Tell me Veeky Forums, how should a space setting do Space Pirates?

TUBES?!

I handle them as disparate groups, none really making to any noteworthiness, doing whatever they see as "their thing." From human trafficking, mining operations, racketeering, look at the current criminal organizations and just supply spaceships.

Sure, you're gonna get guys that put on the 1700s Caribbean Pirate getup, but you're also going to run into guys that have the sense to know that nobody cares who or what you look like. Occasionally, though, you're going to get big names that solidify a force and actually try to either legitimize their business, or become a nation unto their own.

Basically just imagine how diverse and varied the cultures each country's criminal underbelly can create and multiply that by "holy fuck we have a lot of colonies"

TUUUUBES

Think somali pirates in space.

Big ships getting swarmed by little ones.

Will they use space AKs?

Fuck yeah why not user?

Deep space piracy, or more realistic near port piracy?

>Only thing that they "should" be, is criminals, in space, who take things from other people's ships.
I dropped that series as soon as I realized it wasn't doing that.

Metroid-esque Space Pirates? Or Pirates in Space? Those are fairly different questions.

Ayyy.

Page 11. Great thread.
Say goodbye, guys

Make them fa/tg/uys who raid for cash to spend on exorbitantly priced minis.

A common name for a number of different groups, often with ties to Organized crime on larger, more established worlds or often independents who occasionally raid supply and mining ships for their resources and occasionally take hostages.

Either way, taking them alive (or rather, take the ship in tact) is lucrative business and bounty hunters are adept at close range/melee.

...

it died

...

>tfw you're the OP of that thread

Good thread, but that OP was shit and by extension so are you.

>often
>occasionally
>occasionally
So they're just on-world mafia who infrequently go off-world to loot?
Kinda boring, to be honest.

Make them an actual, horrifyingly brutal threat, to commerce and trade vessels. And theme them off of real-life pirates. Disabling, and taking over ships, and spacing the crews. The "nicer" ones might give them an escape shuttle with minimal life-support and supplies.

Make it actually seen, and known, that these pirates are actively engaging in piracy and are a threat to all non-military ships, and even lone military ships, travelling the regions they lurk in.

Are we talking pirates in space, or Space Pirates?

Alternatively, make them an inconvenience like the pirates in Micronesia. Unlike the Somali Pirates, Micronesian pirate takeovers pretty much never turn violent, which is one of the reasons we never hear about it despite the trade routes they prowl being some of the most heavily trafficked in the world.

The show up, with guns of course, and take control of the ship, but they tend to just corral the crew and keep everyone nice and quiet while they work. Their target isn't hostages or stolen goods, but the freighter's fuel, which they siphon off to sell later. The whole process takes maybe an hour or so, and the ship doesn't even need to stop for the duration. After that, they leave, having been more an inconvenience than a threat. Freighter companies write off the missing fuel, usually a pittance for a vessel so large, as "spillage" and continue on as usual, either oblivious or apathetic to the pirates so long as what they take is not worth the trouble and nobody gets killed.

An assortment of warlords, refugees, renegades, smugglers, scavengers and thieves. They might lurk about as small fleets or blend in with the society of governments around them. Others may declare their own little empires by force; the strongest pirate lords are only distinguishable from legitimate governments by the fact that no nations around them recognize them as a government. Nations clear out space pirates when they can afford to, or hire them/pay them off/ignore them when its too hard. Hell, some of the more shady nations actively welcome the more "reputable" pirate bands, as big salvage hauls can be repaired to serve as a navy, converted into scrap, studied (if it's a particularly valuable ship carcass) or - if it has some potentially incriminating information on it - destroyed.
Pirates are only dangerous when their neighbors are under-equipped and uncreative with their dealings.

>The victim does not lose blood or any other vital fluids, and yet the Metroid extracts energy; identifying this energy is our central problem.
>It takes no physical form, and yet without it, the victim dies.
>We will continue to research this matter, as the isolation of this life-giving essence could be the key to our ascendance.

>the key to our ascendance.
What did they mean by this?

>There was no mercy for the Federation dogs. At the command of Dark Samus, we jettisoned the crew into the frigid depths of space, leaving the wreck of Valhalla as a warning to the Federation. Let them tremble before our might!

Nice, hoow would that translate to a space setting? I'm imagining small pirate crews roaming near deep space resource mines and refineries, not attacking the infrastructure itself but the transports coming and going, taking whatever materials they want or need but always making sure they don't endanger the crew and leave enough merchandise to make hunting them unprofitable.

Unless of course, they find that one big haul that will get them set for life, if they can get away with. The one that is worth risking the ire of the spacers and colonists and corporations for. And of course, that is just what the players are transporting and need to protect.

Pirates in real life would generally board a ship they wanted to plunder or blow it full of holes and fish the loot out of the water. Neither strategy makes sense in space: you can't exactly "board" a spaceship in the same way you can board an age of sail ship, and you can't blow it to smithereens and grab the loot out of space because decompression will destroy almost anything unless it was specifically designed to resist that (and let's be honest, why would crates intended to store things INSIDE decompression resistant ships themselves be decompression resistant?). So how would space pirates get to their booty?

