Merchant brigand

From YPPedia

Merchant brigands are groups of NPPs that gather commodities that spawn on uncolonized islands and sail them to colonized islands. They have exclusive access to the raw commodities markets at all uncolonized islands. When enough commodities are collected, the brigands ship them in bulk to colonized islands and sell them to shoppes and stalls. The shoppes and stalls that are sold to are randomly selected from all the highest listed buying prices.

The merchant brigands know the buy prices for commodities at all islands. They pick their destinations using a secret formula that includes distance and price. Merchants will not engage player ships, but may be attacked by players. If the merchants have won any battles along the way, they will sell their plunder (e.g., cannon balls) when they reach port.

Merchant brigands always start at uncolonized islands, but never sail back to them.

Merchant brigands, unlike usual brigands, carry the title <Merchants> instead of <Brigands> on their ship's panel. Like brigands, they can rank from sailors to imperials. Most merchent brigands tend to be much more difficult to defeat than other brigands of an equivalent might rating. If a player ship defeats a merchant brigand, the players receive a portion of the merchant's commodities. Small merchant ships tend to carry valuable and rare commodities while the large merchant ships usually carry fairly common, bulky items such as hemp. The value of these commodities is generally considered poor for the amount of effort spent, and is almost always considerably less than that of a brigand ship of equivalent difficulty.