Pirate Problems - Too many comming at me.

theres always a pirate base, you must destroy them. And for pirates, i'd suggest you build some base defence first and get capital ship

If you want a go at a map without the pirates picking away at your fleet, before you start a game, press Game Options and choose Pirates Inactive. The Pirates stil have a base, but the Bounty Screen is turned off, opting for no bounties on anyone.

Pay the bounty to have the pirates to go elsewhere for the first couple of turns.

Well the fact that pirates are a problem for you is a sympton of the real problem.

The pirates themselves are not your problem.

You problem is that you don't have a proper fleet. If you knew how to build a good fleet and defend properly, 1/3 of your ships should be able to stop pirates with minimal losses.

So basically you need to go about finding how to get a good fleet going.It's off topic so I won't get into it now.

As for the pirates...

you know they are coming. Make sure you prepare. Get your defending fleet positioned such that any planet the pirates target, your ships can get there fast.

Build repair bays on vulnerable planets.

Gauss defence platforms and hangar bays, while not very effective in multiplayer play, work well against pirates.

Or just pay very close attention to the bounty screen and pay the most bounty so they don't attack you.

I conclusion, as you get better with the game and good at building fleets, pirates will become just a minor annoyance.

Sometimes (especially in MP) it could be wise to let the pirates invade one of your planets. If they bring bombers, just kill the bombers then leave the planet. Scuttle any labs/factories you might have, they'll destroy the extractors, then go away to return to their home base (wich add to their defensive fleet overthere then ).

Another thing that it is good to know, is that pirates mainly focus trade ships first (they are pirates after all). So coupled with hangar defenses, and a repell fleet, you can tear them down while they chase those trade ships. Be sure to take out eventual bombers first, then take out their ships.

Vasari have a tech who reduce the number of pirates incoming to them. Altough it may help, better choose (as vas) the tech who up the bounty collected when destroying ships. You'll earn more money, and it will lower your bounty faster.

I would like to point out that in all the games I've played the pirates attack the planet closest to there base, so you can kinda figure out where they are going to be before they get there.

Another note, the size of the pirate raid depends on 1. The amount of bounty on your head and 2. The amount of ships/structures that have been built and exist at the time.

When I play single player games I ALWAYS make sure the AI has the higher bounty so the pirates will keep attacking them. This makes the AI have to spend time and resources fighting off the pirate raids that are continuously getting bigger and bigger. Just dont pour money into increasing the AI's bounty all at once.

1. When it is time for the pirate raid (so when the count down is zero and the bar is flashing red) up the bounty to just the amount to get the AI wanted and then watch it. The AI will probably bet just enough for you to be the one that is targeted.

2. Now immediatly repeat step one and keep repeating the process until the raid is launched. You bet, Ai bets, You bet, Ai bets. thats my method.

It has always worked for me, when the raid is launched the Ai has always had the higher bounty on its head. Just be aware of when the time comes to start uping bounty, it should give a voice warning saying pirate raid is imminent but sometimes the warning isn't given, just pay attention to the Skull/Crossbones tab and if it is flashing you know that it is time to bet.

This game can be kind of frusterating when you are new to it. It took me several tries to finally figure out how to win. Dont ever get discouraged, if you have any more questions post them on the forums or PM someone. You can always PM me, I will try to have an answer to any question about the game. Or I can direct you to people who probably know. Good Luck!

yeah I agree with jetheren that is the stratgy I use but in my oppinon keep a smallish (at least one cap ship with supporting ships) with deffesive structures (repair platforms work best in my oppinon) in orbit at the general direction of the spacelane that the pirates use. than cushion your ships with multiple repair platforms that are blanketing eachother

I find that if I have a planet maxed out in hanger defence structures, a repair bay, and a cannon or two. I can generally take any pirates without sending in ships. Generally 8 bomber squadrens can take out most pirate raids.

Other than that I pick a computer and keep the bounty on them when the time comes. When the bounty get to big, then I just start ignoring it and let the pirates come.

I too am a complete newb at this game. Not at RTS genre, just at SoAsE. Now, you all will probably have a laugh riot on my expenses, but my learning system was like this. I barely could properly follow all the tutorial missions at start. then i read a couple online guides and message boards and decided to start my first game. A weird one. I picked a small random map, and.. well, ZERO opponents, and started the game. Hey, instant victory! Quit or continue playing? Continue playing, of course. So, there i am, the whole tiny solar system for me alone,..and the Jolly Roger team

It was like that that i learned my ropes. When i was beating the game...err, the pirates actually, then i finally added one opponent, of the same race i am, so i could understand what was he doing. All this on AI easy. After i mastered that aspect of the game, i started picking medium maps with more players. Now i am still at the easy difficulty, but am enjoying 2 vs 2 games (my teammate is also an AI). Every new game, i set my ally to be of different race or attitude: turtler, researcher, attacker etc.So i can watch what and what and when is he doing. This system worked for me, maybe will work for someone else that has problems with the early game steep learning curve. Right now, i am actually consistently winning my matches, and i am having fun. Fun is everything, isn't it?

