By order of the TEC, Advent, and Vasari ambassadors, we've been asked politely to open a dialog to the Pirates about their recent strength and incursions.
They, quite undiplomatically, told us what we could do with our demands.
Obviously, such disregard for the peace of the local cluster can't be allowed, so a task force has been formed to extend a more reasonable diplomatic effort to the Pirates. One which our Vasari colleague called, "Forceful" and "Prudent."
The task forc...err, peace envoys, are due to arrive next week to creatively express our feelings to the Pirates. Rest assured, a diplomatic solution is forthcoming.
I agree that the constant growth of Pirate ship stats is a bit out of hand, but I really don't think I've been playing long enough to offer an unbiased opinion... (In other words, they have indeed kicked my arse a few more times than I'd like to admit.)
But another small change that I think would do quite a bit of good is to add another small linear growth; namely, that the strength of each raid decreases proportionally with time in respect to the amount offered via public bounty. As it is, the big problem with large endgame pirate raids is not only that they have some amazing firepower and defensive capabilities, but you can unleash a veritable SWARM of pirates with a paltry amount. Logically, I think it follows that 5000 creds spent on the first pirate raid should be "worth" far more than that same 5000 spent four hours into a standoff. Once you've got a steady income at your disposal, it is rather viable to just have the pirates do your dirty work for you, and I think some scaling along these lines would help to kill two birds with one stone. Instead of a guaranteed personal mercenary force when you can afford toss 40,000 in bounty onto someone lategame, you get less relative power than the early raids, sort of adjusting for inflation as it were. I think it would additionally help to deal with the scenario that a real angry mob of lategame pirates won't exacerbate the problem that they can severely outclass faction capabilities. If you've got some robust defenses set up, some of the stats mentioned in posts above don't seem nearly as intimidating when you've only got a dozen or so ships from the 'super-pirates' to deal with. At least until you decide their asteroid is a galactic eyesore and must be dealt with, but it's your own grave if you want to talk a walk through their backyard.
Please dont make the bidding period last longer... I HATE babysitting this damn thing.
How come I have to put down only 250 credits everytime I bid and the AI can go from 0 to 8000 in 1 bid, beating me to the punch by 0.5 seconds?
Hold Shift for 1k increments. Can't remember if there are any other increments...
Again, my ratio suggestion would take care of the "beating me to the punch" issue nicely
interesting. thanks for moving on a change. i played over the weekend to see what the fuss has been about. every thing was going fairly well until i missed a couple of bumps on the pirate bounty. next thing i know the pirates had wiped out a well defended planet plus my entire fleet. each ship in their fleet had the stats of a mini capital ship. it took maybe 30 minutes of fleet building and rallying to reposition my self to retake the planet.
intel on other planets showed half a dozen other once ai controlled planets in the same situation. planet destoryed. pirate fleet waiting to kill everything that enters the grave well. by that point there were hundreds of pirates in their base as well. a combined attack between my fleets and my allies wouldnt have put a dent into it.
by the time i replaced the lost military tech structures and started builidng novalift cannons to kill the base, i had lost the game to my ally over diplomacy.
...sooo....again....thanks. i dont mind being burdened by the pirates but the game shouldnt be about finding a way to kill them either.
I think pirates are both overpowered and not following their traditional role of piracy enough.
Previously, pirates bacame irrelevant on the late game, and an atempt was made to make them important mid-to-late game, and not just a xp filler.
I will try to organize my ideas scattered on several posts here, I hope I can remember them all.
Pirate Skills
Pirates should be a harassing force. They should harm the effectiveness of all civilian operations. Skills pirates should have:
Override - targets any one civilian structure: Pirates gain temporary control of target civilian structure. Effect lasts until the pirate ship leaves the gravwell or is destroyed. While the pirates have control of the structure, the benefits of the structure becomes a penalty, thus:
A trade port counts as -1 trade port, generating negative income. with 2 trade ports in a gravwell, if 1 is controlled by the pirates, it is the same as having 0 trade ports in said gravwell. If the player had 3 trade ports, having 1 under control of the pirates would be the same of having only 1 trade port.
A military or civilian lab would count as -1 tech level. If a player has 4 military labs and one is overrun by the pirates, that is the same as having only 2 military labs. This would halt research and the ability to create higher level ships.
