I recognize that the pirates could be expanded upon, but I will never argue against their inclusion. For one thing, it provides a credible threat even in a galaxy where your nearest opponent may be dozens of systems away. On top of that, it can force pacifist factions to not completely neglect their military.

Yes, they unintelligent. Yes, they aren't as fleshed out as major factions, or even minor factions. But their inclusion prompts many strategies.

Fully agree with Romeo.

Romeo wrote:

I recognize that the pirates could be expanded upon, but I will never argue against their inclusion. For one thing, it provides a credible threat even in a galaxy where your nearest opponent may be dozens of systems away. On top of that, it can force pacifist factions to not completely neglect their military.

Yes, they unintelligent. Yes, they aren't as fleshed out as major factions, or even minor factions. But their inclusion prompts many strategies.

There is no strategy in fighting pirates, all they do is spawn randomly, slow down your framerate and blockade one of your systems from time to time. Its not a job some random, stupid AI should take, it should be YOU doing that. In every seriously treating itself strategy war game, Sun Tzu inspired tactics play a major part in the game. Disrupting your opponent's trade systems, sniping transport ships, terrorizing outskirt colonies, those are the things that should happen in a duel between 2 strong militaristic factions, not one big fleet of ships moving out of hangar to kill another big fleet. I understand that the aspect of players experiencig nerdgasms during militaristic duels while looking at their huge carriers nuking other huge carriers is important but thats not the point of a strategy game.

Take a look at strategy games like Starcraft, Supreme Commander, Dota even Overwatch  for example. In those games, before any serious battling starts there are hundreds of smaller battles and clashes that are supposed to weaken your opponent and disrupt his plans and actions. There is never a long imaginary cease fire agreement and than a huge clash between 2 forces, only noobs do that.

Pirates in this game serve as nothing more than a filler for simple bot AI. The game and it's mechanics need to change to make it something more than just a primitive tool for making cinematic space battles in high quality. Retreat mechanic must be reworked, the way how ships are build too, resource system must be reworked too, beacause at the moment there is nothing interesting in the militaristic game style, for now it seems interesting but for the tenth time ecstasy will expire and than, bad things will happen to this community.

OH YES, I ll surely write about what those changes should be.

SingularitysMarauder wrote:

Romeo wrote:

I recognize that the pirates could be expanded upon, but I will never argue against their inclusion. For one thing, it provides a credible threat even in a galaxy where your nearest opponent may be dozens of systems away. On top of that, it can force pacifist factions to not completely neglect their military.

Yes, they unintelligent. Yes, they aren't as fleshed out as major factions, or even minor factions. But their inclusion prompts many strategies.

There is no strategy in fighting pirates, all they do is spawn randomly, slow down your framerate and blockade one of your systems from time to time. Its not a job some random, stupid AI should take, it should be YOU doing that. In every seriously treating itself strategy war game, Sun Tzu inspired tactics play a major part in the game. Disrupting your opponent's trade systems, sniping transport ships, terrorizing outskirt colonies, those are the things that should happen in a duel between 2 strong militaristic factions, not one big fleet of ships moving out of hangar to kill another big fleet. I understand that the aspect of players experiencig nerdgasms during militaristic duels while looking at their huge carriers nuking other huge carriers is important but thats not the point of a strategy game.

Take a look at strategy games like Starcraft, Supreme Commander, Dota even Overwatch  for example. In those games, before any serious battling starts there are hundreds of smaller battles and clashes that are supposed to weaken your opponent and disrupt his plans and actions. There is never a long imaginary cease fire agreement and than a huge clash between 2 forces, only noobs do that.

 

Pirates in this game serve as nothing more than a filler for simple bot AI. The game and it's mechanics need to change to make it something more than just a primitive tool for making cinematic space battles in high quality. Retreat mechanic must be reworked, the way how ships are build too, resource system must be reworked too, beacause at the moment there is nothing interesting in the militaristic game style, for now it seems interesting but for the tenth time ecstasy will expire and than, bad things will happen to this community.

OH YES, I ll surely write about what those changes should be.

In your idea, a Sophon in a non-populated corner of the galaxy could simply out tech everyone and win the game before anyone could even bother mounting an opposition. And military races would find themselves at a colossal disadvantage in a sparsely populated galaxy. I agree that there should likely be more explanation as to sources of pirates, but again, removing them is a surefire way to remove huge swaths of decision making.

Those are all combat-exclusive games. I don't have to worry about which technology to unlock next in Supreme Commander, or how my income is looking in DOTA. I need only focus on the task of eliminating my opponent. There is no thought to "not focusing on warfare", because that would run entirely against the nature of those games. In a 4X game though, not focusing on military is definitely a viable strategy, but that's not to say it can be ignored without any consequence. Pirates are one of those consequences.

Pirates serve as a map-based threat, rather than a player based one.

I would also wonder why you want the entire concept removed, given that there's an option to toggle them off.

Romeo wrote:

SingularitysMarauder wrote:

Romeo wrote:

I recognize that the pirates could be expanded upon, but I will never argue against their inclusion. For one thing, it provides a credible threat even in a galaxy where your nearest opponent may be dozens of systems away. On top of that, it can force pacifist factions to not completely neglect their military.

Yes, they unintelligent. Yes, they aren't as fleshed out as major factions, or even minor factions. But their inclusion prompts many strategies.

