Finding pirate bases

[Chris21wen]

I've been consatantly attacked by a pirate faction but I do not know where their base is. I sent a spy to route them out along with some explorer ships over year in game time. The ships haven't found them, the spy has returned apparently successfully having stolen their territory map, BUT, nothing. No locations for the pirate faction. How come if I have their territory map??

[Lucian]

Not sure about territory maps but when I want to locate pirates I steal their operations map not territory. However if successful, their assets - including all bases and ships - only remain visible on the screen for a minute or two of game time before disappearing, so its best to pause the game and take some notes or a screen shot so you don't forget where their stuff is.

[Tehlongone]

I think sending an agent into deep cover in their faction should give you the locations, it gives you real-time visibility of all their fleet operations at least.

Most of the pirate bases I find are found by civilians with proximity sensors.

[Canute0]

Not sure why teritory map didn't work for you, it works for me all the time. Operation maps works too, but it difficult to steal then teritory Map and Deep cover is very difficult even for expierenced agents.

Explorer don't work well, because mosttimes the base is build at allready explored systems.
At the later game i design very cheap Monitor stations with ultra long range scanner, and build them at any cross at the starmap grid.

Try to capture pirate ships, this can reveal the pirate base too, and you can get free resources and tech you didn't researched maybe.

[Starke]

After the early period when your explorers discover pirate bases in the course of their exploration, it does get trickier to find pirate bases. This is the part of the game where long range scanners finally pay their due, IMO. I install them on all my spaceports - the range is very big, especially with upgrades, and you can see any pirates trying to build cheeky bases nearby and monitor their ships in the area - and build a series of ships designed to suss out pirate stuff. I use the escort class, mainly because I don't use it for anything else, and I like using them as combat recon to take out small mining stations their find themselves. Fit the long range scanner, a lot of extra fuel cells to power the scanner and if you're like me, some weapons and a few shields. Then just queue up orders for it to fly to systems where it's possible a pirate base is hiding, or if you want to be more safe, queue up travel points in deep space nearby a few suspect systems. If the recon finds a pirate base, then it'll appear on the map as a flag like always. If it finds a mining station, you won't get a warning, but if you're paying attention you can divert it or some other ships to destroy it.

Also, stealing their territory map only works if they've built a Criminal Network and therefore actually have territory. You'll need to snatch their operations map instead, as suggested above. Their bases will remain on the map as flags after the operations map wears off - it only lasts a minute or so - but you should pause to take note of other places the pirates are operating in. You may well find another empire, independent colony, etc.

[Starke]

double post (why can't I delete these?)

[Jeeves]

If you don't have a network of ultra long range scanner explorers deployed throughout the galaxy, you could just click on every explored system near where you saw a pirate ship until you find the system with their base in it. That's what I used to do every quarter game year until I hit on the idea of ULR scan explorers.

Lonnie Courtney Clay

[turtlefang]

I put long range scanners on every mining station and space port as well as having them on explorer ships. The mining stations help keep the pirates from building in the system where the bases are. And I have an "armed scout" with a long range scanner with each fleet.

Last, I try to build a gas mining station on every calson and hydrogen planet you can to deny it as a possible location to the pirates.

Regardless of my intel agent skills, they always seem to get killed stealing maps. It just doesn't seem to work for me. I've gotten to the point now that I just have a funeral for them when I assign the mission.

[Chris21wen]

ORIGINAL: turtlefang

Regardless of my intel agent skills, they always seem to get killed stealing maps. It just doesn't seem to work for me. I've gotten to the point now that I just have a funeral for them when I assign the mission.

How long do you give them?

[turtlefang]

A year.

For whatever reason, and whatever the success chance shows, they die. It's not 100% of the time, but it happens so often that it has proven not to be worth it.

Destroying bases seems to work and I use them to build skill sets, but stealing maps just seems to be a waste of a good agent, at least for me.

[elanaagain]

I'm with turtlefang, sending almost all agents to steal maps from pirates is a death sentence.

[Fenrisfil]

Missions against pirates do seem to have a lower % chance then actually shown which I always thought was odd. Though when I played as a pirate I noticed my agents all seemed to end up with a high counter espionage skill, so maybe it's that.

Anyway, I use a combination of the above and had actually been putting LRS on exploration ships in the late game (after exploring everywhere) as a standard tactic anyway even before Shadows. Stealing the territory map *should* work and it does for me. I think though it only shows up space ports and owned planets and not mining stations or controlled planets (and certainly not ships), so it could just be that this specific faction didn't have any active bases at the time the mission completed.

[Icemania]

Like many I have a large exploration fleet early to help find Pirate targets. After the immediate area is explored for resources I tend to "move to" only after that to find things of interest. Mid-game I tire of the Explorer micro and put them on Auto, which means many of the explorers will go back to systems not fully explored ... which will help find more Pirate targets. Seeking Galaxy Maps from other empires also helps reveal some targets early before Long Range Scanners can fitted on your Explorer Fleet & Bases.

[turtlefang]

Interesting strategies. I virtually never get hyperdrive before year 8 or so. It just takes some time to build up enough other techs to make it worth while. And during this time, I try to get long range scanners so that when I build my fleet of explorers, they have them.

Seems other folks are sending out scouts without Long Range scanners. Are you finding them that useful? If so, I may need to change my strategy.

[Canute0]

Sorry, but hyperdrive, special the Gerax hyperdrive you should research first/fast. All your ships will be faster with this even with other pre-warp techs on it.
At last you should have them for your explorer, for military ships you can wait for better techs.

