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THE PRIVATEER BANDS (RACE 5) STRATEGY GUIDE(S):

The Personal Logs of Buck-da-Buccaneer

hacked from his on-board computers

at GREAT personal risk

by Joseph Harris

There's been a lot of discussion lately in the VGA Forum about the

Privateers and the tactics to use when playing them (or against them)

I've recently been playing as the Pirates, and have decided to divulge

my info here to the Tourney members. (I break out in hives now when

I see Conrad's name in the Forum... :)

I'll deal mainly with PLAYING the Pirates. Mainly because I'm having an

absolute -BLAST- right now in my game on Wild-at-Heart BBS, where the

competition is tough, smart, and persistant.

First Rule: (Sage advice here..)

Before you can play the Pirates well, you MUST play a game AGAINST them.

Without this experience, you will stumble and make obvious mistakes that

will ultimately lead to your quick demise. Rememeber, most players,

myself included, will go gunning after the Pirates from TURN ONE if

we know they're being played competently. The Pirates are by far the

most dangerous race in this game, and should be eliminated early if

you hope to stand a chance against them. (Again, this assumes the Pirate

player knows what he or she is doing.)

Second Rule:

Devote yourself to playing the Pirates, and playing them well. This

demands a time sacrifice. If you're a player who likes to slam out his

turn in 20 minutes, then the Privateers are NOT for you. They demand

a VERY close attention to detail, and a level of planning on a par with

playing a game of chess against a Grand Master. The Pirates must WORK

for their successes, and if you're not up to it, PASS and play a less

demanding race.

Now for the juicy stuff. I won't bother with expansion and colonization

except to say that in the early stages of a game, you should be building

nothing but Meteors, and leaving them Cloaked -ALWAYS-  Remember what I

said in Rule number 1. If the other players find you too early, they WILL

eliminate you. When you get your second starbase, devote it to building

BR4s with at least tech 6 beams. (Preferably tech 10) The reason for this

is obvious. In the long run, the enemies you face will be handing you

Mine Fields on an ever increasing pace. The BR4 GUNSHIP is aptly named.

She has 5 beam weapons. There are other ships in your arsenal that have

more beams, and you may be tempted to build those instead to increase

your ability to sweep mine fields, but DON'T! The BR4 has the enhanced

Gravitonic Accelerator and she cloaks, which means she'll be pulling

double duty later in the game by robbing and hauling other ships around.

Your third starbase should be devoted to building LADY ROYALE CLASS

CRUISERS. Now I know what your thinking, and Conrad- you hold your

water for a minute, and you'll all find out why I've stepped into the

Insanity Zone. The Lady Royale, you're all thinking, is useless to the

Privateers. She can't cloak, only has 4 beams, and only has one torp

tube! Well, SO WHAT! This ship is NEVER to face combat. Build her with

the worst engines you want and she'll steal more ships than all

your Meteors combined.

Right- OBVIOUSLY! (at least, that's what Conrad's saying)

Look at the Lady Royale's stats -real- careful like and you'll get a

Lady Royale Class Cruiser (P,CM)

# Beam Weapons: 4        Fuel Tanks: 670          Hull Cost: 250

# Tor/Ftr Tubes: 1/0       # Engines: 2            Durianium: 52

Mass: 130      Tech Level: 5            Tritanium: 61

Cargo Room: 160       Crew Size: 270        Molybdenium: 83

That's right. Look at those big whopping fuel tanks! Just two of these

babies can swipe all the fuel off of a Cyborg Cube ship (1260 fuel)!

Three could take a Gorbie!

But she'd be pasted by the enemy ship before she got the chance! (Right

Conrad?) WRONG! That's why you're building at least two BR4s to cruise

around with this Lady. Every Lady should have her very own Sacrificial

BR4s cruising the space lanes with her.

I'll stop discussing the Lady Royale now, and get to the tactics of

Intercepting and Robbing enemy ships, even when in Deep Space, and

even if moving in short, random hops.

INCEPT_1.ZIP is a util available on both the Tim Continuum and here

on Sharenet. It automatically projects the course of all enemy ships,

and tells you where they'll be (exact XY coordinates) on the next turn.

That's your Intercept-While-Cloaked tool.

Before this util, I'd set up a test game using the VGA Planets Campaign

Editor, put an enemy ship at the exact coordinates of the REAL enemy

ship, and then adjust it's waypoint until I viewed a matching heading

on the ship. Then just move the ship at it's current warp setting

and voila! My Test game just told me where the enemy ship would be

in my REAL game on it's next turn. (barring the enemy player changing

course on that turn, which WILL happen, but not very often.)

... ...Privateer overheard saying, "...I think I'll take that one."

More on those Damn Privateers!

Tactics: There is no method I've seen employed that will stop the

Privateers from taking a ship they -really- want. Several tactics

can make it more costly for the Pirate, or more time-consumming,

but NOTHING can STOP you. Superior PATIENCE will win over TACTICS

every time, so get used to waiting. Enemy mine fields will cost you

more ships than anything else you may face, but since a fully tech

10 BR4 costs LESS than 1000 credits, you should have SCADS of ships

by the time you hit the 500 ship limit. The primary enemy tactic

to confound the Pirates is to only move their ships in short, random

"hops". Let's give a recent example. A Cyborg player is determined

to deny me his two prized Biocides. He's currently too low on fuel

to sustain his push into my turf, so his advance has stalled out

waiting for his Fuel Carriers to re-supply him. He sets his Biocides

about 10ly from his planet. He never moves them more than 5 or 6ly

in a turn, and always in a random direction. He's dropped a substantial

mine field in the area, and this is a major cause for concern for my

Meteor and BR4 captains.

First order of business: Get a cloaked ship to the planet he's

cruising around. He may never make planet-fall, but he -might-, so

cover this possibility.

Second: Always target his current position with a cloaked ship. He

may forget to move his ships one day, or he may not be able to upload

his turn, and you'll bag his ship. It's unlikely this will happen,

but it -might-... cover your ass.

Third: Get a cloaked ship to all planets within 80ly of the planet

he's orbiting. There's nothing worse than having the enemy up and

vanish on you by hiding at a totally different planet.

Fourth: If he's doing the "short-hop" routine, do the same. If he's

consistantly moving 5ly, then target his current location, and then

using the cursor keys move 5ly in all four of the major compass directions.

(Obviously you'll need quite a few ships in the area, but you should have

LOADS of ships to use.)

Eventually with this tactic, covering all the locations he can run to,

and flooding the likely spots he may end up at, you WILL bag him.

Patience is the key here. If you have enough ships then by all means,

occasionally un-cloak and mine sweep. It costs you nothing to destroy a

mine-field, but costs him plenty to restore it.

Using the 4 methods I listed above it took me eight turns and 10

ships to bag those two Biocides. Mine fields are a bitch, however,

those two Biocides immediately turned around and trashed two of his

Annihilations, effectively putting a STOP on his assault into my turf.

They were also equipped with Heavy Phasers, and wiped out all the

mine fields he'd spent loads of cash and minerals on. So I consider

the exchange well worth it. It totally changed the balance of power

for the entire sector. (especially since I had stolen two Gorbies while

I was playing tag with the Cyborgs)

When the Wolves Howl-

Wolf Packs are your life-blood. The first rule of stealing ships is

to never assemble your Wolf Pack at an enemy held planet. Your cloak

may fail, or the enemy might be pulling the "Gather Fuel" gambit to

prevent you from getting all his fuel. Enemy ships are at their

most vulnerable when they're far from home, preferably 160+ light years

from home! Second rule is to always assume the enemy ship is fully

loaded with fuel. Even if it's obvious the ship is NOT fully loaded,

assume it is anyway, and make sure you have enough ships to steal

200 tons MORE than the ship could POSSIBLY have in it's tanks.

You may lose a ship or two on the way to the assembly point, and

the extra breathing room means your carefully planned theft won't

blow up in your face.

Assemble your Wolf Packs with Meteors, and use the BR4s and

BR5s to scout out enemy planets. NOW is where the Lady Royale comes into

her own.

Lady-Of-The-Night

When assembling a Wolf Pack, use your BR4-Lady Combos. Hide them at

one of your planets, or an unowned planet within 1 turn of where you

want the wolf pack to be. If you know you're out of range of any

enemy ships, then haul them out into the open. (In case you didn't

figure it out, the Lady is being towed by a BR4) Now, here is an

example in practice of what happens when you use the "Night-Bitch"

gambit. (My own name for it.. believe me, after your enemy sees this

happen for the first time he'll be so pissed off he'll call her a

bitch too.. :) Let's say your victim, a Gorbie Class Battle Carrier

is parked at his own starbase sucking up fighters. You have a cloaked

Meteor at his base ready to haul him 80 ly PLUS to a point in space within

easy reach of your BR4-Lady combo. (Always tow ships in excess of 80

light years, it makes it IMPOSSIBLE for the enemy ship to break the tow)

Set your BR4-Lady combo to arrive in the same point in space as the

victim on the next turn.

Now, the Gorbie hasn't been robbed yet, so he's pissed off and trashes

the Lady Royale AND the BR4 towing it AND the Meteor towing HIM right??

WRONG! Actually, he only destroys the Meteor towing him. He can SEE the

Lady Royale and the other BR4, BUT HE CAN NOT ATTACK THEM!!

SHIPS WITHOUT FUEL ARE IMMUNE TO ATTACK!

You see... you wiley Pirate you, you drained ALL the fuel from the Lady,

and set it so the BR4 towing her would run out of fuel at the location

of the Wolf Pack!! It's easy to do. Set your waypoint at the location

of the assembly point, look at how much fuel is needed to tow the Lady

there, and eliminate the excess. (If you need 68 tons to make the trip,

put 68 tons on the BR4) Make sure if you're parked at a starbase that

the starbase's mission is anything other than REFUEL or LOAD TORPS.

If your Lady's ship weight changes, your BR4 will run out of fuel, and

Starbase functions take place prior to movement.

... Damn Privateers!

More on those nasty Pirates!

NOW. Rememeber I told you to always have TWO BR4s escorting your Lady

around? The other BR4 is still cloaked. He transfers 1 ton of fuel to

the Lady and the empty BR4, and then set all three ships to ROB THAT

SUCKER BLIND!

Hehehehehehehe Told you I wasn't insane! It would only take 3 Lady's

to completely drain a Gorbie, and you've only lost a piddly little Meteor

in the process. CHEAP when you consider a fully loaded Gorbie would

cost about 25,000 credits!!

Imagine the possibility if you were towing, say, a REFINERY ship around

to do this with instead of the "Night-Bitch" ! It's more expensive to

build a Refer, but if you happen to STEAL one, by all means, use him

in place of a Lady and you'll be able to rob the fuel off ANY enemy

ship with only ONE vessel! Any beam totin' ship with large fuel

tanks can be used in this manner!

If there are mine fields around, make sure you send LOTS of cloaked ships

to the Wolf Packs point. If your cloaked escort BR4 gets nailed by a mine,

you may not have a ship there to refuel the Lady, in which case she gets

stolen by the ENEMY. If the BR4 towing your Lady gets destroyed by a

mine, the Lady will still arrive at the Wolf Pack assembly point.

Your enemy will be pounding the keys in utter frustration at the fact

that two apparently empty ships just robbed his ship blind.

What do you do if your Wolf Pack is out of position?

Daisy chains! Tow your victim from it's hiding place (say, a planet)

to a waiting cloaked Meteor. Your towing ship gets pasted by the pissed

off enemy, but the still-cloaked Meteor runs off with the ship on the

next turn. An added bonus to this is now that the ship is out of orbit

and in deep space (it's most vulnerable) It's ship weight CAN NOT

INCREASE! Now you can use the empty-tow tactic to run your towing ship

out of fuel at the Wolf Pack assembly point. The fewer ships you lose

while towing enemy ships the better, and it only serves to frustrate

the enemy again and again.

What if I don't get "Lucky" while chasing down an enemy "short-hopper"?

Sucker him. The Bait-n-Switch is a tried and true tactic. Empty a

Meteor of all his fuel and leave him stranded in enemy space. This

is a VERY tempting target for the enemy. If it just sits there for

a few turns, and if he's really stupid, he may just make a play for it.

Loading the ship with supplies will make it look like it's got fuel,

and he might think he can bag an easy kill. I say he's stupid because

Of course you have half-a-dozen Meteors cloaked at the same location!

If you're not worried about losing the ship, then by all means leave

fuel on the ship and let it sit there on Mine Sweep. You can never

afford to pass up the opportunity to leave ships on Mine Sweep!

A Better Bait-n-Switch: Use a Large Deep Space Freighter. Have it

TOW a CLOAKED Meteor. (Conrad is just ITCHING to get me on this one)

Provided you own the ship, YOU -CAN- TOW A SHIP AND HAVE IT REMAIN

CLOAKED! I've done it. When the enemy intercepts and trashes your

freighter, steal his ship.

