Noob Struggling...

[76mm]

I've not really played any space empire games before (generally more into historical wargaming) but have been eager to try DW2 for some time, so finally broke down and bought it a few days ago.

I read Scotts DW2 guide and set my starting parameters accordingly, but have found myself struggling against the lowly pirates in my home system. In rapid succession three separate pirate factions in my home system demanded payments, so for now I'm paying them all off. But I've reached the point where I think I should be able to take them out, but am really struggling. A couple of issues:
1) I can only find one pirate base...where are the others? Are they necessarily in my system? How do I find them to destroy them?
2) I've launched a few attacks on the sole pirate base that I've been able to find, but all attacks have been complete and total failures; my latest attack involved 8 destroyers and 8 frigates. I've already got Destroyers, Level 2 rail guns, etc, but my ships seems incapable of damaging the pirate base, cannot escape (I guess because of some kind of tractor beam, etc), and then are gradually destroyed by swarms of smaller spacecraft, presumably fighters. I've read through the guides and most of the manual, and as far as I can tell it should be a relatively trivial exercise to destroy these pirate bases, but so far I don't think I've even managed to scratch the paint. Any suggestions on how to proceed?
3) The ghost pirates allied to me some time ago, but they are some distance away from my base and I've had several ships run out of fuel in the middle. Why would I be allowed to select a destination outside of my fuel range, and how to I go about refueling them? I've got several fuel tankers, and sometimes I get a right-click menu item to refuel another ship, but usually no such option is available. It is rather confusing and frustrating...

[Nightskies]

1. More explorers to find the others. Or patience. Depending on the size of the galaxy, I think 40+ explorers is good. Once they are located, you can use the diplomacy tab to select the faction and their base. Then just click the selected target info to center on its location.

2. The base defenses are probably too tough for ordinary railguns. The biggest weakness of the heavy railgun, however- its inaccuracy- is moot against a station. Throw a bunch of heavy railguns in with your fleet (don't make it the dominant weapon, keep smaller railguns as such), and then they'll rip it up. You'll also need PD to deal with the fighters- mitigating their seeking fire will help too. If you want to assure victory, draw out their ships first and attack the station from an angle that it has little or no direct fire weapons facing. You can do this by identifying the weapons visually on the station, using the detailed build screen if needed.

3. This can happen. The station only has so much Caslon. You can downgrade it to a station that has a Mining unit of your own design, since it is probably in orbit of a Caslon supply. It may be best to scuttle the base if its too far and doesn't orbit a Caslon supply, but its probably better to keep it anyway and treat it like a remote research station. The techs and the ships are the best part of the deal for getting Ghost Fleet, the station is just icing. Anyway, you can reach destinations outside your fuel range, it'll just take a LOT longer to get there. This can sometimes be worth it- neutral colonies will refuel your ships. Exploring certain systems is a good example of when you'd want to do that. Fuel ships can also mine Caslon if they empty up and are too far from stock. They're slow at refueling ships, though, so fleets don't rely on fuel ships to keep fueled. They're more like operational extenders and emergency supply.

[76mm]

Thanks; I need to look more into how to design the ships with heavy rail guns and PD.

Regarding the scouts: I've got several, and for a long time they were confined to my system and did not find the other two pirate bases. I put them on auto and they didn't even look--they just sat around with no mission. are all the pirate bases necessarily within my system? how do I get my scouts to seek out pirate bases?

[OrnluWolfjarl]

Hey, welcome to Distant Worlds!

Pirates usually take aback new players. No need to feel bad.

Basically, yes, you need to pay them off early on. There's just no two ways about it.

Lore-wise, pirates are the remnants of ancient navies that fought in a huge intergalactic conflict that basically destroyed every other civilization. They are far more advanced than you. If you started in PreWarp or Tech level 1, then their ships are at least 2-3 tech levels beyond yours, and they can be a big problem. So, it's far easier to just pay them off and focus on developing your space empire, before going out to fight them.

Their fee is not that punitive really. Each protection deal costs you about 1-3% of your starting budget.

