[X3TC] Best Way To Make Friends with Pirates (and everybody)

[rwhiteruff]

I'd kind of like to be everybody's bestest friend, including the pirate clans. Is there a good way to do that with a humble merchant start? I'm just starting to make my millions, getting UTs up and running and so forth, but I'm not really running missions so my reps are still a bit low.

Furthermore I already pissed off the pirates by killing a few of them. At first to befriend the paranid during a patrol mission (btw, the game turned into a slideshow when pirates attacked in Paranid Prime. Yowza!), but later because they blew up one of my Mistral SFs. So I had to take revenge on them.

I've had some experience before with the game but I still feel rather noobish. It felt like pirates were somewhat iffy to find, let alone get to like me.

So advice is welcomed!

[Dycor]

Go to Pirate Sectors (try not to get killed) and do missions for the stations in those sectors. Just don't do the kill missions.

[rwhiteruff]

Will they even offer missions? Maybe I should get a mission running ship. c_c

[glenmcd]

Following is a bit exploitish hence the spoiler block. Don't read if you are new to TC.

Spoiler

Show

Buy a few of the cheapest M5s you can find. Best if they're Argon coz you need to fit them with CLS2 and navigation software. Dock one at a pirate station, preferably one that won't get attacked much. Setup your CLS2 software so that it buys one unit of each ware stocked there. Doesn't matter if they don't have much of anything. Then sell them all back. Buy 1 unit, sell back all in cargobay. You'll increase your Pirate rep at maximum rate achievable through trade. It seems that one unit trade builds rep just as fast a TL load. Meanwhile go do whatever you want and when you do need to kill some pirates (fight missions etc) you should recover in reasonable time. There's nothing stopping you from doing it with other races. I personally don't like handling illegal wares so this is one way I can satisfy the Pirates but keep my hands clean. With other races I get satisfaction out of doing missions for them. Be aware that any ship docked at a Pirate station can be destroyed at any time, due to various races destroying the Pirate base. The Pirate base may respawn but your ship won't. That's a good reason not to use your overtuned Hyperion Vanguard

[rwhiteruff]

Following is a bit exploitish hence the spoiler block. Don't read if you are new to TC.

Spoiler

Show

Buy a few of the cheapest M5s you can find. Best if they're Argon coz you need to fit them with CLS2 and navigation software. Dock one at a pirate station, preferably one that won't get attacked much. Setup your CLS2 software so that it buys one unit of each ware stocked there. Doesn't matter if they don't have much of anything. Then sell them all back. Buy 1 unit, sell back all in cargobay. You'll increase your Pirate rep at maximum rate achievable through trade. It seems that one unit trade builds rep just as fast a TL load. Meanwhile go do whatever you want and when you do need to kill some pirates (fight missions etc) you should recover in reasonable time. There's nothing stopping you from doing it with other races. I personally don't like handling illegal wares so this is one way I can satisfy the Pirates but keep my hands clean. With other races I get satisfaction out of doing missions for them. Be aware that any ship docked at a Pirate station can be destroyed at any time, due to various races destroying the Pirate base. The Pirate base may respawn but your ship won't. That's a good reason not to use your overtuned Hyperion Vanguard

Oh this sounds very nice. So far the only pirate base I know of is in Circle of Labour. It has absolutely nothing in stock. Will this still work?

Going to try to puzzle out how to set up the CLS2 now, since I've never used it before and it confuses me...

[glenmcd]

Oh this sounds very nice. So far the only pirate base I know of is in Circle of Labour. It has absolutely nothing in stock. Will this still work?

Going to try to puzzle out how to set up the CLS2 now, since I've never used it before and it confuses me...

For pirates, buy one unit of Sunrise flowers for your CLS2 ship. That's all it takes for a total guarantee of success. With all others, you won't every find the EQds totally empty. Okay you might but you'll be the first in history to do so

CLS2 confused me and in fact scared me for a long time. But like others once I got past a certain point there was no turning back. Not just for the exploits (which a few use CLS2 for) but for many intended uses and in fact there's no doubt dozens of new uses that haven't been found yet.

[rwhiteruff]

You've already been super helpful, but is there any chance I could talk you into doing a step-by-step on setting up CLS2 for this with a fresh M5? :3

[glenmcd]

First you need to get the required software into your M5:
Commoditity Logistics Software Mk II
Navigation Software

While your ship is docked at any station including Pirate Base, use the following commands:

Control console / Trade / Start Commodity Logistics

Select waypoints. Add station. Select the Pirate base. Task = Buy
Item = [1st item]. Quantity = Up to 1. Do exactly the same again except sell the item. You've now got your first waypoint. Add more waypoints using same method for all other wares at the station. You'll notice that they will all become a part of one waypoint. That's all you need so even an Apprentice level CLS2 pilot will suffice. When you've completed this, use escape to get back to the screen that has Data as the 2nd last item. But the cursor will be on Start. Select start. If you've done the above correctly it should start following the waypoint list. Don't worry that it will pause occasionally even for a few minutes. Select info on the ship and verify that at the Pirate Base it is on "Standby" most of the time but occasionally does something else. It will be so quick that you are likely not to be able to read what it is. Once you've done the above a few times for different races you should pickup how CLS2 is used and how to create other uses.

