Massive Pirate Fleets

from Sins Forums

I started a FFA match against AI on a 6 player map.  Difficulty was set to cruel and I was playing TEC Loyalists.  I was about 6 hours into the game and it was down to Myself, 1 TEC Rebel, and 2 Advent Loyalists.  Pirates were active from the start of the match.  My issue is that first i went to try and take out the pirate base.  when i got there, there were about 3000 pirate ships, all of which had 30+ armor and did 60+damage.  considering my fleet fully maxed out only has about 250-300 ships in total with no where near those damage numbers it would of been impossible for me to wipe out the pirate base.  I just reloaded my game and decided to ignore the pirate bas all together.  About 2 hours later it was down to just myself and the TEC Rebel.  When i jumped into their first planet i planned to take there were no TEC fleet but on there planet there was about 800-1000 pirate ships with the same kind of stats as previously mentioned.  I jumped out and then sent out scouts and every planet i scouted of the TEC Rebels was the same, all of them had about 500+ pirate ships.  This explains why my game at this point was as laggy as it was.  I know the rebels have the ability to ally themselves with the pirates but i didnt think they would defend there planets with that many forces.  this is a huge balance issue,  if a player is able to get pirates to defend his planets in those kind of numbers then there is no way to possible take that play out.  this bug needs to be addressed because it also lowers performance by having that many ships on a map.  In total on this map i would guess that i have found atleast close to10000 pirate ships and that was just on the base and the front line worlds.  who knows how many more were on the ones i couldnt get my scout ships to.

this Shows the number of ships on one of the TEC Rebel planets, this was just 1 of many like this.

Shows the stats on whats supposed to be one of the weekest pirate ships

7,640 views 16 replies
Reply #1 from Sins Forums Top

oh my god, i hope they will fix this.

Reply #2 from Sins Forums Top

Get your Titan in there. There looks like fun!

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Reply #3 from Sins Forums Top

Quoting NovaStalker, reply 2
Get your Titan in there. There looks like fun!
End of NovaStalker's quote

 

I tried with my entire fleet once.  Even with my titans AOE spell fully lvled and my titan being at lvl 9 and all my cap ships from lvl 6-9 there were sytill way to many. there armor value makes the AoE not do much to them, i was only able to kill maybe 50 of the ships before i started loosing caps myself.  Either the amount of ships need to get lowered or there stats do because a combanation of both makes it almost impossible to clear out these wells without taking heavy losses.

Reply #4 from Sins Forums Top

They need to set the raiding fleets on a self destruct timer like we have on DS. The protection fleet is not the problem.

Reply #5 from Sins Forums Top

A scuttle timer might be helpful indeed. If the had one nobody could complain about some buffing in other areas (if needed) either.

But pirates should only collect on the pirate base to my knowledge, they go back there after a raid afterall... if you are a TEC rebel you can't be raided so they shouldn't collect on your planets either... I could see your enemys being lucky and investing money into a pirate quets for the same planet at the same time, but let's be serious, how likely is that to happen?

So how the hell did you end up with them "expanding" all over the place like this?

 

Edit: those massive stats could result from one too many successful raid boosting the pirate research too much, maybe looking into the way they upgrade their ships is neccsary as well?

Reply #6 from Sins Forums Top

I think it's because the bounty went too high and they destroyed all the targets of value meaning the raid never ended.

Reply #7 from Sins Forums Top

Quoting mcintire, reply 5
So how the hell did you end up with them "expanding" all over the place like this?
End of mcintire's quote

Thats what im not sure of,  i didnt even relize it was happening because i was focusing on the advent at the time.  when i got them down and done with and started focusing on the TEC Rebels this is what i found, it was a total suprise to me.  They are all on Rebel worlds so it couldnt be that they raided those planets then just stayed. it was more like they were defending the planets for the rebel player because he still had his own tactical and logistic structures on the planet as well.  I agree that once a targeted planet has been successfully raided that the ships in the raid should have a scuttle timer go active.

Reply #8 from Sins Forums Top

The AI does send pirate missions out against opponents. When playing TEC Rebel I had the AI send several to my planets. They arrived and stayed there. That may be the issue.

Reply #9 from Sins Forums Top

Their armor and damage increase as they collect bounty, so assuming that game was going on for a long time they got fed plenty of credits, especially from trade ships.

Reply #10 from Sins Forums Top

Quoting Scudhawk, reply 9
Their armor and damage increase as they collect bounty, so assuming that game was going on for a long time they got fed plenty of credits, especially from trade ships.
End of Scudhawk's quote

Ah was not aware of that fact. i was like 10 hours into the match so that would explain the stats.  Realy the stats werent all that bad on the occasional pirate rade i faced. my star bases and tactical structures were mort than enough to handle it on its own.  the Main issue was the ammount of ships. with the amount + the stats made it impossible for these wells to be cleared out and allso caused alot of lag in my game.

Reply #11 from Sins Forums Top

Quoting Ryat, reply 8
The AI does send pirate missions out against opponents. When playing TEC Rebel I had the AI send several to my planets. They arrived and stayed there. That may be the issue.
End of Ryat's quote
If that is the case then we need to fix the "offer mission to pirate factions" research a bit I guess.

Reply #12 from Sins Forums Top

A simple timer self destruct is enough. Have it on DS and it works wonders on keeping the pirate population under control.

Reply #13 from Sins Forums Top

Well, personally, I'm not a fan of self destruct timers. (I'd rather them just fly back to their home base first) Now, playing as the Rebels, I've seen them gather at my planets before. I think it's because of either a bounty or a mission.

Now, this does bring up an idea. They aren't going there to defend, they're going on a glitched mission to attack my planet. They should never have left for that mission in the first place. However, shouldn't I be able to issue missions to them to go to a planet in order to defend it?

Reply #14 from Sins Forums Top

i have not encountered this in rebellion yet - only in diplomacy

You have to stagger your attack to have any chance - ie move your scounts about 20 of them in and tell them to go to far side of pirate base - they follow. then jump your fleet / starbase builder jumps in - if your TEC have a system full of shipyears )and a upgrades starbase and start spamming the pirte system with units -

 

I didnt win :(

 

No self destruct timer

 

- the problem is pirates retreat after an attack - the idea being bounty is gone so they stop attacking - the pirate fleet should be motionb the whole time - if you get bountied and pirates attack / destroy all structrues in 1 of your planets they go back to pirate base - when next bounty comes allong a new fleet is dispatched  it should ALWAYS be a new fleet and any surviving ships from the last pirate attack both attacking the new bounty target

Reply #15 from Sins Forums Top

simply turn off pirates if you dont plan to finish a game quickly, 10 hour is a ridiculous amount of time to be playing, and when you send pirates to other factions, such as tec rebel with truce amongst rogues, its a waste of money on your part, and they'll just defend the grav well, gotta think who to really target these days, else you're only helping someone :]

Reply #16 from Sins Forums Top

But those rogues do full up your fleet cap just like returning armada - that leaves you with two choices - either scrap them slowly one by one or use them as your vanguard - which just adds xp yo your enemy so TAR is actually a bad thing and should not be used