Pirate controlled refineries would give penalties instead of bonuses for the metal and crystal resources.
Media hubs would also negatively impact culture.
Controlling a frigate or capital ship factory means the pirates can build ships of the race from which the factory belongs to (!!!).
Ion cannons - targets ships and tactical structures: can temporarily disable operation of ships and structures. This way pirates can bypass strong defenses and get to the civilian structures, or disable them so that they can actually pound them into oblivion.
Flak burst - Pirates dont have fighters, they should have a way to pound strong waves of strike crafts when outnumbered, beyond the flak frigates.
Salvage resources - pirates should consume debris from destroyed ships and structures and scavenge resources from them.
Game mechanics
Pirate raid - Pirate raids should not have a fixed timetable. The 5 min could be a rough estimate, but the level of success of the previous raid should influence the time until next raid. The more successful the previous raid, the shorter the time until the next raid.
Pirates should have a 'cheat level intelligence', always knowing the planets gravwell contents. This way, they can weight the planetary factors:
To decide the best target to raid for maximum profit.
Pirate raids should have a hidden 'minimum bid' which starts small and grows over time, together with pirate strength. It makes no sense for a late-game raid be decided by a 500 credit bid. If the minimum bid is not met, the pirates pick (at least) one target randomly.
Calculating the minimum bid - The pirates will plan to send at least X ships. Each ship has a bid value, according to ship type. Summing the value of the number and type of ships the pirates intend
Pirate tech should have a cap much like the players to avoid the 4000 hull frigates. Once that level is reached, pirates will get stronger by sending more ships and multiple raids, and reducing the time between raids.
If two players engage a bid war, it is possible that two targets (or more) have a big bounty on them. The pirates will likely send two raids ( or more) at once if the bounties are big enough, so that they can profit more.
Private bounty - For a player to hire the pirates against a specific target, the number of targets should automatically calculate the 'minimum bid' value. If the player does not meet that minimum, he cannot launch the private bounty. Adding more money will make the attack force stronger, calculated by the cost per pirate ship like above.
Beefing up the bounty - The player should be ble to donate ships to beef up the pirate attack power. The number of fleet points of all ships would be summed, and for every 25 points of ships given to the pirates, the player will be untargettable for 1 raid. So, if a player donates 1 cap, he will be immune to the next 2 pirate raids.
Pirates controlling shipyards
There are ships that the pirates would prefer to build if they ever have a chance of controlling, according to their role. They would be able to build whichever ships the player which had the shipyard hjacked can build. They would try to build whatever counter they need against the target, according to context.
Hoshikos - best mobile repair skil.
Advent carriers - more squadrons per ship, also lays mines.
Vasari mine layer - can leave a wake of mines when running away, or thrown around in the fray.
LRFs - any faction, for more firepower.
Anti-structure cruisers - especially to finish off tactical defenses and SB.
Starbase constructors - they would send those back to the pirate base. once it is defended though, they would attempt to deploy offensively.
The egg - the best combination of offensive and defensive skills. The level 6 is the best skill for pirate pillaging.
Radiance - for that ship controlling skill.
Marza - MB. Nuff said.
It does not mean they will only build those, only that it will be a preference.
Pirate base
I think the pirate base should have 2 slots for starbases and a great amount of tactical slots, just to make them a very tough nut to crack.
If a faction wipes and colonizes the pirate base, it would be constantly stormed by pirates attempting to get it back, so it would be a high maintenance prize.
I hope you don't weaken pirates at all and I think there not getting strong enough with each pay on them. I for one also like challage and using them to break enemie strongholds
https://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/376151
The only way I have come to beat the bastard is get to maxium level and build TEC plasma cannons on and then blast the hell of of their nest. If they occupy other planets I build up my wealth and hit them time after time and wear them down. Stupid way to win a war thought. Need something to even the playing field like buy their technology. Some pirate is bound to sell out his companions. Captain Henry Morgan for example.
Can't wait to play the changes!
By the way, no matter how powerful (or not) they are, they still have one major weakness: their planet still only has 6k health.
