Ok I’ve been playing for a while now and was wondering why CCP have never implemented letting players start as Sansha or Gurista etc. The ships used by these factions are already in game so there wouldn’t be that much of an issue with ship trees or skills. Players could start the game in the Null Sec zone occupied by whatever faction and do training missions specific to that faction. It would be a hard route to take I’m sure what with vast swaiths of High Sec and Low on the lookout for your ships but I reckon it would really boost the game. If this has been put forward before then sorry but I’ve played other Shittier games that allow you to join and play pirate factions
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I’d like to see more races and bloodlines in character editor too but that’s probably a little like wishing for walking in stations 
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Nothing stoping you from being a “Sansha or Gurista etc.” loyalist or joining such organization or creating one.
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I know you can ‘play’ as a ‘pirate’ of your choice and gain standings by doing their missions but there is no option to start as one. Is there a way to ‘join’ an NPC pirate Corp in game?
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Probably because Sansha are a bunch of “borg” wannabe clones and being an individual born in that faction would be an impossibility.
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All characters start as adult capsuleers anyway and the background is for you to fill up if you wish. This have as much sense as starting as a robed amarrian (in lack of better options) and roleplaying blood raiders slaver.
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I used to role play a serpentis pirate in everyshore at war with the gallente federation. Id attack players running missions and mining. It was great fun until the region died. 
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Because that doesn’t fit the lore or the game design?
Pirate hulls are, by definition and design, better and far more expensive than the basic T1 hulls. That makes them unsuitable to be racial starter ships or anything of the sort.
Also the mechanics of NPC corps don’t really support pirate characters. Pirates are, by definition, shoot on sight in empire space while NPC corps offer protection.
Lore wise the Pirates don’t have direct access to capsule tech, only the empires do, so few if any people born under pirate authority would ever become Capsuleers and those who do would be NPC levels of loyal to those pirate factions.
Overall this idea just doesn’t work.
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They could add whole new ship lines for pirate factions. But actually only reskinned versions of the current empire ships and some few different attributes would work ok.
Lore can always be expanded.
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Players start in nullsec? I really like the idea.
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it could be an option.
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FW corps seem to work around this just fine.
I think having Pirate starter corps is an issue, for most of the reasons you said, but I can see players joining a pirate npc corp at some point. I guess the question there is what benefits do players gain for joining pirate corps?
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Its a good idea and it was something I wanted.
I made an alt a long time ago, flew it out to serpentis prime, and then ran into non existent player market, and lack of seeded bpos and skills, combined with my chosen race (gallente) starting at -5 to serpentis, and the LP market not being worth it because the loot drops in deds anyway, which can be got in more convenient places. So at the point where I’d have to delete alt, rechoose race and put effort into the logistics of supporting it, I stopped.
IMO its more or less a bunch of cut and pasting to fix, along with some new non mission encounters, and considering how belt-rats work to round out the sandboxish stuff (so you don’t have to mission because you can’t really shoot serpentis things if you want to keep your serpentis rep).
The missions themselves at least are already there.
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Just seed out some bpos for regular empire hulls. Maybe even just expensive “stolen” 1 run empire bpcs, so its a fairly spendy existence to begin with to give space for players to feed in supplies from empire.
The pirate lore is utterly broke with respect to capsuleers, since vigilants and gilas and every other pirate hull apparently are designed to be flown by capsuleers anyway.
I personally came back to eve to play a new character (ie this character was a new life as a CAS character because its a fun place to live), and I think they’d probably get a lot of other returning people - particularly if they can’t just be walleted into high performance empire living characters - ie start with major or even permanent empire standing headaches and some system / time period of being locked from out from using skill injectors on ‘experimental pirate capsules’.
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Because nobody would benefit from starting in the NPC nullsec systems…
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Because we still have too many moral bastards in the game. It’s kind of a challenge. You can’t be born as a moron. You have to become a moron! 
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There’s no point in this though, from a game design perspective. If you want a pirate-looking hull we have Skins for that. No one’s going to pay more for a hull that doesn’t do more and if they do more then that has to be balanced and that’s a ton of work in an already pretty crowded design space.
First off, if you look at the lore surrounding Capsule Tech it’s a retrofit that’s applied to existing hulls. The ships built by Capsuleers for Capsuleers are versions specifically designed to use and make the most of the Capsule which means fewer crew, space for the pod itself, and more automation to make full use of the Capsuleers integration with his vessel.
Also I didn’t say that the Pirate factions didn’t have any Capsule tech, just that they don’t have the same access that the Empires have, and even they really only get it through the SoCT/Jove though lore-wise that’s slowly changing.
I’m really not sure why you think putting crippling restrictions on a character from the start would be appealing to anything other than a tiny niche group of players, probably mostly those with existing characters that let them partially or entirely get around the problems starting massively negative to empires would cause.
Stuff like this is always fairly niche, and the more restrictive it is the more niche is becomes for whatever game you’re playing. In this case I can’t see more than a tiny fraction of players being interested since you’re basically proposing hardcore mode in an already punishing game.
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Thanks for the replies. I just wondered why it had never been implemented that’s all. And yes now I think about it it would be pretty hardcore.
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In brief, I think the basic answer there is that it just doesn’t really fit with the direction the game design has gone and there’s no particularly compelling reason to change things to make it fit and then implement it.
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I’ve been wondering this ever since the limited release of pirate corvettes (formerly rookie ships)
even if it was something as simple as being able to “sign up” with one of the pirate factions once you reached a certain standing with them, and you would start getting the pirate rookie ships instead of your old empire ones. hell, i’d even be okay with loosing the ability to dock at an empires HS stations if your standings with them got too low.
if you are that dedicated to the RP, then its a small price to pay.
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