Pirates: too big of a factor?

What happens is when you get experienced enough, pirates are no longer a big deal, and actually, you welcome them sometimes.

You can predict where the pirates are going to launch because they always go to your planet that's closest to the pirate base. Since you know where they're gonna hit, you can prepare for them, like say build up your fleet so you can fight them when they show up.

What's happening is players anticipate the pirates, keep their expanding of eco and military going like normal, but then get the capital ship where the pirates hit at the right time. This gives free, emphasis on FREE experience to that players cap.

Pirates alone aren't a force to be reckoned with. What does make them a force to be reckoned with is if in that 1v1 you hit on one side of your opponent's empire while the pirates are hitting the other. You'd have to scout to make sure you know where the pirates are hitting, but it makes for incredible strategic possibilities.

Pirates would scare me a heck of a lot more if they had shields.

Yeah, shields and CAP ships.....then we'd be in for a ride that's for sure.

Let's stop giving the developers ideas, Monk, heh.

There are other factors involved.

First, say for example in a 1v1 game, both you and your enemy start a bidding war. You bid 1000 and he bids 1250. You loose the bidding and suffer the attck. Several things happen here. First, your bid credits will most likely be there for the next round ( assuming the start of the game and neither of you actually attack each other, causing bounty to be paid ). So, next time your enemy will have to bid at least another 1250 credits to win, assuming you lost a few of your frigates taking planets and some bounty was paid. You could bid a small amount, say 500, and push the pirates his way, forcing him to bid 1750 to win. It never ends. Except he's spent almost 3000 credits to your 1500. Your net gain, assuming you didn't sacrifice your initial frigates on the pirates and used your cap ship. In multi team games ( AI or human ), just let them bid on each other with a little 'help' from you and you'll rarely suffer an attack.

Second, pirates are free XP for your cap ships. They'll level like crazy, and won't be in any real danger. I attack the actual base later on for the XP, wipe all the ships and turrets, and leave to let them rebuild. If you 'bought' your caps to level 3 or 4, a pirate base raid will get them to 5 or 6, level 6 being the goal.

Third, again as mentioned, they make an excellent mercenary force. The more you pay, the greater the attack. The force sent for 1,000 credits is nothing compared to a 10,000 credit mob. Two caps and some static D will take care of this nicely. This opens up some tactical advantage and only costs you credits but not resources for lost ships. While 10k seems like a lot, late game, when you're both close to your fleet cap and evenly matched, a good 10k pirate raid might swing the battle.

On small maps the pirates are a bigger deal, but not that much. They tell you when they're coming ( you can figure out where ). 5-6 hangers, 3-4 turrets, and a cap or two and they die like flies even with an extreme attack. Just kill the seige frigates first to save the planet, mop up the rest. Try not to engage them with frigates or cruisers, it might cost you a ship ( $$ ). Let your enemy waste his money while you level your caps, or hire them later to attack while you storm down another phase lane.

So, USE the pirates. I view them as a resource. Mercenaries when I want them, XP when I don't, and a money sink for my opponent.

And I like the pirate cap ship idea. How about they have an 'Embargo' type ability as well ? Suck out all the money of that system while they're attacking ?

I just play with pirates off because I think the pirate system is messed up. The problem is that the only way to lower your bounty is to lose ships. I think that destroying pirate ships should lower the bounty too (they get scared of you).

I tend to see games with pirates on as noob games that I'd prefer not to play if I notice that they're on in the settings.

Pirates really aren't a large threat they have no shields and are all hull!

They are when you have no fleet and your cap is 2-3 jumps away engaging in a fight for a planet you need to get before an opponent does (and pulling back means the opponent will walk into the semi-undefended planet)...
I once had a 2v2 game where the opponents were bidding on me and attacking my ally - it took me 1/2 hour to get into the game enough to attack my enemies - in which time my ally was almost out of the game. Nasty (:(  The reason I almost lost was because of the pirates stopping me getting up and going. The reason I won is that they left me alone directly so I was able to get more colonies then them while they played tag with my ally...
The question as to why I almost lost is the key - I was spending all my resouces fighting the pirates off, which meant I was not expanding (and cap ship was tied up some of the time, meaning it wasn't clearing planets out for me). This killed my initial expansion and therefore economy which then meant I couldn't get enough credits to outbid TWO opponents since my ally needed his credits just to stay in the game... Loosing that first bid is not a game breaker, but definately puts you behind the eight ball...

