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?
I don't know you so out of politeness I won't judge you... too much. It's a courtesy apparetnly foreign to you.
I play 9v1 on hard. I ususally spend a little bit at a time on the game over days or even weeks. I always use the Vasari despite the fact that the whole game is stacked against them because I like the challenge. I play my opponents against each other. I will abandon planets to let my allies (when I have them) have a place to live inside my rediculously fortified empire. I show up with fleets of ten capitals and 100 carriers and keep the other six capitals and fifty enforcers as reserve. I vivisect opponents, creating weak spots in the no1 AI for my allies and enemies to take advantage of. I'll wait until just before the victory screen pops up to change alliances for dumb stuff like making a smiley face with planets or to see how different pacts change the game. Some of my games have been more than 20 hours, but I'm a man with patience. I play games to have fun.
If I want to be 'good' at something, I do it in real life.
10-15hours into a game of 1x speed.
My main fleet: TEC
9 Capital ships (Lvls 10-6) (Consists of all types of ships)
25++ Kodiaks
15++ LRM Frigates
15++ Flak Frigates
Support from Robotic cruisers, Targetting cruisers)
With additional fire support: Planetary defenses (Gauss Platforms, Hangars) . A FRICKIN' Star Base
VS
Pirate Fleet:
Slightly more ships than me.
End Result: I lost a majority of my ships and the starbase.
Every pirate ship had 60-128 damage.
Now for the sake of arguement lets say it is a "time-based" scaling for the pirates. Wouldn't the easiest fix for this situation to be just to hard cap the pirates potential?
Kitkun, I dont want the Pirates to scale up in strength, that makes no sense at all. I want them to be like they where in entrenchment.
How come my siege frigates only have 500 hull and the Pirate Pillagers can easily reach beyond 2000 in no time... It makes no sense.
Pirates should only increase in NUMBERS, not in strength.
So instead of sending 1 Corsair (Heavy Cruiser) with over 4000 hull, I want them to send 5 Corsair with 800 hull each, now that makes sense, don't you think! That way when one gets destroyed, it give XP¨and also removes some of their firepower, so instead of 1 ship doing 128 dps, you have 5 ships doing 26 DPS, so when one gets destroyed, the PIRATES lose part of their firepower. Thats how its always been, and thats the way it should remain. Because if we follow the current form, why not make a single pirate ship with 30000 hull, 50 armor and 400 dps....
And of course, I pretty much halved the current values for scaling. I don't agree with how it is currently, either.
[e digicons]:fox:[/e]
The current rate and amount at which pirates upgrade their ships is ridiculous. I like the idea of their ships getting stronger as the game progresses to keep up with the other races. But the races have a cap to how much damage they can do, where as currently pirates do not. Single Pirate ships more powerful than lvl 10 capitals is just dumb. They need to have their upgrades capped at a much, much, much lower level. I really think its just a bug, I dont think IC would consciously allow pirate ships to get that strong, I mean they can get ludicrously powerful. I mean 40+ armor?!?! wtf? Starbases max out in the 20s (and for good reason cuz theyre giant targets that have to face massive fleets!), but were talking about single ships with more than twice that! Its gotta be a bug.
Until it lags my game... It already does lag my game has we speak because the pirates are always winning their engagement and returning to their gravity well. By the end of my last game, the pirates base had so many ships that my game was starting lag, so the problem already exist has we speak.
Kitkun, I dont want the pirates to "level up" in strength, its completely idiotic.
I really tought that IC would have fix the pirates in diplomacy, instead they have made them even worst then before. Last night my opponent AI outbided me by 0.5 seconds with 250 credits, suddenly a large UNSTOPPABLE fleet entered my system destroying everything including starbase and a 6000 point planet in about 5 minutes, 5 freaking minutes. It took my fleet more then 5 minutes reach that system...
By the end of that game, it was only a bidding war, I was making sure all raids were directed at the enemy AI and not me. The AI got pwned BADLY!
After the game ended, I went to the living room, sat on the couch and realised I didn't even playtest all the other tech/features that are included in the game. It was a "watchout for the pirates" game. NOT FUN!
IC, bring them back to the entrenchment level and give them Percheron + Hoshiko + Ogrov. That should make them a credible threat while not making them OPed.
