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[Markov Chain]

A good way to use Pirate Ship is to attack enough to get it up to $4, then use a village to play two Pirate Ships and get a province, buying additional villages or Pirate Ships when you play only one. As with most Pirate Ship strategies, this requires a game with more than two players, or else you will have a lot of misses.

The Native Village works particularly well for this strategy, because you can control when you get two Pirate Ships and play both of them, using your mat to save a Pirate Ship for a double.  If you have no Pirate Ship on your mat, use Native Village to put a card on your mat every time.  If you have one Pirate Ship on your mat, take your mat when you have exactly one Pirate Ship in hand, and put a card on your mat when you have zero or two.  If you have two Pirate Ships on your mat, take your mat unless you already have two in hand (in which case you can wait for the next village).

An additional benefit is that Native Village is cheap.   You will have turns with only two copper in hand, and either no Pirate Ships or the ships needed for attacking; you can use these to buy more Native Villages.

[werothegreat]

Pirate Ship's best friends are Worker's Village and Oracle.

[Markov Chain]

Pirate Ship's best friends are Worker's Village and Oracle.

Why Worker's Village?  I don't need +Buy much in Village/Pirate Ship games, and the fact that Worker's Village has the same cost as Pirate Ship makes it harder to get.  .A plain Village works just as well and can be bought on the opening turn.

Oracle is obviously good with Pirate Ship if you can play village/Oracle/Pirate Ship, as it doubles the chance of hitting.

[() | (_) ^/]

Pirate Ship's best friends are Worker's Village and Oracle.

Why Worker's Village?  I don't need +Buy much in Village/Pirate Ship games, and the fact that Worker's Village has the same cost as Pirate Ship makes it harder to get.  .A plain Village works just as well and can be bought on the opening turn.

Oracle is obviously good with Pirate Ship if you can play village/Oracle/Pirate Ship, as it doubles the chance of hitting.

Worker's Village can be bought at the opening.

Once you have your Pirate ShipS juiced up, the +buy is awesome for double Province turns, or at least Province plus something else.  Plain Village really can't do that.

So: if you're doing multiple Pirate Ships, you want Worker's Village over plain Village.  If you're only doing 1 Pirate Ship for some reason, then you don't need any village anyways!

[werothegreat]

I tend to play Pirate Ship like I play Bishop - I try to max out my mat.  So the way I play Pirate Ship, i'm going to need some +Buy in there.

[Powerman]

I tend to play Pirate Ship by not buying it.

[Markov Chain]

Worker's Village can be bought at the opening.

It can, but then you won't get a Pirate Ship in the first set, and in a multi-player game, the other players Pirate Ships will thin out the copper before you get to use yours, so you will need longer to get up to four.

Once you have your Pirate ShipS juiced up, the +buy is awesome for double Province turns, or at least Province plus something else.  Plain Village really can't do that.

So: if you're doing multiple Pirate Ships, you want Worker's Village over plain Village.  If you're only doing 1 Pirate Ship for some reason, then you don't need any village anyways!

If you can get your Pirate Ship up to 6, then +Buy is valuable because you can buy another Worker's Village or Pirate Ship with your province.  However, in a village/Pirate Ship game, once the Pirate Ship reaches 4, you usually want to use a double Pirate Ship to buy provinces, and a single to buy another Pirate Ship or village to increase your chance at a double Pirate Ship.  (In addition, by the time you have reached 4, there won't be much coin to hit.)  Thus the +Buy is only useful if you have a triple Pirate Ship turn, or another source of money. 

[Asklepios]

I tend to play Pirate Ship by not buying it.

I think Pirate Ship is one of those cards that seems amazing when you start off, then rapidly you learn that its actually quite weak, but then it becomes useful again when you recognise the narrower set of circumstances where it IS useful.

Personally I'd look to buy Pirate Ship in a set where money is one of the strongest strategies present, and there is simultaneously very little trashing and decent +action. Or a board where coin flooding is likely to fill your opponent's deck with money (such as games where Jack of All Trades, Trader or Hoard are strong)

For example, a board where the strongest village is Native Village, but there is no stronger engine present!