Pirates are way to strong at the start

[Pipewrench]

note: very sorry, I did not notice my Photoshop was set to epic size...


Newest patches installed 1.7.0.16.


5 games played:

empire info:

Galaxy: elliptical
Star: large
physical size :huge
expansion: starting
research: very expensive
difficulty: very hard
creatures: may
aggression: unstable
pirates:many (average distance)
colony's:scarce
Independent:life

race: ikkuro
home system: harsh
size: starting
tech: starting
corruption: very high
government : democracy

Observations:

retired mines with duplicate resource mining operations.
retired any research facility.
upgraded medium space port with 4 extra research components per category and adjusted energy usage.
upgraded destoryers with more armor and weapons to 40 strength.

This is with only 1 pirate faction encountered

Pirates are armed twice in two games out of four, at the start with 78 firepower and approx twice sprint and turning speed compared to my designs. They are attacking existing mining bases even before explorer reaches out to the first system.

In the two other games they are attacking with lower firepower but the speed makes them easily pull out and wait until destroyer moves on to resume attack.

I counted 12 attacks made by the same pirate with 7 different ship names in the matter of 10 minutes of game play. 3 were small frigate escort types and 4 were destroyers with 30+ firepower.

My economy at best can support 3 destroyers with 3 extra luxury mines built. The pirates wait for a refuel order or repair order and then attack when the destroyer moves. I cannot afford to put on a collector at the start due to the needed increase in firepower because I am facing a constant 30+ firepower threat or 50+ with destroyer frigate combinations.

In last game conceding the fact I could not beat them, I entered into an alliance which almost broke my treasury due to high corruption and harsh home planet conditions. This gave me some breathing room but the first empire I encountered declared war almost immediately.

Summary:

If possible could you insure that pirates do not have weapons that exceed players at the start. 2 pirates with 78 firepower at the game start and with harsh conditions and corruption at max it will cripple an economy instantly. This is forcing impossible openings. I want try and keep hard settings on for the challenge.

Thank god I was not facing 2 pirate factions. They could take over the universe.[;)]

*Holy crap that picture is big !!

[ASHBERY76]

I do not understand.If the game level is too much for your ability change the settings like none or fewer pirates.78 firepower is not hard to match early game and you can even bride them too untill you have a fleet to complete even at hard.[8|]

[Pipewrench]

ORIGINAL: ASHBERY76

I do not understand.If the game level is too much for your ability change the settings like none or fewer pirates.78 firepower is not hard to match early game and you can even bride them too untill you have a fleet to complete even at hard.[8|]

Ability? Get out a calculator. It is not like I started playing this yesterday.

It is mathematically impossible to defend against 2 simultaneous attacks against 1 fleet 70 firepower or 2 ships with 100 firepower with only 40 firepower destroyers defending who are slower. The harsh economy at the start will not allow a shipbuilding program to counter this. Payoffs to pirates until you create a positive cashflow will bankrupt you as well.

I am simply relaying to development that this setting does not give you an opening move.

prove to me how without touching 1 setting since you figure ability is to blame. Ships found excluded.

[WoodMan]

I've never had any problems with pirates at all! I was quite amazed watching someones AAR on YouTube where they were really fighting hard against pirates at the start of the game and suffering fuel shortages as a result, guarding up the fuel mining stations against the pirate assaults.

I guess maybe it is luck. I've probably lost less than 10 stations to pirates in the two years or so I've owned the game. [:D]

Edit: Turn down the pirates. For your settings those pirate settings are too high, they will cripple the AI even if you survive. Pirates are not overpowered at the beggining, you just chose to max them out against the Harsh starting setup which is what made them too numerous. If you chose Few like I do for harsh homeworlds you probably wouldn't have this problem.

Also I'm not sure why the pirates have that high firepower! They use the designs of nearby Empires as far as I was aware. So, maybe they are using designs from a neighbour of yours which has a better starting tech? Baffled.

[ASHBERY76]

That firepower is most likely a Boskara design copy with Shaktur firestorm.The A.I designs better since the latest updates.

