A guide to how YOU can become a successful space pirate
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 12 พ.ค. 2024
- The description of this video has been pirated. It's gone. Space pirates stole it and are trying to ransom it back to me.
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If you get to be the .01% super successful pirate you get to graduate to politics where the real pirates operate.
Legal pirates, best pirates
Yeah. Like the OG pirate lords in the Mediterranean. They were getting yearly bribes from other governments to not attack their ships. They didn't even need to raid at that point. it came to them! Until the US got tired of it anyway.
Unironically early American Politics tho
@@semi-useful5178 Congress' answer to cheaping out on a navy, and then picking a fight with the country with the single most powerful navy on the planet in 1812 was issuing letters of marque out to anyone with ships at least bigger than a rowboat.
@@Theo-ev6yu
Even before that. Throughout the 1600s a lot of Pirates retired as planters and from there politics. And not just in the South. New York was as much a pirate stronghold as Tortuga or Madagascar.
Best line from Hondo, "This effort is no longer profitable". 🤣🤣
Cap'n Hondo is legitimately one of the most realistically-written space pirates I've seen.
That’s what periphery pirates do in Batrletech a lot when they get powerful: make their own mini kingdoms. Though at that point they are more like pirate warlord hybrids.
At some point your such a good pirate you can fund your own legitimacy.
The difference between a pirate and a warlord is that the warlord has a lot more boys and a lot more boats.
@@njnjco Well that, and the logical conclusion that the warlord is no longer running and hiding, but doing the chasing.
"Don't mess with anyone important" works in real life as well. Ask the pirates who kidnapped Iulius Caesar... and that was years before he rose to power.
Little more obscure in the sci-fi context but privateers would be a cool video. Waging war for fun and profit.
I think the reason they're not really a thing in most sci-fi stories is because mercenaries do basically the exact same thing.
Would be awesome to see more though, don't get me wrong.
That's basically most of the BattleTech setting Mercs...
That's just pirates with the backing of a major power.
The do the exact same, difference is they have allied ports to go back to and sell their crap with a cut to the crown.
Plus they MIGHT get prisoner exchanged if captured by another major power. Letters of marque were basically military credentials, making captured privateers PoWs.
Harlock is an anarchist. But he also attacks Earth merchant ships, so he's technically a pirate... And being the kind of man that would assemble a mechanism to fly a flag in the void of space, he adopted the aesthetics.
Or go the Mouretsu Pirates direction: arrange with insurance companies to be in flight entertainment to rob people and maintain your letter of marquis.
I need to rewatch that anime...
Which anime? Sounds baller.
A historic example of what happens when pirates enrage a major power is what happened to the Mediterranean pirates. After the Second Punic War they had prospered because Carthage could barely survive and the Romans couldn't be bothered to patrol the seas with any regularity... Then the pirates started raiding Italy and endangering Rome's grain supply, and the Romans started conquering their bases. Undeterred, the pirates raided Ostia, Rome's harbor... And at this point Rome decided they were an exhistential threat and gave Pompey the Great their entire fleet, most of their army, and permission to raise more troops and do whatever he wanted for six months.
Forty days after the start of the campaign, ALL the pirate bases had been burned or surrendered, almost all pirates were dead or enslaved, and Pompey was resigning his commission.
The pirates didn't learn the lesson and history repeated itself in early 19th century during Barbary wars, only this time trashing was delivered by US navy & friends.
The best (and by best i mean funniest) depiction of space pirates comes from the novels/anime "Bodacious Space Pirates". They are more privateers, with letters of marque, handed out by local governments. And in the current stting, there aren't any ships to rob, so as to earn money to keep tgeir ships maintained, crews fed and companies afloat, they sell "pirate actions" to cruise liners and put on a theatric show, while using whatever opportunity during this process to train boarding actions, taking out security and even legal negotiations.
They also are hired to "play" piratey for local defense forces to train against.
And are still allowed to operate freely, board and raid pirates of other systems and even enemy supply ships in case of war.
And then your main character is a 16 year old girl that has to take over her dead dads ship while still has to abide by child/teen labor laws and get her school diploma, all on minimum wage, cause she isn't old enough.
God, i love that show. Its so silly, so stupid, yet so funny and entertaining.