Dealing with Enemy Assault Forces:

This is what Privateers fear the most:

Pop-Quiz A$$hole: The enemy has just launched a major assault on your

turf, what do you do?

Drool of course. Nothing better can happen to you than to have the

enemy come AT you. It limits your exposure to movement (mine fields)

and has an easily predictable course. (Read predictable as TARGETABLE)

Using the methods above HIT HIS FLEET HARD! Tow in all your Lady's,

and if you have a Refer, tow in one of those! Just remember that

robbing occurs by ID# and plan accordingly. (Remember, it's a LOT

easier to intercept in deep space than it used to be thanks to

Interceptor v1.0 (INCEPT_1.ZIP) ) Have the ships that go into the

heart of the enemy fleet and remain cloaked tow the lowest ID ships

out of the heart of the fleet first. An example is given in the next

message (It's quite lengthy)

... To find a cloaked MBR Tip 1437: "Target that explosion and FIRE!"

Dealing with the assault force:

Attacking fleet:

3 Biocides                  (ID#s : 101, 105, 110 )

1 Annihilation              (ID#  : 467 )

1 Neutronic Fuel Carrier    (ID#  : 103 )

4 Firecloud Class Cruisers  (ID#s : 109, 256, 358, 99)

Combined MAXIMUM Fuel tonnage: 7,700 tons (Whew!)

Time to impact on your favorite starbase: 2 turns from sighting the

enemy.

Ships you have within intercept range:

2 BR4-Lady teams (4 BR4s, 2 Lady Royales)

1 Meteor-Neutronic Refinery team

6 Meteors

11 BR4s

Fuel tonnage we can steal in one turn: 5296  UH-OH!

(Combined fuel tonnage minus 1 ton per ship)

(If those numbers look inflated, rest assured they're NOT. In the game

I hit the 500 ship limit.. also remember, these ships move at 160ly per

turn, so a privateer is almost ALWAYS within range of an enemy ship)

Set all your ships to the intercept point and pray he doesn't change

course on you. You now have one turn to deal with the bad guys before

they make dog-meat of your base.

By now he knows something is up. Several fuel-less ships are in the

same location in space as he is, and if you've done this to him

before, he'll already be crying into his Cheerios, because he should

know by now there is no defense against this once a successful intercept

has been made.

The first thing we can see is that we're not going to be able to steal

all the fuel they could possibly have in one turn. Now these ships are

all under their own power, and are burning fuel. WE HAVE TO ASSUME THE

SHIPS ARE FULL! Never assume otherwise. You'll live longer.

We're going to have to remove these ships as a threat, while taking

minimal losses, and while stealing as many of their ships as possible.

First order of business: Determine ROB order.

It proceeds from lowest to highest ID#

Here it is: (Ship/Fuel) 1 FCloud /  440  2 Biocide/ 1260 3 Carrier/  900

4 Biocide/ 1260  5 Fcloud /  440 6 Biocide/ 1260

7 FCloud /  440  8 FCloud /  440 9 Annihil/ 1260

Wish that damn fuel carrier wasn't there! Even with all of our ships

ROBBING, it leaves 1 Biocide, 1 Annihilation, and two Fireclouds up,

active, and fighting. Some of our ships will need to tow enemy ships,

so we're likely to see at least another Firecloud added to the list

of ships we missed, and possibly another Biocide.

OK. Here's the deal. I'd set five of the BR4s to tow the last 5 ships

in that list above to timbucktoo. We're not going to be able to steal

the fuel from those ships, so let's get them AWAY from here!

A BR4 towing a Biocide won't get far, but it'll get it at LEAST one

more turn out of our hair. DO NOT RUN THE SHIPS OUT OF FUEL! Make sure

they have at least 5 tons to spare. If your enemy gets an empty BR4

it'll only be used against you eventually, so deny him the capture of

an empty BR4, and make him fight it.

... Whatta ya mean we are out of fuel?!  Where's the logistics officer?!

Dealing with the assualt: Part 2

The rest of this is all academic now. I'd reccomend towing the Fuel

Carrier away with another BR4 with his primary enemy set. The last

thing you need is fuel, so that ship should be toasted, or captured

via combat.

Set your Night-Bitches and Neutronic Fuel Refinery to ROB and run.

The Meteors should also be set on a generic ROB and run.

Assign the 10 remaining BR4s to alternately ROB and TOW. Move those

ships AWAY from their target! If your ROB fails, and one of those

ships gets to the planet, you're toast. If you don't have a large

enough intercept force (You got caught by surprise) at least get

in there and break up his assault force. He won't know whether or

not you've got a Wolf Pack in place, and you'll throw a MAJOR monkey

wrench in his plans. Towing his ships out of reach of their target,

while also robbing them, may leave them without enough fuel to reach

a planet to gain more. (Always try to tow enemy ships to remote

locations for just this reason)

Prioritize what you go after. Tonnage is king, so go for the biggest

ships first.

That's it for the personal logs of Buck-da-Buccaneer. The rest of the

transmission was garbled when the Black Ice around his system almost

fried my brain.

In the future, I'll post a detailed "Fed Commander" log, but only if

the users here would like to see one. The Night-Bitch Gambit is by

far the most lethal tactic I've ever used, and it's all my own idea.

You should have heard the language used on me when I first pulled that.

<EVIL GRIN> Once a successful intercept is made, it's unstoppable.

Period.

Let me know what you think of this... although Conrad is a bit harsh,

his critiques are usually right-on, and improves the knowledge base,

so I'd like to hear from everyone on this one.

Joe. (aka Buck-da-Buccaneer, Game 3, Wild-at-Heart BBS (916) 922-2552)

... Damn Privateers!

The Privateer Treasury ver 1.0

Collected and Edited by Mark Wilmot

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Intro:

As a long time Privateer fan I've made a habit of saving interesting Privateer

related posts in my wandering thru cyberspace.  I am presently working on a

Privateer's Logbook which will incorporate many of these ideas as well as my

own experiences into a more easily digestable form.  As part of my preparation

for my strategy guide I decided to sort my mass of notes into some sort of

order.  Some of these are my own, most are from others.  I don't necessarially

agree with all of these views, some may be a bit out of date due to changes in

host since they were first collected and a few contain plain inaccuracies in

places.  However, all-in-all they are a good source of ideas on how to make

the most of everyone's favorite race; The Privateers<g>

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Tactics Sites:

There are many sites on WWW offering varying degree's of info about VGAP.

Here are a few of my favorite places to find hints.

http://www.teleport.com/~goldman/visit.html

Ted York's site has quite a few submissions for most of the races.

http://www.chem.vu.nl/0/Studenten/kreike/vgap.html

Timio's site has a lot of good tactical info and other useful stuff too.

http://www.geocities.com/TimesSquare/3535/

This site a Privateer's page.  Not updated recently, but some useful stuff

here.

http://www.jacobean.demon.co.uk/vgaplanets/start.html#hadd

Galactic Traveller has some good tactics files available.

http://www.anaserve.com/~spacenet/

Spacenet - Source of good thoughtful pieces by experienced players.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

THE GOLDEN RULES

1. STAY UNDETECTED

2. MAXIMIZE YOUR ECONOMY

3. ALLY

4. NEVER UNDERESTIMATE YOUR ENEMY

5. CONCENTRATE YOUR FORCES

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

PLAYING THE PRIVATEER, PART I

by: MICHAEL LEMIEUX (VJNK46E)

The Privateer can be one of the most fun races to play in VGA Planets. If

you examine their unique abilities, you'll begin to appreciate why. No

other race is quite so capable of making off with an opponents resources &

ships as the Privateer.

The Privateers most potent weapon is the ROB mission. Any enemy ships

occupying the same point in space as a Privateer ship can be robbed

(remember, only those Privateer ships with beam weapons can ROB). What

happens during the ROB is the Privateer will take all the fuel it can until

either the target ship(s) are drained dry or the Privateer is filled. Next

the robber will take any Mega-Credits available. Finally the Privateer will

take, in order, any Moly, Trit, Dura or Colonists until its cargo bays are

full. Combine a few robbing ships together & you can see how devastating

this can be to your enemy's logistics. This also comes in very handy for

capturing enemy ships. Remember that a ship with no fuel cannot defend

itself & it won't be able to attack you while you are towing it. Haul off

that ship you have just drained dry to your Star Base that just so happens

to have it's mission set to Force Surrender and voila, the ship joins the

proud ranks of the Privateers.

Now, to plan your ROB missions, there are a couple of things that have to

be considered. One is you can bet your opponents aren't going to be too

thrilled about letting this happen & they WILL have their primary enemy set

to Privateer once they see you are in the area. You'll want to keep your

robbers CLOAKED so your targets can't see you coming & can't force you into

combat.

This makes robbing ships in deep space difficult. Since you can't set your

ship mission to INTERCEPT & remain CLOAKED, you'll have to guess which

point in space your "target" ships are going or risk combat (not a

Privateer strong point) by uncloaking. Good luck!

So, if you gotta remain CLOAKED & can't INTERCEPT in deep space, from where

do you ROB them? At planets of course! If you pay attention to your maps,

you'll be able to figure out to which planets your target keeps going. Get

your cloaked ships there & wait for some juicy targets to show up. The ROB

mission is the very first ship mission to occur (which comes in handy for

preventing some pesky missions like LAY MINES or even movement). It also

happens before movement, so you have to be waiting at the spot you want to

ROB. Once you set your mission to ROB, you will uncloak. So you'll most

likely want to move off the planet or risk tangling with planetary

defenses.

OK, you have your ships at the planet & some targets have been kind enough

to show up, what next? Hopefully you've made sure that your robbers have

plenty of available fuel capacity & empty cargo bays. If you go in with

everything full, why bother right? When you ROB, you will ROB the lowest

numbered ship first. If you take everything off that ship & still have

available capacity, you will then proceed to the next lowest numbered ship

and will continue until you either fill all your robbing ships or all ships

at the site are emptied. If you use more than one ship to ROB, your lowest

numbered ship does the robbing first. A problem that can arise here is if

you are attempting a ROB mission at a planet that has more than one race's

ships in orbit. One of them may be an ally. Unfortunately, VGAP does NOT

allow you to designate ROB targets. You'll ROB your friends just as readily

as you enemies. You'll still begin with the lowest numbered ship, no matter

who owns it. So, when dealing with allies, you have to be careful & make

sure communication is kept open so that you won't leave them dead in space

too.

In my next column, I'll describe the use of the "SNATCH & RUN" tactic,

using the "3X vs life" advantage, and which ships the Privateer should

bother building.

PRIVATEER SECRETS - PART II

By: Steel Rat.

Now that you've read last issue's column on how the ROB mission works, I'm

sure those budding pirates out there are dying to know how to put it to

good use. Pull up your chairs and gather 'round your kindly Uncle Rat now.

He may just let a few hints slip (especially if you promise to NEVER use

these against him).

The obvious use of the ROB mission is to simply make off with with some of

the things you need to succeed in the game. Wouldn't you feel better using

HIS minerals and supplies to build up YOUR bases & ships? Just think of the

warm feeling you'll get when you discover which one of his planets is

pumping out thousands of MCs that you can quite nobly give to the nearest

charity (most likely located on the Privateer homeworld). And while you're

busy putting his resources to good use, he won't be squandering them on his

own ships & bases.

However, a far greater way to use the ROB mission is so you can liberate

the ships your opponents have so kindly built for you. Since the Privateers

don't have any real heavy fighting ships they can build naturally, this is

the best way to get some. It will also give you some serious taunting

ammunition with which to chide those foolish enough to attempt aggression

against the mighty Privateers.

The best way to haul off those prizes is through the technique I call the

Snatch & Run. Here's how it works. You are sitting over an opponent's

planet with your pack of 3 to 4 cloaked ships (it's always best to operate

in packs if you can). A target has appeared that you want to add to your

fleet. You have enough of your ships move away from the planet with their

mission set to ROB so that your "target" ship will lose all it's fuel. How

many ships you use depends on a number of factors such as: how many enemy

ships and what type are present, what the fuel capacity of those ships is,

the ship number of the one you want (lowest numbered ships get robbed

first), and the remaining fuel capacity of your robbing ships (you can find

the fuel capacity numbers in the docs). These numbers are important because

you want to make sure your "target" has no fuel left. Remember that a ship

with no fuel cannot engage in battle.

So, you use enough ships to drain away all the fuel (the "snatch") and then

have one of your remaining ships tow off your "target" on the same turn

(the "run"). Since ROB happens after transfers between ships & planets but

before movement, your "target" won't get the chance to refuel and thus

can't attack the towing ship on the trip home (there is a way for the

target to get around this, but I can't give away all my secrets, right?).