I will never forget Nintendo for what they did to Samus. They took my 1.93m, muscular supersoldier waifu and turned her into a traditionally attractive womanlet

>traditionally attractive womanlet
As Veeky Forums as she was, she wasn't really too muscular.

Her Super Metroid sprite had some pretty defined abs (by Super Nintendo standards).

This. I prefer to play my space pirates like Sentai villains, with tons of bumbling mooks on a ship surrounding the colorfully monstrous alien bosses that actually have names.

You side with Conrad Mazian!
youtube.com/watch?v=Af49WfGUiNA

Some but not very much. Her other ending pictures show some muscle but still somewhat slim.

What's up with all the TUUUBES talk?

It means they want to go where the Chozo went.

It also means that to combat an alien parasite that could not be killed, the Chozo created a species that eats souls.

Alright, can't argue with that. Still, downsizing her from 1.93m (I'm using pic related as my source) to... somewhere in the 1.60m range (I think Other M set it to that size) makes my rage grow faster than the constantly growing universe.

Pirates should be hired by whatever galactic government exists to steal from rival factions or races. Pirates are essentially mercenaries, but their purpose isn't to weaken the enemy in combat but weaken their trade.
Pirates in space should be after commodities they can sell themselves or sell to their government.
Why? Because history says the most successful pirates were given pardons against attacking enemy ships of whatever government was handing out their pardon. And it should work the same way in space

It's an old /v/ meme. Metroid's level design often includes small tunnels (or tubes) that Samus can traverse with the morph ball. This includes such things as Space Pirate bases, which implies that Space Pirates build these tubes that they can't use but Samus can. That expanded intro an obsession with tubes.

>That expanded intro an obsession with tubes.
Or maybe that's just how they communicate with eachother. After all, the internet is a series of tubes.

Other M was extremely inconsistent when it came to size and scale, so I don't think it's the best way to judge.

TUBES!

If there's teleportation, probably a smash-and-grab operation that involves rushing a target's cargo bay and porting your dudes back to the ship with loot in tow.

I like to think that, since the pirates stole most of their technology, they have no idea what the tubes do but if they don't include them then nothing works.

The Space Pirates were the second most technologically advanced species in the setting, behind only the (extinct) Chozo.
And even there, it's not that they have a worse grasp on technology. They just don't have any footing in magic.

But they were pretty close to getting the hang of it.
The Metroids are a great lead on that, which is why they're so obsessive about them.
And they were much better than the Federation at reverse engineering Chozo tech.

The Feds seem to be better at reverse engineering Samus' technology though. By Fusion they've duplicated them.

Metroid Space Pirates were less pirates and more some bug civilization that just happened to not have an official name.

Space Pirates should keep the look of pirates, only in space.

>Space Pirates should keep the look of pirates, only in space.
You know pirates have existed from antiquity all the way until the present day and changed looks dramatically based on time and location, right? There's no reason why pirates in space should look like 17th century West European pirates, other than being recognizeable as pirates to Western audiences.

>(I'm using pic related as my source)
why would you use the super metroid nintendo power comic as a source for anything. Like every comic in nintendo power (hey-o captain N), it wasn't accurate to the source material at all.

Picture related.

I LOVE SPACE PIRATES

>the one with a drill hand

I never noticed this

>why would you use the super metroid nintendo power comic as a source for anything
Wishful thinking. Samus will always be a swole giantess in my heart.

Swole giantess is best Samus.

All other versions are just from men who are afraid of their waifu kicking their ass.

Use the Metroid II instruction manual instead, since I'm pretty sure it's where Nintendo Power pulled the figure from anyway.

The super metroid comic is awful and your stronk independent giantess has to rely on barry burton, paul blart and a shitty yoda clone to save her several times within.

pretty sure those stats include the suit, which they forgot about when making

No way that suit is under 200lbs.

So have peg legs and eyepatches

it's never shown to be especially heavy, and most of the durability comes from supplemental energy tanks

chozo battle armor would probably be fairly light, because it was originally designed to be worn by dudes who have wings and fly around

With robot parrots.

Okay, I know It's stupid to expect any sense of scale from soft sci-fi, but:
>190 kcm
>90 kg
Makes perfect sense for a tall, very muscular person. For a armored battlesuit? Not so much. Even if we're talking light super-space-alloys here, it's still absurdly light considering the thickness of the thing.

> has to rely on barry burton, paul blart and a shitty yoda clone to save her several times within.
>Implying I give a shit about them fucking up an awesome character concept
>Implying I even read the comic

Although if we are talking about the one where she teams up with a kid for a bit I remember her mostly kicking ass so a few times being saved from enemy sucker punches is fine. Nobody is perfect.

> it's still absurdly light considering the thickness of the thing.
>what is magic space materials?

There isn't a very big difference in height with or without the suit. A couple centimeters at most.

In Zero Mission, they can crawl through the narrow spaces so it isn't that stupid.
A 2D game can't have a believable map design
anyway.