So my task for here:
Augmented so that I had about 24 Karrastra Destructors instead of 12 was effective at taking out their planet when I simply focused on attacking it. After I destroyed their planet, I pulled my forces back away from their defenses, retreated the Karrastra's and then with my remaining fleet polished off the rest of their ships. In the meantime I built a Starbase and colonized the planet, and then my Starbase had no problem dealing with their defenses.
Well, we'll see what Thursday's 1.01 patch brings!
Excellent idea--give players a choice. I think a default strength that's halfway between Diplomacy 1.00 and what they were like in Regular Sins and Entrenchment would be good. Cull the current Diplomacy difficulty level "Insane", as in "Insane Pirates" or maybe "Bloodthirsty Pirates".
The real damage is not to people who read this forum. It's to people who know nothing about Sins, who purchase Trinity, and don't even know that these forums exist nor that you use Impulse to update the game (unless it's integreated into Trinity and Diplomacy, I dunno). The danger is that people will play the game for a week and then throw up their hands in frustration and conclude that Sins is garbage. I really do think this was a big mistake the more that I think about it.
<Edit> Download Updates button does in fact bring up Impulse. I don't know if it comes with Trinity or not though. I would assume that it does.
The 1.01 pirates are a joke again. Or at least they were on the 2nd attack against me. I sent them after everyone else the only game I played of 1.01. Was just a 4 player map though so it was over in an hour and a half. Normally play on fastest, but I played on normal to see if I could spot any bugs. Did find one which I will post now actually.
Get the game fairly well in, when you're sitting on 1,000+ supply and the bounties are in the thousands... then tell us how the pirates are. I'll do the same if I beat you to it
Just played 1.01 and you can't beat the pirates they just keep coming every 12 minutes. Its a joke.
Is there a "deplomatic solution" to the pirates? I don't see how.
Well they did say the initial pirate raids are easier now, if you read the changelog. But as the other guys says, it's mid to late game they are impossible, which you might just barely reach in an hour and a half.
I myself gonna turn pirates off untill some player takes the step and makes a mod that weakens them or make their strenght adjustable. Cba with an impossible enemy controled by the same system as my other opponents.
The stupid bidding system should have been changed. It was garbage in 2008 and it is still garbage in 2010...go figure!
Why do I have to babysit the damn thing all the time? Its boring and very frustrating, especially when you're in the middle of a battle.
As they are right now, Pirates are broken and they do not add anything fun to the game, in fact I think they take away some of the fun from what I think the game should be (empire building, colonizing/researching and fleet managing).
BTW, Pirates were not in need of a nerf during the first few raids. The problem was that their ships were uber OP mid to late game.
Well, until IC changes the way the bidding works, Pirates are off again!
i feel the same.. the pirates should be on a random timer(4 min 5min 7 min 8 min) and demand tribute at the end of the timer(which you shouldnt be able to see.) from each player. the random timer is so people cant just hoard right before it goes off since they wont know exactly when.
the amount will be figured by your current eco status and can be of gold crystal metal or a planet.
you get a little time to meet their demands(same as reject mission timer?)
the pirates randomly choose one of the nonpayers to attack... if everyone pays they wont attack(why should they if they get the money without a fight) unless the bounty (i would leave the bounty board up)on a players head is worth 3 times the amount paid for protection money. even if they dont attack they get to upgrade with the "protection" money
also pirate fix seems to make them too easy in the beginning now and stilll too hard at the end..
that might be an answer, make it so diplomacy is extended to pirates. This way going diplomatic at the start of a game is not suicidal.
But i love the pirates!
my "deplomatic solution" is 'Attack me and i'll send my fleet over and Hit you like a cake'
I tired that "solution" severa times and all it got me another lost game. The pirates will simply wipe you out. Its "War of the Worlds" and they are the Martians. That's it! Biological warfare!
agreed. to the mizax. it makes no sense that pirates would send 20 ships if they are only making 500 dollars
this is really super balling. wow. unfortunately it would seem like too much work to simply put in the next update. but this is a pretty fricking good system for pirate activity in any war game set up
I think this pretty much sums up my feelings on pirates right now, nothing to do with difficulty, they just aren't fun.
Well maybe for sins 2..
Also forgot to add that the amount asked for would be directly controlled by how powerful your empire is. this would balance it better... right now the richest person has control of the pirates and the poorest cant win the bidding making it very lopsided.
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