If the above doesn't work and you can't see why, do a screen snapshot of your waypoint list, upload it somewhere and paste that URL of that picture here. I'm not in a position to do that at moment as my gamestart is too early.

[rwhiteruff]

Okay well I picked up a flower in nearby scale plate green and brought it back to Omicron Lyrae where I bought a Discoverer Vanguard. I'll send it to the pirate base and try this now.

If it doesn't work out, since I'm using the steam copy of the game I can just upload a screenshot to steam and hopefully link it here.

[rwhiteruff]

Hm, on the buy command it's asking for product price.

[glenmcd]

Hm, on the buy command it's asking for product price.

Average
I'm still going from memory..

[rwhiteruff]

No worries. So on buy and sell both should be average? The options are minimum, average, maximum, and manual.

[glenmcd]

No worries. So on buy and sell both should be average? The options are minimum, average, maximum, and manual.

EQds always buy and sell for Average, and I assumed pirate bases did too but not I'm not so sure and I can't verify right now. Try average first, and if that doesn't work change to buying at max and selling at minimum. Even then you should find that they won't charge you more than their normal selling price and vice versa

[rwhiteruff]

Okay it was working fine for a little bit there, I think. The orders were cycling through the CLS programmed list and occasionally the ship would have 1 freight loaded. But then the flower just disappeared and now it's in standby mode as there's nothing to buy.

Should I load up more flowers and sell them to the pirate base?

[glenmcd]

Okay it was working fine for a little bit there, I think. The orders were cycling through the CLS programmed list and occasionally the ship would have 1 freight loaded. But then the flower just disappeared and now it's in standby mode as there's nothing to buy.

Should I load up more flowers and sell them to the pirate base?

Looks like you'll have to, but I've got a suggestion to avoid this situation in the future. When you buy, buy 1. When you sell, sell half cargospace. The worst that can happen is that you'll run out of cargospace (which takes very little in an M5) when the station has lots of wares. As the station runs out of stuff, you'll still have at least half a cargobay full of some ware. A pirate must have bought the flower in the moments between you selling and you buying again.

[rwhiteruff]

I dunno what's wrong now.

I followed your advice. Sold a bunch of flowers to the station and shifted 4 out of 7 (hold space) to the M5. Changed the waypoints so that they all sell at up to 3 (again out of 7). Restarted the CLS2.

Now it's just sitting on standby. I double checked and the station is selling flowers for 20 and the average price is 20, so it's not anything to do with pricing. Not sure what the issue is.

[glenmcd]

Okay sounds like you're going to have to play around with it a little to work out what's going wrong. Break the waypoint list down to minimum, verify that works like you think it should, then add another part. Manually sell a few flowers, and get your CLS2 to buy one at a time and that's all. If that goes okay, get it to buy 2 and then sell 1. If that's okay experiment with half cargospace. Sorry I'm still not friends with Argon so can't give you an example tested waypoint list.

[rwhiteruff]

Well I experimented a tiny bit with it. If I sell all the flowers manually, the ship buys exactly 1 and then seems to sit on it. Not sure if it's waiting for something or what.

As an aside this seems potentially useful for a problem I've been having. I can't seem to get "military equipment" in stock when I need it. I'm wondering if it wouldn't be possible to setup a ship or two with routes to supply, say, Shield and Gun production facilities with the resources they need so that they're always pumping out equipment I can buy?

[glenmcd]

Absolutely. You can continually supply resources and buy product at same time or seperately. But you need to first understand all the stops necessary to get a simple use going and then the sky's the limit.

[ajax34i]

Your trading agent follows several script restrictions, that you have to understand:

- If you buy at average price and sell at average price, it will actually have to wait on standby until the seller drops his price to whatever the average is, and until the buyer also does so (in the case of pirate bases, they buy the flowers at average always, so you're just standing by for the flowers to drop to average).

- All stations have an inventory limit; once the station has the 2000 flowers it needs, it won't buy any more. NPC traders will feed it flowers (in huge quantities) too.

Now, you can buy at maximum price and sell at average price (this will ensure that you continuously buy / sell), and you'll gain rep faster but lose money in the transaction. You can also find more pirate stations and/or try to trade in other things they want (the more transactions the better rep).

Building reputation via trading is somewhat slow, though. I have a set of agents feeding Space Fuel and Space Weed to 10+ pirate stations, and the reputation is barely moving. On the other hand, once I got above neutral and they started offering missions, taxi missions are pretty good for rep, and station build missions are awesome. I maxed out to the highest rank within a few hours of building stations (about 10 or so "build station" missions).

The trick is to make sure that you're building for pirate factions. You should take the mission only from stations that greet you with "Hello matey" when you dock, and the video chat of the mission giver should have either a punk, El General, or ghoulish look to the character. The mission should ask you to build in a pirate sector. You should not get a reputation message once you build the station (the pirates don't give messages).