Pirates! (I hate those filthy bandits.)

This isn't really a complaint, just something I've noticed as I play through.

So even when I have three turrets and three shield generators and three hull stabilizers and scanners and everything on my ship, I still find it's generally better to run from pirates, rather than try to destroy or capture their ship. Does this match with anyone else's experience? For one thing, ammo is kind of expensive for the energy turrets (well, not any more, now that my logistics are streamlined, but it was in the past), and in the event that the pirate should be able to board me, someone's going to wind up dead. Mostly their guys, since my entire crew is now armed with assault rifles, but losing even one of my crew is an irreplaceable loss.

Hi,
With you on the ammo thing. I wish you don’t have to replace the energy cell so quickly.
I have not experienced pirates trying to board me yet, I just got to the second system and so far just 1 pirate encounter. Am on medium difficulty.
I did notice though that you can close the vents on doors and lock them. I also saw an option to vent atmosphere at the airlock. Assuming that the pirates board with no space suits, maybe it would be possible to move the crew out of the airlock room, close the vents, locks the doors, and vent the atmosphere to kill them or knock them out.
If anyone has tried this, please let me know what happened.

Perhaps one way to improve this scenario would be to add a buildable defensive turret with a limited (maybe 90 degree) firing arc? You could use it to cover the airlock when facing intruders, and if you're boarding an opponent who has one, you can use tactics like blowing a hole in the enemy hull and coming in from another direction.

Another option would be buildable chest-high walls, which could absorb half the damage of shots passing over them, unless they were fired from a spot directly adjacent to the wall.

I dunno, never really looked at ammo consumption and so far i've been killing pirates with just 2 turrets and 1 shield and this is what i sort of noticed (without looking too much into it, just from memory), they always (so far) have the same ship with just 1 turret, 2 turrets kills them with not even having to reload.... i had them boarding me 1 time and i didn't even realise that was a possibility so i only had 2 ppl with guns, worked well on ships with aliens, but not when being boarded so i lost due to my ppl just going like "aaaah i surrender!!!" and stand there with their arms up... So i reloaded and second time they did not board, so that seems to be random even with the same encounter.... But ya, so far i manage fine with just 2 guns and 1 shield and killing them without reloading the guns.... had to reload tho with the next encounter as they don't seem to reload inbetween fights, now that's sumthing that could be fixed i think, always reload after a fight. But even with the reload i still won with killing them, ohya, and only 2 hull stabilizers.... unless the pirates get bigger ships with more turrets in other sectors, just 2 turrets, 2 stabilizers and 1 shield is more then enuf for me so far...

i noticed that too. i was up to 3 turrets by my second pirate encounter and did not have to reload.
the first time was a real pain because i had 1 turret, and the storage for the energy cells was far from the turret so every time I had to reload their shield would recharge a few points and it made the fight so much longer.

i've really started to notice that most times i have a complaint or something doesn't seem to work right its just that i haven't figured out the right way to do it yet.
the game is quite well balanced and thought out, i'm 50+ hours in and still amazed at the details i find and how deep some of the systems are.

Hi,
With you on the ammo thing. I wish you don’t have to replace the energy cell so quickly.
I have not experienced pirates trying to board me yet, I just got to the second system and so far just 1 pirate encounter. Am on medium difficulty.
I did notice though that you can close the vents on doors and lock them. I also saw an option to vent atmosphere at the airlock. Assuming that the pirates board with no space suits, maybe it would be possible to move the crew out of the airlock room, close the vents, locks the doors, and vent the atmosphere to kill them or knock them out.
If anyone has tried this, please let me know what happened.

As turrets are energy weapons, it would seem logic for them to draw power directly from the reactor than using energy consumables.

As for venting the atmosphere, the mechanism you describe looks very similar to the one that is findable in FTL.

Wait you have 20 ship points? I usually run 4 guns, 3 shields, 1 hull stabilize, no scanner, they are useless currently, less your trying to snipe peeps. I didnt notice a difference in combat using more than 1 hull stabilizer(seems to be more of a recovery time thang)

You have more hullpoints with more stabilizers, thus it takes longer to shoot down, same as having more then 1 shield adding to the total amount of shield u have.... So sporting 1 stabilizer might cost u if they manage to take down ur shield... i already found pirates with 4 turrets on their ship by now and 2 shields... i couldn't win from that even with my 4 turrets... i only sported 1 shield so i could have 2 stabilizers.... Figured out how to combat that tho, have to test still, but ur best bet is to just build a second ship, u can add a new ship instead of finding 1 and change how big it can be, the ones u find can only be small ones, but choosing to build a new ship and change it's size let's u make 2 large ships, if both have 4 turrets and 2 shields and 2 stabilizers, u could win a battle against that larger pirate. It wasn't very obvious for me where u could choose to build a new ship, it's not explained or anything, but there's a + button next to where ur ship is in the list in the top left of the screen, press that, then click on the left arrow in the window that pops up to choose the largest build in 1 click (otherwise u have to press the right arrow a couple of times) and then u can drag the new layout into the main screen, press build and u can then build a second ship. Advise would be to have enuf crew to be able to handle 2 ships, also have enuf materials to last for a couple of days while u build it (or start in sandbox mode and give urself the materials u need, like i did to test it out ) But that should probably be the plan on dealing with the bigger pirates.... Now to be able to pull such thing of with no sandbox mode... hmmm

Another potential anti-boarding countermeasure: if you only have one airlock, you could try drafting your own shuttle and docking it there, so that enemy boarders can't dock. Haven't tried this myself though.

Another potential anti-boarding countermeasure: if you only have one airlock, you could try drafting your own shuttle and docking it there, so that enemy boarders can't dock. Haven't tried this myself though.

Yeah, that don't work, when ever i board a ship i just leave my shuttle on drafted, incase i need to get out "like now! Not in 10 minutes when your done doing circles around the docking port!" :p and if you do that when you say are clearing a pirate ship, if a trade ship is in the sector they will "hack" your ship to move it themselves so they can dock. Kind of annoying

It is fun to half clear a dialect ship and watch a trade ship die trying to finish it for ya, this might be a good spot for communications to come into play, like them "calling" u and asking for help, or permission etc.