Maybe the pirate AI should become larger based off of the intended target. early in the game would be small size.. by later game become a huge fleet. Also, maybe the pirates could attack multiple people based off of how many players are in the game.. say theres 8 players and pirate raid happens.. it should maybe target the top 2 or 3 highest bounty players.

I think what someone said earlier a more targeted attack might be ok.. say instead of putting a bounty in the trade screen you place it directly on a planet. (target enemy planet click add bounty button on quick panel) and say multiple people put a bounty on someone but in different planets. then it would add all those up and give you the final bounty but choose which system had the most put on it. so its like your placing a vote to attack that system but more importantly xxxx person.

Stealing tech? I dont like it. But stealing ships I think would be a nice touch, have a new class of pirate ships that can steal a ship based off of antimater cooldown can maybe steal a few ships a raid etc.

Also when pirates are going after a target.. they seem to ignore anyone who starts to attack them who isnt on the hit list. this isnt right. they should turn to attack any ship that has initated attack on them and then continue on to kill there target. reason why is you can get free exp for your cap ships by shooting a pirate raid while its heading off towards your enemy.

It would also be nice if pirates attacked ANYONE that has bounty on his head if a raid occurs, not just a single empire. But the the size of the fleet he had to face is dependant on the bounty.
With the current way its easy to steamroll the enemy by outbidding him and then attack at a second front when the pirates jump him.
As you basically got a free fleet, there is not much he can do against it.

But if all players would have to deal with the pirates it would stall conflict there a bit and help the players that can eliminate the threat the quickest and go back to their normal strategy.

Also i am all for pirate capships!

Imho pirates should be renamed to mercenaries. Would fit their current role much better.



Well, if you have a couple of guass cannons and repair stations, you don't have anything to worry actually. Pirates will just suicide against the defenses.



Well, bounties would work only in larger FFA games anyway. So I don't see much of a problem.

As many people said they are not really pirates right now, they are mercenaries.
Pirates would not start from a single point in the game, they would pop up in the middle of your empire try to capture/destroy something and then vanish into thin space again.

Mercs on the other hand are hired fighters and should have every asset they can afford to buy from the black market, not just stealth craft.

I guess I'm kinda spammer today. Sorry for that.

Since pirates as are now really act as mercenaries perhaps there should be something done to add "real" pirates, too.

I thought about what to do about them and I guess their main problem is space. They have nowhere to be, nowhere to hide. This is mainly because the gravity well isn't big enough and if you are in it you see everything. Quite a lot should be added to give them that so I guess it won't happen, but since I already have an idea I might as well share.

IMO it would be cool to add asteroid belts into the game. Some solar systems could have one, two, none... Whatever. What it would do is that in each crossection of a hyperline and the asteroid belt a small grav well would be added. Let's just say that the gravity of the asteroid belt is just big enough to throw the ships out of the hyperspace... Some hyperlines have none, one, or two intersections.

Just an image of what I'm talking about;


You can see that there are quite a few of them. These crossections could be spawning points for pirates that would attack small fleets and traders only and hide from the big ones unless discovered. Which also means that there should be a lot of small dead objects in them and they would be near impenetrable for sensors (create neccesity for a scout frigate?).

This would create a neccesity for either constant presence in these intersections or adding guards to tradeships. I guess additional pirates would only spawn in empty crossections.

Anyway, just an idea.

Perhaps... Although this IS the pirate idea... But it has little to do with pirates as they are... I'll move it.   

Crap, I can't edit or delete previous post. NOW I'm a spammer...

All this talk of military tech reminded me of something I read a week ago. Apparently, the US military is planing on putting a laser gun on their Airforce version of the upcoming F-35 Strike Fighter. This thing will be an actual energy beam weapon that burns holes in its target (although, pulse lasers are also a possibility).

Hehe, it is always cool when Sci-Fi becomes reality.

If you give them that I would so love to be a pirate... Reminds me almost of something that the machine empire out of dune would do.... mmmmm dune.

Why thank you. You're so good to me...   

  But you like the idea, admit it!

Perhaps an option for easy, medium, or hard pirates would make everyone a little happier just like you have with the AI. I don't believe making the pirates more difficult will offset the problems with the AI competiveness. If pirates were like they were in Beta 2 I would hope the option to turn them off would be added back in.

I just could never get over the huge fleets comming from no where, it just wasn't believeable they could produce or procure such fleets which were in excess of what entire ai empires could create and support. That would be a very cheap substitute for a competive ai and it would simply be an ai cheat to compensate for an inability of the ai to use strategy. IMHO the ai is very good for beta. It appears to counter attack with concentrated forces when these forces are available so I think its getting there.

Unless the idea of ultra powerful pirates with the ability to clone themselves and their ships almost instanteously and can defy the game's physics and ecomonic laws is what you really like, it sounds like what you may really be looking for is a more competitive ai.

My expectation is with the addition of the two new races and more ai tweaking the ai will become more competitive and there will not be a need to have something to fill in for the ai. The game really is shaping up to be first class and I don't think they will ignore the ai.