Grr. YOU.

lol .

The few times I played against Pirates I learned a trick or two. First I noticed they don’t go after more than one Planet at a time when they attack. They will change to a different Planet on the next attack sometimes. Anyway what I end up doing is I would build my fleet enough so while they are away attacking one of the planets I would attack their Home planet thus stopping their production for new ships. It may sound easy but Pirates can be pretty tuff. Now I only played against Pirates a few times because they are annoying when your trying to colonize a get your tech up so forgive me if I’m not accurate on my info.

Tech fast. Enough LRFs will pwn pirates easily, especially with a capship to soak up the hurt.

Im also new, even though I have played a couple of big maps against normal AI's.

Pirates is never a real problem to me. I build a capital ship and a handfull of the small frigates and they take care of the problem.

For the moment I play tech as they are easier to "understand" as theire buildings is a bit more rezognizeble to a n00b like me.

I always start with, building the capital ship base, and start building the free capital ship straight away. This is my main priority. Then I build a scout or two and a couple of the cheap frigates. The capital ship is the Kol as my starting ship. Then I start to scout for a "easy" star system for the taking.

The fist tech I always explore is the "ice" planet tech, and the "volcano" tech, which allows me to build on all types of planes in the game. It's so annoying not being able to utilize a newly conquered planet.

For the pirates, I also use the bounty thing, and it have proven really helpfull to contain the AI.

When I'm building up my force, I often just let the pirate come and kill them all.

I only use bounty when my fleet are busy fighting far from home to keep the pirate away.

I can not find the option to turn off the pirates.  I see the place to choose "options", but not "game options" as EmpPal stated.  Any help would be appreciated.  Thanks.

Game options when you are choosing the map or when choosing a faction.

Make sure you have the patches.

Download the updates and found it.  Thanks for the help.

How do you download the patches?

To get the newest patches, the Beta for 1.1 you have to have Impulse. Now when you download Impulse click the Blue Stardock Orb in the top left and select "Show Pre-Release Versions" Then go to Updates and update away!

1 repair bay, 1 phase inhibitor, 1 planetary shield, 17 guass cannons. Bring it on biatches.

pirates = free exp for your lovely flagship

I really hope you are upgrading your fleet cap. A lot of new players upgrade their cap way too late. They prefer the increased income because there is no 'noticable' need for a big fleet. 100 cap is pretty crappy especially since your cap ship takes 50 of that. The more ships you have the less losses you will take.

Necro ftl.

To be honest i'm a noob too. But i don't get it....how is this hard to learn?I always jus specialize in econamy 1st with Vasari and have my allys defend me.before even midgame(and colonizing about 5-7 planets) i'm getting such a large income on everything.Pirates even come after me and they arent even an annoyance.just nice lil action. I don't even up my war techs intell just b4 midgame. When i do i get ALL of them though.then i get my fleet logistics. works great kuzz i got my Kozura(sorry if it's spelled wrong or the wrong name) Cannon's on all my planets. i then also start feeding my allys. People keep saying that it is suicidale to start with econamy concentration. I don't even like getting RA.....stupid thing always forces what ships i get....

In the beginning, I used to keep upping the reward to push the pirates to the opponents. But I found that in the end, I was just giving the oponents spare experience points. Secondly, since I've upped the bounty on the opponent, chances are, my own bounty has increased as well (since the other fellow will try to bet against me), so in the next round, I have to put up a lot more cash to keep up. Economically, I think it is a no win scenario. Thirdly, the size of the pirate raid ad their "persistence" is related to how much bounty is on your head. If you and your opponent have been upping the bounty, when the pirates do hit, the bounty is probably high, so the pirate raid will be large and persistent. So in the end, I just accept the pirates and only use the bounty when it serves a tactical advantage (ie. distraction)..

Usually, when just starting out, I have a cap ship (the free one), plus say a bunch of frigates (up to say ten). Usually, in the beginning, if you have a small fleet + one cap ship, you can take on most any pirate raid (unless you have been playing up the bounty). When I have a chance, I try to research and add on hangers. This adds "mobile" defenses (at least within the grav well) to a planet. Later on, I like adding Phase Jump Inhibitors to prevent the pirates from leaving so I can mop them up and soak up the exp points. In fact, if I know a particular planet is a likely target for pirates, I put my least experienced cap ships there for "training excercises"