Meanwhile, what you do with the ships that robbed depends on what you made

off with. If you happened to snatch away some nifty stuff, like a few

thousand MCs, they might as well head home too. If not, just jettison the

stuff you don't want, re-cloak, and head back in for another visit.

The Privateers also have the ability to fine tune their beam weapons so

that you can kill off those pesky crew members who so selfishly wish to

keep you off their ship. Privateer beam weapons receive a 3X bonus vs.

life. If you examine the beam weapons you'll notice that 2 of them, the

Disruptor & Heavy Disruptor, already do quite heavy "life" damage. Combine

these with the 3X advantage and you get a very powerful weapon. Buy these

beams for your ships.

When you plan to capture a ship via combat mode (i.e. using the 3X

advantage), the smart Privateer will remember that before you start to kill

off the crew, you must knock down the ship's shields first. This brings you

to the dilemma of having to use your torps to knock down the shields while

trying to keep from blowing the ship up with the torps after the shields

are down. That's why I only recommend using combat to capture freighters or

lightly armed transports.

You can disable your ship's torps by setting your friendly code to NTP

(case sensitive, and BTW, this will also prevent your fighter carriers from

launching fighters) and since freighters don't carry weapons, you can use

just the beams to knock down the shields and then polish off the crew at

your leisure. Never try to capture any kind of decent warship this way!

With your torps disabled, his torps will quickly kill your ship before your

beams can bust through the shields. You might consider it with a heavy

captured ship that can soak up damage, but the ships that the Privateer can

build just don't stand up well to heavy combat.

Finally, a word on which ships the Privateer should build. METEOR CLASS

BLOCKADE RUNNERS. Alright, so that was four words, but the MCBR is the best

ship the Privateers have. The BR4 & BR5 ships also have uses since they too

can cloak & have the Grav Drives. However, the ship that can best

accomplish the ROB mission is the MCBR. It has the decent fuel and cargo

capacity necessary to make robbing worthwhile. Build as many of them as you

can and put the best weapons you can on them. Yeah, I know, they don't

stand up well in a fight. But if you are forced to fight, you might as well

be ready to do as much damage as possible. Who knows? You may get lucky and

all his torps could miss. Looking at the rest of the ships, you can pretty

much figure out for yourself what uses can be made for each one. In my next

column, I'll discuss the economics of playing VGAP (kinda boring, I know.

But when the boss makes a request, whattya gonna do?)

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Classic Privateer Tactics by Dr. Dorn Peterson

Don't fight - ROB. We will see occasions when a ship will be used as a

Sacrificial Lamb (SL) but other than that you should never fight anything

even close to your size. A cloaked, undamaged MBR is much more useful than

the benefit from eliminating an enemy's medium size capital ship.

Play the fuel game. You will always need less fuel than they do. Strip

unowned planets of fuel with "gather" and whenever you can't steal a ship

at least steal its fuel.

Steal ships. (Now we get down to the meat of the problem.) The following

tactics are all based on the problem that in order to steal a ship's fuel,

so that we can tow it to a SB, we MUST be at exactly the same coordinates

as the enemy ship. We can't use intercept to get there because the turn

order is steal - move - combat. If the enemy capital ship has enemy set to

Privateer (if he doesn't have it set to Privateer the first time he will

from then on), you will die at the end of movement and before you get a

chance to steal. You have to be cloaked when you arrive at the same place

as the enemy ship.

Wait at a planet (yours or unowned) from which you have removed the fuel.

If you are sure that you have more fuel capacity than he has fuel then just

set ROB SHIP and wait until the next turn to begin towing him back to your

SB. You can't do this at his planet because he might transfer fuel up from

the planet and that happens AFTER you rob. Lo and behold, you end up with a

very angry capital ship on your hands, he has fuel, you are not cloaked,

and you get blown away.

Use a sacrificial lamb (SL) at one of his planets to capture capital ships.

Get a cloaked ship to one of his planets where you know ships to be. Pick

the ship you want and tow it out to a waypoint where you have one or more

MBRs waiting. Make sure you pick a waypoint position so that if one of his

other ships is set to intercept the one you are stealing, the other one

won't be able to make it that far (also see tactic #5. This is called the

SL gambit because the ship doing the towing gets pasted at the end of

movement (you haven't stolen the enemy's fuel yet, that's what the other,

cloaked MBRs are there to do.) You can try to set it up so that your ship

just runs out of fuel at the end of the tow but this is a little dangerous.

What happens if the ship takes on cargo and is heavier than you thought?

Projecting a ship's course. (Your opponent has to be very inexperienced for

this to work.) If you see a ship moving toward a planet that is more than 1

jump away, you can try to project where he will be on his next jump if he

continues to move at the same speed. If you try to do this a lot, you will

start to appreciate the Pythagorean Theorem.

Bait and switch. Send a nice target, a full large freighter or uncloaked

captured capital ship, toward enemy space. Unfortunately, for the enemy, it

is accompanied by a couple of cloaked MBRs. Make sure that the freighter is

out of fuel at the end of each jump. That way you don't loose it when some

capital ship arrives with weapons cocked.

The intercepted freighter gambit. If your enemy is "protecting" his

freighter by having a capital ship continually intercept it, you can easily

get both. Have a cloaked ship waiting at a planet when they arrive. Tow the

freighter with your ship but tow it in a known direction and tow it further

than the jump range of the enemy capital ship. Have a second MBR waiting at

the position where the capital ship will end up. Example: Both freighter

and capital ship have been moving at warp 9. Tow the freighter 90 LY north.

Have the 2nd MBR waiting, cloaked, 81 LY north. The capital ship will try

to follow the freighter but won't keep up. You capture the freighter with

guns (You DO put only x-rays or disruptors on your MBRs, don't you? After

all, MBRs are NEVER supposed to fight anything but freighters.) The enemy

capital ship is in deep space, at a known position, where it is easy to ROB

and then TOW.

The pirates nest. Privateers have real trouble defending a specific planet

against a large fleet. The best defense is that they shouldn't know were

the SB or rich planet is. Second, you can spread cheap ships (they don't

have to cloak) around your empire that always have ROB set. These will rob

enemy cloakers that are exploring your empire (this can be disabled by the

host in ver. 3.1). But assume the worst. Your enemy knows where to do you

damage and has a fleet on the way. Don't fight back.

Set up a pirates nest at a planet they are likely to pass through. This is

a collection of cheap BR4s with warp 5 engines and some MBRS. The BR4s wait

at the planet until the fleet arrives. Each one then tows a ship out to

waiting MBRs, to deep space, and maybe one to the SB (if the SB is capable

of handling that one.) This breaks up the fleet and gives you a chance to

handle the ships one at a time.

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Starting Out

As a longtime Privateer player, I'd also advise you to develop some other

bases far-far away from the hustle of the center of the galaxy to crank out

MBR's and BR4's in peace <g> You can defeat the darksense by keeping

minerals/ cash on a supertransport in orbit though he'll still detect the

base he won't know how big it is that way. Remember, most of your best

ships can be built with TL6 or less, aside from Engines which should

generally by TL10. Ghipsodal worlds are my favorite site for new Privateer

starbases because of that.

Setting up some "nests" of multiple MBR's at key worlds along the route of

his invasion can be very helpful. You should strip all fuel off of worlds

aside from starbases and key depots.

Dropping a few mines in anticipation of his moves can really louse up his

day and shed off some smaller escorts in the process should they take mine

hits.

Finally, if worse comes to worse, you should have some freighters standing

by to carry off whatever Population, minerals and cash you can salvage.

These can be towed by your MBR's using the fuel you've stolen from the

oncoming Empire.

As the Privateer living to fight another day is the key to survival.

Dispersing your population early to a variety of alternative bases will

ensure a long and profitable existence if you do lose a few worlds and even

your HW...

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Here are some suggestions: 1) Initial 3-4 ships are BR4's. Warp 5 engines.

Run them at warp 8. Take 10 colonists and supplies. Explore a new system

each turn with each ship, dropping 1&1. Money for defense nice extra. 2)

When you find natives, use BR4 to tow medium freighter with

colonists/supplies (180/20?). 3) Use MBR's to tow Large & Supers when

available. 4) Build best system to capacity first, then next best. 5)

Expand QUICKLY. See point 1 again. 6) Push quickly towards your neighbours

first, then toward easier expansion. Thus you get a wider slice of the pie.

7) Build starbases quickly. Even BR4's are quite worthwhile. 8) Did you

know a warp 5 engine doing warp 8 takes no more fuel than a warp 6 engine

doing warp 8? Gravitionic to boot! BIG TIME EXPANSION HERE!! 9) Even a BR4

kills 15 fighters on a starbase. 3 BR4's plus a Bloodfang takes out a

lizard homestar before turn 30. 10) BE AGRESSIVE!

Expand QUICKLY. Be AGGRESSIVE. Get MULTIPLE builds to everyone else's.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Privateers can do very well in the invasion scenario if they capitalize

on their robbing advantages and lower ships costs from the start. Allowing

other races to expand and settle unopposed is generally fatal to the

Privateers. Especially as there are only seven players and so much space,

you chould easily out expand others by pairing MBR's with LDSF or STF's ,

or even BR4's with MDSF's.

I generally build my bases away from my borders as I don't want my enemies

finding them and knocking them off too easily. Remember with gravatronics

you can cross 300 ly's of stripped worlds in only two moves and your

enemies will take at least 4 moves to reach you giving you plenty of time

to evacuate your resources and set up nests to pick off the invaders while

they slowly starve due to a lack of fuel. The Russian grand strategy of

scorched earth and trading space for time is one every aspiring Privateer

should take to heart.

You should try to build as many bases as possible at Ghipsodal worlds -

others are best avoided as it costs too much money to get TL10 Drives

online. Be careful about building bases where you can't get enough minerals

to keep them going. I normally build bases which are within 1 or 2 moves of

at least 10 planets. These planets I rely on for generating the minerals

and supplies to keep the base operational. You never want a base sitting

idle, if so, you've not planned your logistics properly. Given the relative

low cost of BR4's with TL9 drives - 470 MC, You should be able to build a

ship every turn if you started the base with sufficiend cash and minerals.

Rob! <g>

Seriously, with your faster scouting with BR4's with TL10 drives you should

be able to find good native worlds fairly easily - dropping a single

colonist on each of course so you can keep them as listen posts and easily

strip the minerals and fuel with the vaccum clearner combo of a MBR and a

STF - I built you a couple of those. This same STF can drop supplies and

colonists off and decent worlds worth colonizing. If you want money REALLY

quickly, you can jack taxes upto 60% on natives without throwing the world

into rioting - assuming it's happy to start. I use winplan and if you look

at the build screen, you can fine tune your tax rate - see how much you'll

get and how it will impact on your population. Never increase the tax rate,

if you don't have enough population to collect more. Back to our STF - you

can drop all it's colonists, crank up the tax rate, next turn collect the

cash, drop the tax rate to 0%, and pick up whatever colonists excede the

cash you could collect when you tax at rate which the folks are just short

of 'angry' - if you're wanting to develop the world in the long

This slash and burn strategy can be very nastily applied to border areas

which you don't want your enemies being able to develop. In fact, you may

decide to pick up all but a single colonist and leave the tax rate on the

natives high so they start rioting and go into civil war. This will deprive

your opponents of the ability to easily expand into a region as they will

not have any worlds which they can use as an economic base. You can keep

these worlds in perpetual civil war untill whenever you're evicted, but by

then the population will be decimated and it will be quite a few turns

before the happiness level can be restored - unless it's a Liz or Reb

player.

If you're a real miser, you can tax your colonists - I generally don't

bother as I prefer the population growth to the meager mc you can eek out

of colonists. The best overall economic tax policy is to tax at 30% about

every three turns and leave the rate at 0% the other two. According to a

gentleman on TC, who presented and tested this rather thoroughly, this will

result in the greatest combo of revenue, population growth and supplies

produced - assuming you max out factories.

The only time I bother with managing colonists tax rates is when I play the

Borg - the dream race of every CPA!

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

>Above all else NEVER LET THE ENEMY KNOW WHERE YOUR HOMEWORLD IS...

Actually, deny him as much information as possible. At the very least,

don't reveal where your 'good' bases are. If you don't have tow capture,

consider building 'dummy' bases just to surrender robbed ships (and arrange

for a 'welcoming party' to meet (rob) a revenge mission directed at the

base, of course :).

