Pirates

The content below is based on the demo release and needs to be updated as it may not accurately represent what's currently in-game.

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While a rare issue in the Core Worlds, spiracy, as some amusingly refer to, is a significant force of social decay in the Wayback. In recent years, the Planetary Jingwei's grasp of the pirate problem has severely weakened. Nowadays, pirates run free, operating in bands that raid and pillage defenseless colonies.

Pirates spend lots of time in space and are slightly out of their element when fighting on the ground. They are bad guys, albeit often bumbling and incompetent, with a sense that the smarter pirates are probably running the show off-stage. They obsess over trinkets, a catchall term for loot, with a primary want for goodies that come from outside the system.

As mentioned above, Pirates encompasses many different groups of outlaws, criminals and looters roaming the Wayback, trying to prey on the weak. Their roster focuses on high mobility and reckless assaults. Weapons are usually improvised and repurposed—rarely accurate but packing a lot of raw firepower, especially when firing on the move.

Pirates use a variety of transport vehicles to quickly move across the combat map and close in on their enemies. While these vehicles offer some protection, pirates are especially vulnerable when disembarking. Anticipating when and where they will land and keeping a squad ready to react is essential to prevent an overrun.

Pirates tend to use two primary transport vehicles depending on squad size. Larger squads ride in heavy trucks, while smaller squads use light jeeps.

Pirate Units

Infantry

Name	Squad Size	Squad Weapon	Special Weapon	Hit Points per soldier	Armor	Armor Durability	Description
Scavengers	6-8	Pirate Assault Rifle	Workshopped RPG	10	30	30	A gang of regular space pirates equipped with makeshift assault rifles and frag grenades. Against armored targets, they also use improvised RPGs. They come in large squads and try to overwhelm enemies with reckless aggression and firepower.
Pirate Outcasts	7-8	Pirate Pipe Gun	N/A	10	10	25	A loose group of outlaws armed with various weapons and possibly under the influence of illegal substances.
Veteran Scavengers	8	R14A2 ARC	EMP Rifle	10	50	40	By pure luck, experience or even skill, these scavengers survived longer than others in the wayback. Their veteran status makes them especially determined and dangerous, and their equipment is usually of much higher quality.
Flamethrower Team	3	Pirate Assault Rifle	Flamethrower	10	30	30	A small team of pirates with a flamethrower to smoke out enemies in close combat.
Chain Gun Team	3	Pirate Assault Rifle	Light Chaingun	10	30	30	A small team of scavengers with a portable chain gun. Lacking accuracy but making up for it with sheer firepower, perfect for suppression while advancing. The makeshift nature of the gun makes it prone to jamming.
EMP Team	3	Pirate Assault Rifle	EMP Rifle	10	30	30	A specialized pirate team normally tasked with disabling automated defense mechanisms when boarding spaceships. Their EMP gun disables enemy mechs and vehicles on the battlefield. While not dangerous to infantry, they can easily take out vehicles caught out of position.
Boarding Commando	4	Pirate looted PDW	N/A	13	75	60	A team of heavily armored pirate outlaws specialized in boarding and pacifying spacecraft through violent means.

Vehicle

Name	Hit Points	Armor	Armor Durability	Vehicle Weapon	Description
Laser Truck	140	90/70/50	250	Laser Lance	A specialized version of the pirate truck with a repurposed spaceship laser cannon mounted on top. This truck is a major threat to heavily armored vehicles. The cannon generates extreme heat and must vent periodically to remain operational.
Chain Gun Truck	140	90/70/50	250	Mounted Chaingun	Using the same chassis as the rocket truck and basic transport, this vehicle delivers mobile suppressive firepower. The truck-mounted version of the chain gun is heavier and deals more damage but is still prone to jamming.
Rocket Truck	140	90/70/50	250	Rocket Organ	A wheeled truck equipped with multiple unguided rocket launcher tubes. Inaccurate, but with long range.
Flame Truck	200	120/100/80	300	Heavy Flamethrower	A heavy truck with high durability but minimal armor. The flamethrower mounted on top covers large areas in fire, devastating entrenched infantry. However, the flammable liquid inside the truck makes it prone to catastrophic explosions when damaged.
Pirate HMG Heavy Truck	300	130/110/90	450	M6 CMG	An up-armored civilian truck fitted with a twin-linked heavy machine gun turret. It is surprisingly durable and can threaten infantry and light vehicles.
Mercenary Medium Walker	250	140	400	Swarm Airburst Launcher, Laser Lance	A well trained and equipped mercenary who brings their own medium walker equipped with a variety of medium weapons. Armed with a swarm airburst launcher and a laser lance, it is very combat effective and dangerous.

Transports

Name	Hit Points	Armor	Armor Durability	Vehicle Weapon	Description
Pirate Light Truck	120	90/70/50	150	N/A	An unarmed version of the Pirate Truck (Modular) used as a transport by small squads of pirates.
Pirate Heavy Truck	140	110/90/80	200	N/A	A Heavy Truck used by pirates to move large squads around.

