I was asked to drop my cargo

[wwf4668]

While I like SCA for their constant supply of destroyers, I get this message now every freeking minute and it annoys me very much. It's usually the SCA Minotaurs, I have Corvettes/Frigates (Reaction force) in every second sector and usually kill them (manually). But it requires my attention every minute and I just can not play the game.
I also search the map for "raider" every 5 minutes and kill what I can, but it does not seem to help much.
- Can I wipe them from the universe? Destroy every SCA station and they are gone?
- Does anybody have a mod suggestion? (Reaction Force does not do the trick, since too late). The best thing would be a hunter mod, where you could give ships a default command that they look for specific ships, belonging to a specific fraction within a certain sector range and hunts them down. Haven't found something like this unfortunately.

Thanks for any hints!

[gbjbaanb]

Mirage apparently stops them looking at the cargo, but its a purple mod so yo won't have many.

I find that escorts are the best option. Failing that, borrow a heap of Barbarossa's from VIG and use them. The pirates don't go anywhere near heavily armed transports. They will try to fight Prometheus though, and often will win (despite having 2+2 guns v Prommy's 3+3) unless you teleport in to wreck them manually with the targetted ship.

I don't think there's any other option though, escorts are probably your better bet than the patrols.

[Koizuki]

Mirage apparently stops them looking at the cargo, but its a purple mod so yo won't have many.

Just FYI, these specific purple mods are fairly easy to farm from the BUC. (Drop a satellite in BUC space and kill the fighters that spawn to destroy it.) If you do this, purple chassis mods will become probably the one purple mod you have the most of over all the others.

- Can I wipe them from the universe? Destroy every SCA station and they are gone?

SCA unfortunately cannot be wiped out, because they will simply spawn from nowhere. That said, piracy is a common issue players run into, and Mirage is a very good "counter" to them; It makes whatever ship it's put on immune to pirate cargo scans, rendering them unable to be plundered.
All the pirate factions can be pacified, though, but SCA and BUC are notorious for only being able to be pacified later in the game. All you need to do is reach +10 with any pirate faction, and they will stop plundering your assets because they will consider you a "friend." But SCA and BUC are reputation locked until you either start Terraforming for SCA, or go through the PAR plot for BUC.

The others are able to be pacified earlier in the game: HAT will get to +10 pretty quick by doing the HAT plot, VIG can be traded with since you generally start at -5 with them, allowing docking access, FAF you can find missions for at FRF station leaks, and YAK can be traded with once you reach them during the Yaki Investigation plot.

My personal suggestion is to just use Mirage on your AI-controlled tradeships until you get to the point where every pirate faction is pacified, then you can switch them out for other chassis mods if you wish. After that, you just need to keep the Xenon and Kha'ak at bay, and setting Alerts for the various factions can help give you an additional heads-up.

Bonus: If you own any stations and want to prevent pirates from hacking its storage, leave a Destroyer nearby (captured ones will do,) with a reduced patrol range so it stays closer to the station at all times.

[H34Dru5H]

Save yourself the head ache and set all your S/M traders in default settings to 'Escape and Deploy Laser Towers' and 'Comply' to pirate harassmant and 'Don't notify me'. Yes you may lose a few but we now have the ability to rescue pilots and crew so you won't lose any 3* pilots from you autotraders, just keep an eye on your 'Unassigned Ships' for 'Spacesuits'. I remember it driving me mad early game and the stress became unbearable and back then if you lost good pilots, they were gone for good.

[PersonyPerson]

While I like SCA for their constant supply of destroyers, I get this message now every freeking minute and it annoys me very much. It's usually the SCA Minotaurs, I have Corvettes/Frigates (Reaction force) in every second sector and usually kill them (manually). But it requires my attention every minute and I just can not play the game.
I also search the map for "raider" every 5 minutes and kill what I can, but it does not seem to help much.
- Can I wipe them from the universe? Destroy every SCA station and they are gone?
- Does anybody have a mod suggestion? (Reaction Force does not do the trick, since too late). The best thing would be a hunter mod, where you could give ships a default command that they look for specific ships, belonging to a specific fraction within a certain sector range and hunts them down. Haven't found something like this unfortunately.

