Pirates: What the frick?

Its the same with rebels though, they just appear. The implication is that they we're civilians/masquerading as civilians or whatever and then came up - or maybe they launched from the pirate planet?

Lord knows the garrison/ungarrison (as for fighters) animation has is errr, just appear dissapear (and out of strange places) why wouldn't that work for a whole planet? (Not saying it makes sense but it fits :P)

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I suspect they simply reversed the polarity of their deflector dish. I mean, that's all it took for the Enterprise to do the impossible.

ARRRRRR, you can't stop pirates, you can only hope to contain them

magic is sometning only us space ponies use..

Me thinks you might have found a flaw in the programing.. but then again, you never know where those yahoos hide.. and it could all be writen off as, "we were hiding, agh"

I have the same problem.

If it is indeed free-spawing pirates appearing, with no regards to game reality (i.e. pirates must have a base, logistical requirements etc.) then tactics, strategy and intelligent gameplay get thrown out of the window along with the reason to play.

I really hope there is a valid reason for Pirates appearing like this, and a tactic to stopping them. I'd hate to stop enjoying this game...

I've experienced the same thing as Astralrunner. There I am, having decimated the pirate defenses,, blasted everything in sight, when lo and behold here comes a full-fledged pirate attack. Of course, it could be fictionally suspected that this fleet was off partying and getting laid at some nearby brothel planet and were suddenly called back. If that's the case they should get an attack bonus for being ticked off and interrupted. That's how pirates are.

But then again, considering the frequency of attacks, it would be nice if they played by the same rules as the rest of us. How come we can't be pirates? I've already got the hat, the eye-patch, and uh, the spacegrog.

PS. taking a sip of spacegrog for every ship I destroy seems to make the game play deeper, the graphics more spectacular,and in the later stages of the game (if you last that long) allows other civilizations to broadcast messages directly into your brain. (on single player only)

PPS. I may be drunk but I spell-checked.

Its a Game-Breaker. Plain & simple.

Tactical thinking, planning and skill are useless if you have random spawning pirate fleets.

Game-Breaker. Not sarcasm or spite, just fact.

I had this happen but once the pirate base was wiped it stopped completely. I do agree though that it should maybe be changed in a future patch. Kinda ruins the mystique of the game IMO.

I had this happen but once the pirate base was wiped it stopped completely. I do agree though that it should maybe be changed in a future patch. Kinda ruins the mystique of the game IMO.


sorry for the double post.

Yep, pirates are still cool and add a nice strategic element fairly unique to this game--at least I haven't seen anything comparable in other RTSs. Pirates definately aren't a game breaker, maybe they are even a game MAKER. Use them to your advantage... be the perpetrator, not the victim.

Maybe, though, after you've destroyed their base we could stop with the little raids... I think that would be a sensible change.

I agree completely. Maybe when no one issues bounties, they should just start raiding trade ships for money. It feels odd that you can attack them and kill 20 of their ships, but this has absolutely no effect on their rate of attacks. Hell, you can destroy one of their bases and this doesn't affect the quantity or rate of attacks.

The way the pirates work is simple. the ships that you see in the gravity well are not the ships that attack you, they are the ships that survived there previous attacks and the original ships at the beginning.

When a pirate raid starts the ships warp in from a different star system and then go there target and what ever ships survive and retreat STAY in the pirate base.

the back drop for the pirates is that its isn't some small band or a couple random bases. its massive interstellar organization of wide spread influence and power, to simple assume they don't have the tech to jump between stars would be the more unrealistic option

I can buy this but wouldn't it make sense then that they'd upgrade their ships? I mean they never do but always seem to have a constant stockpile. Again this isn't a game breaker to me but it does make the atmosphere of the already weakly laid background lore seem that much worse. I know that each game is suppose to be or rather can be thought of as a set of battles in the grand scheme of things. And if this is all it becomes I'm fine with that but it seems a tool could be added to the Galaxy Forge for people to make mission and story driven campaigns. This would make for some very fun and interesting mods I feel.