[Theluin]

Oh yes I noticed that since 1.7.0.16 the AI designs seem to even match my own sometimes [:D] (But idk if that's due to the AI being good or me being bad after a long break [;)])

[feelotraveller]

ORIGINAL: ASHBERY76

I do not understand.If the game level is too much for your ability change the settings like none or fewer pirates.78 firepower is not hard to match early game and you can even bride them too untill you have a fleet to complete even at hard.[8|]

+1

As to how you might do it on these settings -

More engines on your destroyers: I'm using a design with 21/39 speed (from memory) and only one less blaster.
Build a fourth and be prepared to lose one or two (or retire the most damaged once the threat is gone).
Don't immediately scrap your bases, let the pirates go after bases you are prepared to lose. (Although it helps not to have it destroyed otherwise the pirates will grow. Remember you can bribe, or scrap the base yourself, at the last moment...)

Just some ideas. I'm sure a good player could improve upon these heaps. [:)]

If you are flexible about your settings, putting the pirates to 'distant' may be the only change needed.

[Dracus]

maybe they are copying the old ones designs. I find that when pirates come from bases near them, the ships chew through my mines real fast. In games like that you just have to withdrawn, recoup, and rebuild.

[Pipewrench]

feelotraveller,

Did you try these settings or are you quoting off a beta experience? [:)]
I would appreciate a confirmation on what I found or proof that what I am saying is untrue and just poor game play. The new update has made some settings, which worked before a futile effort.

Changing the settings is the simple way to fix a problem but the settings are still there for another player to run into.

With great respect, please get out a calculator.

look at the screen or start the game with the setting I gave.
With current settings,
deleting 1 research base, deleting 1 escort and 1 frigate
and having on hand 4 destroyers , 1 constructor, 1 med space port and a tax rate increase to 30% gives
money 14,000 and -4815 cash flow.

With this negative cash flow and also adding 4 mining / gas mining base builds, you will be without money and unable to use your constructor. That negative cash flow will only improve slowly if taxes can be raised and you need mining luxuries to do this. I cannot rely on colony growth to offset things because I have hiked taxes.

Pirates are running with better hit and run now and are usually pulling out after shield strength falls down below 50%. Due to fast jump hyper drives, and higher maneuvering thrust they are able to now simply pull out. Attacks are now so frequent that shields have no way to recharge in time and constructors cannot effect repairs. Destroying the base only moves the matter on to another location.

Buying them off solves problems for the moment but with the negative cash flow it only exasperates the problem.

Best of all, due to constructors auto evade, a
repeated attack on the home system, in early game, will bring construction or repair to a halt.

Try it out. It has forced me to reduce pirates to normal but I still am finding 50+ sprint speed with 400 shields in the very early game. Only 2 start up tests, so this could very well be bad luck. I have had 12 repeated attacks with 1 pirate faction on 1 base in my home system with my 3 destroyers patrolling that base for protection. I am able to kill 50% of the attacks with the rest fleeing. This breaks the freighter runs and construction schedules.

Man did the update change some openings.[;)]

[Theluin]

I just tried your settings and they are pretty hardcore. [:)] I had to do a few reloads but I think I found a strategy that allows you to stand a chane against the pirates (but it still requires some luck[;)])

First of all I retired all state ships and bases leaving only a single constructor redesigned with a lot of shields and long range weapons and set to escape when shields hit 50% and a single small spaceport with 3 of each labs 3 construction bays 6 corvidian shields, 6 armor plates and a few weapons. (No energy collectors running purely on fuel [:)])

I also designed my mining bases as follows: 3 extractors 6 shields, 12 armor plates, 12 blasters, 1 reactor, 1 fuel cell, 20 cargo bays and enough energy collectors to power weapons+shields+static. I built a single gas mining station on a gas giant with fuel in my homesystem. I let the starting mining bases as decoys to draw away the pirates for a time.

I dismissed all my troops and set the taxes so that the cashflow would be at around +500 credits.

After the gms as finished most of the starting bases were already destroyed. I continued slowly building up mining bases (keeping an eye that the private sector doesn't go into the red) al the while being harassed by raiders, however I didn't loose anything so I was happy [:D]

I played that game only for under a decade up to now but the situation seems pretty stable with me slowly expanding my mining operations while the population on my homeworld slowly grows as I don't have that high taxes (around 30%) and I'm right now in the slow process of building my first colony ship, however I don't know how that'll go as I don't have any military ships to escort it and no funds to build them even if I wanted too. I think I'll use the constructor as an "escort cruiser" [:D]

[Pipewrench]

Theluin,

Great thing about the settings is that before the update you could open without technically throwing all your existing designs into the bin. With minimal modification and hard work , and I mean whack a mole micromanagement , you could get 4 luxuries built to support an expansion.

lol[:D]

deepest appreciation for the response.

