Starting with the pirate nation is much harder than it has ever been, but its decision like where to go and what to attack that will make or break your career as a pirate. Going into the waters around the bulk of the English and French towns is a nice place to find ships but also to be attacked and cut off from fixing your ship(s) easily, sticking to the waters around Bermuda will serve you better as you can easily head back to port and fix your ship, sell the loot and ship if you caoptured and kept her.
Now for the ships to attack, well your starting out so your skills are low, your crew is small and your dreams are high. Fight ships of similar force, a Sloop vs a Sloop for example is fine, a Sloop against a Pinnace is never going to work out to well for the Sloop (you) so avoid it. Alway's try to keep any ships you capture so you can sell them and never swap ships in less the captured ship is of real improvements. Better crew size, more cargo space, can sail faster, has more guns mounted. But sailing speed been high is nice, it does have one problem. Can the ship you captured also sail into the wind, you need a ship that will allow you to sail with and against the wind so you can escape should you need to and so you have an advantage against enemy ships durring naval battles.
More crew is also important (more so now than before) however hiring crew is expensive, so keeping your crew alive is important. But playing as a pirate that isn't easy, keeping your distance and firing balls at your enemy will both improve your crews cannon skills and it will also allow you to kill some of the enemy ships crew off aswell. But if the enemy ship is able to get more direct hits on you then that plan will not work, which is when amount of guns you can mount comes in. Having the ability to mount 8 guns down either side is nice, but 16 guns is it really enough?
Well i would say yes for now it is, the difference maker will be in the calibure yoiu have mounted. A 4ibs cannon vs a 8ibs culverine is a big thing, the 8ibs culverine can do the same level of damage as the 12ibs cannon but its reload time is so high that its not worth having in less your crew are expereinced enough to reload them quicker. However coming up against a ship witgh culverines mounted and able to match your cannon loading times will prove to be a devestating affair on your side, so leaving them to go about there business might be a better idea. But then there is speed, if your ship is fast though and your have more crew with more thqan enough weapons onboard (double weapons 2 for each crew members) then you can quickly sail up along side and board her before they can do any serious damage to you and your crew.
Ship captured? sell her at the pirate shipyard (leave guns mounted as they are taken into account when selling the ship). Is the ship worth swapping over or not. If you think she would serve you better than your current ship then do it, and sell your old ship. Crew are automatically moved to your ship when selling a ship, but its alway's best to do this manually as its easy to forget durring naval battles and then loose a ship due to no crew or spend time having to get close enough to be able to move crew across to her.
Hire more crew, i know that this isn't cheap. So tacticas and decisions will play a key role in how well you make it as a captain in the pirate nation (future patches might improve the game play for pirate nation) for now though the focus is fixes to ships and major bugs.
