This guide is for those who prefer a solo game in Survival mode and want to check if the warships you built are good and if the bases are well protected. If you already know how to summon Space Pirates, then you can skip the next chapter of the guide and go directly to the chapter "Private Pirates".

The Space Pirates are the only enemy faction that prevents the player from surviving comfortably in the vanilla Star System. However, they are not characterized by aggressiveness and they will not attack you if you yourself do not want it.

In order for Space Pirates to appear in your Star System, you need to set the following settings when creating a world:
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As a result, pirate ships will appear in the game from time to time, which will only attack you if they are in close proximity. Additionally, you will have access to "May Day" signals, which can be mini-quests for exploring pirated and abandoned ships or simply hidden pirate stations for various purposes.

Most pirate stations and ships, when attacked, summon one or more drones that attack you and prevent you from capturing an enemy ship.

These drones come in different types and sizes, but they all attack the player directly, not the ship they are on, so they are easy to deal with with automatic turrets.

The number and type of drones, as well as the frequency of their appearance, depends on what name one of the enemy antennas uses on the pirate ship. This fact has been known for a long time and is described, for example, in Fandom Wiki[spaceengineers.fandom.com] Below are the drones that will appear if the antenna has the name "Homing Beacon", which spawns one or two drones every 20 seconds:


V2-Gunboat does not refer to the "Homing Beacon" antenna. Unlike other drones, this is a large grid drone, and I brought it here in order to show what the strongest enemy can additionally appear during the battle.

The V2-Gunboat is made of heavy armor, armed with a forward rocket launcher and a Gatling turret that can deal sensitive damage to your ship from a distance of 800 m despite evasive maneuvers.

Drones can certainly make life difficult for you, but as I said, they only appear next to you when you yourself want it and they have a common drawback - a primitive attack tactic. Drones will stop spawning if the antenna that called them is destroyed or de-energized.

But the saddest part is that the vanilla Space Pirates haven't been modded since the beginning of the game and don't have the ranged weapons that came with the Warfire II Update.

You have probably seen videos on YouTube or Reddit, which demonstrate the capabilities of various guided missiles to destroy enemy ships.

Most of them are made according to one scenario: in creative mode, any ship from the workshop is inserted into the world and the Space Pirates faction is assigned to it.

For those who do not know how to do this, I will tell you what you need in the Terminal, select all the blocks using the key combination Ctrl+A and transfer them to the Space Pirates. Don't forget to set the "show hidden blocks" checkbox:

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After assigning a ship to the Space Pirate faction, it begins to shoot back from missiles flying at it or attacking ships from automatic turrets. At the same time, the ship itself remains motionless and is not the most difficult target.

The simplest thing that could be done in this case was to activate the patrol mode on autopilot between two points in order to assess the vulnerability of the ship in motion.

A more complex option involved installing a special script that allowed you to activate the autopilot at the player's coordinates and implemented a vanilla attack scenario:
https://steamproxy.net/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=885731698
Next, I want to offer my own version of how to make a Space Pirate out of any ship that will attack you using AI blocks that became available after the Automaton update. Private Space Pirates will not be as defenseless and predictable as vanilla ones.

To do this, you will need to select a point in space or on the surface of the planet, which will be at least 2500 m from your other ships. Activate the Creative Mode features in the admin panel via the Alt+F10

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Select the ship you are going to test in the workshop and install five additional blocks on it (if they are not already there):

1. Remote control
   
2. AI Flight (Move)
   
3. AI Offensive (Combat)
   
4. Programmable block
   
5. Timer

Block names are default for the English version of the game. If you are using a localized version, you will need to rename them as indicated in the list. The ordinal index after the name does not matter, but the remote control must be named exactly "Remote Control" without index or other prefixes.

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Then, for the AI Offensive block, you need to configure the forward weapons, if it is installed on the ship:

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Now you need to set up a timer with a delay of one second and two actions: in the first slot of the timer panel, you need to place a program block with the "setup" argument, and in the second - start the timer itself. This will execute the script set in the program block every second.

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Setting up the program block consists in loading the EasyPlay automation script into it and installing in its "Custom Date" field the automation scenario from the corresponding section of this manual, which will control the ship:
https://steamproxy.net/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2688952356
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It remains to start the timer so that the ship switches to the defense mode of the point in space in which it is installed and assign all the blocks of the ship to the Space Pirates faction:


Now, when any ship that does not belong to the Space Pirates faction appears within a radius of 2500 meters, your ship will actively defend the point in space where it was installed.

At the same time, he will turn his nose to the enemy, maneuver, use forward weapons and try to maintain the distance specified in the scenario settings in the mode of all-round defense of a point in space. When the battle ends or the target is removed at a distance greater than the one specified in the settings, the ship will return to the specified point until the next enemy appears.

This behavior will prevent the ship from moving away from the defense point and then looking for it for the next series of tests. Unless, of course, all installed AI blocks remain intact.

And finally, if you want to insert several Space Pirate ships close to each other into the world at once, so that they do not shoot during the installation process, you can temporarily increase your reputation with the SPRT faction in the Administrator panel and return it back after everything is ready.

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I will be glad if this guide helps to make your warships better. Having fun!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wsit_E5WU_s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BfTUaoWJNU4
The SPD Monitor uses a more advanced scenario, which is listed in the description in the workshop. Simply press key #9 on the number pad and assign the ship to the Space Pirate faction.
https://steamproxy.net/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2985810040
The Patrol Boat is already set up according to the guide above. To activate the defense mode, you need to sit in the cockpit, press the number 1 key on the numeric keypad and assign all the blocks to the Space Pirates faction. The antenna is set to "Homing Beacon" mode (see "Vanilla Pirates" chapter). Be ready to repel the constant attacks of annoying drones.
https://steamproxy.net/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2987065556
An assault corvette that attacks all these targets with guided missiles
https://steamproxy.net/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2993614241