1069 weak pirates are not

[boolybooly]

Is this what you would call a weak pirate, year 2771? 20th game year.

Game set up was weak / few pirates and dead means dead, because very weak / very few settings produced none at all and I want to play at stopping the crims, because I used to like Judge Dredd as a kid, OK?

I dont agree with the idea of paying protection money and IMHO it sends the wrong moral message if that is the only viable tactic or expected gameplay.

Meaning its a delicate balance but you should be able to tailor it to suit your preference but I dont think this has the right balance.

Next notch up from very weakest settings, which is no challenge, there are suddenly way way too many pirates and some of these ridicuously strong.

Year 20 I have not built outside the start system and yet no less than FIVE pirate clans have been raiding the system non stop. once in a while is fun but this is too much. Two of these declared war and have ridiculously advanced ion defence and drive tech. I would say you should meet TWO at most at "few/weak" settings in that kind of timescale when limited to one system.

These advanced pirates with ion defence only turned up after I defeated the less advanced pirates with ion weapons, which feels like a rigged response but does not respect the dead means dead setting for pirates.

TBH this feels like "Red Queen" balance i.e. moving the goal posts by disrespecting internal consistency of game rules, so all the running you can do leaves you exactly where you started. I am not a fan of Red Queen balance in games, that is an understatement. This kind of thing is gamebreaking for me. I need internal consistency in the game to feel like I achieved anything in playing it, take that away and it ain't worth the bother.

The whole point is if you defeat the pirates it has a palpable positive effect, gives the player a sense of achievement, this negates that.

So this pirate ship is not weak is it? It is not balanced either.

I would suggest "weak" pirates should have next tier tech at most, Ghost fleet level and very weak should have same tier as the player. Sure higher strength at higher settings but this is not right for weak.

weak pirate 01.jpg (1.15 MiB) Viewed 1130 times

pirate clans 01.jpg (1.34 MiB) Viewed 1124 times

[Thineboot]

You may take a look at Empires added for Story Events. You'll notice that you've managed to be at war with two special pirate factions.
The Clan of Superiority is one of them and it's by far the most advanced pirate faction in the actual game [1.0.6.9].
Ghost Fleet is by far the weakest of the special pirate factions and their ships are at the lower technological end of pirate ships in general.
I haven't tested the overall change in their designs regarding weak/strong pirates starting conditions. Therefore I can't comment on how much they get weaker in your case. But you're fighting the strongest pirates, that's for sure.

[boolybooly]

Thanks for the heads up @Thineboot. I think you are right that these piratical story event elements clash with game settings and the principle of choice behind them.

I have no idea where the story event goes so don't know how to view it. There has been no introduction to it, no indication of what might be on offer and what the price would be, unlike all other events. I feel it is possible this is because there is no story and this is just a scaled up "Red Queen" reiteration of the same piratical corruption scenario, which imposes that gameplay on people who have chosen to defeat or avoid it by other methods.

The key question to my mind is what triggers this "special" story event? If it is that I gave vanilla pirates a hard time then that is Red Queen balance QED.

I have to commend the effort put into making story events and the back story of the game, they can be fun but also perhaps misused to impose a choice of playstyle in what should be an open world game.

Below FYI is the advanced pirate frigate, trying to raid my colony and nick my stuff in year 21.

Pirate Frigate 02.jpg (1.28 MiB) Viewed 1086 times

[Jorgen_CAB]

There also is the option to play without the story events and make it completely sandbox mode. You might want to try that next time and see how that feels instead.

[Thineboot]

Note that the pirates are race-specific story events. You can still have the planet destroyer AI activated.

After a few test starts it seems those four pirates only show up when race-specific story events are activated.

If you wanna avoid those sophisticated pirates of The Clan of Superiority you'll have to play without Ghost Fleet, too.
Or you just pay the 125 protection instead of going to war with them

[boolybooly]

I started the thread because after setting weak pirates I was not expecting super advanced pirates and honestly considered it a probable bug. Without any indicator this is a race specific event or why it is triggered, it struck me as overpowered and game breaking and I still think that is the case.

Uberpirates are inconsistent with the weak pirates universe which enables fighting pirates instead of paying them which I wont do on principle because I dont agree with condoning bullying even in a game. So maybe race specific events are the problem or maybe the events themselves are just badly conceived, which I think is the truth.

