1.9.0.5 Negative Protection fee

[Canute0]

A Pirate ship was harrasing my planet and i though, i got enough income at moment, lets pay them for a while.

I ask for a protection and i got one. I need to pay -29000 each month. And yes my cashflow display Top right corner drastic increased.

I think this should never be happen that a Pirate empire pay you.

savegame: Dhayut Empire 2100-03-15.dwg

[pycco]

Same issue here with all pirate factions mid game strongest military.

[Lucian]

Yep, me too. I'm playing *as* a pirate faction and I find that many of the offers for protection that I make to the surrounding empires are negative! So I'm supposed to pay them? I don't think that's the way its supposed to work [&:]

Also, as the faction demanding the protection contract why cant I determine how much I will be charging, why does the game (even when its working properly) have to decide for me? I think we - as pirates - should be allowed to choose how much we charge for protection, if its too much they can reject and it its too little they might be more likely to accept, but no choice at all isn't cool.

[Plant]

How would being allowed to choose how much to charge be useful?
The price should just be automatically set to the amount tat the AI Empire is willing to pay.
If the AI Empire thinks that it is not worth it to pay your pirate faction, then no amount of changing the protection amount will make them pay you.
I think the problem was that they forgot to set the value to a minimum of 0, or that since it is tied to cashflow, perhaps a negative cashflow results in a negative protection fee.

[Lucian]

The price should just be automatically set to the amount tat the AI Empire is willing to pay.

Except that it isn't: Even when the game is generating relatively sane values, the AI empire often refuses to pay, so manifestly it ISN'T willing to pay that amount all the time.

I have no idea of the actual odds, but lets guess for the sake of argument that the value the AI comes up with as an offer gives a 50% chance of acceptance by the AI empire it's targeted at. The idea with being able to set your own protection is that you can change those odds. For example if you hit them for double the amount, the odds of acceptance might drop to only 25%. If you halve the amount, the odds might increase to 75%.

If I really want an AI empire to be friendly with me I might want to give them a very small protection offer so that I maximize my chances of them accepting. At the moment I cant do that because I might be forced to offer 1500 per month when I only want to offer 100.

If the AI Empire thinks that it is not worth it to pay your pirate faction, then no amount of changing the protection amount will make them pay you.

Although that's probably the way the game is currently coded - because changing the protection amount is impossible - it doesn't really bear any resemblance to the way things work in real life. Just because an opponent isn't willing to pay 1500 per month, doesn't mean they wont pay 50 per month in order to avoid being attacked. The same goes for me as a player, I'd seriously consider paying 50 per month to keep a pirate faction off my back while I concentrate my efforts elsewhere. Its just common sense.

[invaderzim]

Having a better relationship with the empire seems to improve the likelihood that will pay.

But now having a massive fleet orbiting their homeworld also works even if they hate your guts. I think this was a new addition to 1.9.0.5. Previously if you had a huge fleet in their system and they hated you, they would never pay.

[Lucian]

Yes I've noticed that too, the AI empires refusing protection the more they hate you made absolutely no sense because the *fact* that they hate you means you are capable of hurting them. And the more they hate you, the more you've hurt them which *should* make them want to pay you.

The way it currently works is much better and much appreciated. All they have to do now is fix those negative protection values [;)] and that part of the game will be working reasonably well.

Edit:/ Although at the moment I just rationalize the negative values as follows...
If I'm playing a pirate a negative value being offered just means the empire's answer is NO! before I even ask.
If I'm playing an empire a negative value means these pirates fear me so much they're willing to pay *me* to leave them alone.

It kind of makes sense as a temporary role-playing rationale, even if I don't think there's currently much game logic behind what seems like an obvious bug.

[Kayoz]

I haven't seen the negative value protection. I just get spammed by warnings that pirates are cancelling protection... when I've never HAD an agreement with them.

[Lucian]

Interesting, I haven't seen that, although it isn't really surprising since (when playing a pirate) I almost always go straight for a protection deal the instant I meet a new pirate faction. Therefore when they cancel it - and they do, a lot - they're always cancelling an agreement that actually did previously exist.

When playing a pirate I estimate that I get given negative values for protection offers to AI empires about 1 in every 5 times and about twice that frequency the amount is ridiculously low, like 18 per month or something.

[Kobracan]

I can confirm that as of 1.9.0.5 there is a problem with the protection values "offered" by the AI. Many times, it's a negative number per month which is clearly a bug; other times it's a very small positive number (19 credits per month) which is suspiciously low.