IC, fix the damn pirates.
I think there needs to be balance betweent the two ideas. Having the pirates just spawn more ships is not ideal as it just increases the idea of the pirates being XP feed. So they need something to increase their survivablity. Flipside, where they are set at currently is seriously OP. I checked the stats and they are set at a 200% increase in everything, hitpoints, armor, weapon damage, weapon cooldown, weapon range. We dont even get that kind of tech in the game, and while yes shields help us (so we can with stand pirates at 100% increase) at these rates it becomes insane. So I feel that both Kitkun and Dragoon have their points. Both an increase in numbers and cut the research levels in half would be better overall. Plus, maybe the AI can handle them better as well.
What about decreasing pirate ships xp value? It will fix "free lategame exp" issue.
I'm no computer programmer but:
The amount of money spent to getting a temp agency to hire pirates should not affect the number so much, but rather the actual strength of the ships. Cheap funding yields cheap pirates, but a bidding war can become a trap. You could still have 7000+ hull, 40+ armor cruisers, but you would pay top dollar for it and no matter the price you only get a dozen or maybe two. Since the pirates jump in from some other place to do missions, they can go back when the mission is over. The pirates jump directly out of the target's gravity well and leave the game map to add more wall to wall shag carpet and pinstripes to their uber-frigates and mega-cruisers. Since the pirates don't return to their home planet to violate intergalactic loitering laws, then there is less lag. If there aren't 100+ super-pirates at their home world then it becomes actually possible to shut them down. Those who want to hire pirates will be motivated to defend the pirate home world from those who want it destroyed.
Diplomacy has the added feature of hiring pirates and that is actually pretty cool, but it needs a bit more of a balance. This idea might help. It lets those who want to hire thugs do so while those who don't want to pay extortion can go kick some pirate booty!
This is actually really starting to piss me off, not so much the damage increases, of fleets sizes the pirates have, but with the god damn range increases to the siege frigates. Why the hell can they outrange my fully upgraded starbase and turrets? And since the newer and stronger versions don't die so quick, and actually do some damage, and also bring some flak along for the ride, I'm finding that my planets simply can not fight off Pirate raids without bring a fleet in, what was the point of Entrenchment again?
The Pirates raids also seem to be too strong to early, a few hundred credits on bounty should never result in a fleet that can handle a Starbase, even a non upgraded one.
The pirates should never be stronger or have better ships than average military.
Their strenght should increase only in accordance with average military strenght, and also should be capped - pirates should NEVER have better ships than professional military!
OK. Sins of a Solar Empire Diplomacy has now turned into: Pirates, buy them up and nuke your opponents with them.
Yes indeedy, just stall, stall, stall and then, once you have your economy in place, just use the Pirate mission and hiking your AI opponents bounty upwards as the tools for universal domination.
And whats more, it requires very little skill, very little in the way of thought and very little in the way of money. For around 3K credits, a pittance once my economy is up and running, I can send a pirate fleet of 50+ Corsairs with more firepower than Capital Ships at my opponents.
Why THANK YOU game designers for such riveting gameplay.
Yes, I just won against 5 hard AI's using this tactic. And whats more, it's pretty easy. Pirates; the new Tactical nuke to send at your opponents!
That.... was your game design intentions I take it game designers? To make the game now *completely* revolve around just getting to the 5+ hour mark and then just getting the pirates to win for you?
No? Really? Hmm, you may want to change that then... as it's BORING.
Diplomacy: Utter Fail as an expansion until you fix this.
While I am not having any problem despatching pirates while I'm on defence, whenever I attack a pirate base I get reemed. If this was done to prevent xp farming, it didn't work. Pirates are still easily dispatched when they attack.
However, when they are on the defense, they can easily have their defense cannons range beyond the gravity well. I lose capital ships in 30 seconds... and that's all they target. And this isn't far in. I have max research and they take down ships faster than I can, easily.
I'm all for pirates improving, but they need a cap. It shouldn't scale to a point beyond what the players themselves can reach. All things being equal, in an equal ship engagement with max research on both sides, it should be a 50/50 chance to win.