There is no strategy in fighting pirates, all they do is spawn randomly, slow down your framerate and blockade one of your systems from time to time. Its not a job some random, stupid AI should take, it should be YOU doing that. In every seriously treating itself strategy war game, Sun Tzu inspired tactics play a major part in the game. Disrupting your opponent's trade systems, sniping transport ships, terrorizing outskirt colonies, those are the things that should happen in a duel between 2 strong militaristic factions, not one big fleet of ships moving out of hangar to kill another big fleet. I understand that the aspect of players experiencig nerdgasms during militaristic duels while looking at their huge carriers nuking other huge carriers is important but thats not the point of a strategy game.

Take a look at strategy games like Starcraft, Supreme Commander, Dota even Overwatch  for example. In those games, before any serious battling starts there are hundreds of smaller battles and clashes that are supposed to weaken your opponent and disrupt his plans and actions. There is never a long imaginary cease fire agreement and than a huge clash between 2 forces, only noobs do that.

 

Pirates in this game serve as nothing more than a filler for simple bot AI. The game and it's mechanics need to change to make it something more than just a primitive tool for making cinematic space battles in high quality. Retreat mechanic must be reworked, the way how ships are build too, resource system must be reworked too, beacause at the moment there is nothing interesting in the militaristic game style, for now it seems interesting but for the tenth time ecstasy will expire and than, bad things will happen to this community.

OH YES, I ll surely write about what those changes should be.

In your idea, a Sophon in a non-populated corner of the galaxy could simply out tech everyone and win the game before anyone could even bother mounting an opposition. And military races would find themselves at a colossal disadvantage in a sparsely populated galaxy. I agree that there should likely be more explanation as to sources of pirates, but again, removing them is a surefire way to remove huge swaths of decision making.

Those are all combat-exclusive games. I don't have to worry about which technology to unlock next in Supreme Commander, or how my income is looking in DOTA. I need only focus on the task of eliminating my opponent. There is no thought to "not focusing on warfare", because that would run entirely against the nature of those games. In a 4X game though, not focusing on military is definitely a viable strategy, but that's not to say it can be ignored without any consequence. Pirates are one of those consequences.

Pirates serve as a map-based threat, rather than a player based one.

I would also wonder why you want the entire concept removed, given that there's an option to toggle them off.

Yeah, I think i ve change my mind on this subject, pirates are needed for races like cravers to gain militaristic support and science and dust for example, deleting them would cause a lot of problems, but I hope they ll add bombarding to the game in the future, this would certainly make Sun Tzu strategies more valuable. Thank you for the conversation.

I just wish the Pirates would group together more ships, or have stronger and stronger ships as the games go on, once you get the T1/T2 ships (which the AI doesn't even make themselves) you just mop the floor with it and they're annoying if anything.

I think the concept of "pirates" or space monsters" works best when the player sees them as opportunities and not annoyances. 

For example, opportunities to level up your ships or commanders through combat (the Civ model with Barbarians). Or being able to salvage space debris for tech or Dust. Maybe a random treasure map or two. 

If the player can be made to feel "Hey, maybe I'll get something cool out of this pirate fight," then it helps mask the real intent of preventing the player from steamrolling the game. ES2 isn't doing enough of that right now, so pirates are just pesky, annoying flies to be avoided at the start and then swatted away when you're stronger.

Pirates are a complete non-issue after the early stages of the game.  Not certain how they could ever disrupt anyone's war strategy.  

From the games I've played so far, one doesn't even need a war strategy.  Go for an early tech lead, build ships with torpedoes for mid/long range attack and one bank of lasers for close in and proceed to blast everyone away.  I am slowly playing through all the available factions and the same method has worked for everyone so far.

Early on in game development, I would say the AI is way too easy to beat and the pirates don't even create a speed bump by mid-game.

Zenicetus wrote:

I think the concept of "pirates" or space monsters" works best when the player sees them as opportunities and not annoyances. 

For example, opportunities to level up your ships or commanders through combat (the Civ model with Barbarians). Or being able to salvage space debris for tech or Dust. Maybe a random treasure map or two. 

If the player can be made to feel "Hey, maybe I'll get something cool out of this pirate fight," then it helps mask the real intent of preventing the player from steamrolling the game. ES2 isn't doing enough of that right now, so pirates are just pesky, annoying flies to be avoided at the start and then swatted away when you're stronger.

At the moment commanders get like 2 exp out of beating two pirate ships, soo..... crap.

SingularitysMarauder wrote:

Zenicetus wrote:

I think the concept of "pirates" or space monsters" works best when the player sees them as opportunities and not annoyances. 

For example, opportunities to level up your ships or commanders through combat (the Civ model with Barbarians). Or being able to salvage space debris for tech or Dust. Maybe a random treasure map or two. 

If the player can be made to feel "Hey, maybe I'll get something cool out of this pirate fight," then it helps mask the real intent of preventing the player from steamrolling the game. ES2 isn't doing enough of that right now, so pirates are just pesky, annoying flies to be avoided at the start and then swatted away when you're stronger.

At the moment commanders get like 2 exp out of beating two pirate ships, soo..... crap.

Yeah (Though I'd argue that's more an issue of the Fleet heroes than the pirates). Their other point still stands though: The traits for getting Dust/Industry/Science from blown up opponents tie in extremely well with pirates. They make a distinctly below-average trait in to a pretty good one.

I'd just like to say that, with the exception of quest-spawned fleets, I am fairly certain that all pirate fleets spawn on minor faction systems. As the Vodyani especially I usually end up with entire constellations free of pirates, because my fleet is in orbit around the minor faction system to leech, so any pirates that spawn die.

Furthermore, pirates do get medium sized hulls, as well as advanced versions of the small hull (and presumably of the medium hull, but I have not seen a game last long enough for that.) And if they catch you off guard with the medium hulls, they can hurt quite a bit.