Weighting at least slightly more than styrofoam, I would assume. Again, since the numbers actually makes perfect sense for a person, it seems the most likely alternative.

>I know It's stupid to expect any sense of scale from soft sci-fi, but:
metroid has no sense of scale, and the suit is mostly designed around jumping and spinning around in the air than it is trudging through an active warzone

because it was made by bird people with stupidly good technology

You don't, because space pirates make no sense. There's no stealth in space. Even if the pirates did somehow manage to plunder a vessel they could be easily tracked down for retribution.

>ponytail
>boots
it's actually fairly significant once you take away the "fake" height on the zero-suit sprite

The Feds had prior help from the Chozo and hadn't recreated any of it by the end of Prime 3, the Space Pirates had duplicated ~½ of it by Prime 1.

I kind of thought pirates would look like your average background characters from Star Wars.

Just a bunch of totally random weirdos covered over in armor pieces, ammo pouches, leather stuff, and various guns, skulls, spikes, and robot pieces cobbled together from whatever crap they can find, loot, or build themselves in an effort to look extra scary. They would be more about looking like a Rob Liefeld 90's extreme character in space and scaring the ship crews than being super good or organized in combat.

>Weighting at least slightly more than styrofoam, I would assume

Yeah, that's the "magic" part of the magic space material

>There's no stealth in space.

Step 1. Be blurry.
Step 2. Do like squids do.
Step 3. Turn sharply.
Step 4. Throw big, hollow, blurry frames in various directions.
>You are now stealth in Space!

>I dropped that series as soon as I realized it wasn't doing that.
Aw don't be that way user, government sanctioned insurance fraud is fun!

I just have a hard time buying that a big, bulky powered battle armor with a huge cannon loaded with missiles would weight something in the neighborhood of 10 kg. I mean, again, metroid has no sense of scale so it might be what they intended, but it's really hard for me to swallow.

Don't be silly. What kind of space pirate doesn't have a cloaking device on their ship?

Wouldn't the same be true of... you know, sea pirates? The real ones? Unless they have like weather control magic to always attack from fog or something, it's not like you can make your ship stealthy on the sea.

Unless submarines, I guess.

>would weight something in the neighborhood of 10 kg
Samus is probably hovering around 5'10 outside of the suit.

She isn't 190 pounds.

>Not also removing the "fake" height of the suit's boots as well.

It's a shame we can't physically see them. I guess we will have to rely on their incredibly obvious and impossible to shroud heat signature.

Or you could remove the rod of 'Diamond-Hard SciFi is the only acceptable SciFi' from your ass and restart your thought train.

Even 20 or 30 kg would be ridiculous.

In hindsight;
Step 4. Throw blurry decoys.

You're in a sci-fi thread. Pic related.

Get a cloaking device for that, senpai. It's like you've never even been to space.

And now the thread has devolved into pure autism with idiots arguing over how much Samus weighs

Depends a lot on the hardness or the setting.

In a hard sci-fi setting you can detect a drive signature from across the solar system, lasers have a relatively limited effective range and large heat expenditure, mass drivers are to slow to be very accurate, and docking with something that doesn't want to dock with you is nigh impossible etc. Generally space piracy is a really hard and a massive pain in the ass to do, in the traditional pirate sense at least.
I would imagine pirates in that kind of setting would try to disguise themselves as a supply ship or something tricking the target into letting them board and then disable the enemy ship before escaping with the spoils.

In a soft sci-fi setting anything goes and you should just do whatever you and your players think is cool.

Uh, that's not how you compare a person's height to an object's height, mate.

fully articulated plate mail weighs less than that

yeah, and it's what, a few milimeters thick? Samus pauldrons alone have more total volume than that, I recon.

duh

I think it started with trying to estimate her height, but then we got sidetracked... I admit, this got kinda ridiculous.

it's also made by real people out of real materials, and not magic bird people can make things out of magic

We've kinda hit a dead end here, or rather, not been going anywhere since the argument began. I'll just believe what I find reasonable, and you believe what you find reasonable. It's bloody soft sci-fi, after all.

>not magic bird people
Except it is magic bird people.

People seem to forget that magic is canon to the Metroid universe. Bryyo had a Technology vs. Magic war that blew the planet to bits. The Federation just happens to be a faction which lacks magic.

The power suit is literally magical technology, hybridized from Federation tech and Chozo magic and technology.

This should put into perspective how advanced the Federation are that they were able to create the suit that Sylux stole, as well as the Lockjaw.

>Bryyo had a Technology vs. Magic war that blew the planet to bits.
Absolutely wrong.

The "magic" that reptilicus databanks refer to is the technology created by the Lords of Science. Through science. It's just that the savage primals are hypocrites, and subsume some of that technology under the guise that it's "magic".

Isn't there a canon event in the Metroid-verse called the Horus rebellion?

Weapons that disable the ships electronics and leave them "dead in the water" coupled with teleportation tech or boarding pods. Or just blow the enemy ship to smithereens and have your space pirates scavenge the valuables with space suits or with drones.