Yep, got to agree, pirates are way overpowered. I was just fighting with an AI over the rights to (my!) asteroid, when we both got jumped by a bunch of pirates. This was about an hour into the game, and we both had three caps and a few other ships - we'd just started the battle so nobody had lost much yet. Within two minutes, both fleets were destroyed and all of the structures in the gravwell too, including the planet. The pirates had better range than the caps, moved a lot faster than the caps and did much more damage than the caps. There were also about 40 of them. I ordered my fleet to GTFO as soon as the pirates arrived, and it was space junk before it reached the edge of the gravwell. I call this utterly ridiculous.
Pirates are parasites, stealing ships and raiding border worlds. They should not be capable of fielding stronger ships than the empires from which those ships origininated. They should be a threat to a fledgeling empire, then fade to an annoyance and finally a joke as that empire grows and develops.
The way pirates are now makes very little sense in terms of realisim, and it changes gameplay to something very dull and pirate raid-centred. I have stopped playing sins until this is fixed - I refuse to turn pirates off as I liked them a lot before this change. I refuse to play entrenchment as I paid for diplomacy and have been looking forward to this release for months now.
On a lighter note, there are lots of other changes I really like, from the skirantra's scramble bombers to the ability to deviate from the highlander victory condition. Please sort this out IC - I've spent 4 days waiting for my replacement GPU card to arrive only to be disappointed with the very game I was waiting to play!
I recommend turning pirates off until its fixed. And if you want a map without a pirate base, create one in the map designer, heres a guide to help you with that if you dont know how.
https://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/375280
Ha ha! I love it! Everybody screamed "give us tough pirates," the devs responded, and now everybody's screaming that they're too tough! BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU WISH FOR! LMFAO!
I'm sure nobody asked for tough pirates asked for every single pirate ship be able to outgun fully upgraded level 10 cap ship 1 on 1. In fact they are more like flying super starbases with the range and damage they can do.
Im loving the new pirates. Hosho ftw.
I thought the "give us tough pirates" requests were pre-beta 2, then they made them tougher and everyone was happy? I don't remember more calls for pirate strength increases after that...
The "give us tough pirates" spiel has been screamed since before Diplomacy was even concieved. It's just been one of those rallying cries by some ever since the game released. I don't care about pirates because I don't want to play against the AI. I guess it's an SP thing.
So instead of mercenary attacks, have it be something more insidious.
Take the Arcova Frigate, toss in some leet "timed explosives" and have the pirates rush in and planet tac-nukes on structures (not star bases though, you might have to add tags to orbital structures if there arent any already for ID). This will screw up that sector. Or if you don't want structures destroyed - make them E.M.P. bombs that disable the structures.
Add a pirate ship that's maybe something like a weak cap ship - give it an ability that's something close to Embargo and the Antorak infiltration ability combined (for the life of me, I forget the name - and I actually use that damn thing every match, lol!)
Have the cutthroats flip extractors to neutrals or something.
Maybe the fleet can have culture repellent - the larger the fleet, the greater the anti-culture value (add it up!). Consider it the broadcasts of anarchists... turns the culture screwy and maybe lowers the population a bit (due to rioting).
In any case, there are a whole slew of things that you can have the pirates do that make them good at trashing an area - without being militarily ridiculous! Also, can't you just give the pirate ships unique tags and set their XP values to trash?
Also... consider application of the pact system - with pirates.
A starbase should be adequate defense against a pirate fleet - assuming it's got an upgrade or two in the Offense/Defense department. Which is why IMO giving the pirates special abilities that massively disrupt economy/culture/production is an important step. This way, even if you do slap them down - you have a few persistent effects that will continue to punish you for not keeping an eye on the bounty!
-Itharus
Ill give a suggestion, pirates are somewhat cheated. It's in 'bold' because I vent to much sorry.
I played Diplomacy for the first time. I began as I always do and didnt payed the pirates a cent... so this is what happened. The pirate rushed ended up rushinng me 3 times and another race 1 time just after I finished one war with the pirates. I barely could count them during this period and I had a big army for the time, tough everything else but my capital's were gone almost each time. The first engagements with the pirates they probably were weaker and they had less ships.
