Pirate PvP??? Noob question

[Bluenosedburt]

I'm a noobie so bare with me please, but i've been reading and it seems to me the only way a pirate can attack someone is if they are flagged for pvp, which in my mind is odd becuase what self respecting trader would flag himself pvp if he was carring a Ship full of vauble cargo. Not to mention the fact pirates can be attacked by anyone at anytime?

Sorry if my question has been asked a hunderd times.

[Monthar]

Pirates can only be attacked if they have their flag on or are sailing in an invalid ship. That is until contention is turned on at launch, then anyone can be attacked in the full pvp circle and pirates can attack and be attacked in the pirate pvp circle.

Thus pirates and Privateers that train the sanctioned piracy skill will have more time and space to pvp around contended ports.

[Bluenosedburt]

So within those zones is an open pvp, where pirates can attack anyone and people can attack us? and are those areas going to be big enough where its relistic that we could snag some free traders and such?

[andy52584]

The actual size of the PvP zones varies by port (to prevent certain zones from overlaping newbie ports mostly) but in general they seemed large enough for some decent PvP. A determined merchant in a fast ship may not be caught, but Im sure you'll run into enough of us in slower ships who are in the wrong place at the wrong time to satisfy your PvP wants. :)

[Bluenosedburt]

Thanks to both of you that replied for all the helpful information i am very much looking foward to this game, seems the pirate life is for me. And not to worry our society doesn't plan on being ganker pirates were just in it for the cash so always surrender !!!

[Gustave Molyneux]

It's also worth mentioning that up to 12 different ports could have these zones around them at any given time. A good bit of the carribean can be red at the same time if the various nations and pirates make it happen.

[Spinnaker Sam]

Actually the theoretical limit according to a dev is 32 ports in a PvP status. This is because pirate raided ports and suppressed ports don't count towards your total, but they still remain in a PvP status for the three days they are "raided" or "suppressed". The chance that the stars will line up that perfectly are highly remote to almost impossible.