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

OK, so I'm a total newbie playing a shareware game as the privateers,

and by some stroke of luck I have a cloaked grav. accelerated ship (MBR)

cloaked and sitting on one of my opponents home worlds very early in the

game (turn 4).  The is a SDSF in orbit.  Do I

a) wait for better prey

b) rob the freighter and run like heck

c) tow the freighter and run like heck

d) sneak off to some other planet

I am no seasoned player myself, but the way I play the Privateers

at the moment is:

1. Become friends with your neightbours and grand-neightbours.

2. Develop and colonise like hell.

3. Don't give the neighbours reason to attack you, but be prepared

in case they do.

In case it was an Instrumentality/Pawn/SSD/SSC in orbit I may have

taken an exception to the rules above, but I'd say d) in this case.

The Privs must be able to outbuild their neighbours by a factr of

three to one to win. To do this they must agressively colonize and

develop their economies. They must also hit their neghbours very early

and prevent those neighbours form developing their econimies.

Concentrate on shipping and planets. Ignore warships for now. They are

too weak to be of any use to you in the long term, and by

concentrating agasint his economy, you ensure that he will not be able

to develop in to a threat.

I'd ignore the above advice and wait for better prey. The minefields

are not up and you have the perfect spy. You know what he has on the

turn he builds it. This is valuable info and is vey hard to deal with

an enemy with this sort of intel.

Personally, as it is so early, IF your opponent is NOT missing turns

and has not yet built an LDSF, I'd be tempted to grab the first LDSF

that pops up and tow it near a planet at Jump 2 range - rob away and

engage with Xrays if you must. (keep your torps off with the NTP

switch - you'd prefer to take this LDSF intact). Chances are you'll

have about a 1000 colonists on board and 200 supplies when you capture

the ship if he does not miss turns (if he does it may be empty). Take

the nearby planet and fortify and colonize away on surrounding

planets- return MBR to enemy homeworld.  This loss so early on of his

main space seed will be devastating to his developing economy.

Cripple what is left of his freighter fleet and with a measly 2 MBr's

you should be able to destroy this fledgling empire. He will never

have been able to get off the ground. Silmultaneously move on and

explore your other neighbour. Move fast - make a pact with your other

neighbour or rob him all to hell. Hit the LDSF's early on and he will

have a VERY hard time getting his tech and economy up to the point

where he can effectively mine or stop you from running amok in his

space. If you are going to play agressively - PLAY AGRESSIVELY. It is

one style or the other - rarely will you succeed trying both.

As you are playing shareware, your main objective should be to scout

and build a base over a Ghipsoldal planet at the very earliest

opportunity to get tech 10 engines (no - that is your second objective

- your first should be to register!). Without them you will not last

long - Gravitonics or no.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Like all races, one of the first priorities of a game is to seek out

planets which are mineral rich with good natives for starbase

construction, tax farming and ship building.  Take advantage of your

speed advantage by sending your first 3 or 4 grav. accelerator ships,

loaded with colonists, supplies (60%/40%) and a little cash for seeding

worlds and identifying those planets which will serve as your cash cows

and future starbases.  Unless other problems arrive (usually military in

nature), you should have a well-functioning planet network long before

the other players have adequately identified their better planets.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

As any who has played the Privateers can tell you the secret is to

expand, expand, expand.  Do not let the other races know where you are.

Build and utilized the MBR and Torp Boat, built with Level 10 engines,

Disruptors, and Level 5 Torps. Send these ships out in pairs to explore,

colonize, and infiltrate the enemy. When sitting at an enemy planet, this

pair of ships should be cloaked with primary enemy off. When an eney ship

arrives that you want, set the MBR to rob fuel of it, and the Torp Boat to

tow it away, ensuring that you set them both to the same way point.  If by

some chance there is to many ships at the enemy base, set both ships to

laying mines around the enemy planet. IMPORTANT...stealth, speed, & secrecy

are your most important weapons. Avoid head to head confrontations at all

costs. If you can form an alliance with another race, espiecally one with

cloaking ships, you want to obtain one with large fuel capacity, to aid in

rob missions. Choosing the right ally can win ytou the game.  If you happen

to capture an enemy ship with a large number of colonists, utilize this

ship to colonize one of his worlds. This avoids using your own ships, which

can be unknown, as well as turning his own weapons against him.  Remember

that Robbing, Speed, Secrecy and TOW Capture are your best weapons.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The first thing a Privateer should do once he has a fleet of MBRs or

BR4s is to scout out planets with Natives.  Even if you can't colonize

them right away, they are still worth seeking out.

Being able to travel 162 LY a turn allows a Privateer to explore a much

greater area at the start of a game than anyone else.

Knowing where there are natives, is a very major information advantage.

The most important thing is that you will know which of your enemies

planets are the most strategically important for him.  If you are

unfamiliar with the particular advantages certain native races give you I

would suggest reading up on it.  Within your own sphere of influence you

will want to develop your planets that have natives more rapidly than

those without.  For Privateers it is even more important that you not

waste time developing planets that have little to offer.  It is better to

have a few good strong planets, than a whole bunch of strongly defended

yet useless colonies.  This is because you don't want to have to defend

anymore planets than you need to.  If you can't make enough money or mine

enough minerals from a planet, don't colonize! It'll just be one more

target for your enemies to take over by brute force.

You can bet that an enemy planet with natives will have many more ships

passing through than one without.  This can potentially give you a few

"fat merchant" ships to rob from.  Make sure a ship is large enough to

justify the risk of starting a war.

Whatever you do, don't allow your opponents to acquire as large a mineral

supply they would like.  If they have fuel, money, and minerals in adequate

amounts they will be able to crush you with a top of the line fleet.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Diplomacy

As the Privateer, everyone wants to be your pal, or everyone wants to

squash you.  A smart player who finds himself in close proximity to the

Privateer will either strike up a close alliance as soon as possible or

do everything he can to smash you before you've been able to build up

your empire.

As other strategists have mentioned, *you* are the problem in most games.

In my experience, the smartest players will seek a strong alliance with

you, in hopes of trading for your gravitronic accelerator technology and

sharing your piracy bounty.  Be careful who you ally with; make sure

you're not dealing with a yahoo who only wants an MBR or three, and will

then either abandon you or turn on you like a snake.  The following are

a few basic strategies for starting off the game:

1. STAY OUT OF SIGHT: Hey, you've got cloaking vessels, USE THEM!

The longer your neighbor is unaware that the Privateers are

in his backyard, the more time you'll have to get your empire

up and running without being stomped on by some hair-trigger

space cowboy who wants to rope him some Pie Rates.  It also

decreases the likelihood that this neighbor will start lacing

his space with minefields to keep your sneaky thieving

bastards from robbing him blind.

2. You can benefit from a close alliance with just about any player.

As your fleet is warship and carrier weak, you want to hook up

with someone who can supply you with some muscle, especially

decent carriers.  My personal favorite allies as the Privateers

are the Evil Empire, the CyBorg and the Birdmen.

3. Yes, it's fun to rob, and unless you master the ins and outs of

piracy you will be toast eventually.  However, you must be *ready*

to rob.  That is, you must be prepared for a full-scale war with

your victim, as most players herniate them-selves with anger after

they get robbed.  Some will drop everything they are doing just to

smash the Privateers after one freighter gets filched.  This means

you must have your mutual borders appropriately mined (several

small fields guarding the natural thoroughfares into your empire

rather than one big one), several cloaked ships waiting you rob or

tow incoming attack fleets at your frontier worlds and ade- quate

defenses at your important planets.  After these defenses are in

place, make sure you have an adequate pirate fleet deployed, so

that you can rob many ships rather than just hitting a ship or two.

Once he's wise you, he'll start mining his space like a maniac,

which will slow you down con-siderably.  Again, don't provoke a

neighbor until you are willing to defend yourself against a major

assault of starship muscle.

4. Don't bother to ally yourself with anyone who acts like he is doing

you a big favor.  Anyone who allies with the Privateers has just

increased his chances of winning the game threefold.  Find an ally

who understands your advantages (i.e., robbing, cloaking and speed)

and your weaknesses (weak warships, no cloning) and is willing to

pull his weight by aiding you with battlecraft and cloning of ships

you capture.

5. You may offer trade opportunities to all players (separately-don't

use a universal message) and see who offers the best deal.  Always

ask for your potential trading partner's offer first, and then make

a counter-offer.  Don't hesitate to offer alternate services, like

towing his warships into battle with MBRs or breaking up an enemy

attack fleet with towing BR4s or BR5s.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

A good neighbour is better than a far-away friend.

This Dutch proverb is especially important to the Privateers.

Try to have at least a firm non-agression pact with all neighbours

and let them look to their other border for potential targets to vent their

agression upon. This saves you, and they benefit from your assistance in

their battles and/or ship trades.  If the grand-neighbour gets angry at you

for the ship theft, they will first have to fight themselves through your

neighbour's area.  The neightbour can profit by launching a counter-attack

onto the planets and bases of your grand-neighbour, thus gaining territory.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Economics

This is a very simple point, but very valuable (literally). After your

initial build of multiple MBRs, you will have perhaps a couple of

hundred MCs left. Rather than skip a build turn, build a Lady Royale

(250MC) with your free engines, and put any old beams on it. Next turn

you then have a ship that can earn 160MC a turn for life. Keep it at

your starbase, with 160 clans on board and mission set to Kill. Even

though it is a poor combat ship when it has low tech beams, it will kill

a few fighters that would otherwise hit your planet.

Obviously the economic bonus of 160MC/turn is very useful, and guess

what! 2 turns later you build another. I usually like to have 3 casinos

above my HW, and a tax rate that generates about 200MC/turn. This means

I can then produce an MBR *every* turn with Tech 8 engines. Early on this

makes for a devastating rate of development.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Privateer Ships

Is it a better tactic to build skyfires to Rob fuel with their 370 KT >

tank or MBR's with 285?

MBRs, as they cloak. If you want to build non-cloakers for robbing, build

the Outrider or Lady Royale (park them in space with no fuel and a cloaker

parked underneath, tow an enemy ship out to them, transfer 1 kt to them and

set their mission to Rob ;).

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Is the Outrider Class scout good for anything? >How about the Small

transport?

Both ships seem like a waist to me, but then again maybe you guys know

something I don't when pair these ships with another.

So what do you consider good groups of ships for the Privateers?

BTW, "it's already clear to that it good to have packs of MBRs travel

together cloak read to Rob. That way one can be sure to get all the >fuel

from a when robbing ship. "

Aside from the MBR's, I like to build a few BR4's, and Dwarfstars.

The BR4's are great for hunting unarmed freighters, transporting cash, and

general scouting duties as the take less fuel to move. They also make good

sacrifical lambs when paired with your MBR wolfpacks. They can also tow

smaller ships - and even larger ship for shorter distances - if need be,

freeing up your MBR's for more important duties elsewhere. Another very

useful role is sweeping mines. As they can carry 5 beams, I'll build a few

with heavy phasers and use them to clear mines for the MBR's to exploit.

Dwarfstars make good hidden bases from at which your other ships can dump

off captured cash, fuel, minerals. They also make excellent minesweepers

with their six beams. I also think of them as escape pods for major bases

as you can load your colonists, cash, fuel and whatever else you want into

them if the base in question is facing imminent destruction. If you're

using Raceplus, you can also RECREW your ships from Dwarfstars instead of

going back to a starbase.

For planetary defense, I sometimes build the Lady Royale as you can

generate cash with it each turn in addition to it's defense duties. Over

the course of a few turns it'll pay for itself easily.

The rest I generally don't bother with myself...

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

BR4's vs MBR's

My reasoning so far has been that Given a limited number of ship slots

available before the ship limit hits, I wold prefer to have the more

capable ships if possible. Your cost analysis is very helpful. It seems the

major difference is in $ cost, as the minerals are pretty close. I have a

tendency to over industrialize, however, so I tend to overlook minor

mineral efficiencies. Also, the majority of my Meteors so far have no

torps. This I do because 1) If I sacrifice a ship in the 'Wilson" manuver,

I might as well sacrifice a cheap one; 2) a Meteor doesn't need torps to

rob with; and 3) if captured, a torpless ship can't lay mines from cloak in

my backfield (which I am terrified of), so I am more willing to risk them.

I would certainly build a BR4 rather than forgo a ship slot, however.

I like BR4's for the following reasons...

1. You can start producing them immediately from any ghipsodal base w/

minimal R&D costs. MBR's require more capital investment in R&D in hulls

and torps as I rarely build MBR's with out T5 Torps - I like them to be

able to defend themselves if needed. I often build them with lower TL

drives too as you can overdrive them fairly easily due to their smaller

size if need be.

2. They make better scouts than MBR's as they are smaller and burn even

less fuel. As the Privateer I always have plenty of ships so prefer to

specialize. Why waste resources on a scout ship which could be used

elsewhere?

3. Someone's gotta tow capture or be a sacrificial lamb, and I'd rather

risk losing a BR4 - if they were smart enough to gather fuel - than an MBR.

