Pirate Kamikazi rush.

from Sins Forums
Well and I'm on my third game so far. I think the pirate's planet rushed is kinda ...

What usually happens is a group of pirate that's about 30-40 ships in which 90% of them are Pillager (planet bombarding cruiser) jump in, ignore everything and go straight for the planet. And most of the time it doesn't matter what kind of defense the planet has it will most likely to fall under these attacks. In my second game one such group attack my capital planet, it's very well developed (around 6000 infrastructure points), 2 layers of gun platform, 4 hangars and a group of frigate. Like I said they ignore everything and knock out the planet in a hurry. On my third game, same story on a well developed ice planet, I even have a capital ship this time, but doesn't make much difference, and frigate is not powerful enough to stop them in time even when I have a group of them.


It's not hard but more like on the annoying side, the reason I call them kamikaze because my defense eventually wipe them out with barely a scratch, just not before they knock out the planet. And there is little to nothing for me right now to prevent that. There is shield, but they're on the one or two last research tier and usually too late for this.


I think there should be some more defense mechanism for planet against this kind of attack. Right now the hangar doesn't really do a lot, the Guass platform is formidable ... but only to those who challenge them. They're feel like anti-capital ship defense right now, and these attack will just ignore them all together. Maybe we can have another gun platform to guard against frigate or cruiser, or maybe give the planet some kind of surface-to-orbit weapon to defense itself. Taking down a planet should be hard, but these guys make it too easy.

modding
15,060 views 16 replies
Reply #1 from Sins Forums Top
Planetary shields will do the job effectively. Thats usually what i research them for. All you need is enough research facilities.

If you want a SPECIFIC counter, a couple of the capital ships have very applicable abilities: The Marza's Radiation Bomb and Missile Barrage can make mincemeat of swarms, and the Dunovs...sparky..dealie can drain all their shields.
Reply #2 from Sins Forums Top

Planetary shields will do the job effectively. Thats usually what i research them for. All you need is enough research facilities.

If you want a SPECIFIC counter, a couple of the capital ships have very applicable abilities: The Marza's Radiation Bomb and Missile Barrage can make mincemeat of swarms, and the Dunovs...sparky..dealie can drain all their shields.


Like I said, the plantary shield is among the last 2 tiers of research, that means it won't be available in a while (unless you use all your spot in your first few sector for research only). The capital ships come later, and when they do become available it's not something convietnly to have as a defense on each planet. The Marza's missile barrage doesn't become available till level 6 right?


I'm talking about static defense, and it feels like we're missing one brother or sister for the Guass Platform, or maybe the shield research can be a couple tier lower.

Sins of a Solar Empire II
Reply #3 from Sins Forums Top
You don't have to keep the research stations. I think it requires six. Just build six, research a couple techs, than dismantle your stations.

By the time pirates become a big problem you ought to be able to get a few level 6 caps.
Reply #4 from Sins Forums Top
I think bombardment damage needs to be turned down, bombardment isnt supposed to go by quickly, its a very extended process. attacking an enemy planet should be an ordeal, it shouldnt be simple sending a mass of ships to bombard, you should need to protect your offensive fleet (something the AI never does)
Reply #5 from Sins Forums Top
Well, for anyone bound to resources (like players), getting enough siege frigates to depopulate a planet fast (and don't feel the loss of all those frigates) is a serious endgame move. The problem is that the pirates can pull that kind of stunt in the early game.
Reply #6 from Sins Forums Top
I think there should be some more defense mechanism for planet against this kind of attack. Right now the hangar doesn't really do a lot, the Guass platform is formidable ... but only to those who challenge them. They're feel like anti-capital ship defense right now, and these attack will just ignore them all together. Maybe we can have another gun platform to guard against frigate or cruiser, or maybe give the planet some kind of surface-to-orbit weapon to defense itself. Taking down a planet should be hard, but these guys make it too easy.


I agree; charging a planet with a large group of Siege Frigates seems like an easy way to annihilate a colony before the orbital defenses can do enough damage to stop you.

I'd like to see fighters gain a role as point defense, tracking down and destroying warheads before they strike their targets. This could help boost planetary defense by cutting the effectiveness of Siege Frigates until the fighter squadrons are destroyed, extending the length of the attack to allow reinforcements time to arrive and forcing the attacker to engage with planetary defenses rather than just charging past them.

-Autistic Angel
Reply #7 from Sins Forums Top

You don't have to keep the research stations. I think it requires six. Just build six, research a couple techs, than dismantle your stations.



That doesn't cut it, and I think you can see that's one very forceful and ackward playing. Build up research, rush the tech, destroy the station ... that doesn't feel right. Plus it's not THAT easy, consider the cost of these station doing a rush like that probably will handicap other departments.



I think bombardment damage needs to be turned down, bombardment isnt supposed to go by quickly, its a very extended process. attacking an enemy planet should be an ordeal, it shouldnt be simple sending a mass of ships to bombard, you should need to protect your offensive fleet (something the AI never does)



I think both need to be adjusted. Maybe the planet need to have more hit point, at least triple. Like you said it should be a considerable afford, not like just pop in and dropping nuke.