I am playing Teekan so there is no Ghost fleet. Teekans have a tough life. Their foundling extra colony is a millstone with its 14k drain due to the terraformer plotline. Best avoided until ready, which I did.

Maybe that is the intended point of the event, piling on to Teekan players because they are seen as an underdog race. Give them a second colony and then take it away again by raiding it incessantly and causing rebellion, then send in uberpirates if the player defeats the raiders. But it doesnt work as a credible scenario and apart from meeting criteria for a Red Queen dynamic, it is just unplayable.

In the game I am playing to test the beta and provide feedback which this is, many uber-pirate ships from two factions are kiting my planet endlessly, harassing all the player race assets non stop every few seconds, there is no break and it is impossible to play the game at normal speed.

Given the difficulty with the interface, ship movement and general bugginess everywhere all the time, getting ships to do what they ought is endless herding of cats micro and if you dont do this and pause every few seconds to check for raiders you lose everything one at a time, ships and stations and resources and then you lose because the pirate ships are so OP. Its like putting an end game planet killer over your starter planet and setting it up to crack the planet open on day 1, I mean you are not going to win and it wont be much in the way of entertainment apart from the pretty explosion. If you wouldn't do that then you shouldnt have these uber-pirates in the early game, end of story. The game engine cannot sustain this kind of mechanic and produce fun. It just does not work.

[boolybooly]

Well, news is they appear to fall to massed ion bomb plus plus. So I can play on unless they Red Queen again at which point I will ragequit.

[boolybooly]

The Clan of Superiority pirates have lived up to their name once again.

The moment I captured one of their frigates they sent a destroyer.

This is Red Queen balance. Why didnt they send it before ? Because I had not triggered that level of challenge by beating the last level.

I find myself torn on the one hand this feels pretty fake, on the other hand it is a challenge which helps understand the tactical game, while at the same time undermining the value of the economic sim.

It does this because it does not arise out of open play with opponent civs following self consistent mechanics constrained by the same economic and research sim rules, which is why I play 4X in the first place. The opponent spawn is triggered by my civ not out of its own mechanics.

On one hand I enjoy the (constant) battles and victories where they arise and triumph of formulating a plan and carrying it through to success.

On the other it feels like some kind of stalker harassing me and it goes on and on and on and I wonder how long it will, when I can bring it to a resolution and ... get on with the game I came here to play, which is not this.

It is a completely different game to the battling of empires.

I guess the idea is that its there for people who want a stimulating combat challenge which is why the combat civs like Mortalen and Boskaran also get this race event. Why the Teekans? I guess that is about being the underdog and overcoming a heavy challenge, the Fremen side of the desert mythos, the training of the faithful, the hunting of the worm.

The pity of it is that in order to switch off this non 4X RPG battle scenario, the rest of the Teekan race events have to be switched off too.

Its true that this scenario clashes with the player control of the pirate sim. Which suggests that it really deserves its own control in game setup because it is really an extension of the pirate sim not a normal race specific event.

If it had its own control like a checkbox beside the pirate slider, then it could be available for all the civs under pirate controls instead of being linked to only a few civs as part of the race specific events, which seems like an inappropriate classification and treatment for this scenario.

Hope that helps.

Pirate Destroyer 01.jpg (1.32 MiB) Viewed 962 times

[boolybooly]

If you want to experience these pirates then there is a v1.0.6.9 save available at the linked post, provided for the discussion in Teekan hardpoints. This save is before completing research for the Ion Bomb with both advanced pirate factions at war with the Teekans assaulting the Teekan homeworld repeatedly and incessantly. A difficult time in Teekan history but the tide is about to turn ...

https://www.matrixgames.com/forums/view ... 1#p5034921

[boolybooly]

You'll notice that you've managed to be at war with two special pirate factions.
The Clan of Superiority is one of them and it's by far the most advanced pirate faction in the actual game [1.0.6.9].
... you're fighting the strongest pirates, that's for sure.

FYI this is not the case as Airless Wanderers (Teekan pirates) which I encountered playing Teekan have next level ion defence etc and whup those other pirate ships well and truly.

Their turning to war appears to have been a bug.

Personally I think they need to be removed from race specific events.