Hey,
I was just checking out the new Beta 2 features, or at least trying to, when an enemy put a 250c bounty on me about 0.001 seconds before a pirate raid launched, and WHAM!!!
About 25 pirate ships attacked my only planet. I had nowhere near the research or fleet capacity to do anything about it. Add this to the fact that pirate ships have capital ship strength now, and it's just insane. You should not be able to wipe out another player's entire planet in the first 15 minutes of gameplay with a 250c bounty.
Also, the pirates kept on attacking me well after all of the 250c had been collected. That makes no sense to me. Please, make it so that you have to keep the bounty up in order to keep the attack going.
Finally, please make it so that you cannot change the "Wanted" player once the 15:00 countdown ends. The enemy AI in my game raised the bounty onto me less than 1 second before the raid launched. It is not humanly possible to switch the bounty onto someone else in that amount of time.
So this combination of things left me at "Game Over" without ever even engaging any of the real enemy AI empires. In summary, in my very humble opinion, the pirates are waaaay too strong. This might be okay in late game, but there is no way I could've done the research and necessary ship-building to fight these guys before their very early game attack.
In the event that the rest of the community disagrees with me (which is likely, seeing as how everyone else has been asking for stronger pirates), allow me to make this "Plan B" suggestion:
Maybe allow the player to set pirate strength in the game, rather than just turning pirates on and off. The Game Options setup screen could change "Pirates Inactive/Active" to "Pirate Strength: Off/Low/Med/High" or something like that. Even that would be a drastic improvement, as you would be able to have pirates in your game, without them becoming a game-ender.
Does anyone else think the new pirates are too strong, or have anything else to add?
To add another note I would like to borrow from real life (yes I know that a game is not real life) for a moment. Back when America was being settled there were problems with pirates. Back then, you could build a decent ship if you had some wood, rope and cloth for sails. I know it's not that simple, but boats were relatively easy to build so even pirates could build them, steal them and maintain/operate them.
Fast forward to today and the kinds of ships that modern pirates have cannot compete in the slightest with the military vessels of any reasonably advanced country. It takes too much training and resources to build, man, operate and maintain powerful warships for any pirate to keep even a small frigate let alone a destroyer or cruiser. Look no further than the problems lately with Somalia where a fast fishing boat is enough to board a freightor and then realize that a single helicoptor can create enough rotor wash to swamp such pirate vessels.
Pirates should be like that. Really a pain for your frontier(s) and when you are getting started, but pretty much a joke against a fleet of two Devestators, six Carriers, a Desolator and forty Transports. They definately should not be able to destroy half that fleet before I can look at their home planet, change my mind and jump out. They just shouldn't.
Please Stardock, don't make me turn off the Pirates just because you wanted to add to Diplomacy the ability to hire thugs. Things are already skewed against the Vasari enough without additional penalties from not making money or resources as fast as TEC. What do the Vasari get out of this expansion anyways? Besides set upon by pirates every 15 minutes...
well first they can decrease the amount of pirates sent their way
as to your idea of where to weaken them, I point to Entrenchment. They were that weak.
But I do agree in the need to do something
With the Distant Stars mod, we have the tech severely ramped up (160% total hitpoints (shield+hull, each race is different)) with higher levels of weapon fire (40% to 60%) and still the late game pirates are nasty, ugly, and difficult to deal with. And we don't have the caps incorporated into the raids yet (though they are in the pirate base along with a starbase of Orky form, registered 600+ in laser/pulse gun firepower, ouch)
Look I'm not trying to be mean here. But you seriously must be very bad. The pirates in the game are still nothing but a predictable minor annoyance. Even with the latest diplomacy build. (1.055 I think it is) A starbase with 1 health upgrade and 1 weapons upgrade will destroy them pretty easily.
dude, you must not play it for very long
I designed the Powerful Pirates on DS because the Entrenchment pirates sucked
with Diplomacy, they are not needed because of how powerful the pirates are now
I agree with these guys, the pirates are too powerful
and this is coming from someone who loves the idea of powerful pirates
The only defense I have found is use whatever resources it takes to ensure someone else is the target. Pirates needed a buff but the current flavor is just a bit much. In the current form a mid to late game pirate raid is more powerful than my largest fleet.Darvroth
I agree with Darvroth, the only way to handle it is to make sure someone else gets hit instead of me. I lose planets mid-game (starbase + defenses) to raiding pirates before my fleet 2 planets over can arrive. it's pathetic.
I love the current difficulty of the pirates. I am actually a little worried I will lose a bid rather than not caring. You have the option to turn off pirates for a game.
IF THEY ATTACK YOUR STARBASE, YES. if they attack your planet and kill it and your structures while ignoring your starbase, you're SCREWED.
They always attack the SB. And even if they didnt my defence fleet wipes them out shortly. You guys seriously need to get better...Ive been playing this since release day and they are not much harder. Its always the same 3-4 planet bombers and the rest is just basic pirate crap. I mean seriously how can you not defend against this? By 6-7 minutes in game you should have a fledgling economy and 2 cap ships, by 15-20 minutes in game you should have at least 200ish spent in ship population and you can't beat the pirates?
