Did you like the pirate/facility takeovers in DWU?

[maggiecow]

It was one of my least favourite parts of the old game, and such a chore to keep on top of.

[Chris0War]

Mining is overrated, a decent nation will trade themselves to the top of the line, forging everlasting bonds of income, while ensuring chaos anywhere to create profitable situations

I'm Dutch BTW .... East India Compagnie FTW !!! Woot

But seriously, i would like something like that to happen in DW2. Wasn't this already implemented? I'm fairly sure i had my fist Caslon station taken over a couple of times? I guess my response would be a couple of raid fleets, i'm not entirely sure though, if capturing of stations if enabled with raid settings. The only thing i dread is all those reports but hey, you can turn those off right?

[Parrius]

Yes, I enjoyed the pirate bases and takeover mechanics. It made the pirates a serious threat. I also liked how they would fleece you based on your economy. It wasn't just a fixed rate of 125.

I loved playing with lots of pirates in DWU, you could bribe them to attack your enemies, you could use them to gain contact with other empires and my favorite mechanic, they grew in power over time and they would also update their ships with better tech. You had to put effort in getting rid of them but at the same time you could use them to attack other empires in proxy wars. Smuggle needed resources to your bases, there was always a cost/benefit when dealing with them. I hope that these mechanics are brought back in Pirates Expansion.

If they became too annoying you could always reduce their numbers and strength during setup. DWU was always a very modular game, you could play in any sandbox you wanted.

[Schatten]

no, why? it was ok for human player, at last your armies had something to do destroying the pirate bases but the AI could not handle them and that lead to losing one planet after next to Pirates in late game since the AI was not able to destroy them with their Armies.
Also the AI has never attacked and take the planets back.

[Parrius]

I think with better AI and the work already done on DW2 the Pirates will be taken out by the IA Empires. DWU IA was great, challenging and the IA did take out the pirate bases when they could. With DW2, the AI is much better and I think more capable of handling dynamic pirate factions. I would like to see more dynamic pirate missions and bases, infiltration of your colonies and take over of your mining stations. Currently, I find that the pirates don't really do anything but stay in their corner of space until someone decides to wipe them out.