First Turns: The Privateer Bands

Most wars are won or lost long before the fighting starts. This series concentrates only on those critical few turns leading up to the Ship Limit as a key to achieving long-term goals necessary for victory.

Overview:

The heaviest warship buildable by the Privateer Bands is the Bloodfang Class Carrier, a passable medium warship but hardly a vessel designed to stand in the line of battle. The Privateer’s preferred venue is in fact elsewhere, in the area of speed, mobility, robbery, and ship capture. Thus, uniquely among the Eleven Races, the Privateer is in a very real sense less dependent on their own economy than their neighbor’s.

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Threat Assessment: The Privateer Bands

This is the eighth in a series of anonymous reports that looks like it could go all the way to eleven — perhaps even twelve. These redacted versions were approved by the Senate for immediate publication, so they can be read by commanders of each respective race in order that they can review their own vulnerabilities in the face of the unknown external threat that commissioned the studies. In this dispatch we focus on that faction known as the Privateer Bands: its strengths, its weaknesses, and how best to defeat it in battle.

Overview

Ease Of Command: Expert
Difficulty To Defeat: Moderate to High
Style: Highly Aggressive / Swashbuckling

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The Privateer Fleet

 

The Privateers prefer light and fast ships with a long range, since their main goal is to rob and steal other races’ ships instead of fighting them directly. They can do that by using their unique ship mission ‘Rob Ship’ that takes fuel and cargo from Continue reading

An Old Scroll – So, you wanna be a Privateer?

The Old Scrolls Series from Donovan’s Super Site:

Please note that some data may refer to earlier game versions or different host settings. Although game and strategies have advanced since the writing of this guide, the provided information is more than useful for an inspired gameplay and a good base to start from. Enjoy!

Written by: Mark Wilmot

So, you wanna be a Privateer?

Part I: Introduction
So you wanna be a Privateer, eh? Wanna streak across the galaxy – yet like a shadow dancing from star to star? Wanna strike fear into the hearts of your enemies – siphoning Continue reading

An Old Scroll – Attacking with the Privateers

The Old Scrolls Series from Donovan’s Super Site:

Please note that some data may refer to earlier game versions or different host settings. Although game and strategies have advanced since the writing of this guide, the provided information is more than useful for an inspired gameplay and a good base to start from. Enjoy!

Written by: Jan ‘Sirius’ Klingele in 1997

Attacking with the Privateers

It is well known, that our beloved Orion Space Traders (or Pirates as some people call them falsely … see “The Origin of the Privateers” by Jan Klingele) are a race who has a difficult time if they have to confront an enemy in an open large scale battle. Unless Continue reading

An Old Scroll – The Privateers

The Old Scrolls Series from Donovan’s Super Site:

Please note that some data may refer to earlier game versions or different host settings. Although game and strategies have advanced since the writing of this guide, the provided information is more than useful for an inspired gameplay and a good base to start from. Enjoy!

Written by: Benson Wong

The Privateers

The Golden Rule for the Privateers “If something can go wrong, it will go wrong.”

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An Old Scroll – The Privateer Treasury

The Old Scrolls Series from Donovan’s Super Site:

Please note that some data may refer to earlier game versions or different host settings. Although game and strategies have advanced since the writing of this guide, the provided information is more than useful for an inspired gameplay and a good base to start from. Enjoy!

Collected and edited by: Mark Wilmot in 1997

The Privateer Treasury

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 Continue reading

An Old Scroll – Playing the Privateer Part I and II

The Old Scrolls Series from Donovan’s Super Site:

Please note that some data may refer to earlier game versions or different host settings. Although game and strategies have advanced since the writing of this guide, the provided information is more than useful for an inspired gameplay and a good base to start from. Enjoy!

Written by: Michael Lemieux (Steel Rat)

Playing the Privateer Part I and II

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.

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The Amazing Small Deep Space Freighter

(written by ECV – Classic Queue)

Tom Graves started a great thread about the many uses of the Small Deep Space Freighter (SDSF) on the news feed at Planets Nu. He has now given us permission to edit and publish his post on Planets Mag for all to see!

NOTE: Certain aspects of this article reference the Priority Build Points system.

In Tom’s words: Small Deep Space Freighters are likely to represent 10-15% of your fleet at the time the Ship Continue reading

Chasing Carriers

Ships with cloaking devices are a good thing — every Privateer, Bird, Fascist or Lizard player will agree on that. Your cloaking ships can disturb enemy freighter routes, sabotage their economy and even fight many medium-sized ships. But when it comes to fighting a carrier race with its huge battlecarriers, the cloaking races often have big problems. This article explains a few little tricks to make these seemingly indestructible carrier monsters less harmful.

As all regular Planets players know, cloaking ships usually can’t stand up to any Continue reading