Kuma wrote:

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@lo_fabre: For all the things it did wrong, I still liked SoaSE's pirate system. Yes, pirates were more powerful than your regular armies but it also gave you tons of experience for your flagships in exchange, and they never stayed longer than they had to. Once they had destroyed enough of your ships/installations to complete your mark, they would go away on their own.

Matter of taste. Really I thoughjt it was good game, but get tired soon due to pirates.

Also, I must point out that letting us pay what we want for the pirate mark is also my favorite solution, I only proposed the other 2 because they might be easier to implement.

I agree with you here.

About the cost of peace with pirates (ATM don't remember exact contract name), I'm not with hagving fixed cooldown, because it will make very complicated for factions with metafolding + corsairs trait to take advantage of it. But can understant exponentially increased prices or similar measures to avoid people abusing it.

You don't get the issue, we both had lods of dust, it being an endless craver AI and me having a good production. The problem is that it's a chore to buy a mark every turn because everyone could buy back all the time.

Numinumi wrote:

It seems just a general issue of AI at greater difficulties getting more dust bonuses than any player would, hence they can afford that even if they shouldn't if it had been a player. Without any restriction on them, they can just buy it out everytime.

Many folks forget that higher difficulty levels only equal higher base FIDSI for AI. They are earning Dust, Science and Industry by doing nothing whereas you, the player, need to compensate for that.

It seems just a general issue of AI at greater difficulties getting more dust bonuses than any player would, hence they can afford that even if they shouldn't if it had been a player. Without any restriction on them, they can just buy it out everytime.

I've had both the pirates killing populations while Cordial with them and being unable to colonize pirate hunting grounds, both as their enemy and ally. The latter was something that happened in my recent multiplayer with a friend of mine playing Riftborn. He's new to the game while it was on hard difficulty, so he lost 2 systems. Reading the text he understood he could recolonize them after dealing with the pirates, but later told me he couldn't. I said try to ally with them, and he did and didn't change. So he had to wait about 20 turns, which was two of his best systems, so it crippled him a fair bit.

About the pirates killing population, there was definitely no privateers around in my playthrough (I played Vaulters). I also noticed that there's an issue with pirates spawning on systems from curiosities. You're friendly with them, but they'll also kill any pop coming out and in that system, while you can't do anything with them nor will they move.

You can pay dust to support the pirates via their diplomacy screen. This improves your relations with them a bit.

Hi Kuma,

Thanks for the feedback ; could you pass on your save? There's a serious possibility that what you're experiencing is caused by AI privateers (is there a Vautlers AI in your game?), but it's hard to tell only from the screenshots. If it's a bug we need to adress it - even if it's not a bug it sounds like we need to improve the feedback :).

Best,

Kuma wrote:

Now, let me begin by saying how much I love the new gameplay elements of the DLC, pirate diplomacy is something I really enjoyed in other games like Sins of a Solar Empire and it was a feature I really wanted to see in ES2. 

Had contrary feeling in SoSE. just anded up not playing this game cause how pirate system worked. They seemed to me a harder thread than other factions. so I'll have different opinions, but to specific points:

• First of all, pirate marks are utterly useless. Not only does almost EVERY AI in the galaxy is BFF with the pirate leader (read : they keep buying non-agression pacts throughout the game) making marks unusable, but even if I use the marks on one of the few AI that didn't buy a non-agression pact, they get rid of them the next turn because the cost for doing so is ridiculously low.

Same issue.

• Secondly, even with all the galaxy literally throwing mountains of Dust at the Pirate leader, his ships designs remained awfully bad, and I went ahead and didn't buy back one of the marks the AI sent me to see how bad things would turn out, and the pirate faction only spammed me with 3CC Fleets, which died one by one on one of my single medium attackers. This isn't right. If everyone is feeding the pirates Dust, they should be the most powerful military faction in the Galaxy. This needs to be noted but I was playing on Normal pirate difficulty (with the AIs on Serious) as I felt a bit rusty, maybe this actually makes them dangerous on Hard/Endless, but Normal definitly feels too weak.

Same. But didn't try higher pirate difficulties as @plutar suggests, as I'm not very fond of playing against pirates. I'm more of playing against other factions.

• Don't allow players to buy back marks for the same price, or allow us to use as many Dust as we'd like to set the price when buying the marks, so that the enemy has to buy an equivalent amount back to remove the mark.

As I'm not very fond of pirates, what you say here will increase game fun and competition. May be the buyer pays aprice for the mark you can put with a slider or +/- buttons, and then if you want to remove it have to pay a higher price (a 10% more or whatever you consider balanced.

