100 is not possible. If you have a save that shows this, please send it to us.

Save already overwritten by other game. The one with me getting pissed off and the 15k bounty idiocy.

Bidding should be hidden, why the heck would other players know wether you have put up money to the pirates. it's a backroom deal, dammit. Also, all players should bribe the pirates to stay away from them, with the player offering the least amount of money being attacked.

That way each player would have a fair chance in bidding and players could not gang up on one player to put up obnoxious amounts of money on them.

You could still do that directly by offering the pirates the mission to attack a specific player (down to what planet they would attack, too). If multiple players consipred on that one player they could even send him multiple raids at once.

I don't see the player losing anything from my proposition. If anything it would make some diplomatic researchas more valuable...

Whatever the intention of the pirate mechanic, the actual effect on player behavior has pretty clearly been that pirates are altogether ignored outside of the few seconds before they launch, at which point we see the ebay-esque last-second bidding war where everyone involved just prays that they get the last click before the invisible countdown runs out. 

Opinions may vary but to me, this is an aggravating way to do business and not much fun overall as a gameplay mechanic, especially against the AI.  I'd much prefer mcintire's approach or something like it to what we have now. 

I think the pirate counter should have a cooldown of 1-5 seconds from the last bid before pirate launch.

I have gone auction-bidding in several games, and one of the definitiviely-not-funny-things about pirate raids is to have someone outbid you, and the pirates launch 1 femtosecond later.

Pirate launch should happen no sooner than 1 to 5 seconds after the last bid, being delayed as needed, so that there is always time to respond to a bid.

Perhaps put the pirates as a player that can give out missions at the start of each new raid. Such as sending a demand for credits to every player, then each raid the demand gets higher. The last person to not fufill the mission gets raided, also taking into account if you are attacking them (feeding titan ect...) causing you to automatically fail the mission.

From what I've witnessed:

Pirates will raid exactly one player every time the counter runs out, even if there are multiple bases (in multiple systems even).

Prates will raid the player with the highest bounty on them.

Pirate bases are rendered nonfunctional when the planet is bombarded to the point the pirates loose control of it (or if the loyalist advent titan captures it), this means that the TEC superweapon can take out pirates fairly easily. The ships and defensive structures are irrelevant, except that they make it harder to conventionally bombard the planet. The pirate base can not be de-capped via culture.

When a pirate raid is finished (system is wiped out) surviving ships will return to the pirate base they launched from and become additional defenders. This includes pirate raids launched via buying missions from the pirate faction.

Buying a pirate mission sends a raid of strength depending on amount spent at a particular player.

TEC rebels have research that allow them to become allies with neutral factions and pirates. Once this tech is researched the TEC rebels can no longer be valid pirate targets and can pass through pirate bases.

Here's the things I'm not sure of:

Pirate raid strength increases as the game progresses. I am unsure if this is based on time or bounty collected by pirates.

The strength of individual pirate ships and structures increases as the game progresses. My assumption is that this is based off of bounty collected by the pirate faction, and it appears to apply to all pirate bases.

thanks for the explanation, Novalith makes sense, so it was the AI after all, who killed the pirates. 

Not only that, but if the extended bidding war were to happen, you could possibly elevate the pirate threat to the point of them just ending the game on the first raid.

This is something I've said before and isn't in the game for god knows what reason.

When launching, Pirates should attack ALL players with an active bounty. HOWEVER, the size of the fleet sent to each player depends on the amount of the bounty. ADDITIONALLY, the total sum of pirates are only slightly affected by the total sum of the bounties, and they are primarily affected by the average fleet size cap of all the players in the game.

That way, if you find yourself with a 5k bounty on your head, you could place 5k on someone else to actually REDUCE the number of pirate ships that are launched against you.

Additionally, the bidding becomes closed 60 seconds before each raid. You can see the last bounty status before that time, and it even decreases as that player's ships are killed, but you can not see the increases until the pirates launch and the bounty board is refreshed.

And as far as the individual pirate ship is concerned, their HP-to-damage ratios are bad. They are too tanky for a "privateer" navy that is not interested in fighting but pillaging. Increase pirate mobility (10-15%) and damage (~10%), but cut their HP and armor. Significantly. 33% is a good start.

There. I just fixed pirates for  you. Again. No need to thank me, Ironclad.

I think the pirates should be programmed to behave as pirates are supposed to and not behave like mercenaries.

For Ex. You contact the pirates and offer them a huge sum of cash to attack a weak player. The pirates would then take your money, and then figure, since you have the extra cash to try and buy them off they just decide to attack you instead and steal YOUR stuff.

or.

You pay off the pirates, and they use that money to make a whole bunch of ships, tell you they are going to attack your enemy, and then just sit in their space and drink grog and sing space shanties for the time being. And then after your exausted from walking into a fight with your enemy expecting pirate support. The pirates then decide to attack one of your allies for no reason.

THAT's what pirates do, they are drunk, high, and complete A**holes.

Mercs on the other hand behave the way they do in game.

-AE