Which would you rather have potentially captured by an angry enemy?

4. They make great cash couriers - at a cheaper price than MBR's.

5. They can tow smaller ships such as medium/small freighters, Dwarfstars

reasonable distances so why tie up an MBR?

6. They make better Freighter killers as they've got more beams.

7. They make great minesweepers as they've got more beams than MBR's.

8. They are significantly cheaper, so you can build more of them.

My minimal MBR TL1 beams, TL5 torps and TL10 drives costs

TRI 31 DUR 70 MOL 129 MC 938 TTL =1628 net cost.

My minimal BR4 TL1 beams TL10 drives costs:

TRI 28 DUR 44 MOL 105 MC 670 TTL = 1201 net cost.

As I often use TL9 drives this is even cheaper:

TRI 28 DUR 38 MOL 85 MC 470 TTL = 923 net cost.

The more ships the merrier, so I build as many bases and as many BR4's as I

can till a base is capable of producing decent MBR's. Even then I'll build

a few BR4's for scouts, minesweepers and small tugs.

I usually use MK IV's on my MBR's as they are rather inexpensive and give

good bang for the buck in knocking out small irksome escorts with lots of

beams.

I like my MBR's to be multi-mission ships as they are the heart of my

fleet. At times, I prefer to destroy or cripple freighters rather than

capture them so the torps are useful for that. I can also lay mines to

interdict enemy shipping lanes - great for killing those nasty Loki's - and

torps allow me to knock out medium sized colonies if no major warships are

present and strip the place of fuel before reinforcements arrive.

In my experience, captured MBR's are usually pretty heavily damaged so

fairly easy to recapture via rob and tow missions - or destroy. Your own

minefields may well destroy the offending MBR should it somehow evade your

recapture as well.

While naturally I prefer to build MBR's if I have the sufficient funds, The

BR4 is a very good alternative - especially at smaller and newer bases.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

A 5 minute study of the ship list for the privateers will quikly reveal

that the Meteor Class Blockade Runner (MBR for short) is the privateers

best ship.  It has gravatoniv accelerators, cloaks, 4 torps and 4 beams,

and can carry 120 cargo.  A good privateer player's fleet will be about

85% MBR's...  and that percentage will drop fast due to the flood of

ships he captures :-)

It is absolutly the most powerful tech 5 ship in the game.  Use it to rob

enemy ships dry of their fuel, then send the boarding party over...  MBR's

work best in groups of 3 or 4 (All but 1 rob fuel, last one tows).

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

This is a very simple point, but very valuable (literally). After your

initial build of multiple MBRs, you will have perhaps a couple of

hundred MCs left. Rather than skip a build turn, build a Lady Royale

(250MC) with your free engines, and put any old beams on it. Next turn

you then have a ship that can earn 160MC a turn for life. Keep it at

your starbase, with 160 clans on board and mission set to Kill. Even

though it is a poor combat ship when it has low tech beams, it will kill

a few fighters that would otherwise hit your planet.

Obviously the economic bonus of 160MC/turn is very useful, and guess

what! 2 turns later you build another. I usually like to have 3 casinos

above my HW, and a tax rate that generates about 200MC/turn. This means

I can then produce an MBR *every* turn with Tech 8 engines. Early on this

makes for a devastating rate of development.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Lady Royales - Fueless Non-cloakers

Someone mentioned using a Lady Royal for Privateer robbing because >of it's

large fuel capacity(670kt). Can someone explain how this >ship can be used to

rob when it cannot cloak? Thanks!

The key is to team it up with one or more cloakers.   You have the LR empty and

fuel on the hidden cloakers.   When the victime arrives, transfer 1 kt to the LR

from the cloakers and set it to ROB.  The cloakers can ROB as well if it's a

high capacity fuel target or can tow the victim away for TOW CAPTURE if it

isn't.

Sometimes you can use the LR alone with 1 kt over a planet set to ROB if

it's territory where people aren't expecting to run into Privateers.  Or, you

could leave the LR empty over the planet and then transfer up fuel if a victim

arrives.  Naturally, this is a lot riskier cause if the victim has PE set to

Privateers or mission set to KILL he'll wax your LR and/or planet.  Of these

two options, I prefer the latter as a fueless LR can usually be rescued before

it could be hauled to an enemy base and captured, and most players will

probably be scared to death there are other cloakers present and probably

won't try to tow it off initially anyhow<g>

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

If the Privateers had about 10 of their ships with the biggest fuel

tanks and beam weapons of some sort (Outrider class scouts maybe?) all

sitting at their home planet with 1 kt of fuel and their mission set to

Rob Ship.  They could suck up 2790 kt of fuel in a single turn.  A fleet

with more than the equivalent of two and a half Cyborg cubes fully

fueled would be needed to have any effect whatsoever.

How effective is this defense in practise?  (I'd hate to waste resources

on SCOUTS!!!!)

Since Robbing happens BEFORE Movement I can't beleive that this would be at all

effective ie:

the turn starts

the scouts all ROB but there is no one to ROB from

movement happens and an enemy fleet takes up orbit

the enemy fleet wipes the scouts

the enemy fleet wipes the planet

bye-bye-Privateers

Instead of leaving 1 pt of fuel on each LR, leave them bone dry and fill them

full of colonists if enemey ships get within striking range leaving only a

single colonist on the surface till the danger is passed. Add a single cloaker

to the mix containing fuel.  Leave him cloaked naturally. Set the Planet FC to

NUK. Stand back and watch...

Enemy fleet will takc your planet - then you will retake it with one of you

fuelless LR's.

Next turn change the FC of the planet, beam fuel over from the cloaked ship to

you LR's and drain the enemy ships dry.  If you have several cloakers standing

by you can use those to tow capture the same turn.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Or, you could leave the LR empty over the planet and then

transfer up fuel if a victim arrives.  Naturally, this is a lot

riskier cause if the victim has PE set to Privateers or mission set to

KILL he'll wax your LR and/or planet.  Of these two options, I prefer

the latter as a fueless LR can usually be rescued before it could be

hauled to an enemy base and captured, and most players will probably

be scared to death there are other cloakers present and probably won't

try to tow it off initially anyhow<g>

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

What is the best tactic to use non cloaking ships eg: Lady Royal, >

Saggitarious trans. (captured), or Gemeni (captured) to ROB?... there fuel

and cargo rooms are increadible but could only rob non armed ships!

See above. Ships w/o fuel can't fight. Transfer some fuel _after_ the enemy

arrives, then rob and move.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Lady royale class cruiser has very big fuel tanks (670 units).

It has 4 beamweapons and 1 torpedo tube too.

You can capture a cloaker which is planing attacks to your planets

with a Lady Royale class cruiser easily! Your enemies will learn this

very fast, so it would be good to catch a good cloaker at first time..

This doesn't work:

If cloakers primary enemy is set to privateer, then the ships decloacks and

attacks immediately and obviously kills the cruiser.But the idea is this:

your enemy is cloaked and comes to see if it's profitable to attack to the

planet.(It's not a good idea to attack with a single or a couple of

cloaker(s), if you have some big captured battleships waiting on the planets

orbit..) So, go on reading ;)

1. Build a lady royale with any weapons and engines which you want.

Mark 4 or Mark 8 torps would be good, because if there comes too many

ships for robbing (fuel capasity up to 669 units for robbing..) or

uncloaking ship.If that hapens, then you can try to defence the planet

by dropping a minefield.It's nice idea to put clans to the ship too,

check part 3 for more information.

2. Put the ship somewhere in a planet which probably can be attacked soon

or something.. (This part is not so important, you probably know where to

but the ship in your game, when you are playing ... )

3. Set ships mission to Rob Ship. The ship can make even megacredits to

you same time, if you put clans to the ship. Ofcourse so much that the

cargobay is full. (You probably have some torps too in the ship for

dropping a minefield) The cruiser will make every turn so many megacredits

that you have clans in the ship and you dont lose fuel! (You dont have to

move for money)

4. Leavy only 1 unit of fuel to the ship.

... The trick is this:

A cloaker comes to the planets orbit. It scans and sees, that there is only

one cruiser, and sets ships mission to kill (*** WARNING: If cloaked ships

attack is turned on, and he/she sets primary enemy to privateer, then your

cruiser will be attacked, but your planet will be missed.He/she can kill

your planet next turn! Anyway, he/she loses the surprise advantage.. ***)

and thinks that "hehe, the privs will die!", but when the next turn comes,

your enemy is surprised; his/her ship(s) are out of fuel and can't attack!

In best case you have caught a Dark wing, Resolute or Cold pain! You can

capture every cloaker in the game with this trick. Lady royales fuel tank is

so big, that you can take out of fuel even two full loaded Dark wing!

After robbing the cloaker, then you just use your tow capture and capture

the ship.And remember to fix it in your SB (Crew is only 135..).

So the trick works probably only against inexperienced players, but it helps

you with the defense problem a bit..

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Okay, after reading a previous defense strategy here, a convuluted

thought came to mind.  You have a starbase with 3 to 4 lady royales

sitting around it, and a couple of MBR's, which is just about ready

to be attacked. Dump all fuel on the lady royales, which then makes

them immune to attack.  Planet dies.  Ships which attacked planet are

visible.  You then from a friendly meteor, transfer a kiloton of fuel

on to each lady royale on the next turn, and set it to rob ship, and

take whatever fuel is on them(hopefully).  Tow the ships with the MBR's

there, and poof, you have an attack fleet to rebuff whatever is

attacking you.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Just a thought. Your LadyRoyal or any other ship with beams has a higher ID

than the arriving ship.

You remove fuel from all the privateer ships and set the planet's FC to NUK

Now when the enemy ship arrives it will capture the planet. The FC will not

be changed and the privateer

ship with the higher ID will then retake the planet. Next turn you change

the planet FC to something

different than NUK and ATT. Now you transfer 1kt fuel to every privateer

ship in orbit and set your mission

to Rob. Bingo you got the ship. Best thing the ships in orbit dont have to

cloak, because with 0 fuel they

cannot be attacked by the enemy ship. Of course you can only do this once,

because then the enemy

should have a counter tactic against this. Another drawback is that the

planet is captured and all the

defensepost are lost; the natives are also angry about this, I think.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Ship Ship Trading Strategys

As far as ship trading goes the Privateers are at a major disadvantage:

Unlike all other races (with the exception of the Crystals), the

Privateers cannot clone.  This means that any ship trade deal you strike

as a Privateer is only as valuable as the ships you trade and obtain.

However, your trading partner likely has the ability to clone an entire

fleet of whatever vessel you have given him.  Translation:  he doesn't

*need* you anymore, at least to obtain that ship class.

This means three things for the Privateers:

1. Do not trade casually with other races unless you are getting a

*great* deal.  Be certain that you have a reasonably firm alliance

in place before you begin trading off your technology; it could come

back and bite you later.

2. Insist on trade deals that appear lopsided in your favor, at least on

the surface.  What trading partners are most likely after are your

gravitronic accelerator (GA) ships, the BR4, BR5 and MBR.  Trading

ship-for-ship is insane: you get one ship, he gets the capacity to

clone an armada. I would never trade one of the above ships for less

than three heavy warships, preferably carriers, with a nice compliment

of fighters already on board.  Some players will refuse, sputter and

scream at you for being so un-reasonable.  Let them moan and find a

trading partner who is wise enough to see the sense of such a deal.

Getting a lopsided trade is *not* ripping off your partner--it simply

takes into account the circumstances with which you as the Privateer

need to deal.

3. Your biggest advantages in the game are the SPEED and LOW FUEL

CONSUMPTION of your GA ships.  YOU MUST STRIKE A VERY HARD BARGAIN FOR

THESE VESSELS--THEY ARE YOUR ACE IN THE HOLE!  With regards to trading

your GA ships, consider the following (some of these points simply

reiterate 1 & 2 above):

A. See if you can get a good trade on the BR4 or BR5 -- hold on to your

MBR for yourself if possible.

B. Make sure you get heavy battleships, or preferably carriers, heavily

armed and loaded, for your GA ship.

C. NEVER trade GA ships, especially the MBR, with anyone you anticipate

needing to squash at any time in the future.

D. NEVER trade GA ships to anyone who has made any threats to you or

your allies, nor to anyone who has been shown to have a treacherous

streak; it is preferable that you trade GA technology only with

committed allies.

4. An alternative to trading GA technology is to offer towing services in

exchange for single warships; for instance, un-limited MBR tows

(earmark a specific ship for the service of this partner) in exchange

for a single heavy carrier or battleship.

The bottom line is: GA ships are arguably the most covetted technology

in the game.  DON'T THROW IT AWAY.  Once you trade it to one person, he

can not only make more, he can also trade it to others and you've lost

both a strategic *and* economic advantage.