They come a forth time to my home planet and blowed structures in their path (ship factories) in a few seconds. The biggest problem of all is that their atacks are too frequent. They are not easily to kill now and also as I'm ending one war with them another bunch is promptly comming. There is no time to produce the original force again much least to develop my civ. Another thing, they were killing my bombers in a weird way. They'd be gone in 2 or 3 seconds (I had like 8 squadrons being constantly produced and just 3 or 2 could stay arround at a time)... and somehow they appeared as they would come out already damaged? I don't know if that was a bug or the pirates, but was very weird as I could never see them coming out full or in green health bar. Those pirates don't even have fighters to be able to persui and hit bombers easily, still they kill them in 3 seconds from frigates... they lost all their glow, they looked like flies.
While I see now that I should play bounty, I noticed the immersion with the game being lost. This game do needed challenge tough. But its due to the fact that you always notice how cheated the pirates are. They arent even a race to develop itself and have this unbeatable technology. Their rush not only are so frequent but also war takes longer giving no time to recover or progress. Also pirates shouldnt be playing a role bigger than the civs. How can that be? They should be just be pesky and more trouble.
I could pay bounties off myself, but as I see it, using them against the AI races will obliterate them? Strangely enough I find myself even feeling for them, it's very unfair. Also I want to engage them, not to see cheated pirates automatically ripping off the AI's I placed. Or might be the damage against them lowered? Anyway...
Their attacks are too much frequent, they take a lot of time to kill and have these junky looking ships best them my own best. The problems were two: Pirates being somewhat weak and were giving free XP.
We may think that pirates not giveing exp may not make sense. Maybe we could see it as experience dealing with the pirates. I suggest to make it possible for capital ships to earn experience from pirates just till a certain level, like 4 or 5 and then more battlefield experience should be earned by battleing against the more experienced (the ones that supposedly use more of strategy because they are better organized and also posses better technology development) which should be the civilizations.
The best that players can do is to send their novice capital ships to go pratice dealing with the pirates, which makes sense and is immersive, just to a level limit of 4. By this, it's possible then to increase the number of pirate ships turning them an annoyance for the bigger part. The few levels gained from them come from the expense of (in the best case) loosing some ships/defenses, being far and out of the bigger threats (the other AI's) but being also an alternative from buying the first upgrades. They shouldnt be weak as they were and sure not as tougher as they are.
Currently I think they are breaking some of the immersion, noone likes to feel that their ships are so very weak. You are obliged to keep playing bounty or else you get very crippled and out of the main picture of the game. I'd play bounty satisfactorily if just I couldnt get much more exp out of the pirates and if they were more challenging than in original Sins, tough balanced, so that they can help against the others and also to not move the main force arround. Just a few hangers could deal with them before.
I havn't seen the extreme power of the pirates yet. My current game is with the Systems of War map with 3 hard AIs. I manage to attract most of the pirate raids because I keep forgetting to up the bounty on someone else. For the most part I'm holding my own but it is costly and has really reduced my expansion, and has caused me to fall behind in the econ part of the game.
Overall I'm enjoying Diplomacy a lot, and I still have a lot to learn. I do think the pirates are a bit too powerful as things stand currently, but they were just xp fodder before. After seeing all the changes and rebalancing since Sins came out, I don't see it being long before there is a tweek patch.
What if instead of increasing the amount of ships for each pirate level, we would increase the ship types. Add in two more ships, one with an ability with a very heavy laser or timed explosive that can easily destroy buildings but only usable every 10 minutes. Have another that has upgraded pillage abilities and embargo so that it happers the economy, like real pirates/privateers.
This way you can still defeat pirates later on, they don't become this uber force. but they will be able to destroy a few buildings and manage to steal enough income from you that it's worth the money you put in. it'd help even more if the ai for pirates would target economic buildings with it's building killers.
So this is how it would play out. For 1000 credits you'd get your regular pirates. For 3000 you now get slightly upgraded pirates and then two ships that have the destroy building ability and 1 ship with embargo. 10, 000 you get fairly upgraded pirates, lots of them, and something like 4 destroy building abilities and 2 embargo ships.
The strength of the ability should be two uses to destroy a trade ship. 1 use would destroy a mining outpost. embargo would be fine if it was the same as the tech carrier ability.
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