I'm not liking the fixed fleet sizes for pirate raid levels.

I like the random fleet supply approach personally.

I just set up ijh the beta and watched a map I'm working on and particularly watched the pirates assault one system and it was spellbinding.  I set two pirate bases up at ends of world chains and they synced assaulting--one would leave as the other arrived.  The AI gradually eeked out dominance by building caps between each wave that decimated its capitol.

It was harsh but I noticed they aren't razing the world just destroying its infrastructure.  I had built an adjacent dead asteroid system and the defender would retreat its cap fleet there--allowing it to gradually add to it after each wave.

Very cool--I think--but pirates must be balanced carefully as to how they will hit players.  On my map its by intent but in a more symmetrical scenario it would unbalance.

I disagree with nerfing the pirates and the on-off touch is the most utilitarian approach.  Perhaps an aggression setting would be nice--one that would scale bounty effects--i.e., where you could make it cost a fortune, etc. or be less aggressive. 

I personally like the changes.  In past pirates always came to DESTROY YOUR WORLD.  Even a small force came to bombard the planet and you had to beef defenses to stop the bombardment's screening force--then come back to kill the bombers--very nice as it has played so far for me.

Player set scalability--as to raid size and/or cost would really be a design asset and a player selectable nerf. I remember when pirates weren't a threat (just fodder to level cap ships--I used to love their arrival) and I much prefer the intensity.

Hard to comment on force mixes with them as I am not sure how it all works out over varying scenarios but I like what I see now.  Perhaps one of a very few pirate raids could be set as a "wildcard" and have different force mix for unpredictability.  I also would like to see pirates devote small strikes towards asteroids--maybe "X%" of a raid could divert along the way?

Just my two-cents.

I'll save my partial map and record the assault sequence if anyone wants to see the assault I described.

Yes, that's the beta.

P.S. In all honestly, the pirates are not even that hard to fend off. There are many strategies you can use. You can start by not trying to fight the bounty and put the money otherwise wasted to better use.

Yes, beta 2 is 1.19a.

The difficulty you play has no impact on the Pirates. That only affects your AI opponents. I would recommend turning them off again, as the vast majority of Sins players do even in Entrenchment when the pirates were pathetically weak.

Really the pirates are not that hard to deal with. I recently tried a game where I wanted to see which "only static" defenses would allow me to defeat the early guarded 26 ships raid. I was playing Advent, what I tried is 2 repair platforms, one hangar defense with bombers (for the Corsairs), 5 beam defense platforms. The hangar had shield bestowal, which I think really helps and is the primary reason I built one, and beam platforms had synergy, which also help but it's tier 4 so you might not have time to set that up if playing normally (I wasn't, I was just preparing defenses specifically for pirates).

What I found is pirates are kinda stupid , they may be tough by sheer strength, but would be a lot tougher if they handled your defenses properly. Basically, they seem to go for the nearest target from where they appear. To beat them easily, exploit their current stupidity ! Make that nearest target be the 5 beam platforms tightly packed and backed by repair and shield bestowal (for Advent, but I think it will nicely work for the other races, upgrade the repair for TEC...). You'll lose nothing while defeating the raid. Add in a small fleet with a capship and you will gain some bonus experience (they don't give much though). However if you mispredicted the pirates arrival location and misplaced the defense platforms, you'll have a harder time...

Another maybe simpler method is the starbase one. Didn't try it but I think that with 2 repair bays, you will have no problem defeating them. Just upgrade health if your starbase is going out too quickly or weapons if you want the pirates to go out more quickly.

While these are ways to protect from them, I do agree that the strength indicator basically is never on "low" for more than two minutes if you play normally, and that in a player against player scenario, the early guarded raid might give the other player a too strong advantage for a so low bounty... I don't know really, I'd like to see two good players give it a try with pirates on, and tell us if the early raids were a decisive factor for the game...

the problem I see with the pirates, is they jump to that guarded level before you could even have researched repair platforms, let alone shield bestowal. The tests I performed showed them going to guarded as soon as the average number of planets per player was 2. Which happens real fast, and a raid isnt far behind that. you might be able to get hangers and some beam guns out, but I seriously doubt you could get a static defense up to protect your second planet (which is usually a measley roid) against their first raid. And if you did manage to do it, you have just lost the edge in the expansion race.

I would much rather see them not attack anything on their own at the begining of the game. Low = no raiding without large bounties. After a fair amount of expansion has gone on (maybe 4-5 planets per player, or you could go by average fleet upgrades or a combination), then they go to guarded and start regular raiding. After that, I dont think theres an issue, but I dont know for sure because every game I've played with the pirates on has crippled me early game and I haven't lasted.

It varies based on the amount of bounty in play.  If the raid level is high and there's only 1000 credits in the pot, the Pirates will not send as massive a fleet. This is to prevent players from cheesing huge pirate fleets into attacking for little money.

Yarlen, is it possible to get a detailed discription of the new system? I never play with pirates on (well, maybe a long, long time ago) and am slightly confused as to when I'm about to get hit hard and when it'll be soft.

And btw, I think the very first raid of the game is still too difficult. It might be because the first raid is always on the guarded level and not the low level.

Thanks for the hard work, though!