1071 weak pirates, premature Clan of Superiority raid !?

[boolybooly]

I tried a RND start for a fresh 1071 game which turned out Haakonish, which suits me as they were my neighbours in the Teekan 1069 game.

I set pirates on few/weak (with empire chaos) again and lo and behold in the 14th year, a Clan of Superiority destroyer turned up raiding a mining base before it was even constructed. That does not make sense, how can they raid it if it is not mining, there is nothing to raid?!

Please get these pirate raids in proportion and allocate advanced pirates their own checkbox.

I am assuming chaos applies to empires not to pirates because that is what the description states.

Haakonish Superiority raid 01.jpg (1.38 MiB) Viewed 1044 times

Pirate Destroyer 02.jpg (1.26 MiB) Viewed 1044 times

[boolybooly]

And that was the spaceport exploding.

I am not playing this. I dont want to be subject to criminal extortion without a viable response.

This is why if I play this game again I will be switching off race specific events.

Shame to waste all that effort but this is not balanced or viable gameplay unless you pay a bribe, which I am not going to do, because I dont live my life as a criminal and I dont choose to roleplay as one either.

Haakonish spaceport explosion 01.jpg (1.14 MiB) Viewed 1036 times

[Nightskies]

Okay.

If someone has a problem with dying to a 12 foot fall, uninstalls and says "dying to this fall damage is stupid, I'm not going to play as a character who doesn't know how to break a fall"... does that really mean anything aside from that person declaring that their morality is too inflexible to tolerate playing the character that the game focuses on?

I don't mean to belittle your morality, but it has no bearing on "balanced or viable gameplay". All sorts of dilemmas can trigger a person. I had to walk away from FFVII for a while when Aries died. If there comes a time where being temporarily suppressed and taken advantage of by a stronger power doesn't trigger you, know that this game has many well balanced, worthy gameplay aspects to it.

[AKicebear]

I don't mean to belittle your morality, but it has no bearing on "balanced or viable gameplay". All sorts of dilemmas can trigger a person.

+1

As noted yourself, the solution is to turn off story events. The makers have a vision of the story for each race, some of which may not match your moral sensibilities.

[boolybooly]

Thanks for replying. With 7Days2Die nerd-poling is usually the answer.

I think there is nothing wrong with playing with morality (in a game) and that includes having a moral compass as well as not but where unbalanced the repercussions represent something of a lecture from the dev about their own view on life. Here one could view pirates as a trope for the banking system, fashioned to create an obvious tension. Call me a heretic but look at it another way, you could argue I am advocating bank robbery as a moral solution, like Robin Hood. Or you could argue protection racketeers are gangsters, so I am following best practice and standard operating procedures for the FBI.

Gameplay which offers no choice prevents player initiative and is a grind. It could be seen as an artistic comment but not as a dilemma.

Typically DW2 presents valid dilemmas as choices with different consequences, so allowing the player to decide and use their initiative and whatever protean methods they can devise to make it work. Here I suggest it fails to do that.

Assuming choice is the intended design philosophy behind the game the devs ought to be shown when play testing reveals difficulties in one of the choices.

Considering the ongoing nature of development it is more likely this is due to lack of play testing than intentional.

To recap it raises issues, one is the balance of the advanced pirate attacks, their timing relative to game progress their overpowered and incessant nature. e.g. They appear to be triggered by building outside the start location ... which is the key advice a noob would need btw ... but for discussion's sake maybe that could be building >1 structure outside or maybe it should be warping beyond the start system boundary etc. Depends what they are trying to achieve with their pirate attacks.

The second is as above that the pirat-o-phobic player cannot be free of pirates without losing race events when game setup obviously allows pirate free settings otherwise. So its a mistake to bundle adv pirates in with race events and it seems to be a crushing imposition. So I would regard it as something which requires attention.

Thirdly what is the impact on new players? Does it hook them or turn them off. I am just looking at Steam mixed reviews right now. I dont doubt most people pay off the pirates but then the negative reviews complain that the game is no longer open play. Maybe the two are linked and the ship planner is really just the crystallisation point for several factors which combine to create that impression. Of course I am suggesting this adv pirate imposition is another such choiceless factor crimping the facade of open play down to a de facto grind.

There is plenty to say about the ship planner as well but that would be veering off topic.

[Nightskies]

"...which is the key advice a noob would need btw..."

You don't remember this popup when pirates appear?

"It appears that we have company. Unfortunately this is not the kind of company that we want - hostile space pirates.
Where did these pirates come from? Are they a scouting party for a larger empire? Or are they a lone group?
These pirates look well-armed and are more technologically advanced than we are. Thus, given our current situation, it would be wise to appease them in any way possible, even paying them off if necessary."

