I guess since they can't get good ships, they compensate in the simple manpower. MARINES: Pirates have more marines than any other civilizations' ship aboard. You can easily find lots of different weapons (for example, Disruptors+Fusion Beams+ Missiles on one ship, which incorporates 3 different technologies) - depending on what the pirates have succeeded to steal. WEAPONS: the Pirates have lots of weapons. A Frigate has 13 points engine power, the Destroyer - 20, the Heavy Cruiser - 34. Don't get me wrong, their engines are not bad, but seem weak because of the high energy consumption of the various weapons aboard. You may be hard pressed to run almost all the time to protect your ship from being hit hard. Even the most powerful dreadnoughts have weak shields, so don't count that much on the 'take damage and hit with your best weapons often' tactic.

Frigates and Destroyers have the strength of the Mirak and Lyran shielding, which is adequate. The Orion ships have very high turn rate and usually attack in large numbers to compensate for their weakness. To compensate for this, their ships are somewhat cheap and easy to operate. So, the best ship you'll see there will be the Dreadnought. This is why they have never made a Battleship - making such a ship is extremely pricy not only to build, but to support either. The weakness of the Pirates' ships is coming from the fact that they aren't able to form gigantic ship-building corporations and make high profit. Speed is somewhat fast, maybe just a little bit slower than the Klingon's ships. = Part Two: Pirates' Ships = The Pirates' ships can be described in just two words: WEAK and MANEUVERABLE. After you win the game with one of the cartels, you may easily turn to the others. This means you should review their ship's statistics well in order to find the cartel that best suits your 'needs'. So, as I mentioned, each cartel operates in a specific territory.

For example, if you check out the Prime Industries cartel, which operates in the borders of the Romulan Empire, you will notice than the Pirates beside the Plasma torpedoes, have photons, missiles and rarely disruptors.

Yet, their weapons are not EXACTLY alike. There are lots of cartels available in the game, each one of them using a specific pattern in weaponry, somewhat similar to the native race's territory, in which they operate.

And if you are going to be a Pirate, you should do your best to acquire this intuition as well. battleship combat is lost for them, so these people have acquired a special intuition when to fight and wehn to run. They are not very warlike - they would rather hit and run, than fight bravely. They look like junkmen to the Federation! Yes, maybe they are, but these junkmen did whatever they could to become a threat and make profit! Using bravery and skill, treachery and treason, they have managed to cripple and capture many armed merchant ships, freighters and cruisers, split them to parts and create entirely new types of warships, with entirely new properties and design! Yes, these brave junkmen deserve respect! The Pirates usually operate on the territory of a specific empire. I must say that the Pirates quickly earned my respect! Imagine the Federation, with all its inhabited, economically powerful planets compared to the Pirate cartels. Why? Because they don't have their own empire, roam 'freely' the space and have very unusual ships. Although of 'bad' alignment, always causing trouble, these brave warriors attracted lots or gamers' interest. YES - Table of Contents: - The Pirates in brief - The Pirates' ships - Pirate Campaign Mission Walkthrough - Some tips and tricks - Final words - = Part One: The Pirates in brief = There was one thing that made SFC Volume 2 somewhat incomplete and this was the lack of a Pirate Cartels campaign.

Starfleet command orion pirates