You could use a sacrificial planet.. Just takeand colonize a planet/roid close to the pirate base, or at least closer then anything else you have. Do nothing for it. No upgrade, NOTHING. The pirates will attack it, and wipe it out. Didn't cost you a thing. As an alternative, you can colonize it, upgrade it, but put nothing in orbit, and then hang around with the fleet just long enough to kill the seige frigates. with nothing else in the system, they'll eventually leave.

What about underdevelopment? That planet would be costing you more than it would if you upgraded, fought off the pirates, or outbid the other factions.

What I do that gives me a nice little early game edge is put a capital ship in the gravity well of the planet that the pirates attack, with some frigate support of course. You will get a high level Capital early  

Interesting stuff.

I'm thinking mostly of a small 1v1 map...here winning the first bid gives you a big edge. As soon as you win, you should immediately do one of two things: attack (as Raging Amish suggests) in another system while they are distracted by the pirates; or expand aggressively (maybe this is the window you need to tech to ice planet colonization, for example). They'll have a head start on you for the second raid's bidding, but by that time you should have leveraged your advantage from the first raid into a strong position. You should never get killed outright by pirates, of course, but on a small map I do think it puts you in a strategic hole to lose that first bid.

It matters much less on larger maps where you can use your whole fleet to quickly wipe out the pirates without fear of your opponent sneaking in the back door.

To consider pirates from another angle: do they ADD anything to the game?

The problem isn't that you can't take them out, it's that they come after you continuously until your bounty is lower than someone else's bounty and they consume your fleet's attention--the time you spend fighting the pirates (capital ship food) is time that you're not spending on colonizing planets or whatever else it is that you'd be doing with your fleet. Should a game be decided based on who wins the first pirate bid? Should a player end up out of the game for that reason? I don't think that's what the game should really be about.

Sorry if i'm wrong about anything here bu i only have the demo and can only play a game for 90 minutes. But i was able to fend off pirates with almost no fleet at all. Just a repair bay a few hangers and about 6 light frigates took down a pirate fleet of about 35 ships.... I havent even played it very much so i'm not gettin how pirates are a bad thing. I usually will have my cap ship there when they come to and that just rapes them and i get a ship that's lvl 6 in about 4 waves...Dosn't require much to beet um and they are actually good xp points.I hope to get the game soon because i can only play as TEC and the best reserches can't be researched. Still this is an awsome game even by just playing the demo:). But i really can only see pirates as a hard thing if they start gettin massive fleets that can probably obliterate your own. other then how many numbers they have they're almost like scouts...don't deliver much of a beating and can't take one.So i'd segust getting a planet ver close to them and uping the defenses on the planet. and maby some ships to take most of the damage. I just had some Light Frigates already there. Obliterted more then half the fleet(ya it maybe wasn't much of a fleet to you guys but in 90 minutes there could only be about 20 ships is considered a fleet)before i had to replasce the Light Frigates. Despite what most say on this forum i've found the defenses very good at damaging the fleets.Especially with a repair bay nearby.

Probably a bit late but @CenturionJixra If anyone cant handle the pirates how will he / she ever be able to win a serious multiplayer game ? My oppinion is that priates are exactly as strong as they have to be. If they would be weaker everyone would ignore them, if they would be stronger they would draw the attention away from the important things... killing the enemys (npc or player).

About the idea of the cap ships for pirates... I think for me... that they are perfectly as strong as they should be ... at the beginning of a game they can give you an extra help to win some minutes against your enemy but in later game they are weak enough to wipe them out or do what ever you want... if anyone wants to kill cap ships... why pirates and not an other npc / player enemy ?

I believe that when an attack is launched by the pirates on you, your bounty should reset to 0.

The bounty system was clearly designed for FFA games.  There is makes complete sense since other players can attack that player to get the bounty money.  The pirates are definitely something that needs attention in one of the micro-expansions.

no taht would be just ridiculus. pirates are relatively weak and can be taken done fairly easily. what you really have to do is know when to bid and when not to so you don't stack the pirates offensive and raise the threat level too high. If you can't just loads of money on your opponent before he can then you shouldn't bid or try to outbid them and just handle the meager pirate attack.

