Pirates are still broken, still OP.

They really really really need to be an anti-economy force not a military force (or at least only a small military force). Whoever gets the pirates on their bid/missions basically wins the game at this point. And disabling the pirates is not a fix... it's hiding your head in the sand.

At this point, I would not recommend this game to anyone unless they stopped at Entrenchment.

In my latest game there are 415 pirate ships at their pirate base. Yep. You heard me... 415. 230 are the heavy cruisers. The weakest of which have atleast 1800hp, and I think that is the siege frigate? The HC have nearly 3000hp.

There are also 5 pirate fleets errant around the central star system causing a ruckus... the fleet size ranges from 50 ships to 120 ships. So there are very nearly 1,000 pirate ships floating around the whole game... the least of which has 1800hp, and dps far above where it rightly should be.

So much for that patch, eh?

-Disgruntled Customer.

Looks like Yarlen's "peace envoys" lost to the pirates...     I'm not suprised, after all defeating Corsairs with over 3000 hull and 128 dps is no easy task.

So next time Yarlen I suggest sending a fleet of Kodiaks to teach the Pirates a lesson, after all they do well over 25 dps... each... 

Pirates in Sins =

That why I suggested giving pirates the ability to takeover civilian structures and using them to their benefit. Suppose you have 4 military labs and pirates take over 1. Suddenly you cannot build starbases anymore, all your military is handicapped. If they take over a frigate factory they can start churning out reinforcements. With enough military labs, they will be able to pump out their own starbase builders... 

Not to mention thatt by controlling a capital ship factory, well... 

Pirates are not about fighting, if a fleet the same size as theirs jumps in, they should hop to another planet of the same target.

Once they accept a bounty, it should start be consumed instantly. when the bounty is depleted, they would only stay at the gravwell for as long as they get the upper hand in there, using up the structures with impunity. As soon as the opposition comes up, they would go back to their base (with the bounty depleted).

I bet this is producing some of the slowdowns

ummm i thought we were trying to make them weaker....(plus pirates steal not conquer)

Swerdy, you've got the wrong quote, I'm getting no slow downs... unless I wanted to fight all 1,000 of those pirates at once in the same place . Although I could see how so many persistent pirate ships could hurt older computers... there do seem to be a lot more left over pirates these days.

whoops thread overload......

A pirate raid blew up my orkulus star base with maxed out defense and weapons upgrades.  I don't think I need to say anymore.  Except maybe I do.

I tried raiding a pirate base late-game when all my military research was finished with 35 skarovas enforcers and a level 10 kortul devastator and skirantra carrier.  The devastator blew up in the first 10 seconds.  The only way to seriously damage the pirates was to get the whole fleet to focus on one ship.  ONE SHIP out of dozens at a time.  This is silly.  These are not pirates.  They should be doing piratey things.  These are not piratey things; these are things I would expect from the Super-Armada of Death. 

Also, I am not very happy with the pirate XP drop.  I don't see how that helped anything at all.  If anything, now it feels like it's a total waste when I actually manage to kill them off.  If the ships had ACTUALLY been scaled down, then it would be fine.

Programming a smart A.I. is hard.

Programming the computer to cheat is easy.

Personally I never did like the way Pirates were implemented in the game, so I always play with the Pirates off. Attacks should be small scale hit you when your down with high success rate for them.

The way they are in the game is more like Mercenaries and even that is open for discussion.

Dont nerf the pirates =*( just make give them more exp value =D

Has anyone mentioned maybe giving the pirates carrier fleets that have special abilities and bonuses against trade and resource buildings? As in, they can wipe out all the buildings there and/or null the trade for a certain period unless a large enough force is there to repel them before they do so?

Pirates are supposed to use cowardice to their advantage. They would pick the fights they know they can win, unless they are cornered - in which case they will fight to death.

They should be a primarily disruptive force, not destructive. That's why I am suggesting to make them take over civilian structures instead of destroying, and having the structure cause a penalty instead of a bonus while it is pirate-controlled.  Trade ports with negative income, science labs both removed from the tech level (-1) and also giving another -1 tech penalty, for a total -2 tech level, trade ports with negative income, and pirate using your capital ship/frigate factory with YOUR resources. 

during late game/huge maps, pirates would launch several attacks simultaneously.

I have a proposal for pirates that might help with the lag issues (maybe) and possibly add to the fun.  If anyone was a fan of Keith Laumer's Bolo science fiction books (or Steve Jackson Games Ogre which was based on it) how about considering making the pirate bases as follows:

Give them lots of defense guns and possibly mines and hangars at their outposts but instead of giving them ever increasing swarms of ever more powerful ships...give them a single ship, an "ogre".  Make it a fast moving cap ship with fighter/bombers and terrifying guns capable of engaging multiple targets (though planetary bombardment should not escalate or it will clobber every planet)--sort of like a mobile starbase maxed out or leveling up each generation.

So you would have a monsterous leviathon lumber into your system that would require a fleet to stop.  As the game progresses and if it was not destroyed it could level up just as pirates do now.  Of course, you would gain monsterous experience for killing one.  I do like Brazillian_Joe's suggestion of them taking facilities--very cool concept if doable.  Having a pirate "Bolo" come in and capture all your orbital facilities and leeching your resources for themselves afterwards would make them fearsome.  Keeping it as a single ship allows mutiple pirate bases with less lag issues as well perhaps?

Each ship would be a fleet unto itself...a navy of one.  Would make them distinctive (especially if they had names).  "Arrrh!  It's the Black Pearl!  Run awaaaay!!"

