Another thing regarding the pirates that annoys me is that they act like they left their pirate senses at their base when attacking. Instead of just blocking the trade port and destroying it, they chase after each tradeship to the edge of the gravwell, move back, move forth etc.
In my opinion a "raid" is something quick and either sneaky or brutal. It doesn't make sense if the pirates stay in your system until your defense arrives and keep knocking on that trade station while they are confronted with a fleet 5x the size of their own.
To add to my suggestion regarding the bounty they should have a slight mechanic similar to the phase jump detector. As soon as a fleet closes in they should return to their base immediatly (depending on the fleets size).
In my opinion no pirate is as stupid and let's himself get caught by a military armada 3x the size of his raid if he can run away

I use pirates all the time but when their threat level becomes severe I have seen some of their fleets be 30 to 70 ships big and sometimes they take a devastating detoir through my territory.

So far, I've only played small size 1vs1 maps so I can learn the basics. I've been focusing on TEC and with the income they can generate, pirates have been instant win. I can bribe them every time and they just crush the AI which nets me the win but feels kind of cheap. Gonna try a non-pirate map and see how I fair.

Anyway, I read this thread awhile ago and after playing last night I have an idea:

Allow more "control" over the pirates. Bribing them to attack other empires is fine but I'd like to pick what they attack. They could have accounts for military, industrial or civilian strikes. Military strikes would focus on static defenses, ships and frigate/capital ship builders, etc. Industrial strikes would target trade ports, refineries, etc. Civilian strikes would target planets themselves, beacons, research stations, etc. I think this would really make the pirates come alive cause right now they've no personality.

I also like the idea of them being like an empire themselves, just maybe scaled down. Like they don't expand thier territory but they can build structures and such.

sometimes pirate bounty doesn't help you, the pirates may still attack you over and over even if you set a higher bounty.

Last game I played, the pirates had one route to anywhere. So I just colonized the only planet that they could head for, added three Hangar Defenses and had about 4 Drone Hosts sit there. I never had to worry about pirates for the rest of the game, even when they got to severe. I even started creating Capital Ships there because the pirates were a general source of good experience (especially with L2 Mass Transcendence).

The AI, though, had quite the problem. I don't know if it was because I started winning before that point or if the AI was just really having a hard time with Pirates, but every time I felt like using a disturbance strategy, I just heavy bidded on them. Gave me 10-15 minutes to wipe out their other asteroids and their home planet.

I would say make the Pirate AI stronger, but since I'm usually the one being attacked by them in Human Multiplayer games, I'll hold my tongue on it.



However, I fully agree with this idea.

the pirates are easily abused in a 1v1 against an AI. i haven't perceived them as nearly as abusive in games vs. other humans (who are much better at defending against them) or in games with multiple AI opponents. Because of this, i generally disable pirates for small maps or 1v1 maps because it takes alot of the "sport" out of the game.

how do you disable them? I know how to make a custom map without them...but I kind of like the prebuilt maps. If I could just disable them when I want to play the AI, I'd consider this problem solved.....but that only leaves one or 2 maps to play.

I agree with this while playing against the AI I used the same tactic, just gave into the pirates pay me or fight me scam. Needless to say they effectivley kept the enemy AI beat down until I massed a fleet and swept them and the pirates off the map.

somone might have already said this but i didnt feel like reading the entire forum. i personally think the pirate system is kinda dumb, i LIKE it when pirates attack me, they are sooo easy to kill and it just gives me more exp for my cap ships, i usually have my capital up to lvl 4 or 5 before i even make 1st contact with the enemy, whose is lvl 1.

I let the pirates attack me as a handicap mechanism...

Used against the AI = easy win.
I have done it a couple of times, one time I saw wounded enemy ships flying around, so I jump to his home system and find the pirates there blowing up his last buildings and the planet health at 2000/6000 while its still being bombed, the pirates broke the enemy fleet and it escaped in tatters and they were bombing his homeworld to dust!

Pirates also SCALE by how much you bid. If you don't bid at all the AI will put 250 on you and the pirates will attack you with a small fleet. One game I put 500 and the AI put 750 on the first attack, the pirates level increased from one to two bars. Then the next attack I put 750 and he put 1000... the pirates went from 2 to 4 bars...

That 4 bar pirate attack was enough to kill the 2 capital ships and 10 or so supporting ships with them protecting the planet, AND bomb it to nothing...

Ofcourse I am a much better player since... but the pirates are also a lot weaker when you are not bidding. level 1 pirates can be beaten by a single level 1 capital ship. level 2 by a capital ship + 10 frigates. level 4 will kill 2 lvl3 capitals and 15 frigates... I shudder to think what level 5 pirates would do to the AI... and they are SO VERY CHEAP!

Also, if you let pirates destroy the structures in orbit, they will leave as soon as they are destroyed, so a besieged planet can survive by scuttling all structures in orbit... HOWEVER, if the pirates "win" an attack like that the pirate fleet will go and reinforce the defenses on their home.

Every 15 minutes a new pirate fleet SPAWNS out of NOTHING in their home system (try being in the pirate system when the timer runs out), any survivors of the pirate fleet attack on a planet reinforce their home defense.. its pretty hard to take a pirate home with 150+ ships defending it.

It really makes no sense... why are they spawning? how do they add another 15k credit and 5k metal and crytal worth of ships when you just added 1k to the bid? Why are they not praying on my trade lanes? I want pirates to attack freighters, not planetary fortifications! And not to the death.

I agree, in theory, that pirates should not attack to the death. After all they're after a bounty, and what good is a bounty when all the pirates who earned it are dead. I don't see pirates sacrificing themselves for "the good of the clan."