WHAT SHIPS YOU SHOULD TRADE FOR:

The Privateer fleet is weak, from a military perspective.  Any serious

armada you may develop will be created through trade and piracy.  For this

reason, obtaining heavy warships is your priority, especially decent

carriers, which you should ask for pre-loaded with 20+ fighters

(especially those who receive free ones at their starbases).  If you can't

build up a serious attack fleet, you'll be toast eventually.

Another type of ship you may be interested in obtaining: cloaking vessels

with big fuel tanks.  Look to the Birdmen and Fascists for these gems.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

Robbing Questions

300 kilotons of fuel on the planet's surface!... will U rob before he

beams up fuel?...

Yes.  Rob happens before everything else (or most everything ;)

Does he designate a specific ship to rob, or does he rob all

ships at a given location until he is full?

All ships at the same location as the robbing ship are vulnerable

If he robs all ships, does he rob them one at a time or equal

amounts from each? If one at a time, what is the order?

ID order - lowest ID surrenders its cargo first, then up the list. The priv

ships also rob in ID order, btw, if more than one of their ships is in the

same place robbing.

If I have cloacked ships in the area, can he rob them and if so,

how do they fall into the rob order?

That depends on the host settings: 'Privateer rob cloaked ships NO or YES'

If cloaked ships are exempt from robbery, they are simply ignored by the

rob mission

What items can he rob (fuel, minerals, megacredits, clans, torps,

fighters)?

Everything except torps and fighters. When all the fuel has been stolen,

the robbed ship is helpless (usually the most important effect).

why is it that sometimes the messages

inform you of successful ROB, giving amounts

transferred. But that sometimes with multiple

ship theft the messages give the impression that there was

no minerals or fuel transferred when Rob did take place.

The game doesn't tell you of any subsequend rob amounts after the first

sucessful one. All the rest of the ships do the rob mission and get the stuff,

but no amounts are listed in the messages.

I don't understand what is so great about the rob thing with the

privateers. What if his HW was attacked by large carriers, he would

loose it. And rob?  them back?  His HW would be totally destroyed, and

what would he do next?

This is the big weakness of the Pirates. They do not have big ships to

defend themselvs with unless they steal some. In you steal a couple of

big carriers then you can defend your worlds with them. If they had no

weakness there would be no reason to play anything else.

The Pirates are a stealth and cunning race not a brute force race. It is

important to spread your money, minerals, fleet and people around. If

you have everything at one important base, or even just a few you are

dead. You must spread out. Then who really cares if you lose your

homeworld. It is just one base and you have many. In the last game I

played my homeworld eventually became one of the starbases that produced

least. At the point you describe there is nothing for the Pirate to do.

He has already made his preperations for evacuation or he has not. The

best he can do is quess. If you sent to little uncloak the fleet and

fight. If you brought too much cloak everything load as much as you can

on ships and wait to rob him.

A particularly nasty variant of this is to take all the people and as

much money and minerals as you can onto your ships cloak and wait. The

starbase will disappear so will all the other developements. Then space

all but a little your fuel so he cannot pick it up from the planet and

your tanks are low. Then rob him silly. Take his ships and move

elsewhere. He got to get the base, but you got your money and people out

and got his ships and his fuel. The bigger problem is what to do if not

big carriers but big cloakers come. You can't see them until it is too

late. Also, the Gorn are really nasty. You can see them coming but they

can uncloak you and you never know how many LCC are escorting.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Towing

Bandit's Privateer Nightmare Strategy:

Pick the ship you are going to tow and choose a point in space to tow it to.

Set your waypoint to that point in space and note how much fuel it's going to

take to get there (with your target ship in tow, of course).  JETTISON all

the fuel you DON'T NEED so you are carrying only EXACTLY the amount of fuel

it's going to take you to reach the waypoint.

Alternatively, you can transfer your excess fuel to the ENEMY SHIP, and then

ROB IT BACK when you tow it out to your wolfpack!!>

Now...set your waypoint 1 LY farther than the original waypoint you chose.

Keep doing that until you see "NEVER" show up in your "E.T.A." window.

That's telling you that you don't have enough fuel to tow your target

ship that one extra light year.

(You'd be surprised how many extra "1 LY" increments you can tow a ship on

the same fuel load.  The object is to go AS FAR AS YOU CAN on your CURRENT

fuel load, but you want DRY FUEL TANKS when you get to your waypoint.>

Set your waypoint BACK 1 LY, and you will have determined exactly how far

your ship can tow the target ship before it runs completely dry of fuel.

This becomes your ROB point.  Send your cloaked MBR's there, and wait.  When

your ship arrives with the target ship in tow (assuming the target ship didn't

change it's mass>, it will be bone dry of fuel, and immune to attack.

Transfer 1 KT of fuel to it from one of your cloakers, and set that sucker to

rob along with the rest of your wolfpack.

Sure does save on having to sacrifice ships!  I've used the same MBR multiple

times to tow enemy ships with this way.  I always use MBR's with Tech 10

engines, and low tech beams and torp tubes as tow tugs, just in case something

goes haywire and they get captured.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

... Tow it out as far as you can... and if you >want to be really tricky

you can try to jettison your fuel so that you >end up with no fuel at the

end of the move (works great with winplan).

VERY risky. Do this to an experienced opponent, and they will soon start

varying their cargo/fuel load to stop it. Then you either have to fight

anyway, or they end up with your MBR.

Don't worry about losing an MBR to take out an enemy warship.

Very true - make sure the ship you are getting is worth it, though!

... as long as you equip the MBR's with only xrays and >maybe a Mark 4

torp, they are of lttle use to the enemy...

Er, MBRs are VERY valuable - as tow ships or as cloaked scouts for example.

Building tow MBRs with just X-rays and no torp launchers is a good idea,

though.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Why sacrifice the MBR?  Adjust the amount of fuel onboard (via jettison)

until it will arrive at the specified waypoint out of fuel.  The

following

turn, the second MBR transfers 1kt of fuel to the first one and they BOTH

rob.  Works like a champ.

The other thing you can do is have the first MBR rob and the second TOW if you

know the ship has less than 285 Fuel. That way the ship changes hands in one

turn :-)

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

One of my meteor towing a big ship to a point where I have other ships

waiting just ran out of fuel when reaching that point, so I didn't

even lose the ship towing the big ship!

You can "plan" on doing that every time.  Just be aware that when you tow an

enemy ship from one of their planets, the "fuel calculation" might not work if

the ship you are towing changes it's mass just before you tow it (i.e. offloads

colonists, loads up on supplies, etc).  For this reason, I prefer to intercept

ships in space, and THEN tow them.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

If you are towing a ship, AND the towed ship has a waypoint set to >1

turn ETA, then you must have equal to or greater warp drives for the tow

to take place (assuming there's enough fuel to go around).

That doesn't weem to be quite right, but close.

As far as I can see (after a bit of testing with host 3.22.014), to

break tow, you need a warp speed set at least as high as the towing ship

(gravitonic ships count double speed for this, so warp-5 counts as

warp-10). You also need a waypoint set further than the tower could

travel.  And this is just the simple case, where one ship tows another which

only tries to escape.

Have you tested this? A gravitonic does not double the warp, but the

speed. Doubling warp quadruples speed. It is logical that gravitonics

would count for a sqrt(2)=1.41 multiplication in the tow break test.

That was my first thought, but it proved to be wrong . My conclusion

could be wrong, of course, but bear in mind this applies purely for the

purposes of the tow-break test, not for anything else in the game. The

test results were :-

A warp-5 MBR tow could not be broken by a transwarp ship.

A warp-4 MBR allowed warp-8 & 9 ships to escape.

A warp-3 MBR allowed warp-6+ ships to escape.

You might like to test the other speeds to see what happens, but given

how few MBRs actually get built with engines of warp-4 or below, it is

just as easy to simply say gravitonic tows cannot be broken.

In any case I stated it wrong: I said breakfree is based on *towers*

possible travel distance, it is *towees* distance, of course.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

To break tow, you need a warp speed set at least as high as the towing

ship (gravitonic ships count at double warp setting for this, so warp-5

counts as warp-10). You also need a waypoint set further than the towee

could travel in 1 turn (ie, a waypoint of >1 turn travel time).

Note that both towers and towees performance was based on the speed set,

not on the actual engines fitted.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Actually towing's a little more complicated...  Despite the number of

times I've played the Privateers, I've never fully tested out and documented

all the towing conflicts and resolutions.  At one time I had a nice clipping

which explained most this but it's disappeared so the following is based on my

RAM - rarely adequate memory.

The tie breakers are as follows... As I understand it

1.  One Engine - Single engine ships always lose.  Some mistakenly think more

engines is a factor in other cases - it's not.

2.  Highest Warp -  The highest warp speed wins.  This is actually where

Grav's win as any Grav with TL5 or better drives has a higher speed than

non-grav ships.

3.  Further waypoint - with any waypoint over one month's travel being

sufficient to break tow.

4.  Lower ID#

Now when you have multiple tows, things get even more confusing...

If you are trying to tow a someone who's also trying to tow then the above

process if followed.   If you win, then their speed is set to 0 and they are

towed off by you.

If you're trying to tow someone who's being towed by another, than tower ID#

comes into play.  Tows are carried out from lowest to highest ID#, so the

lowest ID# will win.  In this case there's nothing there for you to tow when

your ship's turn comes up.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I am playing the Privateers(hold all the boos and hisses) and have

robbed a Birdman ship. I have now towed it two times and have also

towed it to a starbase which is set to force surrender, and the ship

is still not mine.  Any help on how to make this ship mine is appreciated.

Aarrggghh mate, bid not these weaklings to hold their

cat calls and mewlings.  Tiz all they can do to us. har

It is good for them to put a brave face on their own

deaths and makes them worthy adversaries.   Wear their

spite as the proud mantle of your calling, it is sure testimony

to the strength of our Clan.

As to your question (and you should blush to represent us so

weakly in public) is that you haven't emptied his tanks. You're

lucky if he hasn't gone cloak on you, making correcting the

situation more difficult.  But the DW is one of our favorite

caps, so we will see you through this.  Do not break the tow

by touching the Mission button (record his ship ID# so you can

attempt to reset the tow mission while he's cloaked if it's

already broken.)  You can tow him while he's cloaked.  Tow

him to a wolf pack consisting of a half a dozen Little Pests

with lasers and a Bloodcloud with heavy disruptors. Set all

to PE Birdman.  DO NOT USE MISSION KILL!  Set your wolf pack

attack order (using sequenced FCs) so the LPs fight first.  They

will absorb his weapon load and, hopefully, reduce his shields.

The 'Fang will toast the crew and cap the ship (and recap or

kill any LPs that were capped.) Remember to tow your new DW to

a SB to Fix/re-crew it.

Of course, a simpler and more ideal (if you're flying against a

knucklehead who leaves the DW uncloaked) solution is to just rob

him again and then tow/cap him again, simultaneously if you have

multiple ships present.  Remeber, while only our armed ships can Rob,

any two engine Pirate vessel, including freighters, can tow/cap.

In the future, pay close attention to your scanner reports and

ships data files.  You should be able to estimate within a

100 kt the fuel load of any ship or fleet.  Make sure they're empty.

Don't tow if you don't know.  It is much better to use both of

a pair of Meteors to rob, rather than split rob/tow missions

unless you are *sure* one can empty the ship. Much better to

have a stranded enemy in the sea than a live one on the line.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

: Q..what chance do I have towing a shipo thru a minefield : with a MBR as

the tow ship. Most of the felds are smaller : then 50 ly across. Is there a

formula for estimating survival : thru fields?

If minefields work as advertised (minehit% chance of hitting a mine for

each light-year through a field), you can calculate the probability of

surviving with relatively little difficulty. For simplicity, I will take

minehit% to be 1%. This means that the chance of surviving 1 light-year is

.99. The chance of surviving two light-years is .99 * .99 or .99^2.

Therefore, the chance of surviving n light-years is .99^n. Since I didn't

write the host, I can't tell you if this computation is accurate; but if it

works according to the documentation I have seen, this is correct. To

translate this to minehit% not equal 1%, take 100% - minehit%, divide by

100, and raise to the power of the number of light-years. Sorry if I have

unnecessarily confused this, but most scientific calculators should be able

to perform the necessary calculations.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Wolfpack Strategy......

There are several variation ... but this is the main idea .... Have

several MBR's and  a BR4 cruise around .....Once you have located a target

.... and know it's destination (via a utility) Have the MBR's wait at some

x,y within 162LY but more thatn 81LY ...Have the BR4 meet the ship at that

planet either ahead of it or at the same time .....Once the ship

arrives...drag it with the BR4 to the WolfPack..

