um yeah.  pirates = broken.

Seriously IC, you should kick yourselves for this goof-up as you should have seen this coming.  Pirates are like gods now.  I can't play the game until the next patch comes out.

Shout out for IC, for addressing the pirates.  Good or bad?  That's an opinion... but they definitely have game-changing potency as is.  Although I'd love to see a "nerf pirates" option, acknowledgement to those dig them... and I do have to admit I've taken some pleasure in using them as a monetary wand-of-death +5... 

Only gravity gets it all perfect.  I'm new to Sins but am thoroughly impressed by, the complexity it tackles, and the intuitive + sophistocated interface.  As a dev, I imagine that takes guts, because you know there are going to be game-changing imbalances you missed with testing, if nothing else do to the skill level of the test group.  Thanks for a beautiful game and your responsiveness.

I think that as another late-game option for more pirate power, instead of ridiculously powerful ships,  is letting them launch initially one , then more stealth raids without a bid. They would just pick one player - usually the most powerful - and attack it. if the game goes on longer, pirates will attack the 2 most powerful, then the 3 most powerful etc.

Bid timer unknown? In a normal auction it makes no sense for the pirates to have an unknown cut-off.

I haven't gotten to the point of ridiculous pirates, but super frigates certainly does not seem the way to go.

I like the pirates as they are. IMPO they are still quite weak but more anoying now for sure.

definitely agree on being able to set levels. right now the pirates are broken

currently an early game raid of the pirate's mobile "defense platforms"  (how do they move so much mass so easily?)

pirate corsair         14 armor   2464 hp

beam def pltfm      12 armor   3600 hp

In my opinion, there is two major problems :

1. Pirates are (obviously) overpowered.

2. Pirates doesn't fit properly in the Sin's background. How it's possible to have a small ship more armored than a space station ? How pirates living on an asteroid can be more evolved than a space empire with billion of people, research centers, universities... ?  TEC have surely a strong industrial capacity, after all they are an economic power, but their ships seems to be build in pulpboard when they fight against pirates.

My ideas :
Dramaticly reduce the buffs (or simply remove it, that sucks).
Pirates uses a new type of weapon (some kind of radioactive ammunitions, not sure) that can bypass shields and armor. The purpose is to have pirates who kill less, but can seriously damage a fleet.
Other civilizations don't use that kind of weapon because it's extremely dangerous and instable. Pirates are nuts, or they uses slaves, or they don't really care about their health... anyway a good pirate is a dead pirate so TEC&co scientists never really got the chance to study it.

And I read some very good ideas :
Give pirates some economic "damages". A planet attacked by the pirates have debuff on metal/crystal extraction, very high debuff on trade, and no impact on taxes (we all know that tax collectors don't have feelings) due to the fear they inspire amongst the population (like when wisigoths/mongols/babarians attacked the roman empire).
On middle/late game, pirates can attack one or many planets. We never know if we will encounter 1 strong fleet or many weaker, and with economic debuff it can be devastating.

I hope that most of what I have written is understandable  :/.

one thing i would like to see if it is possible is the ability for a single player to secretly pay the pirates and publically pay the pirates at the same time. potentially winning in both auctions. right now it seems that it is all just one big auction with two different venues from which to pay. this is really too bad because there is much potential strategy thwarted by merely having the one end result.

question: in the game as is right now - can a team of 3 (locked or unlocked) participate in the auction such that one team members public auction activity does not negate another team members private auction activity?

edit: i mean of course the end result presupposes negation in terms of who wins but what if the team wanted to give the appearance that they were buying publically but were actually buying privately by funnelling money to one player to use as auction money?

Well, I managed to invade a pirate baseafter a few hours of gameplay. It's no walk in the park, you have to really devote yourself. 9600+ hull gauss guns, 4000+ hull ships... but I wanted the achievement!  

I think it is a bit ludricrous that the devs refused giving capital ships to the pirates because they are supposed to be low tech, yet they have super-duper infinitely growing powerful friggin FRIGATES stronger than capital ships. Ludicrous. 

I think on a futuristic setting like this, education would be pervasive, thus it would NOT be uncommon to find all kinds of Ph.D. scientists willing to wage war on civilization and 10-star generals disgruntled with their governors, willing to defect to piracy. I say get rid of the notion of the pirates being low-tech. Give them star bases  and hangars for their defense, give them ships from all 3 factions, and give them capital ships.

If you are willing to make changes a bit deeper to the game, let the players pay bounty with ships as well as money. Giving a capital ship is a pretty convincing way of telling the pirates to attack the target I want. You could put in an incentive for players to give them ships, like being safe from raids for X raids, depending on the amount of ships given to them. Erm, scout and colony ships should have no value to pirates.

yes but it seems like the way it is working right now, and i could be wrong on this as my last couple Dip games have been 1v1....but if you try and buy into the public auction it cancels out the private auction....you know what i mean?

go into the private auction and bid there. wait for the timer to start.....now go into the public auction and bid there....now go back into the private auction....the timer disappears (and if you wait until the end of the auction time the no-longer-timed private money wont count)...now pay some more money into the private auction....timer starts back up from the beginning and only one of the auction prices count towards the piracy auction result....i have never seen it occur that the private auction timer ends and the pirates just go do that right then....which brings me to ask the question: why does the private auction timer exist in the first place? what is its function other than potentially evening out the bidding war playing field?

seems almost like a contradiction in terms thats all. its not that its horrible right now its just that its falling short of its potential

right now there are 2 auctions ending up in one result. it seems there should be 2 auctions ending in 2 results, one of which is publically transparent, one of which is not. that seems like a better and more consistent/meaningful way of doing it.

im also wondering whether or not the computer recognizes the targets/missions chosen in the private auction and compiles money for bids that are similar and acts according to the compiled result or whether the result is decided by the single highest bidder. it seems like if 3 people are paying 2000 dollars for a hit on one planet that that mission should win over 1 person paying 4000 dollars for something else....but then again....perhaps this is not a good idea as it makes ganging up too easy and narrows the scope for strategies allowed

Wow.