This is a great game. But The latest patch has made the pirates far too powerfull I've had to turned them off. This combined with the last second bidding every few minuites means that the pirates are currently the strongest faction in any match. You have to spend an incredible amount of money to avoid massive assaults far greater than the main factions can muster. Obviously this wasn't ment to be.

I assume the pirates are supposed to be a threat not easily dismissed, and it must be tricky for the developers to correctly balance this. I think lowering their armour, having a truly accurate countdown to when they leave their base and fixing the bug which makes other factions bias towards bidding against you will sort this balance issue.

I discovered a pacification tactic to deal with the Pirate problem: aka the "Novalith Solution"

I THINK THAT WHEN THE PIRATES GET TO THE POINT OF EACH SHIP BEING ABOUT HC LEVEL THEN THEY SHOULD STOP BEING UP GRADED. I PLAYED A GAME WHERE EACH PIRATE SHIP HAD LIKE 30 ARMOR WITH EVEN HEAVIER ATTACK BY THAT POINT IT WASNT WORTH TRYING TO SAVE MY PLANET.

So... any word on this? Is there still pirate balancing in the works? For that matter is there even still work ongoing on Diplomacy at all? What direction is this game going at this point? Has it reached it's conclusion and now onto the next? Or what?

Yeah. It seems the devs have shut up about game progress, development, etc. again, at least with the fans. The caps still need fixing, as do the civ and mil techs (see the appropriate threads in the main forum), ignoring current issues with the Diplomacy XP. I'd be happy to know fixes will be released even in 2 months, but some notification would be nice.

I totally agree with the dozen posts here stating that the pirates should be disruptive, not destructive.

• Destroying moderately upgraded starbases?
• Destroying the entire population of a planet?
• Defeating AI fleets?
• Allowing players to defeat AI players by proxy?

Ok, so Stardock has good programmers but need a lesson in game balance

1. Pirate planet sieging should damage planet health, but minimal population loss. Pirates are there to make money, not kill their prey and harm future raids.
2. Upon planet health reaching 25%, a buff should be triggered that results in no tax collection for 10 minutes (e.g. equivilent to a full undevelopment tax). It could even be ability triggered at planet health of X by pirate pillagers - the game mechanics exist. Pirates are economically incented, and damaging economies is what they do.
3.  Pirate raids should use the same AI as normal AI races... they should run in the face of an overwhelming force... not fight to the last ship. Pirates are not a military force and are not heroic.
4. A pirate strength setting is needed: none, easy, normal, hard. On normal setting a human or AI player shouldnt be able to spend 10,000 credits and send an instantly formed massive armada to wipe out a planet (even if it's random - which it usually isnt). Two or three of these in sucession and it can be game over.

We all know that empires don't become rich at the same pace so here is a suggestion.

Lets get rid of pirate timer and make them random in intervals from (let's say 10-15 min) so we don't really know when they are going to attack and let make them attack all empires in the game. Each empire would be attacked by force depending on how rich that empire is + bounty on that empire. They attack planets with most trade ports and least defense. If there is no trade ports they try to go steal technology.

They have constructors and factories on pirate base planet.

Ships are able to jump directly to the planet they want to attack (no phase lanes for pirates and while phase jumping their ships are visible to all empires + reduce speed with which they travel trough phase space). This way don't get stuck in others empires gravity wells and empires have time to go defend). They attack with ships that have ability similar to sovas' embargo (perhaps 50% of planet income + trade ship stays in gravity well).

They have no pillagers but have ships with kill population on planet, capture module and capture constructor abilities. If they capture constructor they can build defense platforms and factories which can build additional ships -- depending on how much money and minerals they have. 

Their ships stay in gravity well until there is a overwhelming force present to drive them of. (They retreat to pirate base similar as AI does if attacking with much stronger force). 

They don't capture or destroy trade modules since stealing is their important income.

When they capture Labs (they can capture only military) they do research (no tier handicap - more labs  just mean faster research) which stays with them even after those labs are lost and they can infiltrate labs and steal all research that empire did together with ship designs.

Armor, hull and other Weapon research stacks so they can get Tec missile damage increase with Vasari phase missile. Same would go for hull, shields ect. (if they steal 2nd vas hull research, 1st Tec hull research and lets say 3 rd Advent hull they get hull increase that combines all this research).

This way empires are forced to build defense on all planets.

While pirates are attacking their ships are away from pirate base which is lightly defended (defense platforms + limited ship force). Until they steal enough and build more ships at pirate base it is weak and fairly easy to kill (it does have enforce loyalty so u cannot kill them completely). If there is no force present there pirates will rebuild and once their base is sufficiently defended and they build enough ships  they will start raiding again.

This way even when empires are at war they have to work together to get rid of common enemy since if they steal a lot of technologies they get really strong with massive ship hulls and armors. In diplomacy option there is mission to attack pirate base which all empires are eager to fulfill as long as they see that other empires are attacking as well. While in pirate base gravity well with mission offered there is a cease fire (sort of akan lvl6 ability) between attacking empires but just until mission is offered and just in pirate base gravity well ...... every where else war as usual.

PS let me know what u guys think

EDIT: nevermind, stoopid question.

I think the best buff to pirates (from what they were in entrenchment) would have been to make them attack a number of planets at once with small-moderate forces. That's what pirates did, they attacked ships that weren't guarded, they were everywhere the navy wasn't looking. That's what SOASE pirates should do as well - attack a few planets at once. It would be harder to defend against a multi-front assault and the pirates would be up fer some bounty. They would be a serious nuisance and a problem while not jumping into a gravwell with a million credit fleet.

that actually makes a lot of sense N3rull, pity us modders can't get the pirates to do that