I don't think it's been posted for a while, and it still works (since I used it a couple of weeks ago) - one trick for dealing with the pirates without losing your planet is to wait for them to arrive and then scuttle all your buildings (and maybe your worker ships too).  The pirates leave as soon as there are no more targets in system, so if you do it quick enough they'll go away before their siege frigates have killed your planet.  Probably not worth doing for asteroids, but certainly is for high population / upgraded terran and desert worlds.

...and like spiralblitz says, knowing when to bid and when not to is important.  It's better to not bid at all than to bid and lose, unless you can bid in a pattern to try to make your opponent overcommit resources.

I'm very new to this game (played my first successful game last night after a couple of rough ones that didn't go anywhere) and although I DID play with pirates off last night so I could master the basics at the easy level, I don't see how sacrificing an entire world's infrastructure would be worth stalling off pirates.  Wouldn't a good defensive infrastructure be preferable?

defensive building aren't that strong.  And any but the first couple pirate waves will easily demolish infrastructure, as well as your planet.

And scuttling the infrastructure is more profitable than letting the pirates destroy it.

Pirates will turn away if there are no more targets in the gravity well of the planet/asteroid they are attacking. So, you can simply colonize a planet/roid (preferably dead asteroids, since they don't support population anyway), don't build anything there, and when the Pirates come knocking, scuttle the Constructor. Once the Constructor Ship blows, all the Pirates, including Pillagers (their planet bombers) will turn around and fly back to the nearest Pirate Base.

You may want to reconsider pirates.  My expereince is that 25 tac slots will smear any pirate raid.  Put your new cap ship, say maybe a marza, in the grav well where the pirates are being dismantled and the cap ship will get all the experience for destroying the entire pirate fleet.  This will elevate your cap ships quickly.  Pirates are basically free experience for your caps.

Also put your trade center infront of your planet defenses.  It will draw them like a magnate to your big guns.  With some repair stations your trade center will be fine while the pirates quickly go down.  No ssnese prolonging the massacre.

I diagree with the OP.. Pirates are fine the way they are..

1. Make sure you have planetary defenses. 3-5 Repair Bays + 3-5 Hangers arranged in a self protecting manner will last a long time against pirates. If you have another 2-3 frigs + 2-3 LRMs, you can almost ignore the pirate raid completely. And if nothing else, such planetary defenses are useful against other enemies too, so why wouldn't anyone deploy such things?

2. Pirate raids are predictable, both in timing and in location. If you know it, you can prepare for it.

3. Stop bidding on Pirates unless it is for a specific strategic purpose. In fact, I dare say in MP someone bids against you, just ignore the bid. Let the pirates come. If you have built defenses like 1. then you can ignore the pirate raid and focus more on what the other player is really trying to do.

4. In early game, pirates are useful in gaining cap ship exp. So bidding to send the pirates elsewhere just gives exp to the enemy. One of my very first games playing SOASE, I bid up the pirates against the AI continuously. After many pirate raids later, I finally found/met the AI cap ship - it was a level 6 or 7 while I was still stuck at 3.

5. Bidding on pirates is an economic black hole. Even if you win the bid, whatever that was bid against you earlier remains, so for the next pirate raid, you now have the bid against what was bid on you in the last round plus what new bounty the enemy is adding on. Furthermore, by bidding, the total bounty keeps increasing, and so the pirates will work even harder to earn the bounty, and if you end up with like 1000+ credits on your head, geez...

So, my feeling is pirates are a distraction for AI, less so for an experienced human player. They are useful to help you build your fleet exp and will encourage good defenses. On the whole, pirates are not over powered, they are not too distracting, just enough of a nuisance to keep you on your toes.

If all else fails, just turn if off in game options. Arr Ye Mateys!

 

Yeah, I'll agree here.  All else being even, i.e. you (or your team) and your opponent(s) being of equal levels, pirates can be a pain.  True, they are free levels if you have your capital there able to defend.  But, if you are tied up fighting elsewhere, you have to tie up resources building defenses on whatever planet they are going to attack... unless you want to suffer losses until you can get there.

If you move your capital to where the pirates are attacking, that means you can't have it in another location where you may want it to be.

I've played a few 1v1s where the pirates did play against me.  They would be enough of a distraction to keep me from doing exactly what I wanted to.

However, I am totally in agreement that the fee on your head should go down when you destroy the pirate ships.  Maybe not much, but a little.  I think it is kinda ridiculous how it only goes down when they kill you.