Turrets

Name	Hit Points	Armor	Armor Durability	Weapon	Description
EMP Turret	160	110	250	N/A	Fixed emplacement with large EMP emitters that can disable and damage vehicles over range.
Machinegun Turret	160	110	250	M6 CMG	Fixed emplacement with twin-linked heavy MGs to suppress advancing enemies.

Unique Units

Unique units includes non-standard units that can be found in MENACE belonging to the Pirate Faction, typically encountered as parts of mission objectives that only spawn for these purposes.

Name	Squad Size	Squad Weapon	Leader	Hit Points per soldier	Armor	Armor Durability	Description
Saboteurs	6-8	Pirate Assault Rifle	Workshopped RPG	10	0	0	Disguised as ordinary civilians, these elite pirates wreck havoc behind enemy lines.
Saboteur Chaingun Team	3	Pirate Assault Rifle	Light Chaingun	10	0	0	A small support team armed with a chaingun disguised in civilian clothing.
Saboteur Ringleader	6-8	R10A6 K-PAC	Workshopped RPG	10	0	0	The Saboteur Ringleader is especially ruthless and experienced. He also carries advanced equipment.
Pirate First Mate Squad	5	Pirate looted PDW		13	75	60	A pirate ships first Mate leads a squad of reckless killers equipped with heavy breaching armor and deadly corridor sweepers.
Pirate Bodyguards	5	Pirate looted PDW		13	75	60	An especially hardened squad of Pirate veterans pulling security for higher ups in the pirate ranks.
Pirate Bombmaker	5	Pirate Assault Rifle		10	30	30	The infamous bombmaker spreading terror in the area. Armed with a variety of explosives.
Pirate Engineer Squad	3	Pirate Assault Rifle	EMP Rifle	10	30	30	A pirate ship's first engineer, equipped with an EMP rifle and EMP grenades to take out any kind of machinery on the spot.
Pirate Captain	6	Captain's PDW	Gr331 ESG - Grenade Launcher	15	90	80	The leader of any pirate outfit, equipped with the best looted gear and surrounded by his most loyal mates. Known to use so-called 'Pirate Speed' stims.

Pirate Operations

Name	Description
Counter Insurgency	An aggressive warband of Pirates made an unexpected planetfall and have spread over a concerningly large area. Local Forces have been outmatched by the pirates' audacious tactics. The TCR needs to insert, secure the area, and ultimately find and destroy the pirates' base of operations.
Thwart Invasion	A large Pirate Fleet secretly gathered over the past months while amassing ships. This is atypical for Pirates, but the goals are lofty: the invasion plans to loot as much as possible until dispersing again. Already, Local Forces are overwhelmed and need our help.

Pirate Army Lists

The Pirate Outcasts are only available in early game lists. In mid game and later, their weight has been set to 0 meaning they shouldn't be picked by the game during army list creation.

• Pirate Defensive Early Game
• Pirate Defensive Mid Game
• Pirate Offensive Early Game
• Pirate Offensive Early Game Reinforcements
• Pirate Offensive Mid Game
• Pirate Offensive Mid Game Reinforcements

Strategies

Pirates are numerous, lightly armoured, and equipped with weak weapons. They are easily suppressed and routed. They pose a real threat only at the very start of the player's journey, before acquiring proper gear to fight them. From the mid game onwards, they usually crumble under any real firepower. It is also very easy to chain-break their morale once you start mowing down their ranks. The only strength they have is their numbers.

On some missions (usually defense, but sometimes also on offense), they will field many vehicles to transport their troops. You can shoot at these vehicles with regular infantry weapons and kill the passengers before they disembark. Their non-transport vehicles are also soft enough (apart from heavy trucks) that regular infantry weapons will punch through and disable them with a couple of salvos, so do not be afraid to engage them.

Just watch out for their boarding commandos. They have grenades to disable your vehicles and will counterattack to catch you off guard. It is best to either "tank" their counterattack with a vehicle or armoured infantry, or shoot at them from outside their range.

Because of their large numbers, it is advised to have the Decoys upgrade, the Stand-By skill on your SL, or any other way of forcing their turns before the player's on defense missions. They tend to force the player to waste an entire round by first moving units outside of view range, then swarming the objective once the player has no units left to activate.

Notes/Trivia

TBD

References

Dev Diary #10

Behind the Scenes

The generic Pirates voice actor is Joe Corrigall.

Changelog

• Patch #4 - Removed concealment from some pirate units
• Redacted Update 1 - Added 'Mercenary Walker' to Pirate faction for the mid game
• OCI Rework - FIXED Sometimes the game froze if pirate vehicles didn't get deactivated properly
• Patch v0.7.14 - Added backlight to various pirate vehicles