Succesful Pirate Raids Against Overwhelming Odds

[MedievalNerd]

Howdy all,

I'm a bit confused about how pirates manage to do successful raids when they land a single troop which barely lasts a few seconds? I usually keep at least 5 troop units on my colonies, and only some times to they successfully manage to 'repulse' the pirate attack without them being able to steal loads of stuff, including tech.

What is the math behind what constitutes a successful pirate raid? How long do they have to stay? If they flee they still get the raid bounty?

[mSterian]

I'm pretty sure that when they loot something when they're up against impossible odds they loot A LOT LESS. An almost insignificant amount.
The system is there so the pirates have at least SOME income so they're given a chance to recover a bit if you leave them alone.

[Starke]

A patch from a ways back (1.9.0.8?) significantly reduced the amount of loot pirates get from raiding in the face of resistance, so if you're playing an old patch that explains it. But mSterian is correct, pirates still have a decent chance of escaping with smaller amounts of loot even if they can't overwhelm all the colony's defenses. I'm a little bit surprised they can still steal tech this way, though.

[Fenrisfil]

Also introduced in a patch was a restriction that you can stop this happening provided you destroy all the raiding ships. So while they can still smash and grab against a colony well defended on the ground they can't if you make sure their raiders have no means of escaping with any loot. This seems reasonable enough to me.