Explorer with long range scanner are a waste, IMO. Mosttimes you don't watch the explorer and you don't notice when they got anything interesting at scanner range. Mining and other stations ok, but not explorer. Explorer need to fly to any planet anyway to scan for resources, a long range scanner don't help at this job.
Long range scanner are just good to overwatch enemy ship movement, to discover newbuild pirate bases at sensor range.

[Starke]

I just use explorers to catalog unknown systems' resources, look for ruins/independents/potential colonies/etc., and they also occasionally find pirate bases by running into them, at which point I manually tell them to GTFO. They are in no way combat recon ships. When I need to find pirates or monitor another empire's fleets, I build a few specialty armed recon ships to do the job, letting my peaceful explorer designs continue to canvass the reaches of the galaxy.

[turtlefang]

I research the hyperdrive as soon as I can but I rarely get it before year 8 or so. By the time a ship gets to the "special ruins" and the research takes place, it usually about then.

After the spaceport is built, I build two explorers (redesigned to have a little more speed) and send one each to each of the special places. I add a resource sensor to my constructors so I don't have to wait on an explorer to go to a planet to send them out.

For whatever reason, it seems like it takes forever to research warp bubble and hyperdrive techs - and I build my first spaceport with 12 labs of each type to jumpstart construction and keep taxes down to keep population growth up.

Sometime between year 8 and 10, I breakout of my initial system after colonized another other planets (if any). I usually try to plan on having enough resources to pump out between 30 and 50 explorers and flood the surrounding area. The long range scanners on board let me id pirate bases fairly easily in the immediate areas and the mining stations keep them from infiltrating my space.

As my fleets build out, I do use the escort class to build armed scouts to go with each fleet but my explores are unarmed, peaceful types.

Not sure what is taking so long as you seem to be hitting the drive much earlier.

[Starke]

ORIGINAL: turtlefang

I research the hyperdrive as soon as I can but I rarely get it before year 8 or so. By the time a ship gets to the "special ruins" and the research takes place, it usually about then.

After the spaceport is built, I build two explorers (redesigned to have a little more speed) and send one each to each of the special places. I add a resource sensor to my constructors so I don't have to wait on an explorer to go to a planet to send them out.

For whatever reason, it seems like it takes forever to research warp bubble and hyperdrive techs - and I build my first spaceport with 12 labs of each type to jumpstart construction and keep taxes down to keep population growth up.

Sometime between year 8 and 10, I breakout of my initial system after colonized another other planets (if any). I usually try to plan on having enough resources to pump out between 30 and 50 explorers and flood the surrounding area. The long range scanners on board let me id pirate bases fairly easily in the immediate areas and the mining stations keep them from infiltrating my space.

As my fleets build out, I do use the escort class to build armed scouts to go with each fleet but my explores are unarmed, peaceful types.

Not sure what is taking so long as you seem to be hitting the drive much earlier.

Re: research speed, 8 years is exactly in line with what it usually takes me. But unlike you, I focus all my research potential into Energy to get hyperdrive tech ASAP (with the empire research cap in prewarp this only takes 2 research stations and a SSP [assuming default designs], or ~15 labs) - if you're doing it in 8 years without a research-bonused race while also researching other things, that's very impressive. Maybe my race (Haakonish) has a smaller starting population and therefore a lower research cap?

The reason they take so long is because they are key technologies, (another such one is the first colonization tech) their research cost is massively higher than the other techs in that column. I guess otherwise the PreWarp/pre-colonization phase would be very short indeed. =P

Also, holy potatoes, 30 to 50 explorers?! 0_0 I use more like 6-8 lol, and just manually control them to spread out through the surrounding systems. Also, with the power drain from the long range sensors, I imagine they have to return to refuel pretty often.

[turtlefang]

It makes me feel better now as I use a more balanced research approach.

The long range scanners use static energy so I use energy collectors to power them. And each scout has five fuel cells, a few shields and a few armor if I have researched the armor. So they do have to refuel often.

I usually assign two scouts per sector for each surrounding sectors - and then two more for each sector closes to the center of the map (or wherever the stars are most highly clustered). I leave five on automated and five manually controlled.

And yes, 30 headed to 50 ASAP. I want to know what's out there ASAP. And where the resources are ASAP.

And this means that during the prewarp I have to mine everything in the initial system. So I end up building 8 to 10 constructors during prewarp. And I have to mine the asteroid fields for steel, lead and gold in many cases just to make sure I have enough available on breakout even if the resources are the best.

[Icemania]

Starke, I also have 30+ Explorers once I have Gerax Hyperdrive, as they will help you find goodies relatively early e.g. Super Weapons, Super Luxuries, Debris Fields, Way of the Ancients. I'm not sure why but it seems that Total Empire Research Potential increases very very early on to about 400k from the initial 300k, so I find 15 labs isn't enough, and build a 20 lab Energy Research Centre to be sure. I play Ikkuro so we should be somewhat similar. On Expensive Research I also sneak in Enhanced Construction just before Gerax Hyperdrive.

turtlefang, my first wave of Size 300 Explorers (i.e. immediately after Gerax is complete) has 20 Fuel Cells. They are tin foil ... no shields, no armour ... but I can explore very widely very quickly and don't mind losses. That said, I do play Large Maps. My concern with LRS this early is that exploration would be relatively limited due to the refuelling needs. I certainly have no problem finding Pirate targets for early Extermination Fleets, but definitely use Long Range Scanners in the second phase of Exploration with larger ships.

Canute, Explorers with LRS in the second phase of Explorer builds are extremely useful. I send the first batch to search immediately beyond the scanning range of bases and they progressively circle outwards to make sure anything remotely unfriendly is cleared out i.e. helps find more targets faster, without this, I'd probably have some idle Extermination Fleets.