Thanks for any hints!

Mods to stop the notification spam are not necessary. Just go to "Player Information -> Global orders -> Default global response to Pirate harassment -> Give the desired behaviour you want your freighters to do -> untick "Notify me of an incident occurs". You'll still know if and when a pirate attack is happening because it's give you a "temporary reputation loss" message in the notification ticker.

If your concern is also the survival of your freighters, then increasing the number of patrol ships is probably the way to go.

[wwf4668]

Thanks for all the quick replies. So no easy solution.

- Mirage. I use it on a Prometheus smuggling Space Fuel and illegal stuff with great success, but I'm nowhere near getting enough for my 70+ stationbound traders.
- I've got all traders on deploy laser tower and escape, but I still want to kill the stupid suckers that dare to attack my poor civilian ships. (sorry, I get emotional there and even destroy the escape pods if they bail out)
- Building 70 Katanas as escort for each trader might be something I will try, even though I find it a bit of an overkill.
- Transforming my trader fleet from Demeter/Boa to Barbarossa might also something I will try, though I like the M-Traders, am afraid of cluttering on the L/XL-Dock and everything will be a bit slower, since the Barbarossa can not use the highway.
- With SCA pacification I think I need terraforming, right? I'm stupidly stuck at the point that I have to move my HQ within Grand-Exchange and have now Idea where to put it without destroying allies or putting it to a horribly remote position, but that I have to solve I guess. I also have no Idea how to befriend FAF, yet. Just installed the split DLC a week ago and their pirate dragons start to annoy me too (no escape). Should I play the Split storyline for that?

Just FYI, these specific purple mods are fairly easy to farm from the BUC. (Drop a satellite in BUC space and kill the fighters that spawn to destroy it.) If you do this, purple chassis mods will become probably the one purple mod you have the most of over all the others.

Thanks a lot, I thought only Prometheus can drop mods, I will try that. But I must admit I never saw anybody destroy my satellites, not even xenon.

Bonus: If you own any stations and want to prevent pirates from hacking its storage, leave a Destroyer nearby (captured ones will do,) with a reduced patrol range so it stays closer to the station at all times.

Yes, read about that some time ago and works great!

Anyway, I must say, the sheer amount of random spawning SCA Minotaurs in this game is really going on my nerves.
Thanks again for all the hints!!

[hajko2]

Good evening,

I have placed traps in the dangerous areas, consisting of 1 M-Trader with high value cargo and 8 M-Nemesis to defend the trader.
The trader waits for the attack, the Nemesis then destroys the attacker. 1 Nemesis has the repeat command to collect the remaining containers.

This works well, my high-level traders have otherwise installed the cargo concealment mod and are not attacked.

[TheDeliveryMan]

I use Hermes Vanguards with PAR combat equipment and full service crew. They can be bought at the ALI Wharf in Trinity Scantum VII. I set them to escape from pirate harassment and attacks. Since 7.00 they usually escape just fine when asked to drop their cargo and I can safely ignore their calls.

For befriending the Fallen Families, explore Free Families space and look for signal leaks at their stations. Some signal leaks are criminal/pirate missions for the Fallen Families.

[Koizuki]

Mirage works well, but does depend on HQ research, so make sure you have the Exceptional Chassis research done to utilize them.
250k to install one is far cheaper than 70 Katanas to escort, though the latter is more amusing.

Using Military ships is also an option (albeit more expensive than civilian transports.) Pirates don't bother with Military ships, so using Frigates and such to trade will work fine, and is why the Barbarossa works, since it seems to be technically considered a Destroyer, rather than a Freighter. The Prometheus is still considered a Transport, though, so it will still be plundered if not Miraged, although it is generally capable of fighting back on its own at least.

- With SCA pacification I think I need terraforming, right? I'm stupidly stuck at the point that I have to move my HQ within Grand-Exchange and have now Idea where to put it without destroying allies or putting it to a horribly remote position, but that I have to solve I guess. I also have no Idea how to befriend FAF, yet. Just installed the split DLC a week ago and their pirate dragons start to annoy me too (no escape). Should I play the Split storyline for that?

