No Man's Sky - Tips to Pirate for Beginners

Quick Guide to Piracy

What You Need

For proper piracy, you will need the following:

Infra-Knife (photon cannons are okay, but the infra-knife is better).
Rocket Launcher.
Ship with at least 7 empty inventory slots (I use a maxed-out hauler).

The Procedure of Piracy

To carry out effective piracy, simply follow these steps:

Wait in an economically stable system until a fleet of freighters arrive.
From a fair distance (I recommend at least 1700 U), use the rocket launcher to destroy a cargo pod attached to one of the freighters.
Put your ship into full reverse, and wait for the reinforcements to arrive.
Using the rocket launcher, pick the enemy ships off one by one while flying backwards.
After a few waves of enemies, a large gunship will arrive. Do not shoot this ship! eliminate the small fighters, and leave the gunship intact.
The gunship will wait for you to make the first move, so if you don’t hit any of its turrets, you should be okay to just ignore it.
Because the large ship is intact and not in combat, no reinforcements will be called, and you should be good to just ignore it.
Now that no reinforcements will be called, use the infra-knife to quickly strip mine the fleet. if you only steal from the freighters and avoid the loose cargo pods, it won’t even cost you any reputation, but I prefer to clear out everything.
Travel to the nearest space station, and sell all the materials you won’t use. on average, you should turn a profit of around 1.2 to 1.8 million Units per fleet, but if you went that extra mile and collected the enemy ship drops, you can earn up to 4 million from a single fleet.
Rinse and repeat. simply exit the system to completely reset the state of all freighters, then strike again.

The End Result

This guide teaches you how to be a good pirate in the game. It also shows you how to fight NPC ships well. This method works best against small NPC ships. It’s not as good against other players because they can change their tactics.

How to Pirate & Recover Standing

Why Pirate?

It’s an easy way to get some useful resources, such as chromatic metal, gold, frigate fuel etc., salvaged frigate modules (these are used to unlock upgrades and base parts for your freighter) and contraband cargo; which can sell for high prices in non-Outlaw systems.

Where to Pirate?

Outlaw systems are considered the best to use as there are no System Authorities (sentinels).

How to Pirate?

Freighters have cargo pods attached to the hull that you can shoot – if you want to be selective, first scout the pods by approaching and aiming at them.

Shooting pods escorting the freighters or the hull pods will result in system race standing loss, and outlaw faction standing increase.

When you start destroying the cargo pods, enemy ships will start spawning. Don’t shoot them, or more ships will come. Guns on the freighter are weak compared to enemy ships.

To Escape:

Land on the Space Anomaly, a station or any friendly freighter, including your own. You can also boost away until the Pulse Drive is ready to engage.

Recover Standing:

Land at a trade outpost in a system for the applicable race and buy race curiosities to gift to NPCs. The curiosities may also be acquired from various missions and containers, as well as frigate expeditions. A Forged Passport will reset your standing to 1 when currently negative, while it increases your standing +1 when currently positive.

I appreciate your time and hope this little tutorial was helpful.