Protection deals also build up relationships with them, so if you choose to, you may make a couple of trade deals (give them money for tech/locations) when your protection agreement relations bonus has topped off (at +10), which would push your relationships high enough to get a Non-Aggression Pact. Which is basically the same as a "Protection" agreement, without you paying them anything. From that point, you can choose to further develop your relationship, which may entice them to outright join your empire (you instantly get all their stations and ships). This is especially easy if the major race in the pirate faction is the same as your race.

Alternatively, when you build up a sufficient navy, you may decide to go after them.

To answer your first question, pirate bases are scattered all over the galaxy. The very first pirates you encounter are usually in some system nearby, and you need to discover them through exploration (takes some time) or espionage (really hard unless you have super good spies). There are 3 types of pirates:

1. Normal pirates, who visit your system with a ship, ask you to pay an "unfortunate accident" protection agreement, then leave to continue exploring (or come back to harass you, if you refused to pay up)

2. Story pirates, who are involved in some way to the story of one of the playable race. The Human story pirates are the Ghost Fleet and at least one Human faction will usually have them spawn nearby. They will join the first Human they encounter, who can afford to pay them their fee (which you should ALWAYS do).

3. Special location pirates (this might answer your second question), who are not really pirates. Sometimes, your starting system may contain 1 or 2 hostile asteroid bases. Although these bases are listed as "pirates", they are not really pirate factions like the ones above. They are just there as a sort of home system nuisance to push the player to develop and deal with them. These stations are usually really well equipped, and you probably won't be able to deal with them until at least the early mid-game.

To properly answer your second question: That tech is not going to cut it (edit, with those amounts of ships), especially if you are dealing with the "Special Location" kind of pirates. Bases and ships usually have a strength level. You can check that to assess how easy of an enemy they are. Don't attack pirates, except when you are overmatching them by at least 25% (and even then, it might be difficult). If you want to dig deeper for a proper way to deal with them, then see if you can access the base design (on its card - bottom left of your screen - click on the design name). Take a look at what kind of components they are made of and figure out how you are going to deal with it. You are probably going to need:

* Some form of good PD (Point Defense) to deal with fighters and missiles/torpedoes/area weapons

* Shields that can regenerate faster than you can be damaged

* Armor that can soak up a significant amount of damage

* Weapons that are collectively going to beat the base's shield regeneration (look at shield and shield recharge components) and self-repairing capabilities (look for damage control components).

* Enough numbers of ships to overmatch the base's fighting capabilities

A good strategy is to equip your ships with missiles (which are long-range and will save you from having to deal with most of the enemy weapons). Approach the base but stay out of weapons distance. Let its fighters come to you and deal with them, then move in closer so your missiles can start working.

With rail guns, I'd say switch to heavy railguns, and get the railgun PD tech while you are at it. You'll also need at least twice that number of ships to deal with a normal pirate base and get away with minimal losses, provided your shields and armor are also at tech level 2.

Really though, these "pirates" aren't really a problem. They are just sitting there, waiting for you to be ready to destroy them. So don't sweat it if you can't deal with them. You can always come back to them later.

Normal pirates on the other hand, can be weaker than these special location pirates, but they can still need quite a lot of preparation and planning to deal with. The same advice as above applies to them. You'll definitely need to take into account their estimated strength (compared to your fleets) and tech level. My rule of thumb is to not attack pirates, until I at least have a fleet with about the same strength as them.

You also have to consider that "Normal" Pirates will not stay idle and wait for you to come and destroy them. They are continuously getting stronger. Especially because:

1. They are exploring the galaxy like you, and they are finding significantly advanced ships that are laying abandoned here and there.

2. As space empires are exploring, they are finding planets with ruins. About 30% of ruins are actually secret pirate ambushes. These are scripted events, which basically give 3-4 advanced ships to a random pirate faction.

3. They have their own Constructor ships, which are going around the galaxy building up Mines as well as MORE pirate bases.

A pirate faction is not defeated, unless you destroy all of its Bases (and you have checked the "Pirates stay dead" option when you generated your galaxy). So, if you decide to go after pirates, be sure you can account for all their bases, and that you can destroy them quickly enough (or their remaining bases will be far away, so that they won't really be a problem you'll have to deal with later).

