well first they can decrease the amount of pirates sent their way

as to your idea of where to weaken them, I point to Entrenchment. They were that weak.

But I do agree in the need to do something

With the Distant Stars mod, we have the tech severely ramped up (160% total hitpoints (shield+hull, each race is different)) with higher levels of weapon fire (40% to 60%) and still the late game pirates are nasty, ugly, and difficult to deal with. And we don't have the caps incorporated into the raids yet (though they are in the pirate base along with a starbase of Orky form, registered 600+ in laser/pulse gun firepower, ouch)

dude, you must not play it for very long

I designed the Powerful Pirates on DS because the Entrenchment pirates sucked

with Diplomacy, they are not needed because of how powerful the pirates are now

I agree with these guys, the pirates are too powerful

and this is coming from someone who loves the idea of powerful pirates

I love the current difficulty of the pirates.  I am actually a little worried I will lose a bid rather than not caring.  You have the option to turn off pirates for a game.

They always attack the SB. And even if they didnt my defence fleet wipes them out shortly. You guys seriously need to get better...Ive been playing this since release day and they are not much harder. Its always the same 3-4 planet bombers and the rest is just basic pirate crap. I mean seriously how can you not defend against this? By 6-7 minutes in game you should have a fledgling economy and 2 cap ships, by 15-20 minutes in game you should have at least 200ish spent in ship population and you can't beat the pirates?

**edit:I have a thought they updated 1.00 already once this weekend. Are you playing that original 1.00 or the second one? I don't know if thats the problem for you. Or if I'm just better at the game then you. Not that it matters, but our experiences with the pirates are vastly different.

15 hours huh? I don't play more then 6-8 opponents so that the games over in 2 hours on fastest settings. 15 hours of sins sounds yucky, thats what civ 4 and galactic civ 2 is for.

Ok, after winning a FFA against 3 cruel AI (maximum two winners) I let the game continue to see what would happen and...

I've got to agree with Ryat on this one. Infinately increasing pirate strength is not even believable. The rate of increase sounds more like an oversight to me than a planned gameplay mechanic and has nothing to do with perceived player skill. Part of the problem is actually the Pirate Pillager laser damage. Later in the game it can fire from 1/4 of the gravity well essentially obliterating any static defenses including that heavily upgraded starbase due to the range. I went six hours to see what the rate of increase would look like and it is quite funny.

That said, I actually do like an increased pirate strength in the early to mid game and it was fun to see the crazy pirate raids and there are ways to deal with it in the current version without turning it off. I don't usually play 15 hour games so probably not as big a problem for me.

Basically you have the same options IMO to deal with the current pirates in the game atleast up to the six hour mark I hit (But wow, if the rate of increase is constant I want a diplomacy pact with the pirates to get a hold of their armor and weapon increases )

1) Have your starbase protecting your planet (Enforced loyalty, auxilary governmnet, etc) to keep the pillagers off your structures (They will keep bombing the planet to no avail) and heavily fortify your starbase with repair bays and turrents (bombers are nearly worthless (except for distractions) due to the pirate flak (100+ dps) late game). This works really well even with Vasari starbase and no AOE. If your Vasari, you probably want your starbase on hold. I lost a fully upgraded starbase this way to see how it would fair... which was not good.

2) Let them destroy your planet and re-colonize.

3) Destroy the pirate base before they get overly powerful (I finally did this at 6 hour timeframe). The turrents where crazy powerful 10k health and 100+ dps. However, I was able to destroy it with six Kortuls (I didn't want to wait forever to kill the 10K hull turrents after taking out 5-6 of them with 40 carriers, etc).

Pirate stats (6 hour mark)

Name Hull, Armor, Experience (lol), DPS

Pirate Rogue 2880, 22, 15, 65

Pirate Pillager 2610, 21, 30, 86

Pirate Corsair 4620, 26, 50, 106

Pirate Cutthroat 3510, 24, 35, 28 and 83

Pirate Reaper 3975, 24, 25, 136

Pirate Turrent 10500, 34, 50, 101 (mini starbase!)

I just bought Diplomacy the other day, and started playing today (Feb 8th, 2010), and I feel I have to chip in on this thread...

I 10,000% agree that the pirates are absolutely ridiculous as they are. I always play on Hard difficulty when dealing with AI, and I don't know if that's making the difference or not, but neither do I care.

The pirate "Heavy Cruisers" have as many or more HP than my Kortuls, and the dps output of a pirate raid is absolutely off the charts. I had a raid against me that destroyed my FULLY upgraded Orkulus (with over 16,000 hp and r2 reintegration ability, and maxed weapons) in about two minutes... The station was sorrounded by several repair platforms, hangars, and turrets. It was all wiped out... my tactical slot maxxed planet, the fully upgraded Orkulus, and the planet itself... rickrolled in about 4 minutes.

To put this in perspective - no enemy fleet (which were all larger than said pirate raid) had ever even put a serious dent in that system. That planet had survived about eight sieges prior to the pirate raid. The bounty on my head was only 2000 credits (prices were often into the 6,000 range by this point). So... yeah... pretty retarded. Also, half the map is nothing but the remnants of pirate fleets where AI worlds used to be.

As it stands, pirates are so effective that they can simultaneously trounce the Vasari, the TEC, and the Advent. They may as well elect a king and form a gov't because no one can really oppose them. And that, is freaking ridiculous.

Not to even mention the obtuse dimplomacy system itself that seems to be just as capricious and random as the old one - except it costs more resources now.

All in all, this expansion is about 2/5 stars, and two of those stars are because I'm a fanboi.

Fix this!

-Itharus

Maybe some game devolopers think that harder is more challenge and therefore more fun.  I like pirates, when they are not super powered.  How about add more pirate ships to make them more versatile?  Like ships tha can hijack frigates, or ships that can slow or stun other ships.  Ships that can cloak?

We're all playing the game intensely right now. 

It's a delicate thing and just as the pirates went back and forth during the original release, we will be revisiting how strong they are here too.

What we want to avoid is the situation where players hire the pirates to attack an enemy and they merely serve as XP fodder for the target player.

My frist impression of the pirates...  I was caught offguard to be honest.  While I agree the old pirates needed a good buff, but I think the buff might be too extreme.  Perhaps a slider for pirate strength might be a good idea.  I know some of the much more skillful posters here thinks the pirate strength is good now, but I'd dare to say majority of us aren't as good as you.  I like the aspect of having pirates in the game but now, I'm considering turning them off.  They are quite strong from the get-go.  Especially in the early game, they pack more wallop than the other AI players can dish at me.

If you have to resort to one race's super weapon to neuter the base... Something is a little off kilter here.

hm if that is a concern, why not just make pirate fleet not give any exp?

Siege: Dial gun back to 6K range and 2 targets per bank.
Medium: Dial Anti-Module gun *way* down to 2.5K range and 5 DPS.
Research: 2 per raid.
Weapon Damage research: 10% damage for all types.
Weapon Cooldown research: 7% cooldown, 5% range for all types.
Hull research: 7.5%, 1 Armor.
Armor research: REMOVE.
Repair research: 20%.