[Discussion] Beta Pirates - Endless Space

[Discussion] Beta Pirates

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Kreios

Newcomer

Kreios

Newcomer

13 years ago

Jun 8, 2012, 11:27:35 PM

Igncom1 wrote:
^Thats good, preventing people from always following their perfect build and strategy.

Agreed in full. Without pirates, I'd probably ignore the weapon tech when playing against the AI until a war actually broke out (or I had a hankering for artifacts and nothing better to research). Unfortunately, even with the pirates, I only research the first two weapons techs, kill all of the pirates on my side of the wormholes, then slaughter the rest with the first beam weapon once I push through the wormholes for the next colonization phase. Seriously, people should be placing scouts (with scanner modules) to watch nearby planets. I never see pirates spawning in line of sight, and I think the lack of surveilance by the AI is what's allowing the pirates to crush them, since their armament scales with the game turns.

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jungle_rhino

Newcomer

jungle_rhino

Newcomer

13 years ago

Jun 6, 2012, 4:09:36 PM

While I enjoy the challenge of the early pirates they are clearly a bit OTT as the AI players struggle with them - in my current game the Sowers are getting absolutely pwned by them. It also makes the first three tiers of weapons research pretty pointless - your fleets simply can't compete until you pick up lasers.

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KravMagaUC

Newcomer

KravMagaUC

Newcomer

13 years ago

Jun 6, 2012, 4:23:05 PM

They used to be balanced pretty well, in my opinion. The only issue I had was when they would take over a planet and it would start sending out waves of high-end (way stronger than the other players) fleets en mass out of nowhere. Now that they're stronger, they seem to be doing that a lot more and it makes them go from nuisance to a really easy way to get killed off early. It leads to a kind of feedback loop where they take a planet, it makes fleets you can't stop that take planets, which makes fleets that take over more planets, and so on.

Besides, when they take out entire empires, that's boring. Pirates don't really have anything that makes them interesting to go against, they're just there, crappin' out death fleets.

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Ohma

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Ohma

Newcomer

13 years ago

Jun 6, 2012, 5:03:30 PM

Well, my two cents on this is that the pirates need to either:

A. Have the tonnage on their ships toned down a bit/take up some of that space with not just guns. As it is now my defense fleets are getting pulverized even though they're equipped with piles of anti-kinetic armor, HP boost armor, and I'm playing as UE O_o.

B. Have their spawn rate reduced in some way. My current idea is that this could be tied to either local or galaxy wide happiness and some other stuff; the idea being that the pirates are coming from the dissatisfied and oppressed, and the ferocity and number of pirate attacks can be managed by keeping people happy enough not to consider going off to join the Crossbone Vanguard.

I also think that blockades should stop Dust income from a blockaded system, not research. Combine that with idea B and I think you'd set up a pretty nifty playstyle for the UE early game, where your ship bonuses are used to keep pirates at bay more than usual, because it's pretty easy to make up for the drop in production caused by unhappiness by taxing your people and just buying everything.

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GeneralArmchair

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GeneralArmchair

Newcomer

13 years ago

Jun 7, 2012, 5:39:07 PM

I don't get the pirate whining. They're still pushovers. Usually all I lose to them are individual colony ships that accidentally run face first into a pirate nest.

As far as I'm concerned, the main differences are.

1: I now have to deploy more than a single destroyer to murder all the pirates.

2: When I do engage the pirates, I might actually take a casualty or two (HOW TERRIBLE!!!!!).

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Calico

Newcomer

Calico

Newcomer

13 years ago

Jun 7, 2012, 6:55:30 PM

I'm happy with the pirates as they are now.... the real worry is the AI lacking the ability to win against them, eventually leading to entire Factions beeing overrun by turn 75. Even the bigger AI's seem to have trouble with them, since they tend to pile up their Fleets in their homsystem instead of deploying them to the frontiers of their Empire.