To answer your third question: Your fuel distance initially sucks, because your tech is so primitive. Fuel distance depends on 4 things (gets more significant the further down you go):

1. Your ship reactor and the rate at which it consumes fuel, as well as its capabilities to support warp travel.

2. Your ship's mass. Heavier ships consume a lot more fuel. Don't be eager, when designing ships, to fill them up with components when you don't need them.

3. Your warp engines. Generally, earlier engines require less energy, but they are also a lot less efficient. Meaning they take you around so slowly, that by the time you get there, you've already burned up your fuel. Upgrading your warp engines will significantly extend your fuel range (and your speed).

4. Your fuel capacity. You have components called Fuel Cells, which is where your ships store their fuel. Getting more and better fuel cells on your ship designs significantly impacts your fuel range. However, keep in mind that adding more fuel cells might also hinder you, because you still need to take ship mass into account.

The best way to increase your fuel range is to build fuel (Caslon) mining stations in systems near the edge of your fuel range. This will give you refueling stations that will allow your ships to reach more systems, and thus expand your influence.

Fuel tankers are useful, but it's not a solution to extending your fuel range. They are only there to TACTICALLY increase your fuel capacity, i.e. their use is more for military ships that are trying to get somewhere near the edge of their range or further away, and then still have enough fuel left over to power their shields and weapon systems. Automated fuel tankers at peace will still go around refueling any ship that requests it, but that can be slow going, depending on the numbers you got.

The way fuel tankers work (has been quite buggy since release, but it's mostly fixed now, is that they first need to go to a gas giant and mine for fuel (or pick it up at a refueling station), then go to their target and refuel them. If you have them incorporated in a fleet, then they'll only do this for ships of their own fleet.

So first check that your fuel tankers are actually carrying fuel, then make sure they are part of the same fleet with the ship you want to refuel (or they are not part of a fleet, so you can refuel anybody). Really, you should probably leave them alone and automate them, and they'll go about happily refueling every little civilian ship that is getting stuck in space.

Hope this helps, sorry if it's a long answer. I wanted to make sure you understand the systems, so you can come up with your own solutions.

[76mm]

Wow, thanks much for the detailed answer!

Based on what you're saying, I have to say that a couple of these things are the main reason why I rarely play this kind of game:
1) advanced pirates in my starting system on default settings...why? If I wanted nearby enemies that I can't kill, I'd have chosen a higher difficulty rating. Ditto for having to deal with three pirate factions at the very beginning of the game. I just don't consider it fun.
2) i get that my ships have limited fuel. But I don't understand why I wouldn't get some kind of warning that ships don't have enough fuel to reach the destination (chosen from a right click menu). I can automate a lot, but then have to micro-manage basic stuff like this? This is exactly the kind of thing I think should be automated...

Oh well, I'll keep trying, hopefully something will click.

[76mm]

Another thing: I've got my main fleet under manual control at my home starbase, but for some reason it occasionally sallies out to attack the nearby pirate base, without orders, losing a few ships before I can get it to stop. Why is it attacking without orders? It's happened about three times now, I lose at least one destroyer every time...

[arvcran2]

...

Ditto for having to deal with three pirate factions at the very beginning of the game. I just don't consider it fun.

If you read the Game Manual's prelude and story background it will give you insight on the desperation of the Pirates.

Knowing this might help you in understanding why they are the way they are. Military options versus a force that cannot lose is self defeating and as you say "not fun"! You have to seek a means to proceed using any and all other methods which the game provides. They are not all obvious.

I personally do enjoy the journey of finding out what measures are available via the player interface, the manual, the in game Galactopedia, and the in game walk throughs. Not everyone finds fun in learning and spending time investigating and reading ... but something tells me you might not be averse to this kind of challenge. Scott's Youtube videos are perhaps not explicitly relevant to the current state of game implementation but they could provide a lot of insight if you need the spoilers to expedite the process.

Enjoy!

[76mm]

I personally do enjoy the journey of finding out what measures are available via the player interface, the manual, the in game Galactopedia, and the in game walk throughs. Not everyone finds fun in learning and spending time investigating and reading ... but something tells me you might not be averse to this kind of challenge. Scott's Youtube videos are perhaps not explicitly relevant to the current state of game implementation but they could provide a lot of insight if you need the spoilers to expedite the process.

