Kingsclaw wrote:
I'm going to be honest about something, I hate pirates in Space 4X games because NOBODY has done them justice.



In almost all the space strategy games I've played pirates are setup as a suicidal militia group, often with powerful vessels causing general havoc with my fledgling empire that only effects my economy by forcing me to rebuild my military vessels.



You know who does that? Terrorists or merc groups. Pirates have one soul purpose - to steal valuables in the fastest and most painless way without anybody catching them.



The other problem with pirates is eventually they are easily wiped out mid-game with a click, something which to this day no government on are planet has managed to do. I'd like to imagine pirates would flourish in space what with all the traffic with trade vessels and shipping lanes as empires span the galaxies.



I honestly believe that pirates in a real space 4X game should be something dealt with in the background that directly effect your economy, like countering espionage. The larger your empire, the more serious Pirates would effect your income. You could implement research or building options to counter this. I suppose patrol vessels could be possible, but pirates would naturally be scared of by them - not confronting them in medium size attack cruisers.

When you say nobody has done them justice, that's almost exactly how they were implemented in MOO3. Pirates had a negative effect on both income and stability (the equivalent of happiness in ES). The magnitude of the effect depended on the system population, and could be countered by stationing ships there. You never actually saw any pirate ships, just their effects on the system. The only part really missing was that the effectiveness of the counter depended solely on total size class, so a single dreadnought would be as effective as many smaller ships which, as you say, isn't really realistic.

SpaceTroll wrote:
As it was already mentionned the background was chosen by vote, which was not my favorite... I even tried to influence the vote towards the fanatics *shame on me*... but nope they all wanted simple pirates.

I think the problem isn't so much that pirates were chosen, but that as implemented they're not really pirates at all. Pirates generally have fairly small resources, and survive by engaging in hit-and-run attacks on vulnerable merchants and the like. Whereas in ES, and many other 4X games, they apparently have the resources of entire star systems behind them and can go head-to-head with the battlefleets of major galactic empires. So it's not that there's anything wrong with pirates, they could just do with being a little more piratey.

SpaceTroll wrote:
As for the multiple factions of pirates that would cool, definitely something to track for post release.

Europa Universalis 3 does something like this in a very nice way. There are various different types of rebels that appear based on different factors and with different goals. So if you conquer a small country you might get rebels that will try to reform that country if they manage to take over the relevant provinces, but if your claim to the throne is weak you might get rebels that try to take over as much of the country as possible and replace the existing ruler with a new one. Obviously a lot of the details aren't applicable here since it's a different kind of game, and being Paradox it goes into far more fiddly details than most people want to deal with. But I think it's worth a look at for some ideas of how different outlaw factions can be implemented in a game.



They also have quite a good way of dealing with actual pirates. Essentially there are two separate effects. If you don't have a large enough fleet and don't patrol your coastal waters enough (fleet size and patrolling actually give two separate modifiers), distant colonies will produce far less income from tariffs as merchants are assumed to be less able to trade. If you don't patrol coasts regularly, small pirate fleets can spawn which blockade ports, reducing income and increasing revolt chance. I think this could work pretty well in ES as well. Instead of having pirates in powerful fleets that can invade and conquer planets, have them appear as small fleets that are relatively easily beaten in a straight fight, but will keep appearing if you just have a couple of big fleets and don't leave ships behind to patrol your systems. Instead of invasions, they could simply blockade a system and maybe siphon off part of its dust income. And instead of appearing in uncontrolled systems, they would only appear in controlled but undefended ones.

I agree with you good sir. Pirates' objectives are not based around killing colonies or anything nonsense like that. They attack shipping lines and get all the loot they can. Pirates survive off of the loot they pillage from trading vessels, and generally take on vessels that are much weaker than them, securing an easy win. Pirates have no reason to take on any sort of opposition. Think about it, would a major drug smuggler blow up a police station? Derp, no. They would operate under their nose (yah know, like tehy do).



Good post, you make a lot of sense

As long as we are talking Pirates here, the level of new involvement being discussed seems to be in the direction of a mini-faction.

If anyone here is familiar with "Sins of a Solar Empire," they have both mini factions as well as Pirates (the utility and purpose of both have waxed and waned with nearly every update/expansion through).



The devs have already stated that they don't want to put in any kind of minor empires for now. To me, development concerning pirates should follow the following:



1: Work out the kinks with the main races

1b: Affect Pirates as needed and modify them as a potential "testing ground" for the viability of minor factions.

2. Work out the kinks with the main races



I like the idea of Pirates hitting supply lines and generally creating havoc for economy and industry. But how would one do that? Could they have a special support modification for such things in their ships? If they were "stationed" between planets, could they a percentage of income from trade? These are all very rough ideas since I'm only about an hour into the game.