*also forget to add that when a player wipes the current map of other players/ai and the current Pirate base shouldn't he be allowed to travel to say the original base of Pirate options? That'd be pretty cool and probably a massive battle.*

While on the topic of pirates, what would happen if you had say.... 10 pirates bases in a solar system? Would each of them produce a fleet?

Nope, only one does.

Pirates are not a "player". They are a game mechanic. The rules are different for them because, well, they *are* one of the rules.

If you destroy the base itself, they will no longer spawn there. Simply killing the ships and cannons around it won't cut it.

Yeah, it basically comes down to the fact that Pirates are not a faction that you fight against like the others. They are not subject to the same rules as the main factions. Thus, the spawning of ships.

At this point, I'm used to it.

They might be changed later (I wouldn't be surprised if this is already in the planning stages) in either a patch or expansion. As it is...they are background and a neutral force to contend with, not a full fledged faction, like the planetary garrisons at the start of the game. They just happen to get bigger if you let them.

When I killed the pirate bases the attacks stopped. But they did succeed in launching an attack before they were defeated. I don't split hairs with silly things like this.

P.S. -- Attacking pirate base = good way to level up your capital ships.'

P.S.S -- I'd be thrilled if you could start collecting bounty from other players once you've overtaken a pirate base. Kind of like you set up your own pseudo pirate facade

I pretty much realized that they weren't a proper extra civ in the game as soon as I saw their outpost, it doesn't really bother me but I do think it'd be much cooler if pirates function similarly to how a proper civ works. Obviously it can't be a full fledged civ - they don't occupy planets, they don't do research, but like AstralRunner pointed out, if at least they produced ships like everybody else. They could have 3 or 4 frigate factories, and they constantly produce more ships, and once they have enough they attack. If players put lots of bounties they could produce ships at a faster rate, or upgrade them like with research, etc.

Basically, they don't have to be as complicated as proper civs but they don't have to be completely "magical" either - fleets appearing out of nowhere when their base is down to less than 100 points is a bit of an atmosphere breaker.

Yeah I discovered that a few weeks ago and asked for a change in the 1.03 thread, so I hope they change it somehow.

The real question is how many Ninja bases would be needed to deal with the 10 Pirate bases...

Thanks for that Kryo - I'm all for pirates but perhaps in a later update there could be an option box for 'realistic' pirates which means destroy their base = no more pirates.

Of course I can see the reason for a Pirate *base* to re-appear someplace - that makes sense and in my opinion would work better with this new option.

It is just frustrating, that as a strategy gamer I cannot plan logically for dealing with pirates: e.g. Locate the base, deal a crippling blow etc.

It is a rule that seems to be at odds with the great realism feel of the game, in my opinion.

I'm pretty sure you do. I've seen bounty counts rapidly depleting as my ally beats on AIs, for example.

The pirate fleets as I recall 'port to the nearest star (or the pirate base, then go to the star), and then work their way in from there. They'll target the nearest, least-defended world and priortize trade targets over defenses (ie, trade ports, trade ships, etc.) so you can easily defend against them that way.

I think a better alternative would be as others have said - have the raid build in strength gradually (kind of like a Returning Armada; a bit of the raid spawns at the pirate base every minute or so) then dispatch once it's at full strength. Then make the timer tied to the raid strength and vice versa, so if you launch a counter-assault/early offensive and wipe out some of the raiding group before they dispatch, the timer increases again.

The pirate defense fleets do get bigger, I believe it's based on time or player fleet sizes. If you leave it too long, it can end up like this.

you *always* collect bounty, regardless of whether or not you own a pirate base. you just have to kill things to earn it (mouse over the planet of an enemy with a bounty on him, it'll give you a value for what killing this planet is worth)
great way to make money at some times, especially if the enemy has 25k+ in bounty on him (then the instant after you win the pirate war send in a taskforce to kill a few of his planets for nearly free, its a LOT of money you can earn). <-particularly amazing strategy for multiple team or FFA games.

Uh, I did say just that. If you destroy the pirate base, they no longer spawn there. If it was the only/last base, then they're gone completely.