Thanks for the tips. As mentioned, I usually play traditional wargames, so typically play a more of a military strategy in games like this, which is probably why I tend to get frustrated. Trying to explore other play styles.

But one problem I often have, and have in this game, is that I find myself struggling with the interface more than I'd like. For instance, one of my scout ships just isn't responding to orders. It's on manual, I give it an order, but it doesn't do anything. It has fuel, but it won't move. It is near a "disturbance" (I can't find any indication of what that is supposed to mean)...and if it is intended to be in some kind of in-game "bermuda triangle", it would be nice if I would get some kind of message about why its not moving, or at least that I've lost comms with it, or something...instead of it just not moving with no indication why...

[76mm]

Ugh...so I am trying to colonize an independent colony. I signed a couple of treaties with it, got chance of colonization up to 100%. Went to the colonies screen, clicked to build a colony ship and colonize the place. A few minutes later I got a message saying that the ind colony had offered to become my colony. I was given two choices: "Stop Colonizing" and "Decline". Um, neither one of those would seem to result in colonization, right? So I chose Stop Colonizing. A few minutes later I went to back to the colonies screen and right-clicked on the ind colony, when I was given a choice to send the colony ship to the place. I did that, but it keeps canceling. I've done this about four times now, but the colonization keeps canceling. No message why, it just stops. This kind of thing is really frustrating...is it a bug? Am I doing something wrong? Dunno, but if I'm doing something wrong the game should tell me...

[madasgardian]

If you’ve already queued up colonization for an independent you can just ignore a pop-up request from them that happens after the fact, but agree that the stop/decline choice is confusing in that context.

As to why it’s not happening, do you have the proper tech and enough money to build a colony ship? That’s usually my problem early on — they ain’t cheap.

Rather than use the button on the Colony screen, you could try to just build a colony ship, load it and send it to colonize manually (select ship and right click on planet). That approach would probably give you a better feel for what’s causing the delay. (e.g., you might be short on materials to build it, or cash as mentioned, or maybe the planet is in the middle of a nebula and your ship can’t get there without the proper defenses, etc.)

You’ll get a “colonization failed” message in certain cases (ship attacked, rejected by inhabitants, etc.)

Also, as mentioned there’s basically zero reason to fight pirates. Eventually they’ll offer you a non-aggression treaty if you pay for a few sets of system coordinates. I kinda wish some would stay hostile to make things a little more interesting.

[CaptBeefheart]

76mm: I hear ya. I'm used to other games, like WITP-AE, which will give you some sort of warning if you try to send a ship somewhere it doesn't have the range to reach.

Gents: How do you know the range of a ship and how that translates on the map? Also, for scouts on auto, how do you get them to refuel? I've had them get stuck in the middle of my home system.

Please note I last played this in July, so if things have been improved, that would be great.

Cheers,
CB

[madasgardian]

Gents: How do you know the range of a ship and how that translates on the map?

Check out the Fuel entry under Game Concepts in the Galactopedia. In part:

"The current movement range of the selected ship is shown by a dashed yellow range circle that can be seen when zoomed out to the galaxy level. This helps you to visually guage how far a ship can travel before it requires refuelling."

[76mm]

As to why it’s not happening, do you have the proper tech and enough money to build a colony ship? That’s usually my problem early on — they ain’t cheap.

Yes, I've got the colony ship, it is shown in my colony screen. But when I click on the colony and give the command to "Send Colony Ship X to colonize" (or whatever), nothing happens. I will try sending the ship directly to the colony, haven't tried that yet.

[madasgardian]

Yes, I've got the colony ship, it is shown in my colony screen. But when I click on the colony and give the command to "Send Colony Ship X to colonize" (or whatever), nothing happens.

Hopefully someone will correct me if I'm mistaken... but in my experience if you click colonize from the colony itself, it kicks off the process from scratch (i.e., a new colony ship is built and sent when possible). I believe any existing colony ships you've already constructed are ignored.

