Piracy

Piracy is a career path in Star Citizen, encompassing a variety of criminal activities, many of which are still planned. These activities include but are not limited to robbery, racketeering, manufacture and distribution of narcotics, unauthorized or illegal salvage, sale of stolen goods, enslavement or sale or use of slaves, and murder.

As with many other careers, the precise mechanics have not been outlined – instead, the intended goals and career experience have both been clarified through a series of short stories. The series for piracy specifically is entitled “B0otyCall,” a radio show hosted by a pirate named Jester. At this time, there are nine such stories covering a variety of topics, from as of yet unimplemented mechanics, to conduct between pirates, and what constitutes an acceptable amount of murder.

Law, Reputation, and Piracy
Recognized pirate ships should not expect to travel or operate in UEE space unmolested, nor should they expect landing permission to be given in UEE ports. Detection can be circumvented with forged hull ID's and personal ID's, however, these are stated to be imperfect, and caution should still be taken.

Piracy is intended to be accomplished within UEE space, although at great risk. It requires that one first disables a communications relay. This prevents hostile action from being observed passively by the UEE. Thus, the pirate would not lose any reputation with the appropriate parties. However, it is unclear if player launched emergency beacons depend on comm relays, or if their signal is strong enough to propagate through a star system on its own.

It is known that there will be criminal controlled regions of UEE space, and that these regions will have their own laws. However, it is unclear if the UEE will notice or prosecute crimes committed in these regions.

Pirate Law(s)
It should be first understood that there is no single pirate law or code – NPC pirate organizations will have their own laws, customs, and regulations which will be applied within their sphere of influence. These will be enforced within their controlled territories, and enforcement may extend beyond their territory if a Blood Price is assigned to whoever broke said law.

Anticipated Gameplay
It is intended for ships to be considerably more difficult to destroy. As more ship systems come online, such as the final iteration of armor, the final iteration of shields, component redundancy, and the final iteration of component damage, simply popping a ship will be impractical. Moreover, the rewards will be lower. The objective of this is to incentivize boarding or negotiating a payment rather than pouncing on a ship and killing them instantly to receive most of their cargo. Easily accessible commodities in lawful space will be less easily accessed in lawless space. Operational costs run high, but so do gains.

Hiding within nebulas should be possible, and reduce one's signature - so they provide a method of jumping people.

It is stated that we will be able to scan hulls for the cargo within, so targets will no longer be random. Likewise, hulls can be hardened against scanning - serving both smugglers, and those who have cargo that they believe best not seen by pirates.

Mindless killing is likely to result in investigation from the UEE and potentially even hostile action from NPC pirates.

The Distinction Between Piracy and Griefing
Precisely what manner of player interactions constitute piracy, as opposed to griefing, has been a contentious issue amongst the community. On June 25th, 2018, a Lead System Designer defined piracy as a for profit enterprise, and contrasted it with repeated targeted player kills which prevented a person from actually playing the game. In that same interview, it was later clarified that regions of space will have variable and known degrees of risk and reward, with the greatest rewards laying in the riskiest, lawless regions – as there would be safer albeit less rewarding options available, as well as information about the inherent risks of various regions provided to players thereby enabling them to make an informed decision about where to play, it was concluded that complaints of griefing in space known to be lawless would be mostly indefensible. The primary determiner of whether an activity constitutes griefing would appear to be denying a player the ability to play: it is acceptable to make the life of a player difficult, to have an antagonistic relationship, to seek vengeance or have enemies, to hate some as you love others, but there is “a line.” While that line certainly includes total denial of gameplay, what other cases may constitute griefing can only be discerned as more game mechanics come online and the player population grows.