The difficulty of pirates seems to have spiked from the last patch. I'm not sure if it was intentional but I'm posting here because it's incredibly difficult to deal with (and that's playing on EASY).

For instance, a pirate fleet of two smalls (I forget the name) and 1 medium (Poacher) nearly outmatched my fleet of SEVEN smalls and one medium. Before this patch, that would have been a very easy fight, but in this patch I lost almost all of my small ships.

Beyond that, the pirates seem to be EVERYWHERE. It doesn't seem like their numbers were reduced with the patch at all. Every single uninhabited system I traveled to had a pirate fleet of 4 waiting at it.

Hey there,

What are your galaxy settings and constellation number, along with the name of the designs you were trying to fight, please?

If you have a save that'd be gold!

The Pirates have been given spawn caps they should normally reach quite quickly (they had none before).

Most designs have not been touched, 2 of them were nerfed and 2 were buffed a little.

Maybe you were a bit late on military technology and or you were fighting against a fleet with medium hull pirate? Those are much stronger than the small ships!

Thank you for your help!

AutoSave 2187.zip

Here's my most recent save file (note that it's also currently suffering from the inability to load bug).

I was playing as the Vodyani, on a Large Ovoid galaxy, with constellations set to 'Unique.' Minor Faction quantity was set to 'High' (I suspected that what I thought was a ton of pirates was because of the many minor faction systems).

For the life of me I can't remember the name of the smaller craft but it was of the same design scheme as the Poacher, there were 3 of the smaller ones and 1 Poacher that nearly defeated 1 Brand, 2 Racks, and 5 Gouges. The gouges were all outfitted with Improved Sync-Lasers (the hyperium upgraded lasers) and the brand was outfitted with the basic missiles. The Brand at least also had the hyperium shield upgrades.  A fleet of 3 shuttles and 1 station also handily defeated one of my hero-led fleets, but those were mostly exploration ships so that's not as surprising.

This save is also suffering from a bug that has locked 2 of my heroes, both from losing the fleets they were assigned to. I was attempting to get to the faction quest system but my first hero's fleet ran into a pirate fleet and was killed. After the battle was over I noticed the hero's ship was still there so I tried to send him to the system (which was unconnected by star lanes) and he disappeared somewhere during travel, unable to be unassigned or reassigned. In my second attempt, I again ran into another pirate fleet that again destroyed my ships, and this time instead of moving the hero who was again still there after my fleet was lost, I decided to simply unassign her since it was in a friendly minor faction system. She then became locked with the reassignment timer stuck on 8 turns.

Admittedly I was a bit miffed about losing both of my exploration fleets trying to get to the quest system while also trying to catch up in score, so perhaps it was just in my mind, but it certainly seemed like fights that I normally would have crushed in the previous build were now much harder.

The most recent version of my game that I was actually able to load was this:

spaesvampires.zip

This turn was in the early 40s, I was already at turn 84 in my autosave that I linked. I hope all this helps! It would be nice to not have to plow through a whole game in one sitting

I see..

Yes, the Poacher is a medium hull attack ship which means it's roughly 6-8 times stronger than the strongest small hull pirate attack ship.

Also, the more Minor Factions you have in the game, the more Pirates you will encounter, and since you were playing with a Unique constellation, there was no limitation on Pirate movement (especially when you consider that the Ovoid has a naturally higher density of connections)

For early game, especially with Vodyani who need to Leech to grow, I'd recommend escorting your Leechers and  Wheels with a Hero if you don't feel like going for the "Leechin'n'Runnin" guerilla type of tactics.

Admiral Heroes are perfectly capable of dealing with early Pirates, ensuring an easier constellation control early on.

Thanks for the tips! I normally would just put the hero as a governor on my first system, I suppose escorting the leechers would help a lot for getting decent growth early on.