I was hoping not to Nerf the existing mining base design too much without it becoming a pirate irrelevancy . One of the problems I saw is that my nearest neighbor was also being harassed by the generic pirate design and tactics. I have a funny feeling that without the guardians around most AI empires will crumble depending on AI empire scripting against AI pirate attacks. I hope the AI empires are strong enough to hold out.

Here I was trying my best to keep Fleets doing the job of protecting the private sector and costs down. Now its back to high taxes and death star uber mining, again. ugggg!

thxs again.

p.s. did you notice the increase in the speed and evade,flee or get the uber pirate running at 78? This little puppy came up more then once on game start and it might be just a simple data glitch I can tweak.

[Panpiper]

I got used to playing with pirates on maximum, liking the extra rep boost one got from dealing with them. That was before I installed the latest patch. Running a game even on normal difficulty with pirates at max now is asking for a world of hurt. I lost a good several mines in the early game and I expect it was only my relatively fortuitous discovery of a high tech abandoned ship that saved me. I didn't try to defend the targets they went for. I just made a bee line to their bases and took them out at their roots. (I tend to build a 'lot' of explorers early on, which helps me to find the pirate bases quickly, while building relatively few warships.)

[Pipewrench]

Panpiper,

Same here. With settings reduced it was fairly easy to explore faster and build decent size fleets to hit pirate bases.

Unfortunately, I wanted a challenge many moons ago so went harsh with total corruption because I had to give the AI every advantage possible. It forces you to micromanage everything early game because of income while trying to keep a reasonable retrofitting strategy against the AI empires.

I was able to balance things and build slowly without throwing 30+ weapon systems on my mines but with this expansion the pirates are faster, smarter and carry a very big hammer 1/2 the time. The pirates are playing very realistically now and it shows. Whether other empires can counter this threat is yet to be seen.

[Theluin]

Pipewrenh hat technology where the pirates armed with in your game?

Perhaps a glitch has allowed them to steal an Ancient Guardian design as the specifications about the pirate ships you posted look quite similar to their designs.

[Panpiper]

I did indeed once in the latest edition encounter pirates who seemed to have been able to 'find' a super tech abandoned ship, and a capital ship at that. Needless to say, I decided to resign that game. There is absolutely no way to stand up to that early game.

[Pipewrench]

ORIGINAL: Theluin

Pipewrenh hat technology where the pirates armed with in your game?

Perhaps a glitch has allowed them to steal an Ancient Guardian design as the specifications about the pirate ships you posted look quite similar to their designs.

That is partially why I made the original post. In 2 out of 4 starts with these settings, produced this pirate ship at game start. This could be a tech glitch on my side or some unforeseen after effect of the update. I was hoping that some other players could try these settings and see if they run into the pirate of death within a couple of minutes at game start.

Thanks for your beta run on the settings again. If it is not appearing on your side I might just re-install.

Panpiper

Yes that has happened before. This time however the ships pictured above look to be from the same family if I am not mistaken.

note:
With pirates turned down to normal, in all 4 game starts, this menace does not appear.

[Dracus]

I am wondering if for some reason, they are getting the pirate faction swamp designs even though that faction has not popped yet.

[Theluin]

Started another game today with your settings and after playing it for almost a decade no pirates appeared whatsoever, which I must say is pretty strange [:)]

[Pipewrench]

They have stealth cloak[:-] or is it your lucky rabbit's foot?[;)]

I did run into the same 78 firepower design with 1 other pirate empire so I do believe this is not a found ship. It might be a glitch on my installed data.

I am trying one more time and if I get +110 attacks again with an early pirate contact I will install fresh again.

Key points:
Fire sale down to 1 destroyer, 1 troop, high taxes and death star builds only on luxuries you do not own.

thanks for the input and the envy.

[Tanaka]

Strange I have never had any problems with pirates and I play with them to the max. I wish they were more of a challenge! Find and destroy their base and poof they are gone or join you! I wish the bases were better armed and harder to destroy!