• For immunity (Non-agression pact), either :
  • Don't allow players to buy immunity all the time, or at least make it require being in friendlier terms than the one setting the mark (For example, I'm Friendly with pirates, Cordial and lower can't target me).

Don't like this.

• Don't let it affect Marks. Make it a free-pass for going into pirate systems in early game for exploration, but once someone puts money on your head, business is business, nothing personel, etc and pirates attack you

curioulsy here I agree with you- It gives more sense to pirate marks.

• Give it a huge cooldown.

Dont' like this.

• Make the pirate AI meaner if everyone throws money at them, that's actually one of the points I liked the most about Sins of a Solar Empire's pirates, trying to get rid of the mark in early game could lead to Empires throwing lods of money on the pirates which in turn made them grow WAY faster than empires, which created nice situations. Basically, make it a tradeoff : I buy favors but I also make them stronger when they could their new and shiny ships against me next.

That's what never liked me from SoSE. As said want to play against other empires with specific character and background, not against unespecific pirates.

I didn't like the pirate marks honestly, because it makes the whole game like Sins of a solar empire, where all you do is spam porduction and throw pirate fleets en mass at your enemies to kill them. 

It's a bug. During a Vaulters game I wanted to move some civilian pops to a different system while I had a Non-Aggression Pact with the pirates, giving me portals at each pirate base. The civilian ship teleported from my system to the pirate base, only to be immediately destroyed by the pirates there.

I was not pleased

That's a bug then (or privateers).

It's turn 107. I would hope that by then any of us would be able to handle them. They are not supposed to be a terror all game. The fact that you had to dedicate a strong fleet to clearing them, and that you lost a well developed system to them says a lot. This would almost never happen on previous patches, whereas now it's a major possibility.

I don't know if the system hunting grounds for pirates is a bug or not. Not sure how I feel about it if it isn't. On the one hand, it's an incredibly harsh punishment for losing a system, on the other, it makes pirates a problem that needs to be dealt with. 

I haven't found the pirates attacking my civilian ships when we are genuinely at peace, but the relations to them degrades over time, and it can drop down at inconvenient moments. You will drop from cordial to wary pretty fast if you are not paying them constantly. Anything less than cordial means they will target your ships. The option to cancel the peace treaty with them is immediate on reaching cordial.

Also, how are you getting precisely 12 CC as Riftborn? Is this with custom factions turned on (i.e. with Big Fleets trait)? 

JaquierKhader wrote:

I bought a few pirate marks in my previous game and on the next turn from buying those marks they returned with an empty report saying: "The contract was bought out".

Sounds, as if the targeted faction did choose to pay dust for to get rid of the pirate mark ?!

Just a patch before people complained pirates are too hard, and now you want to buff them again? Pirates should be nuisance on normal difficulty, not a major force to reckon with.

Okay for the difficulty, guys, but maybe normal could be upped a little bit (or be renamed to easy) because it felt really underwhelming.

As for my other points, I was only playing with serious AIs, so they shouldn't have that much bonus Dust, but even I could afford to buy back marks all the time without even focusing on Dust. I'm on turn 120, Dust inflation is almost 3x yet the mark's cost to buy back is still 1800, which is almost what I produce each turn...

I agree with the OP's statements. 

I bought a few pirate marks in my previous game and on the next turn from buying those marks they returned with an empty report saying: "The contract was bought out".

It would be really handy to determine the price of the contract yourself.

Had similar experiences to Sublustris and Plutar. Pirates on Endless difficulty are terrifying, and there is a proxy economy war going on throughout the game just to keep them off your back and bothering others. Makes early dust production pretty important, and I was actively selling my resources a lot more just to keep them away from my Arks. I hadn't clocked how much Vaulters really have the edge when it comes to pirates. So maybe ramp up the pirate difficulty a bit more. The AI will handle it on hard. 

As for the suggestions you made, I would put that in the Ideas section (I did one on pirates a while back) since the DEV's will be more likely to see it and maybe implement it

Kuma wrote:

I wouldn't want the AIs to struggle against them, either, but I was planning on giving it another go later. It doesn't fix the other issues I mentionned though, does it?

I agree with Plutar, Endless pirates drastically change the game and provide a good challenge

As for the AI, the pirates shouldn't pose too much of a challenge as long as the AI is also on Endless or some other high level difficulty 

Try endless on the pirates. Normal Pirates are very easy like a gentle pile of experience for Your Heroes to gobble up. Trust me when I say endless Pirates are endless. I'm posting this from my phone however I have shared a screen capture that shows over 70 pirate ships on a given mark. There difficulty changes quite drastically from setting to setting.