The_Regicide

[quote who="137" reply="82" id="3152019"] Well, no, if you read the initial post it is. I am aware of your branch of the discussion, although I really don't think that it is possible to balance the pirates to remain effective in combat in every kind of game (long, short, big, small) otherwise. So they should probably remain as they are, although their ships are stronger than those of regular factions in late game. [/quote] There is a way, sure. Make them faster and

Erm... I don't think anyone said pirates are too effective, too dangerous or too much of a threat. This thread is not about that.

Sarcasm? What sarcasm? You seem to be unable to grasp the simple fact: pirates have better ships than anyone else. They have more of them. They shouldn't. That's wrong. Needs tweaking.

I give up. You're hopeless.

[quote who="OddskiBoddski" reply="73" id="3150553"]Exactly my point. The pirates have been around for a while, making money the whole time. So it would make sense for them to be able to buy good ships.[/quote] THEIR SHIPS HAVE MORE ARMOR, HEALTH AND DAMAGE THAN THE BEST THINGS ALL THE HUMAN MILITARIES CAN EVER HOPE TO FIELD! Good ship != Best ship in the universe. For a pirate, a good ship is something that can catch a trader and shoot something at it.

So, umm... The Pirates have been around since the TEC, so by your logic, it makes sense for them to get better ships than the TEC... even though most of their ships are old repurposed and weaponized TEC ships? WAT!?

I can definitely see how certain technologies are off limits to the Pirates. What I don't get is how they manage to field ships with better health, armor and damage than the military.

I was talking about the Pirates, not Iran and North Korea.

They don't have antimatter reactors.

[quote who="OddskiBoddski" reply="58" id="3147964"]Again, the pirates would be able to at least hire a good engineer....And not all of them are imminently retiring either, I'm guessing. Plus, seeing as the pirates would seem to have a goodly amount of money from all the credits people give them through bounty, wouldn't some pirates be able to hire away some of these supremely skilled engineers? And also, come to think of it, how do the normal empires get so many of these engineers? A

[quote who="Fyrstar2002" reply="53" id="3147831"]What does PEBKAC mean? And while we're at it, what does AFAIK mean? [/quote] Problem Exists Between Keyboard And Chair. In other words, the user is at fault, not the program or the machine. AFAIK is As Far As I Know.

You don't really need to sabotage it. Utilizing valuable and complex crystal-derived fuel to power the shield is also a good idea. Or maybe the shield technology is so incredibly complicated that maintaining the equipment is beyond all but the best of quantum reaction field engineers. Hell, it could even be so that a single shield is worth as much as an entire ship. Pirates are in it for the money, I can definitely see them sell stuff to retire.

[quote who="Shalkto" reply="50" id="3147728"]well first off reg you have a problem if you are crashing when you turn off pirates...haven't ahd that happen yet. so the problem is between the keyboard and the chair in your case.[/quote] Problem stopped happening with the 5/3 patch. Also, you don't seem to know what PEBKAC means.

[quote who="SpardaSon21" reply="46" id="3147601"]I want a Pirates.constants file so we can mod all of this.[/quote] Wouldn't give us access to the spawning/attack mechanisms. But sure, it'd be a great start!

Here's my pirates scaling and bounty effect idea with some minor fleshing out: Average Fleet Supply under 150 = Pirates inactive. They activate when the average gets above 150 Supply, and the first raid counter starts. Average Fleet Supply 150 - 300 = Threat level 1. Pirates have a total fleet equal to 150 supply + 1 for every 100 credits of total bounty. Everyone with a bounty on their head gets a share of the pirate fleet, and this share is equal to their share of the

[quote who="Emjay86" reply="39" id="3147070"]The only concern with that though is the pirates becoming too powerful... I guess in that sense that is the sole reason as to why they are there though... Its a contraversial decision if its ever made and I can see people going crazy over it. That being said it does make more sense. It would be nice if they were at least able to get something dangerous for example something on the lines of a

[quote who="OddskiBoddski" reply="38" id="3147014"]If you were a SMART pirate you would probably want to install some armor in case something went wrong....just saying....[/quote] They already have "some" armor, that is the problem. Their armor is better than anything the three greatest cultures of the universe can produce!

Short answer: No. Long answer: It would make no gameplay or logical sense. For starters, pirates aren't the vanguard of an army, they are not front line troops, if they end up taking fire, something has gone wrong. And the thing that's most annoying about pirates is their ability to tie up a fleet because they're so damn tanky, and can really disrupt your economy by killing planets and trade/refinery ships, but can't really put up much hurt otherwise, not unless the ga

As I said, they're WAY too tanky. Pirates should be opportunistic glass cannons. If you can field more ships that are better than anything else in the universe, why are you bothering with the pillage. Grab the planet and expand like wildfire!

And a few orders of magnitude more expensive.

How do you consider a single starbase countering raids a problem but think that repair bays and turrets should be enough?

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 wit

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

New game, got a ~600 credits bounty on my head, figured I could take them on, no problem. Yeah, no. A hundred ships came. A hundred. Against my flagship, two caps and a smattering of corvettes. The pirate siccing mechanics are STILL incredibly toxic, and the pirate screen is STILL ignored all the time except for the last half of second where you just pump up the bounty. Got mad afterwards, placed a 15000 bounty on one AI. 0.1 seconds before the pirates launched, I had

Oh right, forgot about that. Thanks.