insane size pirate fleets?

Custom map? The pirates tend to have a fair force at their base, but 70-100 of each type is absurd. I also don't know of a map that has a pirate base as the only way across.

nope it was Random Small map
its my 2nd game so it took a WHILE to explore around (like 4 hours) but by the time I got there, they have like 70 cuthroats, 120 corsairs, and 70,90, 90 of other things.

bets part they don't even have any factories there to build all this crap - they just GROW as time goes on. I saw the Ai fleet (50+ ships) trying to sneak past and got oblitirated in like 30 seconds

Any completed pirate raids after which they have ships remaining return to defend their base. So if you had a bunch of raids that had ships left over, that's them It can get to some pretty interesting numbers of ships. Thankfully, they don't have shields or shield mitigation, so they are huge suckers for AoE damage.

Screenshots?

just tell me wher to click to make screenshot
i will show a REAL pirat planet.

I guess Annatar11 is right, all the pirats went to attack the AI and guess AI never put much of resistance so they woudl prabobly attack some small base blow it up and return

Print screen takes screenshots. If you're using Vista, there's a weird issue where the key doesn't work for everyone. If it does work, you'll see a message on screen saying where the shot was saved. If you don't see that, re-bind the key to something else.

But yeah. Pirates don't randomly spawn ships. They start with a certain number, and then the only way they increase it is surviving ships from previous raids

Anecdotal, but I had a medium random single map last night vs 2 ai that had the pirate base as the only path between me and the 2 ai opponents. In this one scenario only was the only time I saw MASSIVE fleets by the pirates, and I could only assume it was because the ai made a fleet to go after each of us, making 3 large fleets, plus their home grav well protection fleet. All 3 of us (me and both ai players) were listed in the pirate window as being targeted by them for the attack. Tghere had to be, easily, 300+ ships in the pirate home grav well at the time I peeked in... Yikes!

vs a single player and a single ai on a small map? Very curious...

Hi, guys, i just registered.

I think the pirate fleet does not grow as time goes. Last time I had two pirate bases on the map, and everytime I put more bounty on my enemies. What happened later was the pirate base close to my enemies grew to a enormous size but the one beside me still have about 20 ship of each type. I took out it with ease.

I thought it depends on the bounty collected. The base that doesn't get to launch a raid doesn't get any "income" so that they can't build any ships.

Had it happen to me once, and the fleet did get huge.. Choke point for the whole map, had 4 phase lanes in, two for each side. Made it easy to expand on my side !

hehehe Yeah, I loved it when it happened to me. I had 8 grav wells all to myself. The AI opponents had to fight each other for their grav wells, and both were constantly contending with the pirates. I thought it was funny when each of the AI opponents kept upping the bounty against each other and put not a penny onto me until I sent a scout over their way...

Actually, they do "grow". During a pirate raid, the pirates spawn at the closest pirate base to their victim. Therefore, if you never had them come after you, there would be hardly any ships at that pirate base, but lots at the other one.

And if I eliminate all the invaders and not one ship goes back, what would happen then? Will the base still "grow"?

No Or at least, it's not supposed to

Pirate bases only produce the ships that they send at you. If the ships survive raiding, they return to the pirate base and the AI does not use them again. Poorly defended pirate attacks will eventually build up massive fortifications at these planets.

Pirates do not have shield regeneration, nor phase jump inhibitors, and ineffective health regen. Use this to your advantage! Stage hit+run attacks on the pirates. For example, jump in a few decoy scouts, then a massive carrier fleet(they got BIG buffs!) to deal the damage. When the fleet is in danger jump them out. Certain capital ships (lvl 6 Marza!) can deal massive AoE damage in a short time, before they jump away to recharge. The Vasari superweapon will deal 10% damage to all pirates in the system, keep stacking the damage until their massive fleet turns into a mass of tissue paper. The Advent malice ability got hurt pretty bad, but a few assault attempts should do the job, plus culture research gives them vision inside the pirate zone.

If you leave the pirates alone, they tend to space around their system in a loose formation. Hit them hard, then retreat before all the ships come to get you.

I didn't know that. Thank you.

Ah I was too lazy to quote the old ones.

Finding such a big pirate fleet is a bit of a shocker!

On my first map we managed to get the pirates on the AI after the start of the game so I have no idea how well they were defending agasint them and how many pirate ships were being destroyed.

Either way the Pirate Base was on the interconnecting asteroid loc that divided our two little space empires up. When I ventured to pass through it to start hostilities there were certainly 100+ pirate ships that massacred my first underdeveloped fleet.

Attempt two with several (Playign as TEC) capital ships and the right support ships (Hosh's, Dunov's, Cielo Command Cruisers) saw the end of them but at the loss of the majority of my lighter frigates. Got awesome xp for the Caps and learnt about fleet structure as regards ensuring you have the ships with abilities that compliment and support each other.