So this is what is happening.

"An overpowering presence appears and demands payment or suffer the consequences."
"I bring my weapons to bear and attack!"
"You what? Nevermind. Okay... let me calculate this right quick. Done. Your stations and ships are mercilessly destroyed."
"What? I didn't have a chance?"
"An. Overpowering. Presence. Not challenging, not just powerful. You cannot hope fight them with what you had. Want to try again?"
"Nah, if I can't fight them right away, I think you're just imposing your ideas of the world on me."
"Are you suggesting that this doesn't happen all the time since recorded history began? Forced extortion by threat of violence? Most people in the real world can't simply overpower all threats with violence."
"That's just what you think. You always have a choice to resist."

It appears that it is you who is forcing your views here. Rather than argue against the stubborn morality, I'll speak of it from a gameplay perspective.

While many games make the player the infallible hero, equipped somehow with the ability to overcome the odds laid before them from the get-go, it is not a rule or requirement for a good game. I believe the inverse, actually, that a good game may require that the hero equips themselves, being helpless before they acquire the tools they need. Be it allies, a gun, technology, money or a 6th sense, whatever it is, without it, they may not be able to run or hide. Some games make the player go without the tool for a time. There doesn't need to be a choice involved. The game doesn't have to bend over because someone has a moral problem with using the tool(s) the game gives them.

"Gameplay which offers no choice prevents player initiative and is a grind. It could be seen as an artistic comment but not as a dilemma."

Depriving choice, by definition, is preventing initiative. It has nothing to do with being a grind, though, lest you mean that is a lamentable event that you continue to lament until you've dealt with the issue. Regardless, there is a choice in how one ultimately deals with pirates- even *not* paying and suffering the consequences is a choice that one can persevere through. It is a likely fatal disadvantage - paying them temporarily is clearly a superior choice - but defeat only comes when you are eliminated. Pirates won't do that. If one spends too much time stubbornly fighting an overpowering enemy, though, their defeat is inevitable. It is doable though.

"Considering the ongoing nature of development it is more likely this is due to lack of play testing than intentional."

This is assuming that it is an erroneous choice to make pirates actually dangerous at first. This is wrong. Pirates that are not dangerous would be a mere story element, a background event. That is not at all the intent. They are supposed to be dangerous, as the very event popup on first contact clearly states. Rather, many postulate that pirates should grow in strength to continue being dangerous, like in DW:U. I agree with the sentiment, but don't think its essential.

"Thirdly what is the impact on new players? Does it hook them or turn them off. I am just looking at Steam mixed reviews right now. I dont doubt most people pay off the pirates but then the negative reviews complain that the game is no longer open play."

Yes, some people are turned off by failing. This is fine. I don't see anyone else making reviews saying that the game is too hard, though. It may be that I just pay no mind to those reviews unless a significant number of reviews say so, because some people's difficulty are due to personal dilemmas that have nothing to do with the actual difficulty of the game.

To emphasize that point, a dramatic game that requires the player to pull the trigger on an innocent person as a sacrifice to survive (Zero Escape: Zero Time Dilemma), there is no difficulty in pulling the trigger. It may be difficult for people to do in a manner of speaking, or to come to a decision to do it. Actually pulling the trigger or making the choice, though, requires no skill, talent or ability for a typical human.

[boolybooly]

That is factually incorrect. The text quoted above applies to the second pirate which arrives shortly after the Clan of Superiority, not the Clan, which has text which is sociopathic in nature and is obviously intended to offend.

I would ask respondants to kindly avoid confusing this abusive roleplay within the game, with the discussion of it outside of the game.

The abusive roleplay does not justify a mismatch between game settings and gameplay, which is the point.

If a player sets weak pirates they should not be obliged to deal with powerful pirates, it is not consistent.

To help the devs find a workable solution I have already offered a suggestion to give the adv pirate story its own checkbox as part of pirate settings so it is not bundled in with species specific events.

I would also like to offer a suggestion for the gameplay itself, to improve balance if a player chooses to include the Clan of Superiority pirate gameplay but does not want to reward bad actors.

This is because elswhere the game offers dramatic choices but you can take either path with different consequences and it makes sense that the Clan of Superiority scenario should provide a choice as well. Meaning both paths, though different in character, should be viable.

My playtesting indicates defiance is not viable because the scenario has not been polished or thought through for a defiant response.

This is because the scenario summons two adv pirate factions to oppose the player. My guess is the logic behind this design was that once allied to the CoS the player needs something to capture, which is a generous thought but is predicated on the assumption of capitulation to insupportable sociopathy and so is not the kindness it might seem.