**edit:I have a thought they updated 1.00 already once this weekend. Are you playing that original 1.00 or the second one? I don't know if thats the problem for you. Or if I'm just better at the game then you. Not that it matters, but our experiences with the pirates are vastly different.
15 hours into the game, pirates have 4k hp with 128 Autocannon attack. They send about 40-50 ships to my base. It takes my main fleet, 80 mines, 1 fully upgraded Star Base, 10 Gauss Platforms and 2 hangars to fend them off.
At this point: Kodiaks have 1.5k hp, 1k shield and 28 autocannon attack.
Hows that? At this point, the game just becomes a bidding war. and you become a side show.
15 hours huh? I don't play more then 6-8 opponents so that the games over in 2 hours on fastest settings. 15 hours of sins sounds yucky, thats what civ 4 and galactic civ 2 is for.
Where some are seeing a problem, I'm seeing fun. I'm not in beta tough, so can't say for sure. But this game only problem (single mode) is difference in challange. It mostly lacks and winning the end turns to be a question of time. It's great to see that there will be more challenge because adding another way to win in a game that somewhat lacks presure - through diplomacy - can readily sound as if it will get easier. For games that are really good, its nice to have a hard challange, because it works as a reason for the need's of someone to get the experience again.
I really like sins and wish to play it but the challenge is predictive. It grows and ends mostly in the same pace. Once through the initial confronts for produceing 'that' army, its an end before the end. So it's nice to hear that it will be harder and I hope its not only in the way of giveing more power to opponents (yet just that is still great).
I just found it strange some saying that the pirate's increase of power come from better technologies. In that case, I personaly think that it doesnt sounds true. Pirates should have their power mostly in numbers. They are not a race like the others and shouldnt have a workeing 'society' to produce the proper technology; and not to mention they just have a planet that takes the role of a base. They supposedly steal technology (or ships and the modify it) so they shouldnt have it more advanced. What pirates should have imo, is a much faster production because they are a group all about warfare with proper training ready.
I think pirates should: Have bigger numbers and/or much faster production. Also they could get better along the game the more other civilizations advance, since in fiction that all is hundreds of years passing and so they would have been stealing better ships and a somewhat improved tech from others. Most of their ships are customized from various pieces (just as they look) and could also vary greatly in haveing great atk power/ poor defence and then the opposite. Maybe they could also use a mixture of the skills all three races have. Not to mention that the more money you give for bounties, the stronger they get. So an economic oriented player, could fortify them by spareing money the bounties and hopefully still maintaining them, haveing this considerably force at disposition.
The strategy worked and obviously that the pirates later went on a bloodlust robbery against the economic race and unified the universe. But pirates can't survive just by themselves because of their pickpocketing nature and lack of proper victims. They keep to themselves at their base drinking the remaining beer and so, after years, they become errands and slowly extinguish. The universe is now calm and at peace again as it should. Makeing them powerful isn't so bad after all.
Ok, after winning a FFA against 3 cruel AI (maximum two winners) I let the game continue to see what would happen and...
I've got to agree with Ryat on this one. Infinately increasing pirate strength is not even believable. The rate of increase sounds more like an oversight to me than a planned gameplay mechanic and has nothing to do with perceived player skill. Part of the problem is actually the Pirate Pillager laser damage. Later in the game it can fire from 1/4 of the gravity well essentially obliterating any static defenses including that heavily upgraded starbase due to the range. I went six hours to see what the rate of increase would look like and it is quite funny.
That said, I actually do like an increased pirate strength in the early to mid game and it was fun to see the crazy pirate raids and there are ways to deal with it in the current version without turning it off. I don't usually play 15 hour games so probably not as big a problem for me.
Basically you have the same options IMO to deal with the current pirates in the game atleast up to the six hour mark I hit (But wow, if the rate of increase is constant I want a diplomacy pact with the pirates to get a hold of their armor and weapon increases [e digicons]:thumbsup:[/e] )
1) Have your starbase protecting your planet (Enforced loyalty, auxilary governmnet, etc) to keep the pillagers off your structures (They will keep bombing the planet to no avail) and heavily fortify your starbase with repair bays and turrents (bombers are nearly worthless (except for distractions) due to the pirate flak (100+ dps) late game). This works really well even with Vasari starbase and no AOE. If your Vasari, you probably want your starbase on hold. I lost a fully upgraded starbase this way to see how it would fair... which was not good.
2) Let them destroy your planet and re-colonize.
3) Destroy the pirate base before they get overly powerful (I finally did this at 6 hour timeframe). The turrents where crazy powerful 10k health and 100+ dps. However, I was able to destroy it with six Kortuls (I didn't want to wait forever to kill the 10K hull turrents after taking out 5-6 of them with 40 carriers, etc).
Pirate stats (6 hour mark) [e digicons]\o/[/e]
Name Hull, Armor, Experience (lol), DPS
Pirate Rogue 2880, 22, 15, 65
Pirate Pillager 2610, 21, 30, 86
Pirate Corsair 4620, 26, 50, 106
Pirate Cutthroat 3510, 24, 35, 28 and 83
Pirate Reaper 3975, 24, 25, 136
Pirate Turrent 10500, 34, 50, 101 (mini starbase!)
