POLL: Do you like or dislike pirates?

Like pirates, but they only seem to work well on small maps. Where there just you and the other guy. There is no point in put a bounty on some one, if there only you, to attack them.

I like the idea of pirates, but the fact that they are just hit-and-runners that can't be dealt with by anything but force sucks.. I feel itd be pretty tight to be able to buy out pirates for your own uses.. not just shirk off bounty on your own head.

Or even have games where one person can play as pirates.. unable to colonize but can ravage the hell out of players.

Also, there should be a 'king of the pirates' capital ship thats something like a boss when you attack their base. Otherwise its just real army vs. bunch of random ships.

Also (this is the last one), why do they have to ignore fleets to go after trade ships? Isn't that just a retarded idea?

When I first started, I hated them. Random attacks forced me to keep reserve units to beat back another invasion. It seemed kind of stupid to have some chaotic force attacking me at timed intervals. I was constantly fighting one more faction besides the one(s) I signed up for !

Now I look at them more as a mercenary force to be utilized if I have the cash ( which I usually do as TEC ). They harrass my enemies on a constant basis, and pirates work very well with insurgency. Two or three harrasssing fleets inside enemy territory that I don't have to balance against my fleet cap is sweet. Individually they aren't much, but it's constant grind when used with Insurgency, and forces my opponents to adjust. I'll also follow the invading Pirate fleet to an enemy planet, letting them soften it up. They also make a nice counter to RA. I will hold off on spending before an impending raid is announced, and horde some cash. If I can bid low and still get an attack on my enemy, I have extra cash to spend on my fleets or tech's. If I have to bid high, credits are easier to come by as TEC, which also hurts my Vasari/Advent opponents who had to spend at least close to what I did. Unless you're grossly mis-managed as TEC, you'll never suffer an attack.

Mid game, even being attacked by them isn't that bad. It's cheap experience for my cap ships. They're even nice enough to announce when they're coming to be slaughtered! I think most people who hate them are new players who haven't figured out how to manipulate them yet.

Late game, two Novaliths solves the pirate problem if I want them gone. But usually my economy is so big even spending 20k credits to buy an attack isn't a big deal.

I have to say I like pirates. In MP games, they can really help turn the tide of the battle. Although I admit, they are really only helpful on smaller maps. On larger maps with more people, they tend to become more of an annoyance than a help.

Like them.

They can be interesting in many games, and there's nothing more fun than in a map like Maelstrom seeing one of your enemies move their fleet away to help an ally, and then calling in the Pirates on them and watch their fleet scurry back. They're probably most useful in early games though where a player has to halt their expansion to ward off the attack, which sets them back by several minutes often.

One of the most amusing things I've seen about them is how they can be a double edged sword, even when you win the bidding. Pirates can be used by a defensive player as a great form of experience (I played a game once who the easy pirate target eventually busted out with like 4 capitals all above level 7 and started a little rampage). So it's always worth scouting the player to see if the Pirates are walking into a trap to be experience food.

So I'm all for Pirates. Fun aspect of the game.

I personally think that pirates should be more like pirates.. randomly flying about attacking things, and that you should not only be able to put a bounty on someone else, but pay off your own bounty.. they pay 1000 to put a bounty on you.. you pay 2000 to take 1000 off.. the pirates stop attacking you, and go back to marauding
also, pirates should follow the same rules as everyone else, they should have to buy their ships
oh, and they should travel through other neutral systems unhampered, but I think that the neutral planets should develop their planets locally

I started out liking them, but have grown to dislike them. Their primary role seems to be as an annoyance. They don't seem to be cost effective. Plus the fact that they are magically generated doesn't help their case.

I love pirates but have a couple of big complaints about them:

#1. Pirates ignore the fleet of the player they're attacking while traveling through neutral systems, and do not engage until they have reached the targeted player's planet. This makes it difficult to "pre-empt" the pirate attack by sending your fleet "in-between" the pirate base and your planet closest to it.

#2. If you put a big pirate bounty on your enemy, and the pirates send a fleet to your enemy, the pirates will also attack your fleet while you're engaged with the enemy fleet. This really sucks late game when you are attempting to siege their planets, but pirates randomly show up and kill your siege ships.

Other than these couple of issues they are fun and add a spice to the game.

They make the game more dynamic, because if you end up with pirates on you you then have to make a choice: either rush your opponent or get the extra exp from the pirates, and if you chose to rush you then have to compensate for the crap you lose due to the pirates. If you end up with pirates helping you then have the option to out maneuver your opponents fleet using the pirates as a ruse.

I like them

When I use a frigate approach I use them to harass my opponents...if I want to do a capital ship approach then I do like above I bid just enough to make my opponent spend money and let the cap ships expience up. Does require a longer game, though.

I love pirates! I really hope they get their old-version Kol with all the piratey spikes and bitz...

They're a good thing, and keeps the game exciting. However, the fact that they don't stop before they reach the target planet is, like said before, very annoying.

Pirates = good.

I enjoy pirates. Ideally there would also be space-vikings. Yarrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.