It gets worse because if the player chooses not to capitulate then both advanced pirate clans attack the player, incessantly, in different locations, at the same time, which is unmanageable and not fun at all.

What strikes me is that there is a viable way through, if the two clans oppose each other in exploiting the player empire. What this means is the clans need to monitor and respond to their opponents attacks. So the player planet etc is raided half as much instead of twice over. See screeny of two different raids happening simultaneously which is not a very rare event and on the basis of 20 years experience beta testing games, I would say is very imbalanced and currently plays as if the likely outcome of defiance has not been play tested or thought through i.e. its in a rough state and deserves polishing, because with a few tweaks defiance could be a lot of fun.

Double raid 01.jpg (1.39 MiB) Viewed 831 times

[Nightskies]

That double raid event is a bug. (I think?)

I note that in this test, you're playing the Haakonish, which happens to be the race associated with the Clan of Superiority. When encountering the associated pirate faction, those 4 races have a unique popup message (as seen in another thread conveniently spelling it out at this time), which this time was:

"May pleasing odors fill your nostrils, lost siblings! We see you have unshackled yourselves from a life of gravity and unfiltered air! We are the Clan of Superiority. Once we were soil-pounders like you, but now we are free. Our ancestors were early offworld miners who stumbled upon some ancient ship technology. That allowed us to leave our home system and the limiting tether of land and sky. You inferiors still cling to the old way. The Clan of Superiority is unbound and prosperous. Still, you are Haakonish and not unlike us. We will consider trading with you if you are willing to invest in our mutual prosperity. It is an opportunity you should not miss! If you reject us, you are no Haakonish, but rather filth to be expelled into vacuum, and we will not countenance your presence in our space."

It doesn't tell in a narrative manner that your empire is inferior, so that is a fair consideration. I'm not sure you're speaking fairly in calling this sociopathic, though it certainly is threatening. The other texts are:

"Hail, Dirtsider! We are the Ghost Fleet and we have long watched over your primitive world. Our old legends tell us that many, many years ago, some our ancestors settled among you.
As a result, of all the plague-filled dirtballs in the galaxy, we've been a bit protective of yours and we've generally discouraged other of the clans from raiding your system. Now, this has cost us over time as some of the clans are fairly ultra-violent.
Anyway, the legends also said that someday you would take to the stars again and that when that day came, we would be able to re-join our dirt-based ancestors in one happy new clan. Well, seeing as this has now happened, we figure it's time for a chat.
The only thing is, we've been re-reading the legend and also talking over the cost of protecting your dirt-ball over the generations and the legend says that re-joining you will "return us to prosperity".
We figure this means you need to pay up and if you do, we'll know the prophecy was right and we'll join up with you.
Otherwise, well... I guess we all know not all stories turn out to be true. So what do you say?"

"Intruders, this salvage belongs to the Airless Wanderers. We claim no soil. All of space is ours. Respect our territory, and we will have no problem with you, dirt-dweller though you may be. Encroach on our claim, and we will destroy you."

Due to extreme spoilers involving the Zenox, I will omit this one.

It seems as though you're being ornery about your position that you should be able to fight back at first. I've already demonstrated that it is explicitly the intent that pirates are dangerous to starting empires. As though you're fishing for examples where it doesn't explicitly tell you that the pirates are overpowering. In your original experience, *it did spell it out to you.* Even without the explicit advice, the threat is plain in all cases, and even a 'noob' should be aware that pirates are dangerous without it, your empire has barely achieved jump drive travel and *boop* here are some warships equipped with inter-system drives showing up.

HOWEVER, the idea of tweaking to make defiance viable? Say more. The idea that they raid less doesn't make much sense, but there might be something here.

Perhaps a successful raid could provide a colony with a 'raid defiance bonus' for some time. Not eliminating stolen credits and materials, but at least mitigating it. Or pushing the odds that nothing gets stolen in the empire's favor. Perhaps an empire that has refused any protection agreements could have a smaller bonus like that. ((I vaguely remember that raiders or raided targets get a 'buff' that prevents it from happening again for a time, contrary to the bug you experienced))

Perhaps pirates could offer a temporary mercanary-like contract to fight on your behalf after a successful raid provided the diplomatic value with them isn't too far in the red, similar to what the Ghost Fleet claimed they were doing for the human empire before they ascended. Of course, that should be more pricey than a mere protection agreement, but less than paying off a bunch of pirates (not accounting for the damage from a successful raid). I don't think this should give the player control of the pirates, but it makes the target empire's colonies and bases as though it were belonging to the pirates and interrupts the pirate's usual routine for making trouble for other empires.

Whatever the case, it should be clear that resisting is an inferior choice to giving tribute. So no tweaks might be the best approach.