Brad, for some of us, at this point so early with the game, this is more of a burden than a fix. I can understand that Pirates are an integral part of the gameplay (even if I think they are not well implemented) but AT LEAST, you should introduce the option to modify the frequency of the raid. This shouldn't a HUGE modification.

Like someone said, when you play a huge game that last days, having to deal with pirates every 12 minutes is not fun, it's just damn annoying. Right now, this is my biggest grip with the game and I can't believe this wasn't brought up with 1 year of Beta testing. I pre-ordered the game 1 week before lunch and with that 1 week with Beta4, I already had the pirates 12 minutes timmer on my list of annoyance with the game. Also, adding some "randomness" to the encounter would also make things a little more "likeable". I can't picture Pirates waiting in their cockpit saying: "dang I wich we could attack but we can't there is still 6 minutes lefts on the counter...".

Allow us to modify the frequency to 12 minutes (like now) to something like 60 minutes.

You could just make it so that, the pirate raid timer is random. That will be more benificial I think. Of course it would be an annoyance to check everytime, but it is, What I think a good annoyance. Because it is Random, you will have to check the pirate raid every time, but it would be random so it could be one minute or to 60 minute. You would not know until u check it. I think that is a better idea for pirates.

I'd like the AI not to know exactly when the last picosecond to bid is and be able to instantly drop 12,000 credits to out bid me on easy difficulty. It'd be nice if the pirates launched when the timer reaches 0:00 instead of warning at 0:00 and then some unknown time (to players, the AI seems to know Exactly when it is) later bidding has to stop, how about last bid at 0:00 and then the attack launches xx later?

Love the game.

Actually, both A+B would be the ideal. Personally, I would not set pirates weaker in my games, or turn them off, but in general being able to and to adjust raid frequency/strength wouldn't hurt anything.

That's both normal, and not usually a problem since your trade posts pump out free trade ships when existing ones get destroyed

PS: I just want to add that I REALLY REALLY appreciate the developers and everyone posting their thoughts. This is a very cool community and makes me glad that I purchased this game to support you guys.

The game rocks!

The timer isnt part of the galaxy file. So the toggle could just make the timer infinite , so pirates never come.

I'd vote for option D: Length between pirate raids. I don't think pirate raids should be taken out but how often they happen should be settable.

Just curious, did you test it? Might just be the trigger for the actual warning, not actual departure?

how about D) slider for frequency of the pirates, no need to "modify" their strength. This should be easier to modify.

But if I had to choose, it would be B, then A.

From what I've read of people's comments thus far, I would say to go with Option D: Allow the players to adjust the frequency of pirate attacks. It sounds like that's more of an issue than how powerful they are.

I like option B the most.

Slider setting Pirate strength (more flexible but more complicated)

Sometimes those pirates are damn anoying. Hell sometimes they attack me even when I bribed them to stay away

Again - it's not their strength, it's their frequency.

So given the options above, I'd have to go with (A). Or (D): A slider for the delay between raids. And (A) definitely for the random maps. (Not the designer created ones, but the truly random ones.)