I picked up this game today and started playing, I found myself in a nice corner of the galaxy with only 2 ways in, one traditional and one wormhole. So I went to work defending those two places, then a pirate fleet attacked my homeworld, having magically appeared somewhere in my tightly defended corner of the galaxy.



I think it's really unfortunate that you decided to take this route with the game. I play these games for the strategy, but strategy doesn't matter at all when you are spawning enemies magically. I regret wasting my time now. I hope you learn from this lesson with the next game.



BTW, 'space pirates' are not going to be wealthier and stronger than civilizations. They can't create massive fleets without a base of operations, and if they have no base then they are living on their star ships. You should take these things into consideration when designing 'pirate' factions in your games. Otherwise you're only being lazy and treating your customers like they're too dumb to know what's going on.

Well, you probably won't come back to these forums, but I'll say what I wish anyways.



It really sucks that Pirates ruined your experience. I sincerely hope that you'll revisit Endless Space some time - especially considering there is an option to disable pirates.

It sounded like you had a really nice home-constellation, but it also sounds like you weren't monitoring your uncolonized systems... That would be the main reason for pirates to spawn.



If you think about it from a roleplay aspect, the Pirates wouldn't be of a completely different species - they would be outlaws of your own civilization, some could've come from your home world, others your first colony, etc. As these outlaws escaped patrolled space, they found one another and pooled their resources - banding together to pillage and plunder unsuspecting colonies. -- That may be dissatisfying in your opinion, but that justifies Pirates in my mind - Though I'm a heavy roleplayer when it comes to 4X games.



Although Pirates are widely hated in the Endless Space community, I personally have rarely had an issue with them - my main problem is the way they fight; gunning for a single target with every gun is absurdly annoying at times - I generally have a 'kamikaze' blueprint handy to deal with excessive amounts of pirates, just because standard Jack of all Trade ships don't tend to work.



The 'cheap' way to deal with pirate fleets is having ships of your own that own no defences, purely weapons (Long-Ranged if you're playing Disharmony). You'll be able to outgun the pirates because they only target 1 ship at a time. -- Alternatively, you could build a fleet that has a 'guardian-esc' ship at the fore-front, purely defences and health (maybe a repair module) to counter the pirates, while the rest of the fleet guns them down.



But Pirates are kinda like unwanted children - the best defence is /Prevention/ in the bedroom (Systems): Ships and Systems that you own all have 'Detection Radii' (weird word, Radiuses makes more sense but sounds dumb) - If an uncolonized system is enveloped by a Detection Radius, it becomes incapable of producing Pirate fleets.



Due to the way Pirates spawn, they're mostly preventable - just by having line of site over neutral systems you can prevent 90% of pirates from spawning. The only ones you can't prevent are the Pirates spawned by anomalies and random events - which are generally pretty rare in my experience.



Well, I hope even a sentence of this is helpful - Endless Space is actually my favourite game - and I know full well that it has many flaws. If you compare Endless Space to Endless Legend; it's clear that Amplitude has substantially improved and have come a long way as a Studio. And with what they've shared of Endless Space 2, they're applying that knowledge well.



It seems like you signed up here simply to voice your disapproval - which is fine, criticism aids development.

Though I sincerely hope you come back to Endless Space.

Also, you can absolutely disable pirates when creating a game. It's under the advanced button when you make a new game.

I understand your reaction, SimbaLion, I often thought as a player that Endless Space's pirates had a tendency to dogpile on you when you were at your weakest, and they've messed me up in many early games. As Hiyouren and SixThousandHulls mentioned, pirates are something you can disable altogether from the game when you first create your game. I've personally almost always disabled them in my multiplayer games because I like my galaxy to have the most random distribution of constellations and systems, and pirates are another variable that can stack the odds against a player.



However, keep in mind that some races (Cravers come to mind, I think Hissho too?) get a Science bonus for every enemy ship destroyed on Empire, so pirates can have a use (once recycled) for certain races...