Plus that AI behavior needs to change, since it doesn't matter if it's Pirate or anyone else for whatever reason, it doesn't make sense, sending in a kamikazi fleet to attack a planet.


Reply #8 from Sins Forums Top
This is a serious problem. There is no defense against this. And despite what kyro and the gang keep saying, no, having someone else with a larger bounty doesn't do anything. Marauders send these fleets 90% of the time at the human player, 5% at the players allies, and 5% of the time I see 3-4 marauders attacking my enemy who has 8000 more bounty on them (I see this because my allies keep sending their trade ships to his only remaining planet due to them taking his asteroid) than I have on me(41000 vs 33000).
Reply #9 from Sins Forums Top
The stations are dirt cheap compared to tech, not an issue, and you wont be deconstructing all of them.

Rushing a world with bombardment frigates is a terrible strategy. They arn't cheap. The only reason it works for the pirates is that they dont have to pay for them, and everyone says marauders are too strong right now. In fact a single bomber frigate rush is going to be a more expensive enterprise with much less payoff than research rushing.

Losing a world while the orbital infrastructure is intact isnt even a big deal, just an annoyance.

If pirates are preferring you for a target its probably because you have huge numbers of freighter vessels.
Reply #10 from Sins Forums Top
Nope, I only have one trade post, and one refinery, while everyone else has like 3-4. No, the pirates only go after the human players. I also can't figure out why pirates would want to bomb a planet like that. Makes no sense. Pirates go after the booty, you never hear of a huge pirate fleet bombarding a random costal city because they felt like it. Attacking shipping is fine, that makes sense, but they don't need something that fires nukes at a planet. Unless they are doing so for ransom.

And there is no reason why we should be forced to do this tech rush to get to shield generators. We should never be forced to do any particular strategy. It defeats the whole purpose of sandbox.

Until they are nerfed, I'm playing with that option disabled.


BTW: Question for one of the devs/mods/admins/whatever the heck you are:

Does destroying a planet get you bounty? Because if it does, it should give you a crapload of the bounty and I never see my bounty go down by much if any when I loose a planet.
Reply #11 from Sins Forums Top
I talked about it in another post on here, Pirates should focus their attacks on your ships and high profile structures only, not planets too...

Losing a Research facility or trade port or capital ship yard seems more reasonable than losing an entire planet because of a pirate raid.
Reply #12 from Sins Forums Top
Check out the Gauss cannon defence mod posted here, it helps does it's part with these pirate scum. I am actualy glad to have these pirates here now, they make the game interesting and i need to more closely defend my trade lanes and expansion planets because of them !

Oh and of course they let my military kick ass on a regular basis, and thats always good.

Theres just this one thing im getting REALLY ANNOYED at. The siege rush when they come to your planet. Using a custom built mod i needed to make no less than 60 (!!!) Gauss defence structures to ensure my people's safety from getting nuked. the enemy launches missiles too fast and they are too deadly for the speed the craft moves at and the number that are regularily used its just ridiculous. I think the rest of the pirate fleet is more or less okay, i would have liked to have seen more flack frigates if possible in theyre forces, but oh well.

On the topic of bounty: what the hell ? i have 1500 bounty against me, and it warrants a fleet of a bout 30 pirate ships ?! This is madness !!! this is blasphemy !!! and whenever they attack the bounty goes to 0, but the comps keep pooling it up for me (once again i dont mind, kicking ass does NOT get old).

On a final note, late game we should see (at least) one pirate battlecruiser.
Reply #13 from Stardock Forums Top
According to the data files, there are three factors that influence the pirates' choice of target:

1) number of planets controlled
2) number of civilian ships (trade + refinery ships)
3) bounty

On the topic of fleet diversity, I'm fiddling with a mod now to remove the pirates' siege frigates, and to add in cruisers.
Reply #14 from Sins Forums Top
Im also fiddling with the pirate-stuff, basicly making whole new "mercenary" units that can be made out of the frigate section that are just beefed up versions of the pirate units. One such unit is the updated "pillager" which is now a slow super heavy unit that gets in very close and launches slow moving nukes into the atmosphere. This way if you (or an AI) loses a world to this unit it will feel suitably epic. Im hoping to do the same with the pirate version. Nice to see im not the only one here avidly engaging in large scale beta-2 mods.
Reply #15 from Sins Forums Top
Yeah, with pirates turned off, wich is how I play now the late game gets very tedious and boring since the AI at this point cant make anything to stand up to me or attack me. I ended up moding the late game out comleetly lol. Till they improve the AI or fix pirates anyway. I made home worlds stat with 1000 popuation cap and can be upgraded to 3600 pop, home system starts with 2 crysta and 2 metal mines with 9k in each, and home system starts with 20 logistics slots and can be upgraded to 40.

The game is fast paced, fun and exciting. Its also usualy over before the boreing part can start hehehe. Its kinda like playing in deathmatch mode in the old Age of Empires game.
Reply #16 from Sins Forums Top
Pirate Leader Whispers: I am in your capital's orbit pewing your infrastructure.

Yes the mad pirate attacks that wipe out entire plants need to stop, even a well defended planet will suffer badly from a mass Pillager attack before killing them off.