All to disguise an actually interesting deeper plot.
A follow up that contrasts pirate with Privateer (which frankly is a lot of sci fi pirates), could be interesting, and gear and logistics would be different as youre a glorified merc that exists to be an annoyance to people that arent your patron.
I feel there's an exception to your warship and hitting big fish clause: letters of marquee and sanctioned privateering. When. The big boys are at war, choosing a side and fighting as an independent contractor with prize rules can be exceptionally lucrative. It's exceedingly dangerous, but you have the backing of a major power for repairs and supplies, and any ship under the enemy flag is free game.
Treasure Planet has a good ancient pirate.
(Only downside was his crew tryimg to rebel. But hey! Details. He got a treasure hoard from across the galaxy! And never was caught by any nation)
About as fi as sci-fi gets, but damn did I love that one when I was a kid. I would give quite a considerable sum to have that world turned into something like a Sid Myers Pirates game.
"I recommend you read up on the Bismarck and what happened to that thing." You absolutely nailed it there, RC. Funny and accurate.
Never forget the Hood.
@@Endy5_Still_Alive one lucky shot , and the Royal Navy was still a real navy .......... What did the Tirpitz do ? Hid in fjords untill it got sunk
🎵 We gotta sink the Bismarck, 'cause the world depends on us 🎵
@@williamhenby952 And boy did they! That sucker sunk so hard it hit the bottom going more than 30 mph!
Sunk her with haste. The Brits weren't playing around. 🤣
You can break more and more of these rules as you grow in wealth and power. But then you start being less of a pirate and more of a Warlord.
Or president. Either works.
@@Endy5_Still_Alive I don’t get it.
And if you go for a second ship, don't go for firepower, go for freight space. Keep it close enough to dump your loot and you can stay operative longer before touching base. Usually you can also base some fighters on them either to bail you out or to catch up with a prize that can outrun your main ship. It also can be an ammunition and fuel store for your main ship, extending your operations.
Although the extra freight space can become especially handy when you hit a small colony. Food and machinery can take up a lot of space and machinery could sell quickly to another colony that has the money to buy it.
Also remember, protection money to not steal stuff and selling stuff back to the original owner can be more profitable than to offload loot elsewhere.
Or do actual protection. If a colony is worth getting hit again and again by other pirates, that may be a good base for you that pays for protection against pirates. You can always double as mercenaries or smugglers.
Especially Star Wars allows you a lot of flexibility.
Why am I not surprised Florida made it in this video?
Amazing what happens when you actually PUBLISH police response reports...Florida may be special...but it also happens to actually keep police record public more than other states, so people actually can FIND the bizzare.
Captain Harlock original came from the Star Blazers Manga
Thanks for the guide. This’ll help avoid the space cops
Harlock is to pirates what Zoro is to bandits. Plus you can't blame him for going with the theme because he fights against stagnation at least in his original runs. In Arcadia of my Youth hes the Priorun incarnate against the conquers of earth and their colonies. 😊
Oh man, how did I never see that, good catch.
A major point for space pirates is that the lightspeed limit can in many cases stop fast communications and thus mean people can't call for backup to anyone actually even a bit far away.
Pirates are primarily a phenomenon of unrest and strife, it's the areas where the local militaries are too busy duking it out to care about a few merchant vessels being picked and in fact would partake or tacitly help those are if you are taking out the enemies shipping.
i too love piracy and hate paying for things
Defending my boy harlock, when he isn't doing the job the earth gov is too lazy do do itself, he is plundering any unprotected vessel he can find, be it civilian or any lightly protected convoy. If your ship outguns half a navy you can do that
i want to see a universe where the 'dreaded space pirates' just turn out to be some sweaty teens swapping bootleg anime vhs! :D
I find this venture.... profitable!
Excellent video! If you want to scratch your space pirate fix, thete is indy game called Starsector. You can be a pirate, fundamentalist luddic pirate, corporate pirate, privateer, pirate hatwd by actual pirates..
Ah yes, piracy.
The ghost of General MacArthur terrorizing space pirates with nukes is definitely my next novel.
It's a background plot point in the one I'm working on right now, actually, lmao
@@njmksr8686 It's honestly a good idea. Stupid and silly, but hell, I'm onboard with it.