So I'd say ensue when yuo do engage them make sure you have a force that is built to cope with a sustaiend fight or hit and run as suggested!

Hit and run tactic, pure and simple. Build two sizeable fleets consisting of only capital ships. If you have the resources, build two fleets each with three main battleships, 2 carriers and one support. Jump in with the first fleet starting at the left/top of the phase lane. Position the other fleet at the right/bottom of the phase lane. After 15-20 seconds, jump your first fleet back to your starting point (using Shift+R speeds things up!) and jump your second fleet in.
Make sure your point of departure sector has repair stations in the gravity well, to quickly ready your fleet. I found that building 2 or 3 repair stations speeds things up enough to get your first fleet in top shape fairly quick.

When your second fleet has taken a few hits after 15-20 seconds, retreat them back and send in the first again, etc. Manage your attack fleet's special abilities personally, I found that the fleet AI sometimes uses the abilities at rather silly moments (repair cloud when everyone is at 100%hp for example). When playing Vasari I recommend the support cruisers ability to add mobility to all of your cap ships when retreating.

This all depens on lots of research in warfare (more armor/shield regen/antimatter reserve-regen/better guns), and a minimal of level 4 cap ships.

I know it is tempting to throw everything in at once, but forget that, send in your main guns first, with your support a split second behind them, the Pirate AI should focus on your main ships asap. If you are playing Vasari (can't remember if any other race got this ability) send in a Colony Capital ship as well and use it's ability to drop the armor rating of the pirates.

As you can read, I favor the Vasari and their Capital ships greatly.

Meh, compared to player ships on an individual basis, pirate ships are rather weak. Just don't let your fleet get within range of the gauss guns until the pirate fleet is down, and you should mow through them with a fleet 2\3 the pirates' size with rather negligible losses.

I just turn off autoattack and jump my massive fleet in and keep them on the edge of the gravity well, manually send out my strikecraft. Once the pirate ships are in range (and note that they are rather spread out), I just manually focus-fire ship by ship (shift key waypoint attacks) until enough of the pirates are in range that I don't have to worry about my stupid ships getting in range of the gauss guns. At that point, turn autoattack back on.

Microing cap ship abilities is useful, as always.

How can there be so many replies, and not a single right answer???

Just guessing here, but you have the 'He's no good to me dead' achievement, don't you.

The pirates will increase their forces with every cent of bounty they collect!

SO if you get into a bidding war with an opponent, suddenly the pirate rating jumps from low to extreme, and a horde of pirates swarms the loser. What you end up with is 100+ cutlasses and corsairs, which on a small map takes forever to destroy.

Whereas if you just IGNORE bounties as much as possible, the total number of pirates per base is about 40ish.

Couple of space buccaneer facts:
*Pirates will not jump star systems, this means that if you take out the pirate base in your home system, but there is a base elsewhere, the pirates will only attack planets in THAT(those) system/s.
*You don't need to take out the base defenders to stop the raids, just the planet. (5 novaliths is awesome for this). But culture does zip.
*Pirates have bugger all fighter/bomber defenses. (Read the Percheron desc. for background info on this) Carrier capital ships work very well with this, or a Percheron/Aerie/Lanstrata swarm with an Light frig screen.

As for dealing with it once you have mucked up the pirates' base/s, the hit and run will work a lot bettr once you stop replenishing the ships with bounty:
1. Stop using bounties.
2. Use a siege frigate swarm to take out the pirate planet, or novaliths if you're that lucky.
3. Hit and run with light carrier swarms. Use light frigates in front to draw fire, with your carriers tucked away outside of the well. When the light frigates are kaput, retreat the carriers, and repeat.

Your solution is ineffective as well really. The carrier thing is okay, but won't work very well in 1.05. Though its amazing in 1.1 beta with the upgraded carriers. An easier solution if the guys running the beta though is just a lvl 6 marza, with the upgraded missle barrage it can take out all the pirates in two volleys. volley 1, then retreat (pirates dont heal) volley 2 good game pirates.

Actually, the only answer that's not right here is yours because it doesn't address the original question.

Yes, the amount of bounty helps determine the strength of the pirate's raid (but it's not the only factor). But the original question was why there are so many ships at the pirate base itself. Which has nothing directly to do with bounty, but only surviving ships returning to the base.

Indirectly, the higher the bounties the bigger the raid so the more ships may survive, but bounty is not a direct effect on the size of the garrison fleet.

They do that???

Yup. Start a small map, don't outbid the AI, let the first pirate wave take out everything around your planet, and then look at what the ships do They stick around for a little bit, then go back to their base and sit there.