Yes, the SCA pacification involves Terraforming Scale Plate Green in particular. It doesn't require you to fully complete it, but there are additional changes that occur as you complete more of the process. Simply finishing the first anything in Scale Plate Green should trigger SCA to become friendly, though. You can check this post if you're feeling adventurous or curious about it, as I did a dive into the actual code last week to determine exactly what happens during the SCA Terraforming prooject (It's in the spoiler block.)

As far as moving the HQ, you need to find a spot that is clear within something like a 50-60km radius around the nav beacon. Don't forget that you can also just spawn it at the edge of the sector, or above/below the ecliptic if you want it more centrally located. Or you can just say "sorry" and vaporize anything in the position you actually want, and deal with repairing relations later.

As far as FAF goes, I don't think the split storyline directly affects FAF's piracy against you. Indirectly, it should because the dominant faction at the end of that plot should be much more aggressive about going after FAF themselves, but they still won't do anything if FAF disguises within their sectors.
In order to pacify FAF, you must do missions, as far as I'm aware. They do not own any sectors, nor any stations, so they can only be received by scanning mission leaks on FRF stations specifically. You'll be able to tell since the mission briefing will tell you that the mission giver is "Fallen Families." They are the usual criminal missions, so the easiest ones are just passenger transport and station hacking, and the others potentially impacting your reputation with other factions if you do them.

Thanks a lot, I thought only Prometheus can drop mods, I will try that. But I must admit I never saw anybody destroy my satellites, not even xenon.

Most BUC ships are modded, but it's only BUC in particular that really hates satellites, and only in sectors that contain their Lost Property Office, I believe. Pious Mists IV and XI, Trinity Sanctum VII, Hewa's Twin V, and Morning Star IV are the ones I remember off the top of my head. Drop a satellite near the "foggy" areas, or near their stations and they will spawn fighters periodically to destroy it. These fighters often have a really high chance of dropping the exceptional chassis mod; I automate farming these by sticking a group of ships to patrol around where I've put a cluster of satellites with fire authorization against BUC set to Ruthless, and one ship to just repeat-collect-drops.

Anyway, I must say, the sheer amount of random spawning SCA Minotaurs in this game is really going on my nerves.

Prior to the completion of the SCA Terraforming Project, I believe SCA has the ablity to spawn up to 26 Minotaurs across the galaxy for plundering, not including the "aggressive" jobs in the new anarchy sectors, or the "deep space encounter" one-off spawns.

[gbjbaanb]

Probably my biggest beef with the pirates, apart from the notifications that can be quiet for ages then 3 pop up at once, is that the pirates will happily patrol even the core sectors. I have attacks in Argon Prime and Kingdoms' End. I don't like this, those sectors should be off limits for all but the most suicidal pirates.

I would prefer if pirates chose sectors based on some criteria of how core they are to empires. Core sectors = no pirates. Boundary ones = some pirates. Outlying ones = more pirates.

[jlehtone]

I would prefer if pirates chose sectors based on some criteria of how core they are to empires. Core sectors = no pirates. Boundary ones = some pirates. Outlying ones = more pirates.

I have seen maps, where player "inspired" some faction to migrate to entire other side of the universe from where their "home" was initially.
Who is core then? For example, PIO in my game are in, and only in, Oort Cloud. They have no cops to patrol&protect, but there does not seem to be pirates either.

[poljik2]

I would prefer if pirates chose sectors based on some criteria of how core they are to empires. Core sectors = no pirates. Boundary ones = some pirates. Outlying ones = more pirates.

I have seen maps, where player "inspired" some faction to migrate to entire other side of the universe from where their "home" was initially.
Who is core then? For example, PIO in my game are in, and only in, Oort Cloud. They have no cops to patrol&protect, but there does not seem to be pirates either.

Perhaps the “coreness” or “remoteness” of a sector could be tied to the presence of and distance from shipyards and wharves, with exceptions made for specific sectors where needed.