Pirate's ship building out of whack (pics included)

[Kylan]

Playing a 700star, 6x6 sector game with "very few" pirates, I noticed a huge blob the other night moving through deep space near one of my long range scanner equipped explorer ships. When I checked the diplomacy screen for the pirates I noticed the amount of ships they had amassed. When I zoomed in on the specific location it was a swarm of escorts, each with no more than 25 firepower.

[Kylan]

A close up of the swarm. Just want to point out that I don't think this kind of mass production should be happening. Amounts like this could overwhelm pretty much anything, including the Ancient Guardians.

[zonks]

I got this same thing tonight, I've the most powerful fleet with 180 ships compared to all know races, yet I came across 1 pirate faction that had approx. 430 ships, far more than any of the other pirate factions.

[DeadlyShoe]

yes they build ENORMOUS swarms of escorts O_o

[zonks]

This problem is still here after the new patch. I received notification of an independent colony and jumped across for a look, what I found was a mass of escorts like the picture above, all around an independent colony, couldn't add my own screen shot because of the 7 days after 10th post requirement,I really wish I could finish a game, god knows how many times I have had to restart now.

[Raap]

I don't mind so much that they build this amount of ships( assuming they can afford it). The bigger problem is that they neither use them well nor build bigger ships.

[zonks]

I pushed on with this game and kept an eye on them, seems they pushed their ship numbers up to just under 400, I was getting continually raided, mining and gas stations were being captured left right and center, I kept trying to fight them off and discovered that their losses where not being replenished, I've currently got them down to about 90 ships, and they don't seem to be building more, it's as if they build until they are broke and in massive dept, then can no longer build because of this.

I did also notice that when I paid for a protection pact, they continued to attack me anyway.

[Oberst_Klink]

ORIGINAL: Olek

I pushed on with this game and kept an eye on them, seems they pushed their ship numbers up to just under 400, I was getting continually raided, mining and gas stations were being captured left right and center, I kept trying to fight them off and discovered that their losses where not being replenished, I've currently got them down to about 90 ships, and they don't seem to be building more, it's as if they build until they are broke and in massive dept, then can no longer build because of this.

I did also notice that when I paid for a protection pact, they continued to attack me anyway.

Funny thing is... I noticed that all pirate factions are way too strong from the start, even in normal games with a regular difficulty level, BUT... the odd things about it, it seems to happen more often when playing a 6x6 or 8x8 map with 100-250 stars... even when I set the pirate levels to 'few'. Anybody else can confirm that?

Klink, Oberst

[ASHBERY76]

Too many ships are built in general even for Empires.Raise prices and maintenance.

[zonks]

I'm playing in 1400 stars, 15x15, also have pirates set to few, though that setting seems to make no difference to the number of Pirate factions.

I have checked the other pirate factions that I have come in contact with and they all have ship numbers between 20-60, it's only this one faction that has the hoard.
I wonder if it has anything to do with that event that has the "pirate faction that has not been seen for hundreds of years" that come blasting into the game.

[Schussel]

just happened to me within year 1 (just reached warp) with the bonus of an capital ship and several destructions of my stations due to focus fire make peace break peave focus fire .. etc

PS: whats the deal with that "You are not allowed to post links-error" in the boards lately + the annoying behavior that it kills the former post ...

[necaradan666]

Apparently you're not allowed to post links etc until a week after you have 10 posts, I don't know I never tried to post a link here.

That's an awesome amount of ships. I'd love to roll in there with a capital and watch them all burn. Did the OP get the legendary pirates event or something? I've never seen this many pirate ships in my games but I usually play with 'many' pirates

[zonks]

There was no legendary pirates event for me, I was pretty early into the game when I discovered the hoard.
I'm at a loss, this pirate faction seems to be able to build a lot of ships, all of which are escorts with a few abandoned destroyers and capitols now and then, you pay them to leave you alone, yet they keep attacking and raiding, all the other pirate factions leave you alone when paid and have reasonable sized fleets.

Another thing I have also noticed, I chose to have 11 other races plus mine, yet at this point in the game there is 25, I have that independent colonies thing ticked, but really, 13 more?, it just seems to have turned into a click fest, and it's a pity because I really like this game.

[Bebop Cola]

One thing I've been noticing that I think is linked to this is Pirate faction under-production of freighters. I've seen a couple pirate factions actually stall their production entirely because they over-produce military vessels beyond their ability to keep up with resource shuffling with freighters, then they keep producing military vessels.

What happens is their space ports stall with close to a 100 military vessels queued to build but no resources on hand to build them. The few freighters they have are all tied up elsewhere pulling smuggling missions. They eventually run out of money and start sacrificing every mining base they have that could even get them the resources they need if they had the freighters to ship them back to the space port.

I was experimenting with one last night and used the editor to dump about 100 additional freighters for them and their building issues started to smooth out. Unfortunately, my system rebooted for system updates so I didn't have a a save game to upload. Next time I notice this happening I'll upload the game for review, but I wanted to bring attention to this in case others had seen similar behavior.

[davidjruss]

Playing on a 1400 star galaxy with Pirates set to few and distant , the nearby Pirate faction with 1 base started with 8 military vessels , then jumped to 26 and now has 97 vessels ( I have 10 ). It seems to myself that the Pirate factions can construct vessels " out of thin air " , not appearing to be restricted by the number of construction yards available or time involved for construction ( or even materials required ? ).

With the Pirate factions able to produce military vessels in numbers that the player cannot due to economic and physical restrictions , results in a " whack a mole " type game which will in time alienate players.

Perhaps Elliot could investigate the number of pirate vessels and their construction methods and confirm that they are WAD or if the AI Pirate vessel numbers should be reduced.

DavidR

[Bingeling]

I think it seems like pirates spam escorts way too much, if powerful, they should advance to larger ships.

I have no tested this, but suspect that pirates (for empire play) needs another setting.

Having "many" will probably create a lot of pirate factions battling each other for control. Many die, some become modestly strong.

If there are "few" pirates, they will have more room, and they mostly become stronger, faster.

I think it could be an idea with a "pirate power" setting, which tweaks the overall state of pirate empires. That way it would be possible to have "few" pirates that don't become very strong. And it would be possible to set up many pirates, but they are not very strong. And also set up a "normal" amount that will be very powerful.

[necaradan666]

Yes, it's a very misleading setting that one

[Gorofin]

My question is, how do they can upkeep this fleet and build more ships ...
The upkeep should slow down building ships even for the pirates.

Small ships are ok: pirat like and you can hit and run with them.

[zonks]

Started another game with the pirate settings on very few, all was going well until I hit my 9th colonisation, then the pirates that had around 40 ships started to mass produce, in a matter of 10 minutes, they went from 330 to 412, they are now sitting on 488, all escorts, there is a mass of them around an independent planet doing nothing while the rest of them raid my colonies every minute or two, I pay them protection money and they still attack, I cannot keep wasting my time starting over and over again to have my game ruined by this.

[Flinkebeinchen]

Just let your Intelligence Agents destroy their bases (especially their SpacePorts) and they will slowly run out of resources.. and just keep in mind that those huge amounts of ships are a massive fuel sink.. ships without fuel are nearly worthless.. so why not focus on their Gas Mines? Like stealing their operation plans and make use of them [:D]