Pirate Confusion

from Stardock Forums

I'm finding myself very confused. I love playing this game, even though the tutorials are lacking and there's no campaign. But anyway, on to pirates. I bribe the shit out of those pirates. I give them ample supplies of cash to attack my enemy (on 2 player fyi) and yet they still decide that I'm better prey! I have triede raising the bounty to ludacris ammounts, but I still get attacked.

Allow me to elaborate. As established, I keep the bounty for my enemy well above they bounty for me. When the raid timer goes to zero a raid is launched, supposedly, on my enemies. In between the timers I would recieve a full pirate invasion force IN MY FACE. The locations varied, but were never my capital world.

It's really started to bug me, and actually caused me to fail what should've been easy. I took over every other system except for the one world my enemies had left. Supposedly the pirates had been doing the hard work for me for a while, so I started massing my forces. I get a message saying that they're going to kill my capital world, goody my fleet is there. (Remember, I've been in control of every single other world except for theirs for a while. This means that they've only had one planet for resources and have been being attacked by pirates for some time.) It's what happened next that just pissed me off. Their invasion force comes in and IT WAS HUGE. How in the world could they get so many ships, I don't know. But what came with them was a big-ass fleet of pirates! (in between the raid timer cooldown by the way)

I feel stupid here, I know I just missed something when I was trying to learn the game. Help!

3,104 views 4 replies
Reply #1 from Sins Forums Top

well since all of the ships travel the path of less resistance, they might end up travelling thru your planet just to get to your enemy

Reply #2 from Sins Forums Top

...and the AI has a nasty habit of out bidding you at the very very very last milisecond.

Offworld Trading Company
Reply #3 from Sins Forums Top

It's generally not a good idea to put bounty on more than one enemy.  The pirates go after whoever has the most bounty on them, there's no "consolation prize" if someone happens to have a lot of bounty on them as well, so don't waste your cash raising bounty on multiple AI's.

There are two conditions under which you could get a pirate raid even if you weren't the "most wanted" player.  The first, as has already been mentioned, is that pirates often have to travel a long distance to reach their intended target, and may actually travel through your planets to get there.  The second condition is if you capture the planet the pirates were intending to attack before they get there.

A lot of people turn pirates off because they're annoying.  The raids are infrequent and lead to these "winner take all" bidding wars that don't really add much to the game.  Pirates are really only dangerous for the first two or three raids.  After that (even at their maximum strength level) they're beaten back so easily there's virtually no point in wasting your cash buying them off.

Reply #4 from Sins Forums Top

When you play Advent, get that Persuasive Offer.  It helps.  Regarless of faction, you can easily outbid the AI by using this method:  When it says pirate swarm detetcted or whatever start counting.  Do not bid till you count to about 15.  Make sure your bids are higher once pass this point.  If AI bids more, bid again to outbid him.  If you bid too early, you are just wasting credits.  Take some practice to get the timing down.  Very useful against AI.