and Rebel Falcon Class ships jump before normal movement (phase 0) and have normal warp movement after the jump

Changed: Privateer boarding power increased, if they have the ship plans on the attacking ship when they try to board a ship they will kill 120 enemy for every 1 attacker they send over.

Changed: Plan Napper device range increased to 150 LY


Host.exe Version 4.000.117

New: Repairs limited to Hyperdrive 30%, Hull 20%, Systems 40%, Weapons 20%, Life support 10% per turn

Host.exe Version 4.000.118

New: Repair limit bonus factors:

Weapons: 20% Normal max repair rate
If your PC Factor is less than 80 max weapon repair is 40%
If your PC Factor is less than 40 max weapon repair rate is 60%

Shields: 20% Normal max repair rate
If your race's addiction to Grecken Blood Wine is less than 20 repair rate is 40%

Control Systems: 40% normal repair rate
If leadership greater than 90 repair rate is 80%

Hull: 20% max repair rate
If PR and Law are both greater than 80 max repair rate is 50%

Hyper Drive: 30% normal repair rate
If Force Good is greater than 20 max repair rate is 60%

Life Support: 10% normal repair rate
If PC Factor greater than 80 repair rate is 40%

Host.exe Version 4.000.123

New: For the steal ship plans spy mission to work you must get a ship within 40 LY of a ship belonging to the enemy race that you wish to steal plans from

New: Siliconoid natives produce bonus ord units for all races that have them in their base.

New: Amphibians produce free weapons

New: Bovinoids can give a 50% discount on supply units

New: Reptilians can boost mining rates by 40%


Host.exe Version 4.000.125

New: Cloaked ships burn cloak fuel

New: Captured ships stop dead in space after being captured with a transporter

Fixed: Hacker droids fail to get plans of ships more massive than what the tow beam can pull


Host.exe Version 4.000.126

New: Privateers can no longer use alien ship plans to build new ships

New: Privateers can not give hull plans to another race

New: Privateer cargo pods will no longer hold plans

New: Hull plan napper blows an enemies' ship's computer core when it steals plans, doing 99% system damage to the enemy ship's systems

New: Hull plan napper causes cargo pods with alien plans to explode if they are docked

New: Hull plan napper also grabs cash with the alien plans that it takes

New: Privateers get the insanely high 1 to 120 kill ratio when boarding an enemy ship with a boarding laser if the enemy ship is of a hull type that the enemy can not normally build

New: Cargo grappler can steal food from pods and ground bases

New: Privateers have 2X scanning bonus when it comes to detecting and scanning enemy bases

New: Privateers gain ship experiance when they use a boarding laser, cargo grappler or hull plan napper


Host.exe Version 4.000.129

Fixed: Nova Minefield bug, mines failing to chain react

New: Wings clear intercept target in the event the target is destroyed.

New: Wings clear dock target in the event the target is destroyed.

New Rule: Privateers are no longer allowed to transfer cargo to a another race's base unless they use the target's universal friendly code. They can not do the transfer at all if the two races are at war.

Anti-Privateer strategy: Since my assault gondola's only kill off colonists, my friend (and enemy) has taken to colonizing forward bases with troops and/or crew. That way I don't get an early warning they are in the area until the crew breed some colonists, and even when that happens, I do not kill off the entire population. Just thought I'd throw that out to all those anti-privateers out there. :) Killian Lett

Speaking of Crew:
Privateer Crew fight like 40 and troops like 50. The Privs can't build Training Centers. They make troops on ships if the ship experience is high enough, but they can make crew (fast) on ANY ship. So when I play the Privs I use Crew for much of my fighting (including boarding BTW) - Drew Sullivan

A few comments from Yazoo:
Auto-intercept with fighters is very good.  But even better is to set a Barb minefield of minimal diameter around the planet you are defending, coupled that minefield with auto-intercept of ships and/or your fighters. The mines force the Priv to slow down to 13 ly per turn after hyperjump, and he then cannot outrun your auto intercept ships.

If you are sending in an invading force, I would suggest laying a minefield along your path of ingress.  They may be cloaked or not. As your ships move toward Priv, activate the minefield. He sees your ship, hyps jumps on tick 1, grabs fuel, and flees right through your grav mines. Boom!  Plus, privs cannot see mines very well.

Meteors are very expensive.

Also, just in case you get robbed, your ships should carry pods of fuel and ord on them. The Privs cannot rob pods. (To be more precise - their Money Tap can steal cash from pods, but they can't steal other stuff from pods - PH)

Finally, 2 Deth Specs with transwarp engines and PTTs set with appropriate standoff range are deadly to Privs Meteors.  They should be set to auto-inntercept.  The Priv will have a difficult time fleeing Deth Specs following a robbery attempt.

PH: The Siren HAARP device seems scary, because it can suck all your crew away, but it works AFTER movement (and thus combat) so it isn't a total barrier to approaching Privateer strongholds. And remember in order for the Siren HAARP to work effectively, the Lady Royale needs to have a low crew level... and ships with low crew levels fight poorly.  Also, I suspect  you can avoid losing ships to this device by docking an Assault Pod to ships which may have their crew sucked out, and set the pod to replenish crew on the ship with the Transfer To Ship function. of the pod. (I admit I have not simulated the pod idea to test it. Perhaps the HAARP steals crew from pods too.)

If your ship is about to be captured by Scum, set it to Recycle. At least in Host 197, this command is not wiped by boarding. Nor are waypoints or Intercept. One interesting suggestion along these lines is to set ships which are not going to bases, to Recycle, just in case. But I don't think I'd remember to always turn this off!