I hadn't realized that they had beefed up the Pirates so much - I now realize what you all are saying.

I guess, with respect to the Pirates, is what should their role in Diplomacy be? What was wrong with their roles in original Sins and Entrenchment?

Simply making them gain power throughout the game seems like a good idea at first, but the problem is that there is a point where they are more powerful than any planet in the game. This has been said throughout this topic. The way it is now, you really need to focus on eliminating them, but you cannot divert resources unless you have a bunch of allies.

Case in point, I just played a 3-player game with 2 computer players and me. I tried to attack the Pirates after I had eliminated 1 player and I couldn't believe my eyes how powerful they were. I had a fleet of 2x every Vasari Capital Ship (all at least level 5); 12x Jikara Navigator, Ravastra Skrimisher, Kanrak Assailant, Karrastra Destructor, and Junsurak Sentinel; and 6x Lasurak Transporter, Stilakus Subverter, Serevun Overseer, and Skarovas Enforcer - that's 96 ships! All fully upgraded and I ended up losing a significant number of ships without even starting on any of their defenses. I decided to simply reload and take care of my other computer oppenent and then went after the Pirates after the last computer was defeated by selecting "Keep Playing".

So if the developers don't want the Pirates being destroyed easily by a single player, then I think they succeeded. However, is this what we want the Pirates doing in Diplomacy?

I'm partial to a setting letting you select the Pirates strength, but as other people have alluded to it seems like there should be a different way to make the Pirates more interesting than simply overpowering their ships and defenses.

Here are some things to think about:

1. It has been mentioned to scale the experience points of the Pirates as they increase in strength - this may make it worth your while to try to go after them.
2. It seems like there should be more ships that are less powerful than fewer ships that are more powerful. An interesting thing may be to allow the Pirates to salvage ships they destroy (this is similar to the capturing idea someone mentioned) such that on the next raid there may be a salvaged TEC, Advent, or Vasari ship (effectively a "reincarnated" version of that ship with all its capability when it was destroyed). This would give them a bit of power without making them ridiculous.
3. It may make sense to give the Pirates some kind of effect. Some people have alluded to an Embargo type ability - this sounds really interesting.
4. Another effect may be to give them the effect of a moving Culture structure (like a Broadcast Center, etc.) such that the loyalty of planets is affected by the size of the fleet attacking planets (i.e. a certain fleet size scales the loyalty effect accordingly).
5. Another effect may be to give the player who paid for the raid shared intelligence from the planet the Pirates attack (essentially shared ship vision while the Pirates are attacking said planet). This gives even more incentive to pay for a raid.
6. Adding a sabotage capability to Pirates might be interesting where if they are able to deploy a saboteur team to a structure or planet, it either suffers damage or has reduced capability for a period of time.
7. With respect to Pirate planets, if the developers want to prevent their planets from being captured easily maybe it makes sense to let them (once again) salvage destroyed planetary structures and add them to their planet(s) for defense. The more you lose to the Pirates, the stronger they get.

These are just some ideas to help spur the discussion and give the developers a bit more to chew on - I do agree, though, that it seems like Pirates should not be the Dread Lords of Sins.

Since some people gave suggestions, here is mine. I want pirates to last long, and I want them to be a threat for any faction. Here is my scenario:

Pirates' homeworld is an asteroid and can be conquered. But, being an asteroid, it has little value for any other faction. The cost involved in its taking would not be worth the reward.

Pirates have the whole map revealed. (They have people infiltred in every faction). When they strike, they strike where a faction is the weakest.

Pirates goal is not to kill people. They need those people to produce goods, so they they can rob them again and again. When they attack, they target civilian structures and destroy them quickly, they bomb the planet up to half its health for the fun of it and jump to another planet if they didn't face any resistance. When they get their ass kicked, they retreat to their base.

Their bombing could have an impact on planet allegiance, it would reflect the feeling of insecurity left in their wake.

Pirates remember who encouraged piracy by gaving them money. After their base has been crushed (and some time has elapsed), they spawn again on the nearest asteroid/planet belonging to the player who gave them the most money (pirates are more likely to hide where they are welcomed).


Results:
_ There will always be pirates.
_ Pirates are a real hindrance but don't put a whole faction into jeopardy. (They raid planets, they are not world eaters).
_ Abusing of the bounty system and of the strength of the pirates can be risky: if two players got tired and gather their fleet to wipe them out, you lose a planet/asteroid.
_ Players won't try to crush pirates as fast as possible because there will always be pirates anyway. It's better to know where to point the guns than having uglies spawn on the other side of them. Besides there is no need for their base to be better defended than the death star.
_ It's funny to see the richest guy have a pirate base pop in his empire.

maybe another good idea (or maybe not)...but what if the more research the pirates do, the more expensive they become, the more experience they are worth and the longer the bidding period lasts....something like that....