The BR4 will get dusted, unless you have matching friendly codes or

calculate the fuel perfectly so you end up with zero reaching the

wolfpack, then set all ships to rob ONCE the ship gets their.... the next

turn you will have a enemy ship robbed of all it fuel ....Drag it home and

it is Yours ......

Tips:

Make sure you have enough fuel capacity to rob his tanks from max

... anything else is a calculated risk

Make sure you wolfpack is cloaked until the BR4 drags the ship

..that way you don't fight.....Remember Robbing ships comes before

fighting and moving .. if done successful .. he will have no fuel to fight

or run....

I general have 1 BR4 ... and half MBR with just beams (sacrificial

if needed) and the other half with Torps ...That way I can lay a mine

field and protect the Robbing ships ... Isuggest you lay a mine with one

MBR thus losing his "robbing" for the turn....

3.  A tactic to stop them is Dump all you fuel to the ground but 1-10

units ... then set mission to beam up ..... ie .....You have 600fuel

...drop 590 leaving 10 ....next turn he robbs you of 10 ...you beam up

fuel and then dust him....

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Ground Attacks

If two ships of Race A and B are orbitting a planet, which is owned by

Race >B, for example, but they have only one Colonist, and Race A drops 10

colonists...

The rules say the order is drop cargo, rob, and beam up cargo.

If the colonists are dropped, will they fight immediately, kill the Race B

colonists, and prevent the Race A ship from beaming anything up?

Or does colonist combat occur later...?

One clarification, cargo dropped to an owned planet happens BEFORE rob

missions. Cargo dropped on unowned/enemy planets happens AFTER rob

missions.

Both cargo drops are before beaming-up of minerals so yes, dropping

colonists would prevent the previous owner from beaming up from the planet

unless he's got a matching FC for the planet.

As a Privateer I always try to carry a fair number of colonists on my MBR's

for exactly that purpose, as many players rely on transfering fuel to their

owned planet and then beaming it up after rob missions are finished to

prevent tow-captures. Boy are they surprised the first time I pull this one

on them! <g>

Course this doesn't work so well vs the Lizards or Fascists as their ground

def is multiplied; and if there are defense posts, they can modify the odds

too.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Gravity Wells

Am I correct in assuming that the warp well extends from each planet 3.99

ly? That's what The Complete User's Manual states anyhow.

Well, I don't know what the &^* Manual says, but in Host v3.22.014 (and

all earlier versions I know of, say 3.14 - 3.22.014) you're allowed to

move up to the planet at a distance of 3.14 LY without being sucked into

the warp well.

[Just set your pointer on the planet, and for example shift it 3 pixels

down and 1 left, or 3 pixels right and 1 down. etc.]

If you are moving at warp 1, you won't be affected by the planet's

gravity well.  This makes it a little hard to intercept his ship,

though.

So, how do you use warp wells to hide from someone who knows what

they're doing?

Imagine this situation:

1. I hide my merlin/firecloud/neutronic/etc. in a warp-well

2. enemy sees it. dispatches a carrier to kill me

3. carrier does intercept and is warp-welled into the planet.

now if I owned the planet and it was well defended, that would be

one solution. imagine instead, I'm on the offensive, and have only

0 or a small number of colonists/defenses.  Thus he takes the planet

and is going to come after me at warp 1.  I can do two things here:

A. run far.  I'm a tad ahead of him, so as long as I keep moving

at full speed, he'll never catch me, until one of us runs out

of fuel.

problem : I must keep running forever, cuz there's only a

1-LY space between us, and if I ever go to a planet, he'll

catch me.

B. try to move around in the warp well.  This will work for a brief

while.  i.e. if I'm 1 LY from the planet, I can spend 2

more turns moving radially outward, and he must chase at

warp 1, staying behind me.  However, now I'm screwed.  Some

simple geometry shows I cannot make more moves without being

intercepted or going out of the warp well.  Actually, here

I can play a trick game : if I run away at full speed, he

must intercept at full speed to stay with me; but if I instead

head back towards the planet, he must stay at warp 1 or fall

into the gravity well.  Thus I have a 50% (or so) chance of

pulling off a slinky maneuver at this point.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Combat

testing out different beam combo's on a BR4

vs different favorite targetes using Winplan's VCR SIM.

%Damage     50% Shield Bonus on/ No Shield Bonus

D= Destroyed

X Rays  Blast  Disrpt  Hblst  HDsrpt  HPhsr

SMDF       1 22      18 D      10 D    18 D     8 D      20 D

MDSF        2 4       10 46     4  72    14 D    12 63     8 D

LDSF        11 8      45 67    12 18    26 48    12 28    20 36

STF          29 13     95 D     31 30    68 79    23 30    35 48

Comments:

1.  Shield Bonus on means Privateers will capture more useable

freighters rather than destroying or crippling them.

2.  Heavy Phasers are a bit safer then Heavy Blasters and better

minesweepers.

3.  Blasters are one of the worst choices if you want to capture but

the best if you want to cripple, or destroy enemy shipping.

4. XRays are the most target friendly - what a surprise <g>

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

How to attack with the Privateers

It is well known, that our beloved Orion Space Traders (or

Pirates as some people call them falsely) are a race who has a

difficult time if they have to confront an enemy in an open large

scale battle. Unless they have „organized“ heavy warships, they

just lack the necessary firepower to confront a strong

opposition. This is especially true in games without an engine-

shield-bonus, because the low mass Privateer ships are

especially poor combatants (especially against fighter carriers)

without an engine-shield-bonus. Therefore it is usually the best

strategy for our peace-loving green folks from Orion (who

prefer dancing anyhow) to avoid any major fighting and to stay

hidden.

If the Orion Space Traders have to defend an specific important

planet against an determined attack, it takes careful planing to

intercept the incoming enemy at the right places, to break up

his battlegroups by towing some of his ships to hidden waiting

defenders and to render the attacking ships helpless by robbing

their fuel. Some clever hints about this tactic can be found for

example in Dr. Dorn Peterson’s contribution as cited in the

Dreadlord battlemanual.

But there are times when you as an Orion commander cannot

wait for the enemy to come to you and when you do not have

the possibility to choose the location of the engagement,

because you really want to attack a heavily fortified planet. Due

to your movement advantages you should have a sound

economy with plenty of starbases and enough minerals and

money at each of them. In other words: you should have a clear

superiority in numbers. But you still lack the real muscles, since

your race just cannot turn resources into great combat vessels.

And if you cannot get such ships from somebody else, you

have to overwhelm the enemy by sheer numbers (and maybe

by the surprise due to the lighting speed of your gravitonic

accelerated battle groups).

The following battle report is from an still ongoing game (TH1

hosted by Tim Hofstee in CompuServe’s PBM Forum) and

shows how the Privateers can attack a strong enemy

homeworld even without any foreign technology. It also shows

that unexpected events can bring doom even to the most

sophisticated battleplans. I hope that some of the readers will

learn as much from reading my report as I did from planing and

fighting the attack.

The Crystals had started a war against the people from Orion

by attacking a planet and killing all innocent colonists there. In

addition to that the Crystalline web mines posed a great threat

for the Orion trading lanes, and therefore the council of Orion

had to decide to extinguish this Crystalline danger completely

from the Echo cluster.

During the beginning of the war, the Orion activities

concentrated on disrupting the Crystalline economy, harassing

the border planets, destroying freight traffic and isolating the

productive starbases from their supply of minerals and money.

Over time, the Crystalline war fleet degenerated and the

Crystals run out of resources to keep a full coverage of web

mine fields around their core planets. So the time had come for

the ultimate decisive battle: the attack onto the Crystalline

homeworld.

The Orion council had developed a fine battleplan and prepared

everything for a long time. Starbases were specifically set up,

ships custom build for the attack, planets taken and supplied as

intermediate staging areas and then a fleet of a total of 14 ships

(which was a big fleet then given the fact that it was still

relatively early in a resource poor game) launched to fly the

attack against the Crystalline homeworld.

The Crystals (or anybody else) did not see anything moving

into position and could have been warned in advance only by

the fact that their defending ships had been towed away by

Orion ships for several turns. The Orion fleet appeared in attack

orbit around the Crystalline home world without prior detection

by the defenders. All ships came in either cloaked or towed by

meteors directly from the staging area at a planet some 150

light-years away.

The plan was that the Orion fleet should split into four

battlegroups and attack in four distinctive waves:

Group 1 (the Scout Lance) had the primary role to sweep

the area free of Crystalline webmines, which were deployed

as a large barrier around their homeworld. They had also

captured some defending ships earlier and flew a supporting

attack against a secondary starbase nearby. All scout ships

had already moved to their positions cloaked and were

equipped with high tech beams and plenty of supplies (to

repair possible web mine hits).

Group 2 (the Combat Lance) was to take out (or capture)

any newly arriving defending ships, if they were to be build

at the starbase just during this turn or coming in from other

planets. It was their purpose to protect the third group from

enemy ships. Therefore they fought first with their high tech

torpedoes and went in cloaked, so that they could not be

reached by the planetary defenses.

Group 3 (the Anti-aircraft Lance) had the sole purpose to

shoot down the fighter compliment of the starbase. This

group consisted of cheap expandable ships with enough

beam weapons to handle the base's maximum load of 60

fighters.

Group 4 (the Command Lance) was then to fly the final

attack against the planet and to destroy it with a lot of high

tech weapons. They carried a substantial amount of Mark

VIII torpedoes.

Unfortunately the plan did not work out fully and the battle

turned out to be very costly for the attacking Privateers,

although this was not caused directly by the Crystalline

defenses.

So what went wrong? Just in the moment when the brave

people from Orion launched their forces into the orbit around

the Crystalline homeworld, another race - the Fascists -

appeared and attacked the Orion fleet. Here is what happened

„in slow motion“:

The Scout Group swept the webmine barrier away, which

allowed not only the friendly ships, but also the Fascists to

move in (had the Fascists tried to move there any earlier,

they would have gotten stuck in the webmines badly, which

had happened to them at another location earlier in the

game).  Then some of the scout ships flew their supporting

attack against the second starbase.

The Combat Group blew the only newly arriving Crystalline

ship in orbit to pieces, but these ships did not fight the

Fascist, since the group was cloaked (to avoid the planetary

defenses) and not set to Fascist as primary enemy, since

they were supposed to attack Crystalline ships.

The Anti-Aircraft Group was now attacked by the Fascists

and entirely destroyed, because these ships had never been

designed to fight other ships and were totally lacking any

long range weapons.

Only after the Anti-Aircarft Lance was gone, the Command

Group started to fight the Fascist and were able to destroy

the Fascist opposition (which was out of ammunition at this

point of time) immediately.

Now the Command Group proceeded to fight the planetary

defenders. But the starbase was still filled with fighters and

those fighters were able to destroy most ships of the

Command Lance. Being ships of Privateer design, none of

them had the mass (there is no Engine Shield Bonus in this

game) or the high number of beam weapons to withstand a

serious fighter attack long.

Thanks to their high tech weapons, the remaining Orion

ships were eventually able to bring down the starbase and

planet, but only under high losses. After the loss of the

homeworld, the Crystalline opposition collapsed rapidly.

The high losses during the attack could have easily been

avoided, if the Orions had just added one ship to the Combat

group, with primary enemy set to Fascist. That would have

killed the Fascists (who did not come with strong forces, since

they stumbled onto the battle field by pure chance) in the very

beginning and protected the Anti-Aircraft Lance until it’s ships

would have been able to shoot down the defending fighters.

But the Orions just did not expect a Fascist attack against them

over the Crystalline homeworld. So the lesson is, always be

prepared, that somebody will surface (come out of cloak)

totally unexpected to screw up your plans. Be prepared for this

possibility!

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Personally, I prefer to fill an opponents space with MBR's before he

knows we are at war.  This way he doesn't make too many minefields.  Then when

you are ready (at least 10 MBR in his space), have them kill every freighter

you can find, preferably all in one turn.  He will then set some of his

warships to mine, and some to chase you down.  No problem.  Have a few of your

MBR's set to minesweep, and have their speed set to warp nine.  You won't

entirely clear a minefield, but you won't hit a mine either. Visit as many of

his planets as you can.  Any that have no starbase and less than 3000 clans

can be easily killed by a well armed MBR.  This gives you all the cash and

minerals to make torps, plus a stop off point for the next phase.  Set a

cloaked wolf pack to a planet that you know he has warships at.  I have done

this with as many as 10 MBR's, with the Cyborg having 5 Fireclouds at the

planet.  Set all but 1 or 2 to rob, and hop them to a planet you have taken

that you can reach in one turn.  the one or two you use to tow the lowest id

warships away to the same planet. He doesn't get to see exactly where you

went, you can then drop all the fuel to the planet, and do the same tactic

over and over.  If you have taken enough of his crappy planets, it will taken

hima while to find the right one. All of his ships that you have taken over

can be set to attack his better planets.  The only drawback to that is that

they will have skeleton crews, so he may take them back, but by then you have

used his own ships to attack him, and if he does recapture them, they are

damaged. I am sure a good player could counter this, but it works extremely

well against newbies and intermediates.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

vs Fascists

If you have any good tips specifically against the Fascists, pleas

share them!

