For me it is bit silly that pirate factions have better ships for ship to ship combat despite empires haveing lot of scientist inventing new ways to kill each other.
I would suggest that makeing pirate faction ships as combat goes as good as empire T1 ships and haveing bonuses for tracking and tackling other ships instead.
Pirate faction that have bonuses fitting expanded probe launcher (no bonuses for hacking, let this stay for SOE)
Pirate faction whose ships can not be Dscanned (like Huginn or Curse)
Pirate faction whos ships have super lock times (like frigs resolution 2000mm, cruisers 750mm, battleships 500mm)
Pirate faction with super align times and warp speeds (maybe 10au for frigs, 7au for cruisers, 5 au for battleships)
Bonus to loot drop rate that depends of pilot security status (loot drop is counted from pilot that gave last blow and maybe rate should be 2,5% per negative sec lvl status 25% max). This might be bonus for every pirate faction ship
Yes, that is true empires have their T2 and T3 ships. Point is that current pirate ships are too powerful for a tier that they are classified in. I am FW pilot and I dont know how should beginner pilot with rifter or punisher go agangst daredevil or succubus.
Also pirate ships dont seem to be very piraty but just T2 ships classified as T1 ships.
Pirate lifestile in my mind is good tackle and increased loot. So differance between empire and pirate ships should be that each pirate faction has extra bonuses to how they hunt down their pray their own distinct way. Fast lockers as good gate campers, non Dscannabele ships wait in gated mission sites ect.
I have nothing agangst pirates haveing T2 versions of their ships with increased combat abilities
I totally agree that pirate faction frigs don’t belong in novice sites. So do quite a few people. But if that’s the problem you have with pirate frigs, then change fw, not the frigs.
Outside FW pirate frigs are a tier unto themselves. Like dead space mods.
Not really how any of this works.
Pirate ships is short for pirate faction ships. As in made by a pirate faction. Not necessarily a ship designed exclusively for piracy. And even more than that, if you check the in-game database they are not called pirate anything. They are non-empire faction ships.
With regards to them being tech2: Tech2 refers to advanced design with specialised roles including interceptor, bomber or electronic attack etc. As such pirate ships cannot be classed as tech2, because they don’t fall into those categories. Even the dramiel that can be likened to a powerful interceptor, it is still missing specialisations like warp disruption bonuses, mwd sig bonuses, interdiction nullifier bonuses and it does not require any interceptor skill book. It is categorically not an interceptor.