You definitely want that 16 cap ships lvl 6+ marza fleet. Now that will make pirates pop ...
I just bought Diplomacy the other day, and started playing today (Feb 8th, 2010), and I feel I have to chip in on this thread...
I 10,000% agree that the pirates are absolutely ridiculous as they are. I always play on Hard difficulty when dealing with AI, and I don't know if that's making the difference or not, but neither do I care.
The pirate "Heavy Cruisers" have as many or more HP than my Kortuls, and the dps output of a pirate raid is absolutely off the charts. I had a raid against me that destroyed my FULLY upgraded Orkulus (with over 16,000 hp and r2 reintegration ability, and maxed weapons) in about two minutes... The station was sorrounded by several repair platforms, hangars, and turrets. It was all wiped out... my tactical slot maxxed planet, the fully upgraded Orkulus, and the planet itself... rickrolled in about 4 minutes.
To put this in perspective - no enemy fleet (which were all larger than said pirate raid) had ever even put a serious dent in that system. That planet had survived about eight sieges prior to the pirate raid. The bounty on my head was only 2000 credits (prices were often into the 6,000 range by this point). So... yeah... pretty retarded. Also, half the map is nothing but the remnants of pirate fleets where AI worlds used to be.
As it stands, pirates are so effective that they can simultaneously trounce the Vasari, the TEC, and the Advent. They may as well elect a king and form a gov't because no one can really oppose them. And that, is freaking ridiculous.
Not to even mention the obtuse dimplomacy system itself that seems to be just as capricious and random as the old one - except it costs more resources now.
All in all, this expansion is about 2/5 stars, and two of those stars are because I'm a fanboi.
Fix this!
-Itharus
I agree with you Itharus on everything you just said including the poor rating you gave this expansion. I'm a fanboy too!
Are you listening IC, FIX THIS!
Maybe some game devolopers think that harder is more challenge and therefore more fun. I like pirates, when they are not super powered. How about add more pirate ships to make them more versatile? Like ships tha can hijack frigates, or ships that can slow or stun other ships. Ships that can cloak?
Dont fix whats not broken.
They tried this during beta and it was scrapped.
We're all playing the game intensely right now.
It's a delicate thing and just as the pirates went back and forth during the original release, we will be revisiting how strong they are here too.
What we want to avoid is the situation where players hire the pirates to attack an enemy and they merely serve as XP fodder for the target player.
Dang! Too bad that didn't work out. I always thought it'd be cool to see various hijacked ships from all races in a pirate fleet. Imagine a KOL with all the pointy spikes and pirate flag on it. That would look wicked.
My frist impression of the pirates... I was caught offguard to be honest. While I agree the old pirates needed a good buff, but I think the buff might be too extreme. Perhaps a slider for pirate strength might be a good idea. I know some of the much more skillful posters here thinks the pirate strength is good now, but I'd dare to say majority of us aren't as good as you. I like the aspect of having pirates in the game but now, I'm considering turning them off. They are quite strong from the get-go. Especially in the early game, they pack more wallop than the other AI players can dish at me.
If you have to resort to one race's super weapon to neuter the base... Something is a little off kilter here.
We understand what you are trying to do, but pirates should never be able to take out a heavily upgraded starbase, they should hit the targeted empire where they are at there most vulnerable. Right now all they do is hit the first planet of the chosen target instead of bypassing the heavily defended one to reach the vulnerable one. Pirates should be the strength they where in Entrenchment and they should only grow in numbers, not survivability/damage/range.
We were complaining that the pirates were too easy to deal with in Entrenchment, but that was because they were lacking an Assault Cruiser.
Thats why I recommended that the Pirates should have a hybrid Carrier/Assault Cruiser capable of treatening starbases and other defensive structures by having a long range cruiser capable of anti-structure damage and carrying Fighter-Bombers.
But if IC cant do that then just give the Pirates the Ogrov Torpedo Cruiser, Percheron Carriers and Hoshiko Cruisers, that should give them the edge they where missing in Entrenchment. If you want them to be more resistant, just give them shields. But please remove the stupidly OPed pirates you have just created.
hm if that is a concern, why not just make pirate fleet not give any exp?
Well I still disagree. Perhaps it scales too high in your "15 hour game" (I call bs on this game length unless your playing on slow) but in any regular game they won't be a problem except to bad players. My advice, get better.
Siege: Dial gun back to 6K range and 2 targets per bank.Medium: Dial Anti-Module gun *way* down to 2.5K range and 5 DPS.Research: 2 per raid.Weapon Damage research: 10% damage for all types.Weapon Cooldown research: 7% cooldown, 5% range for all types.Hull research: 7.5%, 1 Armor.Armor research: REMOVE.Repair research: 20%.
[e digicons]:fox:[/e]
Could we drop the L2P garbage and elitism and just get back to discussing what changes might be good? Thanks.
There are many great features available to you once you register, including:
Sign in or Create Account
