Hello again.

I'm having trouble with those pesky pirates, while they don't wonder within my empire influence space, they are starting to gather huge fleets in neutral systems that are adjacent to mine. Worse yet, I sent an exploration probe to the Horatio empire and well... things didn't look well to those guys. They have a Reaver outpost wich is spawning constant fleets of pirates, but I'm unable to reach that destination because two things:

-Horatio is in the way and I really don't want a war with them (I'm a mercyful god).
-My ships take FOREVER to reach a destination. Like waaay too long.
-My ships seems too weak compared to the pirates. I engaged with a 8 ship flotilla (they got 4 ships) and while I destroyed they fleet, It cost me severe loses.

So, to that I ask: how much ships it's a good quantity? My go-to is fill my attack ships with long-range lasers and my defense ships with close combat and the highest amount of shields avaiable (plus HP). But maybe I'm doing something wrong (It occur me that I can creat two kinds of models of attack-type ships, one with long range and another with more of a close quarter weaponry).

Thanks for any advice you can give me!

(and also, if there's a site with an in depth tutorial about space battle and ship composition, can I ask for a link? I feel I don't really understand yet)

Oh and I playing with the United Empire (I forgot to mention it)

One problem i found with them is not their numbers, but they get Poarcher way too fast, and it equip with one big gun which will 2-3 shots your small ship, and deal huge damage to medium one. Also, there should be a cap on how many of them can be active in the area so we don't get flood by 200 of them. I have no problem fighting them, but it get kinda old.

FreedomFighterEx wrote:

One problem i found with them is not their numbers, but they get Poarcher way too fast, and it equip with one big gun which will 2-3 shots your small ship, and deal huge damage to medium one. Also, there should be a cap on how many of them can be active in the area so we don't get flood by 200 of them. I have no problem fighting them, but it get kinda old.

I understand, I figure once when you get the hang of it (a.k.a: know exactly what to build and what kind of ships the pirates are running) it's just a matter of repetition. Once I read that the AI can learn from your encounter and modify their ships hull accordingly, but I don't know if that counts for the pirates or just another big empire (with the access to differents kind of modules)

Pirate's ship doesn't change they layout. It will use the same stuff, just higher tier. The enemy AI however, change their design so often, and none of them is effective against player.