I'm playing MP with some friends as Vaulters and I'd like to start messing around with privateers. The thing is : I don't really know what a fleet of privateers looks like from another person perspective.

Is it easy to spot the owner ? Fleet cap being different from pirates' one, Vaulters hull model, or anything like that ?

there is a chance that they discover that the fleet belonged to an "unknown empire" which is probably a vaulters player, but most of the time they can't tell the difference (except that you can raid and destroy there planets of course)

I suspect the fleet still have the original faction logo on the ship, but I could be wrong. I like to use boarding pods to overtake other factions' ships and even pirate ships, then assemble privateer fleets using those, just in case.

Hi,

If you're using the regular privateers action, the fleet label appears as Pirates but the ships inside the fleet are the ones you put there and they appear as such.

If you're using the Vaulters specific action, your ships get disguised as Pirate ships in addition to the fleet appearing as a Pirate one.

Hope this helps!

Thanks, can you expand on how combat happens when using Vaulters as Privateers. I have seen in Lets plays where the Vaulter AI attacks with a Privateer Fleet, and occasionally they get "Discovered" and revelaed as Vaulters. Does this mean there is a chance they can enage and stay hidden and if so what are the odds and does it point this out in any tool tips in game?

Sure!

Their fleet appears as a Pirate fleet on the map, but if you watch the battle, you always see it was only a decoy and they were Vaulters ships (not which Vaulters empire though if there are multiple!)

To not make watching battles mandatory, we decided to also have a warning in the battle report that your ships detected that these Pirates were actually Vaulters ships and not real Pirates.

Smart!