QcNoodle wrote:
you could mod the game... not that hard seriously...

There's a different sub forum for that. If he wanted to mod the game, he would've posted this there.



I couldn't imagine Amplitude saying: "Hey guys its our game and all but yeah all those features you've suggested or want we'll just go ahead and allow modding tools so you can fix the game for us so we don't have to, ha trollololololol."

I liked how the pirates were implemented in MOO3, it forced me to keep patrol fleets around all systems, and I agree that several smaller vessels should be better at this than one big.

If you want to keep pirate fleets, they should appear over poorly defended systems and blockade + siphon money from it, even pillage if left unchecked for some time and even occupy it if left unchecked for a long time, but they would retreat/disappear when a larger fleet was attacking them. Of course if a smaller fleet attacked them, they would try to destroy it. They should have lots of small ships, with big ships being a rarity. Maybe both can be implemented (negative effect + random fleets)?



The way they are implemented now, maybe they could be a powerful pirate faction, like Yaki in X-universe, probably filled with renegades from all races with a powerful leader.

Perhaps they should be renamed to Barbarians.



Or Independent Militants.



Or Space-faring Nomads.



That way you won't have to re-design anything. Except for adding a "Ransom" button when the engagement window comes up.

With the AI being unbalanced as it is, giving pirates more power (and the fact they just pop up, in the middle of our borders) is generally a bad idea. If i'm fighting a war on 3 borders i don't want some damn pirates raping me in the back. Sure pirates should be rethought, but more power to them (to the point of them being a faction?) makes no sense.

Exactly how much power you want to give them has nothing (really) to do with them being a faction. Think of the minor races in gal civ 2, they are technically a faction, but week.



However I like strong pirates, reminds me to build up my forces early. otherwise i would wait till i encounter a hostile enemy, which can be too late.

Radon wrote:
With the AI being unbalanced as it is, giving pirates more power (and the fact they just pop up, in the middle of our borders) is generally a bad idea. If i'm fighting a war on 3 borders i don't want some damn pirates raping me in the back. Sure pirates should be rethought, but more power to them (to the point of them being a faction?) makes no sense.

Truhan wrote:
Oh, you mean like when the stars are right and R'lyeh rises from the oceans and great Cthulhu awakens from his slumber for a time? Or perhaps the monotonous flutes stop playing for some reason and the nuclear chaos of the universe that is Azathoth stops being the Blind Idiot God and starts being unbridled destruction.

I sense great sarcasm with this one.

You, sir, are a true pirate. Though I must ponder how a zealot could emerge amongst the Horatio when they're a race of clones (accidental cloning mutation perhaps? I LOVE when games decide to do fluff, hint hint).

did you know you could disable them when you create a game?...

QcNoodle wrote:
did you know you could disable them when you create a game?...

Lol that's not my point....I want more depth not less.

You, sir. Just made a lot of sense. From now on, I shall call them: Terrorists.

Kingsclaw wrote:
Lol that's not my point....I want more depth not less.

you could mod the game... not that hard seriously...

I agree with OP completely.



Losing a system or two and having a massive attack on infrastructure would really be interesting.

Oooo I really like the ideas your throwing around. I never gave it much thought, but after pondering on it you have some nice points. A change such as that would bring the game to life a little more and make things more dynamic. I am personally a big fan of all sorts of events in strategy games such as this. It brings me more into the game. If we have the ability to mod in events ect... I might consider doing this. Regardless I hope the Devs take notice, and that they have the ability, intention, and of course time to bring more things like this into the game.

I would like a few game-wrecking random encounters (like the "Grand Menaces" from SOTS). Terrorists would be one of them. Basically something damaging enough to really upset the "galactic order" and maybe force players to ally against a common enemy. They need to be something drastic, capable of crippling a powerful player or wiping out a smaller one.

Kingsclaw -> Count with me in your fight! I think the same and it is very good to see other question the same. This suicidal pirates are nonsense. This came from a long time ago and nobody thinks about it, but i hope that someone, someday listen what you said. The games will be much more realistic and interesting!

Actually one of the first options in the games2gether approach was a vote on the background story for the pirates. Sadly that vote seems not to have been archived, but here's the old thread dealing with the argument, if our endless space pirates should be people abducting 1) aliens, 2) fanatics or 3) criminals (that option won): /#/endless-space/forum/28-game-design/thread/10982-discussion-pirates-and-why-the-third-options-dosent-work

idea: the pirate ships are actually self-replicating/upgrading warships originally produced by the Endless. With the Endless gone, they have reactivated upon the appearance of new spacefaring species and indiscriminately attack all non-Endless civilizations.