Perhaps they should only be used to harass trade and refinery ships and lightly defended outposts and not be a force that rivals or even exceeds your own. Maybe they should be easily routed by the appearance of a significant fleet, instead of just being easy (at times) xp fodder.

I am not that great a player yet, but I do enjoy flanking the AI with pirates by sending a scout to see where they're going to hit the AI and then sending my fleet to one of their other planets. Makes me feel somewhat like a tactician. Also when the game's over, sending in ten cap ships and a bunch of heavy cruisers to a pirate base provides a nice display of fireworks and ships level like crazy.

I do enjoy the pirates the way they are and have no idea how the suggestions I am presenting will change game mechanics, but in my opinion pirates should make you queasy, but the real and unpredictable threat should be the AI.

seriously....is there a way to just "turn off" the pirates? I played a game of gaian crescent when I first got the game, and the pirates didn't spawn (the pirate base was just a dead asteroid). Is there an option that I'm just missing? (I'm suspecting that the pirate base was added to gaian crescent in a patch)

If not, would it be possible to make a mod to turn them off easily? I'm at the point of just loading up every map in galaxy forge and manually removing the pirates from each map.

Pirate ships do not cost anything in metal and crystal - nothing at all. Their ships' price is in the form of cash only. The Pirates' cheapest ship is the Rogue light frigate, which costs 600 cash and no recourses. Their most expensive ship is the Cutthroat SRL(Short-Range Laser ) frigate, which costs 1300 cash and no resources. The Cutthroat also has an ability who's name(AbilityStealResources) implies that it can steal resources and cash from a planet by attacking refineries and trade ports, so this may have an effect.

But a 1000 cash bounty and a single asteroid(the Pirate base) worth of tax income, as you said, is not enough to buy them even a single raid's worth of weaponry. Here are my theories of how the Pirate economy works:

1. Apart from bounty, the Pirates also get any money that players spend when buying things directly from the Black Market(not from other players).

2. The Pirates get to collect the cash from all bounties placed on any player, and then have a 'technology' which doubles the cash and allows them to buy ships.

3. The Pirates have a 'technology' that doubles all their income, and they get money from tax(on their base), raiding with the Cutthroat, killing trade ships, getting a cut of all Black Market transactions and selling the unlimited resources that are always available on the Black Market. With this considerable income, they buy ships and go on raids.

4. They just cheat and get free ships that spawn depending on the level of bounty their target has on their head. They have no such thing as 'fleet cap', so they can just amass ships until someone blows them up.

Hey guys, I made a mod to disable the pirates. I uploaded it to the mod site, but it said it might take a few days to get it "approved".

Basically all you have to do is get the GameInfo files from the beta modset tool.
In the "Gameplay.constants" file, look for the "pirateraiddef" section.

Set
minSupply 0
maxSupply 0

This makes it so that even when the raid timer goes off, no pirates are actually spawned.

Just to be safe, I also set
strengthPerOwnedPlanet 0
strengthPerCargoShip 0
strengthPerBounty 0

You can also set first and normal WarningTime to some huge number like 90000000.
This controls when the timer actually goes off and you hear "a pirate raid is imminent". This just keeps you from hearing it every few minutes even though no pirates are launched.

Unfortunately, the game maxes out the timer at 1 hour, so no matter how big you set it in the file, it'll still go off every hour or so. But again, it just THINKS it's launching a pirate raid, none are actually launched thanks to the min/max supply variables.


Now, as per the previous post, gameplay wise, the size of a pirate raid is determined by the 3 variables I referenced above: the number of owned planets, the number of cargo ships, and the amount of bounty.

So it would seem that has every player's economy grows, via planets, trade stations, and refineries, the number of pirates grow as well.

Story wise, you could think of it as an invisible tax: the pirates are actually raiding your trade lanes, taking money, and getting stronger as your economy grows, you just never actually see it, and there is nothing you can do to prevent it.

Link to the mod: https://www.wincustomize.com/skins.aspx?skinid=33&libid=71

Heres where you went wrong "the ai"
Plain and simple. Online against real people, the pirates are just a real pain in the but. Has prevented me from killing another player many times. Never been killed by pirates though. Unless you count that one time where I went an Eco build, got double teamed with one team using mostly carriers, and a pirate raid...

Bounty is what you are supposed to play with, but it doesn't "defeat" them, only utilizes them. Sounds like you are starting to learn the game. I rarely try to to kill the pirates as they are very useful alive.

Also, fighting pirates, (either the stationery squatters or the raiders sent on a bounty quest), is useful to level up capital ships as well. If I have a few new capital ships laying around, I send them to the planet the pirates will raid and put no money to bounty, letting the other player waste his money so I can get the chance to safely level up my capital ships. Pirates always take the shortest route to your owned planets and attack the first planet system you own on the way, so figuring out where they will attack is easy.

If you insist on killing the pirate base though, the opposition there is scaled to the level of the players, probably by some summation of fleet points and fleet supply points. The reason I think that is because I once played an entire single-player game with just one, yes "1", fleet point and one supply point. I eventually entered the pirate base around mid-game with my one capital ship (a wimpy Akkan), and a handful of Cobalt Light Frigates and found similarly light opposition. Lots of light frigates, which I defeated by running around and microing.

In other games of similar length where I leveled fleet points up to the max, and then entered the pirate base with about 10 capital ships, I would find huge numbers of pirate cruisers, almost no lighter ships, and end up losing a couple capital ships even with microing.

Other than player level scaling, pirate base opposition is fairly static and does not replenish itself really. You can jump in and out to heal and still whittle them down. The bounty raiders which spawn at the base never stay there, and even if you try to engage them in a fight before they jump out, you can't unless you have some fleeing-ship slowdown tech. Bounty raiders won't stop to help their brethren pirates whom you are slaughtering.