The AI Pilgrims in my last game had a fairly good start and a couple of Fleets sitting at their Homeplanet, but regurlary lost planets to Pirate Fleets. Then they send a Fleet to take the Planet back, the Pirates meanwhile move on to the next sytem, rinse and repeat. Playing Amoeba with several Allies really lets you get some insight into the AI.

So, yeah Pirates are cool as they are now... it's the AI that is not.

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varruss

Newcomer

varruss

Newcomer

13 years ago

Jun 8, 2012, 1:44:37 AM

I just have to vent it out

– Pirates have to be adjusted.

I had 4 pirate fleets show up and block 4 of my planets. Of course they blocked the planets with Titanium (had 3 of them) so I can’t build any additional ships. Also all 4 fleets were 2-3 times more powerful than my own so I can’t engage them.

In the next game I had pirate fleets substantially weaker than mine kill my fleets.

What I noticed is:

Pirates are OK if you play Normal level.

They are not OK on higher levels.

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Apollysis

Newcomer

Apollysis

Newcomer

13 years ago

Jun 8, 2012, 1:58:39 AM

On normal they would be ok if the AI could deal with them. I handled them was doing well. Next thing I know the empire above me gets taken over by pirates and 7 strong pirate fleets start teleporting onto my planets with insane beam weapons.

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GeneralArmchair

Newcomer

GeneralArmchair

Newcomer

13 years ago

Jun 8, 2012, 4:51:30 AM

varruss wrote:
I just have to vent it out – Pirates have to be adjusted.

I had 4 pirate fleets show up and block 4 of my planets. Of course they blocked the planets with Titanium (had 3 of them) so I can’t build any additional ships. Also all 4 fleets were 2-3 times more powerful than my own so I can’t engage them.

In the next game I had pirate fleets substantially weaker than mine kill my fleets.

What I noticed is:

Pirates are OK if you play Normal level.

They are not OK on higher levels.

Are you talking about the "pirate difficulty level" setting or just the plain regular "AI difficulty" level setting? Because if you're talking the regular difficulty level you just need to build some fleets worthy of the name. (step 1: Delete the "defender" design and build a real warship).

My 5 destroyers armed with only level two lasers and a little armor plating were kicking the !@#$% out of pirate fleets on impossible setting. At most I'd take a single casualty. They were at most a nuisance and never a threat.

Once I developed cruisers, the odds of the pirates ever threatening me in the slightest went straight out the airlock.

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Dr_Mox

Old Timer

Dr_Mox

Old Timer

13 years ago

Jun 8, 2012, 9:18:42 AM

Calico wrote:
I'm happy with the pirates as they are now.... the real worry is the AI lacking the ability to win against them, eventually leading to entire Factions beeing overrun by turn 75. Even the bigger AI's seem to have trouble with them, since they tend to pile up their Fleets in their homsystem instead of deploying them to the frontiers of their Empire.

So, yeah Pirates are cool as they are now... it's the AI that is not.

Yep +1

smiley: approval

Agreement: the AI needs some Love and the Pirates need to be a Playable Faction, they are pretty much there already.... Yarrrrrr!

smiley: twisted

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Riik

Newcomer

Riik

Newcomer

13 years ago

Jun 8, 2012, 9:41:55 AM

The worst thing about pirates is that to stay ahead of them:

1) Focus heavily on laser tech

2) Make plenty of glass cannon fleets

On every beta game so far I've played with them enabled, pirates have been using glass cannon fleets of their own. Or at least near enough to it. And they almost always have the latest beam technology that I have, which is usually far beyond that of the AI players. The only counter for this is to use glass cannon fleets against them, which result in large casualties on both sides. Essentially, you spend the entire game at war with pirates and the other empires become practically like minor factions you conquer easily on your way to taking over the galaxy.

And it gets worse that by late game on an 8 arm spiral, you get to the other side of the galaxy after wiping out another empire, and there in those last couple systems in their arm they've decided against colonising, is the most rediculous amount of pirates you could ever imagine. This particular enounter was before the update reduced them, of course, but they had stacked up 2 fleets of 13, 3 fleets of 9 and 4 fleets between 7 and 3 in size. And that's only in the space of 3 systems. Pirates should be bands of theives and terrorists, not full-on invasion forces. And what's more, on the same game, the pirates had essentually formed an empire in one corner, where they owned 5 connected systems.