Hondo Onaka is a good pirate.
Also Hondo Onaka: Attacks the Jedi, multiple times.
To be fair. He survived. Multiple times. Most pirates only attack Jedi once
Not to mention the sixth as well. Surviving a Jedi is not that hard. Surviving a sigh is so much more impressive
I always think of Outlaw Star every time "Space pirates" are brought up. I know full well they are barely pirates if at all but still the first thing that comes to mind.
Thanks for the video.
I kind of enjoyed the Bodacious Space Pirates manga/anime althought they were basically pirates who became privateers in the end for a bunch of colonies rebelling against corpo authority & how they adapted their hereditary letter of marque conditions to more peaceful times. XD
I really do think the one exception to this that if you were the battletag universe after the third succession War like right after it and you had a Mckenna Class battleship but no one could stop you anyways and you could pretty much take Anything you wanted to since even the major powers would Have nothing to stop you
If we're talking about space pirates there was a Japanese light novel: "Reborn as a space mercenary I woke up piloting the strongest starship".
It depicted pirates as universally detested for being unproductive and literally butchering, robbing or enslaving anyone they come across. There's a part in the light novel where it said they put their captured victims through an unseen processing that turned them into mindless meat drones to become slave labours or send them into kamikaze attacks against the opposing major factions.
No examples for privateers available?
Pirate, Noun, a person who attacks and robs ships at sea, a Space Pirate is therefore someone that attacks and robs ships in space. Captain Harlock Does this as they use the supplies from the ships they attack to keep attacking more, just because he is a pirate AND a rebel does not give you the right to besmirch his good name.
I would argue that a space pirate would love/want mobile bases of some kind. If Hondo a simi-functional venitor class cruiser and he would use it like a portable castle, to stash his hoard of supplies and repair his attack craft. likely also setting up a black market for smaller pirate factions
Heck using the same logic it doesn’t need to be a spaceship to be a mobile base. A modern aircraft carrier fitted as a landing pad launcher would work, or one of the Jawa sand crawlers would fit the bill. Remember its all about not being WORTH a big factions times/man power to get rid of.
I can't believe Captain Harlock caught a stray there.
Starsector does pirates fairly well. You know shit is getting out of hand, when they bring out Atlas MkIIs. The normal Atlas is the biggest freighter in the game, the MkII is that, but with a crapload of guns strapped to her hull.
Hondo's biggest issue is he has a brain. During the biggest war in a thousand years no one in their right mind expects an undefended transport to be ferrying Jedi kids. I suspect Hondo spent the rest of his life wondering if that incident was actually real, a weird dream or an hallucination resulting from some bad Spice.
I still wish they had used Hondo to canonize the rebellion's use of Privateers though. In Legends most major factions employed Privateers at some punt including both sides of the Galactic Civil War but you don't see them in canon much.
Pirates, revolutionaries, freedom fighters... the usual jazz, all of those you failed to sing a contract with... all... of... them...
The best option is to become a corsair if the settings allows it, save the money and then retire
One of the best targets, honestly, would probably be coffee or energy drinks. Everybody wants them, and nobody's going to not buy it when you show up.
Over all good advice, though it may not be as simple in the far future, depending on what the society is like. IFF technology, scanning technology, and general paranoia and authoritarianism with high level technology to back it might make it impossible to blend in with civilian ships, or find a legal port in which to fence your plundered goods.
In which case, you'd have different priorities. In that scenario, I would imagine a fast ship with a lot of firepower and some ECM or jamming technology would be more desirable. The idea would be to pick out a target, hit them quick, salvage what you can, and then get out. The ECM would be a delaying/obfuscation tactic to fool sensors and keep the target from calling for help from the local patrols.
Also of note, people, especially skilled technicians, would actually be quite a valuable commodity. If the government is terribly corrupt and/or oppressive, a free spirited individual might just take up the chance to get out from under the boot, even if it means a harder life. Or on the flip side, getting in good with government or military officials via bribery, blackmail, or whatever means, would also be quite valuable. They could pull strings to cover for your crimes, direct investigations elsewhere, or even give you intel on patrol routes or promising targets (that might belong to rival companies to ones they have a stake in).