Build some cheap BR4's with just TL6 or even TL5 drives to use as scouts to

find those waiting glory devices.

Liberally sprinkled mines will reduce problems of his cloakers penatrating your

space or of his GD ships hitting your prime worlds.

Keep at least a couple cloakers over any major border base to rob and capture

any of his ships which might uncloak and pillage such a base. Keep ALL your MC

on the orbiting ship or you'll lose them to the Pillaging Fascists.  If you

pair a cloaker with a Lady Royale w/o fuel, you can transfer 1 KT of fuel and

then drain ANY fascist ship dry with the LR and tow capture the Pillager with

the cloaker.

Strip all fuel and minerals from non-base border worlds ASAP.  This will

greatly limit the range his raiders can strike if they can't replenish their

fuel tanks at worlds he'll invariably capture from you.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

vs LOKI's

If you are playing with any addon that allows movement, like pwarp,

and this movement takes plase in Auxhost2, then this is after the

second decloak!!! :->> This means you can warp your gasstation in

after movment, thus avoiding decloak, and minefields!

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

LAM>   How do you rob any ship escorted by a Loki?  Is that not the only

LAM> vessle out there that is truly untouchable?  The problem came about when

Mmm... Nice problem...

Some strategy's that should work:

intercept the loki in the Borgs fleet with a cloaker, like a Meteor Class

Blockade Runner. Now the loki will be attacked first. BUT! If the borg are

clever the loki is without fuel (being towed by another ship in the fleet) and

won't fight so another ship will kill your Meteor Class Blockade Runner.

have a couple of Lady Royale Class Cruisers without fuel waiting at one of

your planets. Be careful: the planet will be cought by the enemy so you can't

get fuel. You'll have to use a waiting cloacker to transfer fuel the next turn.

Now you have the problem of the loki again. If it has fuel it will destroy your

cloackers, if it has no fuel there's no problem. You can rob next turn, after

transferring some fuel to your Lady Royale Class Cruisers off course. Maybe you

can extend this strategy by intercepting the loki with a cloacker, so the turn

the fleet arrives at your planet the loki will be attacked, if it has no fuel

your cloacker gets killed and the loki survives, next turn you rob. If it has

fuel the loki will be taken out first, then your cloacker gets killed, the next

turn the cloacked cloacker transfers fuel to the waiting Lady Royale Class

Cruisers and they rob the fleet empty.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

watch out for lokis...

It's been my observation so far in the game's I've played that the number

of players actually getting hold of Loki's tends to very limited. The fear

of Loki's greatly excedes the real risk of encountering them. Anyway, if

you don't have that fearless, carefree attitude, you'll never be a good

Privateer player anyhow <g>

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Use cheap BR4's to scout moving to 10 ly distance from a planet. If

there's a Loki it'll uncloak you and you're still safely out of >>reach.

yes, but on the second turn, you can be A) intercepted, B) mined, >C)

webbed.

Well this is true, but I did say a CHEAP BR4 <g> You might still get away

if you run and you're lucky <g> If you want to spend a bit more money but

have a more annoying scout build the BR5 with TL4 tubes and dump a few

mines yourself if you get uncloaked to cover your attempted exit. If you

want a super scout, build a BR4 with Heavy Phasers and if uncloaked change

to minesweeping and RUN! They'll have to dump a lot of mines to catch you

as you'll be able to sweep 2000! This ship can double for minesweeping

duties outlined earlier too...

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

vs SSD's

RG> the Empire just have to drop 10 clans and boom :) He can drop 10 clans

RG> without fuel, TOO. Imagine, the ssd arrives, is robbed but still belongs

RG> to the empire. Next turn he drop his clans...

Super Star Destroyer arrives at a planet, Pirate now needs two ships: one to

rob it clean (like a Lady Royale Class Cruiser), one to tow it away the same

turn (like Meteor Class Blockade Runner).

Second turn: Lady Royale Class Cruiser rods Super Star Destroyer clean, taking

it's fuel and cargo. This is _before_ transport, so Super Star Destroyer can't

beam down its clans any more, they should be robbed of the ship. I still don't

really understand the Rob, except for it takes _all_ fuel.

Then, in the same turn, Meteor Class Blockade Runner tows fuelless Super Star

Destroyer away and captures the ship.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

vs Gorbie SUK [Raceplus]

In a game I played I was the empire and I setted the SUK f.c. on a

Gorbie of mine (there were privs around and i wanted to kill them...)

The privateers player has setted the SUK f.c. also on all his MBRs...

As the result, all privs MBRs were attracted by the gravity well, but

they did NOT fight against my gorbie... so they robbed, towed and

captured it :-((((

Good for the privs, that was most entertaining <G>.

Perhaps we should send one to Timo Kreike, he collects stories like

this...

More to the point though, why didn't the Gorbies escort ships fight and

kill the priv MBRs?

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

vs Rushes

I have 2 rushes heading my way. I'm the Privateers. Only got 2 turns

before they hit an important world but what is the best way to defend?

Glory devices? Mines? Robbing?

Just 2 Rush ships, no escorts?

Do you have any estimates as to whether they are full of fuel, or if they

are stretching fuel economy just to make it? If they have full fuel tanks,

you probably won't be able to rob one (Rush has . . . 1550 fuel at max?).

If one or the other looks like it is consistently lower on fuel, you might

try to rob one dry of fuel. Once he sees one ship drained of fuel, you

would at least have him guessing.

As a last-ditch effort, you might want to waste one small or cheap grav

ship towing one Rush as far away as your grav accelerators will let you.

You might lose a ship, but if he was counting on having both ships for his

assault, and suddenly he sees that one is unavailable for at least 2 turns

(to get back to where he was before the tow), then that should at least buy

you some more time. This is especially useful if you don't have enough

ships to rob him of all his fuel, but you think he is having fuel problems

which will make it difficult for him to get that towed Rush back to the

front (hey, it takes a lot of fuel to move those puppies around).

You could also tow one ship further _into_ your territory if you have a

pack of cloaked ships which could meet at one point, and rob him there.

Then suddenly he faces the prospect of facing one of his own Rush ships

somewhere in your territory.

Mining would slow him down, esp. if he has crappy beams since each Rush

only packs 5 beams anyway with a normal shiplist.

Glory devices will slow him down only if he doesn't capture supply-rich

worlds. You'll have to run sims of Rush ships against those you have built

and captured to see what your chances are in combat.

If the planet he is attacking is not a Starbase world, I's suggest the

following:

Remove all fuel from planetary surface - Remove all colonists from planet

surface - put them in an armed - Netronic Refinery Ship or 2 with empty

tanks -- leave 2 cloakers with full holds of clans above planet and some

fuel - have one or more waiting wolf packs of 3 or more MBR's each in deep

space cloaked. Depending upon your NRS's above the planet, you might get

away with a smaller wolf pack - but I'd advise against getting shepa unless

you have noc choice Turn after he comes in:

1- drop your hold of clans on planet - preferably user a lowr ship id than

he has to do this to take advantage of any def posts on surface in case he

drops clans

2 - use NR Ships to Rob right him there, (transferring first 1 fuel to each

with cloaker). The NRS is QUITE handy for draining mega fuel real fast.

(Remember - the drainer needs to be armed)

3- tow both Rush's to waiting wolf packs. Lose 2 x MBRS, drain Rush

Carriers dry with wolf packs on folowing turn. Call it it a fair exchange

and try not to gloat :).

4- repeat as necessary ( except for the clans part - he probably won't be

that sloppy again) in bid to win game until Rebel figures out he needs mine

laying escorts very BADLY around the planets he is attacking. (But those

minelayers can always be cloak-intercepted on the turn he moves in) Build

all your future MBR's with Heavy Disruptors to use as support mine-sweepers

when using wolf pack tactics. Carry on and look out for the Lokis and Glory

Ships which your frustrated opponent will figure out he needs sooner or

later...

Beaming up all of the clans off of the surface may or may not work to

prevent a beam gather. If the enemy takes the time to match the fcode of

the planet first - your clans won't be able to stop the beam gather. But

then again, most players tend to be careless until given a reason not to

be. If it is an important planet (but WITHOUT a BASE) this is a nice ploy.

Under Host 3.2x, pulling all the clans off a starbase world removes the

starbase from play (this is a big "oops"). In some circumstances you might

want to pull the clans off anyway - but this in highly remote. Arm the base

and duke it out as best you can with the base if forced to. With a big

bovie world - you might prefer to ditch the base just to keep the natives

hapy (highly unlikely - but a possibility).

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

1. MBR tows RUSH to Priv planet.

Tower and Planet goes boom (PE=Privateer).

I'd use a BR4 or BR5 to tow you and save my MBR's for other duties.  Of course,

if the MBR was the only ship available, then I'd be willing to sacrifice it for

a RUSH<g>

If I were a Privateer, I'd pickup the colonists and fuel the same turn so your

RUSH would arrive over an empty and uninhabited world.  Therefore, you'd not

attack it and be unable to beam down fuel the next turn.

He has 6 more MBRs waiting at it.

2. I downloaded 1/2 of my fuel to planet, set mission to Gather Fuel.

You'd be unable to DL your fuel as you wouldn't own the planet.  There'd be no

fuel to gather either. In such situations I often add a STF to the wolfpack to

act as a fuel and mineral carrier the MBR's can transfer their cargo to before

ROBBING.   Naturally, the STF is out of fuel as is the LR so immune to attack

when your RUSH first arrives.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Minesweeping

I recently discovered an excellent tactic that can be used with any ship

against minefields, especially Webmines.  The times it can be used are

much more often when you have Gravitonic accelerator ships.

The purpose of my tactic is to Minesweep without giving away your position

or even your identity.  The key to it is that ships will sweep for mines

before movement (As far as I know it can happen after movement too.)

What you need is a planet within 162 LY of a planet that you know is safe.

If you are using a normal ship, this distance shrinks to 82 LY, for obvious

reasons.  The essential thing is that you are using a cloaker, otherwise the

the advantage of anonymity is lost.

Okay, what you do is send your ship 1 LY into the enemy minefield, while

cloaked.  Next turn set your waypoint to your sanctuary planet.  Then change

your mission to Minesweep.  Voila, next round you will wiped out some mines,

and be safely whisked away.  Unless of course your haven planet, is not so

safe anymore.

For example if you are using a MBR with 4 Heavy Phasers you will have

clobbered thousands of mines.  A BR4 with it's 5 guns would be great in

every minesweeping scenario except against Webmines.  The 25% drain on fuel

could leave a BR4 rather low on fuel.  Correct me if I'm wrong, even when

you use minesweep and the field shrinks away from you, you still lose fuel

don't you?

For those of you who've never played the Crystals, the Crystals aren't

notified of their mines being eliminated.  They obviously can figure it out,

but you'll still leave them unaware of where you are.

Theoretically this tactic should work great against minefields protecting

the enemy's border.  Mind me, I haven't used this in a real game, only in a

self-hosted, self-played game.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Are you fed up with minefields slowing (or halting) your raiding parties?

Consider the Br4 as an effective minesweeper. It's qualities are perfect

for this role. With cloaking device and gravitonic accelerator, you can

gain quick and easy access to an enemies minefield. Once there, the 5 beam

weapons sweep at a decent rate. I suggest sending Br4's out in packs. That

way the minefield will be swept away at a VERY high rate.This will infuriate

and worry your enemy. If you use seige type tactics and keep sweeping his

minefields, he will eventually run out of money/minerals to build mines.

And unless he likes living on a planet with no minerals, he will have to go

on a mineral run sometime. At this point, you've basically got him! Should

you lose your Br4's in this endeavour, it is no big loss.  They are cheap

and simple to construct. Happy sweeping!

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Privateer Logbook

A comprehensive guide to playing the Privateers is currently under

construction. The first several installments and selected excerpts will be

released thru The Planeteer.   The first installment appeared in issue 10.

It currently is about 40 pages in length and I've got quite a bit more to

cover yet.  I've no tenative target date on completing this as it's something

I do in my free time and as the spirit moves me<g>  It will be made available

freely once finished.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Editor:

I will release updated versions of this file in the future.  All are welcome

to send me material, questions or comments.  You can contact me at either:

markrendl@aol.com   or   mwilmot@gol.com

Mark Wilmot

June/11/1997