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Gilleous

Newcomer

Gilleous

Newcomer

13 years ago

Jun 8, 2012, 9:45:50 AM

Calico wrote:
So, yeah Pirates are cool as they are now... it's the AI that is not.

They were a little much at first with the beta, still managable though. After one of the hotfix patches things did get better and overall pirates are fine. They are not hard to beat, can catch you off guard, you need to plan and play in consideration of their presence, and might cost you a bit even if you are careful (cost you alot of you are not).

The problem as said by Calico is that the AI factions have terrible pirate mitagation techniques, heck they seem to do very poorly against just defending themselves.

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mabalogna

Newcomer

mabalogna

Newcomer

13 years ago

Jun 8, 2012, 4:03:16 PM

I like the pirates. They're forcing me to tech some military upgrades much earlier then i normally would just to deal with them

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Igncom1

Craver

Infantry win firefights. Tanks win battles. Artillery win wars.

Igncom1

Craver

13 years ago

Jun 8, 2012, 4:04:58 PM

^Thats good, preventing people from always following their perfect build and strategy.

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VIPSharidann

Newcomer

VIPSharidann

Newcomer

13 years ago

Jun 6, 2012, 4:01:11 PM

Err... send one vessel.

Check their armament

Build some vessels with long range capability (Missile heavy or beams) and boost your defenses around their strengths (armor if they use kinetics) and you don't need to kamikaze that much usually. An admiral would help too.

Gadzooky wrote:
Playing Amobea last night, pirate fleet 4/15 strength 1800. I was sending in fleets 9/9 and their strength was 5-600, totally ruined my game, I had to kamakaze several fleets so I didn't lose the system while not noticing they pinched another system. With my fleet decimated the Sophons moved in.

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drewitt

Newcomer

drewitt

Newcomer

13 years ago

Jun 9, 2012, 12:42:07 AM

Beta pirates remind me of the 'Andromeda' universe!

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vaendryl

Forgotten Enthusiast

(╯°□°）╯︵ uoıʇdǝɔxǝ

vaendryl

Forgotten Enthusiast

13 years ago

Jun 9, 2012, 11:28:54 PM

Dr_Mox wrote:
Yep +1 Agreement: the AI needs some Love and the Pirates need to be a Playable Faction, they are pretty much there already.... Yarrrrrr!

pilgrims say hi

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Kruos

Old Craver

Kruos

Old Craver

13 years ago

Jun 14, 2012, 9:14:04 AM

I like the power pirates of the beta, and the way they force player to adapt their strategy, even when playing a peaceful race.

But as it is now, I think they are more a threat for the AIs than for the player. Why? Because a good way for the player to handle the pirates spawn in early game is to put sentinel scout everywhere in his constellation, and the AI do not do that. So, in finé, whereas the player crush some pirates outside his starting constellation only once his eco is developped, the AIs have to fight them inside theirs constellations when building theirs eco.

Considering that the AIs have already some difficulties to manage their development, the often seen result is a big development level difference between the player and the AIs at mid-game.

So, to reduce this difference a little, I propose to allow pirates travel throught wormhole. This way the 'sentinel tactic' would be less efficient, and thus the player would have to face pirates at early game, like the AIs, when building their eco.

What do you think?

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HAL9000

Newcomer

HAL9000

Newcomer

13 years ago

Jun 14, 2012, 10:49:03 AM

I would like to have at least one more setting for pirates between 'normal' and 'no pirates at all' where they spawn less frequent and maybe a tad weaker.

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Alexodia

Newcomer

Alexodia

Newcomer

13 years ago

Jun 14, 2012, 5:56:46 PM

I say we rename the Pirates Anterans, Reapers, or intergalactic peace keepers from Stellar Generation Prime. =P thats how powerful these things get,

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