I've had no luck talking the pirates out of fighting, and i'm not dropping my cargo.

As for keeping your eye on them, it's not that hard, really. Just use your radar. The situations with the largest threat is when you're alone, but in situations when you're not, you can definitely use the reprieve when they go after AI. Then you can use your comms (which the guy in the video forgot all about) to convince them to turn to you when your shields are back up. I get why people wouldn't want to do this, though. The worst problem i've had when friendlies were mixed in was sometimes the little furball got out of range and i couldn't catch up, though that was in Gemini Gold (basically, the enemy would get stuck looking away and was faster, but the militia wouldn't let up).

Obviously one of the first things you're going to buy from there is the radar, again, but you want to focus on survivability. Once you realize you don't absolutely need the top tier RADAR, you'll make some good money in trading or combat that'll get you a nice color-coded one that can lock in short order. Then spam with IRs until you can get either the very next upgrade or the best radar so you have ITTS, too, for more efficiency. Then you just move for your Orion, but you need enough pocket change to get it surivvable, too, and I haven't quite figured that out, yet (I can get to the point of buying it, but it seems bigger or something, 'cause making it as good as the Tarsus without those high level shields seems hard: it's like the AI get better weapons or something, but it could be just that the double missile launcher with IRs makes that much of a difference).

If you cannot talk the pirates out of attacking you, you are obviously doing something wrong - perhaps your overall aggressive stance (which you are btw. demonstrating even in this discussion), might have something to do with that?

Try to use different approach. Or not. No one really cares. This is a game, remember? If it works for you, well, great – but it does not work for me, and it is great as well. For me at least.

Simply, don’t force your opinions on other people. That is all.

c 4 3. Oh well, once you start taking them on they make really, really good sources of money. Sure, you take damage, but the pay is better than a trade run where you still end up taking the same amount of damage. I mean, they are pirates, i do have big loads of cargo, i don't expect them to leave me alone, really. Those who live in glass houses should not throw stones. I made no comment suggesting that one should not try things whatever your way is, just offered my own suggestions. You're the one coming into this with an attitude. Just play the game how you want, and don't take it personal when someone makes a suggestion that conflicts with yours.

I understand keeping track of which of 2 or 3 dots on your radar is hostile or not, but don't have a cow when other people say it's perfectly manageable (which is something you have to do, anyway, 'cause you aren't going to have IFF without at least 30,000 credits, anyway). And, hey, just had a rough encounter with some pirates, permanently destroyed my iris, but the reward on their head gave me 50,000, which means I now have an IFF colored radar with locking, and with the mistake i made earlier of replacing my torpedo launchers with missile launchers early (also made encounters slow since IRs are terrible dumbfires: 10 minutes for 3 encounters, hell i recorded it for fun) now means i can basically spam missiles to end any encounter and can do low bounty runs or some basic trading and it's just a matter of slowly making my way to a better ship without much effort.

Ok, you can talk (almost) anyone out of combat, unless they are your designated target (one way or another).

And taking bounties has certain risks, rather unavoidably, and Tarsus is really not well suited for that... though I agree, that it is possible to rack up money this way rather quickly.
And yes, it comes with certain overhead in terms of missiles (etc.) and repairs.

It all boils down to the means how to make first real money...
and yet again, there are simply multiple ways to do so - and that is all.

Does one just naturally keep spamming "i'll tell no one" for pirates? I know you can drop the cargo, but that's the last thing you want to do when you're running into pirates every run or you just upgraded your ship.

To be completely honest, I don't remember. However, the calming phase for is on exactly the spot as with the other factions, if this is of any help.

Of course, the game keeps track record for all faction kills, therefore, it sometimes takes a considerable effort to talk someone out of attacking you and this is not exactly being helped by the fact, that sometime there are "plot" ebemies, which you have to kill anyway.
And Retros are simply crazy.

For example - it is always possible to talk Kilrathi out of attacking you, but in the late game, where you are probably at odds with at least one of the official factions (I am trying to be spoiler free, but I think you know which faction I am talking about) it takes cosiderably less effort to do so, which is, given the nature of late game, rather fortunate (but by that time, player usually has a Centurion-based killing machine anyway, so it is merely a question "role playing" if you will).

Exactly.
You can even judge the level of hostility of each faction based on how long it does take to calm someone.

On that note, since i've yet to have any success, does calming one calm the other?

Unfortunately, only one at a time, so sometimes it really makes bigger sense to simply kill all.

Given the rate at which my shields go down, it seems that's going to be the big plan. Actually, now that i'm in the Orion, ABs work as long as they're not too close to the jump point. Need to get those engines and shields.