[Erik Rutins]

Ugh...so I am trying to colonize an independent colony. I signed a couple of treaties with it, got chance of colonization up to 100%. Went to the colonies screen, clicked to build a colony ship and colonize the place. A few minutes later I got a message saying that the ind colony had offered to become my colony. I was given two choices: "Stop Colonizing" and "Decline". Um, neither one of those would seem to result in colonization, right? So I chose Stop Colonizing. A few minutes later I went to back to the colonies screen and right-clicked on the ind colony, when I was given a choice to send the colony ship to the place. I did that, but it keeps canceling. I've done this about four times now, but the colonization keeps canceling. No message why, it just stops. This kind of thing is really frustrating...is it a bug? Am I doing something wrong? Dunno, but if I'm doing something wrong the game should tell me...

Decline would have been the right choice there. I agree it's confusing, fixing this particular interaction has been high on our list of messaging/notification improvements.

Colony ships will typically only cancel colonization if there is a threat present at the location to be colonized.

Regards,

- Erik

[Erik Rutins]

76mm: I hear ya. I'm used to other games, like WITP-AE, which will give you some sort of warning if you try to send a ship somewhere it doesn't have the range to reach.

Gents: How do you know the range of a ship and how that translates on the map? Also, for scouts on auto, how do you get them to refuel? I've had them get stuck in the middle of my home system.

Please note I last played this in July, so if things have been improved, that would be great.

There is a maximum colonization range, which is in the galaxy settings and is enforced, but other than that colony ships don't generally worry much about fuel range as it's a one way trip.

Regards,

- Erik

[Erik Rutins]

As to why it’s not happening, do you have the proper tech and enough money to build a colony ship? That’s usually my problem early on — they ain’t cheap.

Yes, I've got the colony ship, it is shown in my colony screen. But when I click on the colony and give the command to "Send Colony Ship X to colonize" (or whatever), nothing happens. I will try sending the ship directly to the colony, haven't tried that yet.

If you use the menu at the top to assign it (Under Colonies -> New Colonies) does that work for you? Generally if there is a reason it can't be assigned, it will tell you there.

[TinyFrog]

Some additional comments to OP.

You could spy the pirate's homebase by stealing their operational maps. If you are successful you can klick on the pirates home-base in the diplomacy screen.

IME you need both Large weapons to cut through armour damage reduction (because this is more effective against small and medium weapons) and as high DPS as possible to kill the shields. Low tier missiles will have real problems with the armour because one missile salvo consist of 8 missiles and each does minimal damage versus armour. I never use missiles early game. In the current patch I recommend AE-weapons and/or torpedoes as the most low-tier bang for your buck. OR perhaps a 100% Ion damage fleet can get lucky and disable some important internal systems (after first painfully chewing through the shields).

I got fed up with the constant pay-protection-fee and later changing it into non-aggression (by paying special locations etc to the pirates) so I turned OFF all pirates in my current game. I think the no-pirate-option benefits the other AI-species even more - because players are better at dealing with the pirates. The game got more fun - because now it's less repetition and instead a space race versus the other aliens.

Your main fleet rallying out to kill pirates could be because the Fleet is set to raid targets within 50% of fuel range? Klick on the fleet, select the rightmost button under the fleet-info "Set Tactics" - to configure the fleet behaviour.

And two days ago I discovered something that REALLY improved my game experience; i.e. that you can filter what spam-messages are to be silent! Click the letter labelled "Message Log" then klick above the header on "Filtered to 10 message types."

[76mm]

Your main fleet rallying out to kill pirates could be because the Fleet is set to raid targets within 50% of fuel range? Klick on the fleet, select the rightmost button under the fleet-info "Set Tactics" - to configure the fleet behaviour.

This just happened again; lost two more destroyers. You would think that Manual would mean, uh, manual control. i changed tactics to "only engage if attacked".

[76mm]

If you use the menu at the top to assign it (Under Colonies -> New Colonies) does that work for you? Generally if there is a reason it can't be assigned, it will tell you there.

It shows the name of my colony ship. When I click on it for it to colonize this place, it starts doing so, and then stops with no notice or explanation.