I enjoy all of SCIENCE INSANITY videos
The only disagreement I have with this videos it would be better to set up an asteroid belt so you can have defenses and many smaller bases
Small pirate ships are so true. Cossacks pirated Black Sea in between 16t-17h cent. via chaikas that were like 12-24 meters long. And they were damn best pirates you could've heard of back then.
That harlock movie was good
the United States Navy was literally started to fight pirates!
And still does.
As a male living in the southermost contineral US state I am king of my local drainage ditch.
This is a fun video I like this look at how space pirates work beyond just existing to be free EXP for the protagonist.
Hondo: "You know what I always say: speak softly and drive a big TANK"
I don't know why I ever held off on the videos. Ever since the first one as you can probably tell was battletech. Now any and all content I can't get enough of.
"Are they secretly the good guys?" No. Being good or evil is about what you do, not to whom you do it. Stealing doesn't suddenly become a righteous act just because you're stealing from a bad guy. That's just two theives stealing from each other.
So basically go after the space fairing equivalent of the truck of suff for your local big box store.
I just want to jump in here and say that one of the best ways to be a pirate is by having a front business. Say your in the outer rim and you attack merchant vessels. You board them and then take their shit. If the resits then you butcher their crew take their stuff back to your warehouse for your completely legitimate salvage and second hand goods business. This is how to be a good pirate. Don't f@$# around with slavery as most people will disagree with it. Hope this helps for any of my fellow struggling authors and have a good day.
If love to hear his take on pirates in Battletech.
Honda is probably my favorite pirate
Hondo knows when to GTFO when the risk outweighs the reward.
15:18 galaxy system
There's a great quote about piracy by HL Mencken. I can't post it here because ScrewTube keeps deleting it.
dark eldar?
Not really pirates .......... More like slavers
@@mathewkelly9968 that is true, but stealing people is still stealing and it's not like pirates never partook of a good old fashioned person snatch.
You uh... you seem to know a suspicious amount about piracy there SI.
Noted.
Any chance you take a look at Known Space?
Funny hat man
"Kenobi!"
1:20 Mmm, AotR screenshots.
This was a really fun Video
Steal the algorithm! Yar!
Pirate hunting could be lucrative.
Or bring you to ruin. Privateers had to find way to raise the money for their own expeditions and were entirely dependent on capturing worthy prizes and capturing or killing enough pirates to recoup the initial investment and pay their crews (including the prize money bonuses that made them join up with that captain in the first place).
And even with letters of marque, one man's privateer is another's pirate, and one bad cruise as a privateer can mean they'll turn pirate themselves.
In fact, historically, the only real difference between a ship engaged in legitimate business and a pirate ship was one bad payday.
How to be a pirate: Don't. It almost never ends well. The only times I have ever heard of that it did go well for someone in a real-world sense where they retired rich was in the case of some Privateers: pirates in the de-facto employ of a major government that sheltered you from law enforcement and demanded a cut of your profits. Some Arab Mediterranean pirates were de-facto vassals of some sultanate or other, and a few retired wealthy. A very few privateers for the English crown or other European powers got rich as well. In ancient China a huge pirate fleet became so powerful that their captain was bought off by the government and surrendered with a full pardon, and lived in wealth and peace till dying of old age - this is incredibly unusual. So yes, basically large government-affiliated and sanctioned pirates sometimes make it, but that's if they don't get killed by the angry opposing government they are being used against or a state that no longer needs you and decides to dispose of you. The success rate is truly abysmal, you would be far better off trying to build a legitimate business to get wealthy, and failure doesn't just mean having to try over or live in poverty, it means a horrible death.
Piracy, although its probably closer to privateering, was really profitable in the Mediterranean for something like 1000+ years. The issue that ran into was that the loses they cost started outpasing the cost of dealing with them, ala how the US Navy started.
The US government realized it would cost less to build a navy to attack the pirates at their home bases rather than just paying the tribute the pirates demanded to leave them alone, not to mention how some of the pirates attacked anyways.