The pirates as they are now are not pirates, instead they are mercenaries. In their current forum i do find them annoying just because so much more could have been done with them rather then 2 minutes of watching the bounty price if you can be bothered to check with a weak fleet showing up at a planet sometime later.

After the first 2/3 raids they are no longer a concern as I start building repair bays and a few turrets at every planet and move a few extra ships there and that is all you need, and if i have enough territory i leave a asteroid for them to attack and go away without me ever caring (sometimes upping the bounty just enough to get the other side to waste even more cash).

So they are annoying, but not a problem though that is a problem.

I like pirates and how they are put into the game it could be better but its better than nothing.

No, I always turn pirates off. In a game with multiple star systems, they are an annoyance at best. In a single system game, I prefer getting to spend all my resources on production and research.

I like the idea of pirates but I think the current implementation is annoying. As someone else said they aren't pirates they are mercenaries. The main thing I hate though is having to basically stop playing and stare at the bidding screen knowing that the AI will always bid at the last minute. I can't stand that. Plus the other things people have said annoy me too; ingnoring the fleet, attacking when you are engaged with who you are paying them to attack. Stuff like that.

Imo right now the only thing good about the pirates is that they have a really cool character portrait and a really cool base.  

Obviously I play with them off.

Like them.

They are free exp for me early on if I want it... with a little scouting you can see where they will attack with some probability in the beginning of the game. Then you choose if you will pay them to attack or absorb the exp.

If you are willing to pay a lot of bounty in the first few rounds you can turn them into a force that has to be dealt with. The more early bounty they collect the faster the threat level rises. In a multi player game this can turn them quickly into a force that simply can't be ignored. So if your playing a game with 3v3 or more you can all throw in money on one enemy and then next round ... they will be too big to deal with without diverting a large fleet. This hardly ever happens but it makes an interesting diversion and can cost your enemy a system or 2 early on if they ignore it.

As to why they just fly through a system... you show me any where in history where a pirate or even pirate fleet was a match for ships of the line. They never had any reason to attack a fleet... they had letters of mark that allowed them "permission and compensation" for attacking enemy shipping and ports that were lightly defended. That is why they go for your shipping... that is where they get money for them.

If any thing to make this more accurate they should never engage your fleet... they should just attack any system where there is no fleet. If you send one in all well and good but they would never stop in a system that is defended properly...

Edit: Oh and taking out their base with a secondary fleet later in the game will push a capitol ship to level 6 form level one if you can afford the time to do it...

I love them; when they are attacking someone else. I hate them when I forget about the bounty, and see they are attacking me. There needs to be a patch-fix: "Toggle, Pirates attack someone else when you forget about bounty".

I turn it off. It would be ok without the bidding.

What I find interesting is that people who want the game sped up as fast as possible seem to like pirates the most which is kind of strange because they can take huge credits out of everyones hands and moves that money away from inrfa and fleet building and basically slows the game down. Their a massive credit dump, other than that there an interesting component in some games. You can deal with them through pure defenses and once you get heavy cruisers a rear fleet of cruisers can take them out easy enough.

The huge downside to pirates is your forcing you opponent to build defenses, build fleet, and giving their caps xp, and losing alot of creds all in exchange for time. And most players dont even seem to ask themselves if its worth it. It's not always the best move. I've been hit with insurgency and pirates and in the end i have higher level caps, defenses all over the place and a very large fleet.

What I find interesting is that people who want the game sped up as fast as possible seem to like pirates the most which is kind of strange because they can take huge credits out of everyones hands and moves that money away from inrfa and fleet building and basically slows the game down. Their a massive credit dump, other than that there an interesting component in some games. You can deal with them through pure defenses and once you get heavy cruisers a rear fleet of cruisers can take them out easy enough.

The huge downside to pirates is your forcing you opponent to build defenses, build fleet, and giving their caps xp, and losing alot of creds all in exchange for time. And most players dont even seem to ask themselves if its worth it. It's not always the best move. I've been hit with insurgency and pirates and in the end i have higher level caps, defenses all over the place and a very large fleet.

They also need to do something about how bounty works because there should be other avenues to reducing your bounty other than losing ships and structures. Namely losing trade ships to pirates should pay more bounty off and killing pirate ships should also reduce your bounty slighty. Being able to effectively counter pirates shoudnt mean that you have to deal with them every time because your bounty never goes down.

basically watched against one each hard tec type of ai on the (fulcrum map)? just to compare the various ais, and I saw something interesting.. even when the ai is tough as hell and built to the 9's it won't attack the pirate base..
ps. I had pirate attacks off

What I would like to see is an option for the player(s) who have bought the pirate attack to "control" the pirates in some way.

Maybe there could be options:
a) harass their systems and keep jumping away when engaged.
directly engage their fleets.
c) attack a specific planet?

This would be interesting, although, of course, would create even more balance issues.

Not a big fan of the pirates. They can add an interesting element to some games, but I generally keep them off. Straight up pvp without the annoyance of pirate intervention.