@@cp1cupcake That's exactly what I was thinking about when I mentioned the Med. As far as I have read, most of those pirates were indeed beholden to different governments, making them tantamount to privateers. And an awful lot of them were also slavers. If you are familiar with why the U.S. Navy was formed (To deal with the pirates disrupting our fledgling nation's trade and capturing our sailors and selling them into slavery, while tacitly working for the various Islamic states around the Med.), then you also probably know that not long after the British Navy spent an absolute fortune in money and lives to interdict and forcefully end the slave trade nearly world-wide with their naval power, putting a basic end to slavery as a "thing" for the first time in world history. The Arabs were pretty much the worst slaving culture the world has ever known, and their activities put the European slave trade to shame as a short-lived drop in the bucket compared to their millennia of doing it on a scale that made Europe and America's look microscopic in comparison, and with much more cruelty. Do you know why there isn't a remnant black population in the Arab world like there is in the U.S. and the British colonies? The Arabs forcibly castrated their male slaves so they couldn't breed and cause "problems" - after all, they could easily just get more from relatively near-by Africa and places like the Caucasus where they captured European white slaves (Mostly females for sex slaves or harem women, and men for soldiers.). But nobody wants to talk about that, because it disrupts the useful SJW narrative that "All whites bad, always enslaving the Blacks and Browns!" - even though they did far more slaving amongst themselves and to each-other as well as Europeans than any other group ever has by FAR, and it was only put a stop to by European whites even though some were briefly complicit in it. Don't drink the SJW Kool-Aid.
No Ice Pirates? Boooooooh! ;)
Because what great story doesn't involve pirates
I am doubtful of your ability to teach me how to be one though.
EDIT - You forgot one thing....the excessive use of the ARRGGGHHH!!!!
Obligatory algorithm enhancer
In my thusend year sci-fi setting from the "future" years of 2019-3000 the second faction in the setting to stay a thing thoughout that thousend years is the yar-har-har golly old aghing Pirates founded in the golden age of pirtaes by a cosen of the hero's ancestor who loved capturing gallons and the harden empire targets... But then got bramnuda triangled to a strange 99 mile long D shaped island in the middle of the bramuda triangle and to the year 2023. Where he met the main character a signed a deal that the pirate gets to do his thing and he gets to be the bad guy and give troubled folks an oulet and safe place... over the corse of the time line he would a massive several fleets 1 per "7 sea" of captured and coverted mechant vesals able to end any nation if he wanted and he can operate anywhere at any time and in the space eras he begins to make his own ships even glorus space gallons and because he is a menice he is only kept in check by that deal and being the least powerful major faction at any given time... Is he is good exemple of a pirate I feel yes but he isn't a normal pirate etheir just a stupidly good and successful one.
Pirates of the carribian really blew blackbeards ship out the ocean didn't it. I thought that was the accurate interprtation, bar the flamethrower but wow thats tiny🤣
Governments and corporations get big mad when pirates muscle in on THEIR schtick. Lol
There can be only one...... pirate.
When you mentioned the Mediterranean you forgot the two main products that the IRL Barbary Coast Pirates did hunt for, slaves and hostages for ransom. They had pretty much ownership of the whole sea to do wathever they wanted, while were based in and around the muslim kingdoms there.
Also, they had pretty much the perfect setup according to your concepts, while the British and Spanish ignored them, because they were not stupid enough to pester the only two actual naval powers in Europe. And the pirates would be there colecting bribes to stop harassing the locals forever.
Until USA decided they would not, created the USA NAVY just to eliminate them (for real, it is in the first line of text of the congress' charter that created the Navy) and obtained peace at the mouth of a cannon...
Also, Hondo Onaka did knew hi was hunting the Jedi kids, because he was objectivelly seeking to steal theyr kyber cristals, and kids are easyer targets than adults.
And the run-ins with the two sides on the clone wars were his fault. Had him just ignored Count Dooku instead of taking him for ransom, or, at least, seizing the opportunity , by selling him to one of the two sides, he would be gold. When he choose to piss off both Jedi and Sith, he was doomed: the Sith went for revenge, and the Jedi ignored his pleas for help... and later had him smugling missiles to support Saw Gerrera...
Hondo rules
FIRST!
I mean obviously not, but Comments for Algorithm Fodder
Can you get a better mic or dampen the area you are in? I would love to listen to your stuff but the audio is bad. Not trying to be a dick. Your content is decent but the audio is killing it.