After I briefly rage-quit a (single-player ) game of ES last night, I found myself wondering precisely how the game handles pirates, their designs, their strength, their spawning logic et cetera, because right in the middle of a major cold war engagement with the Amoeba, it seemed like the gates of hell were suddenly unleashed in the space of a single turn, releasing half a dozen pirate fleets running around my territory and another one that seemed to spawn right next to our current outpost battleground and wiped out both our fleets there at the time.



So, what I do know about pirates:



[LIST=1]

They spawn on Uninhabited Systems

They never (or?) use any defence modules

They can ultimately use any type of weapons modules

[/LIST]





The big one I'd like to know a bit more about is #1 on this list. Is it that pirates spawn on Uncolonised systems, or do they spawn on systems that are Unobserved (i.e. not in sensor range)? Does Influence from established colonies prevent them from spawning on systems within that influence?





Back to my story - there I was defending a chokepoint system with two wormhole connections out of Amoeba's arm into the centre of a Spiral Galaxy with a rather valiant fleet of Rank 4 ships that had been facing down fleet-after-fleet of the economically much stronger Amoeba without so much as a scratch, since I had a significant technological advantage that made my shields virtually impenetrable to their current beam weapons. This was mid-game in a quite skirmish-orientated huge galaxy, and my fleet put out about 2400 ower:, the Amoeba and Cravers it'd been wiping the floor with had variably 2000-3600 ower:



This had been going on for about 5-6 turns, blockading the system, winning 2 battles a turn and trying to stem the flow of further fleets so I could capture the system and secure the border against the Amoeba. Then suddenly, WHAM: warping in from a nearby uncolonised system, a pirate fleet. Not just any pirate fleet, either:



Each ship (nice little pirate ship, 450 health - corvettes) had 1200+ beam power, and the combined fleet strength of about 6-7 of these was something in excess of 5000 ower: The first thing I noticed was the Amoeba fleet that was due to engage me just disappeared. Then, this pirate fleet attacked my fleet, and wiped out my entire (heavily shielded) fleet barely after the second phase had started, with surprisingly few losses. For reference, the two most powerful empires in the galaxy at the time were the Amoeba and the Cravers, and their most advanced weapons at this stage in the game gave their ships around ~600 beam power on their cruiser-sized vessels.





And this was almost when I rage-quit, as this ridiculously overpowered (compared to me and the rest of the actual factions in the galaxy) pirate fleet was just magically spawned and brutally violated us. But no, I thought - they have powerful weapons, but surely that's just the result of stacking weapons and no defence on a ship; I'll mop these up with my reserve fleet in the area. So I didn't rage-quit just there, I tweaked some gear on my current Line Cruiser and Escort Destroyer setups so that they got an even bigger shield capacity.





Oh, but then something magical transpired: It seems the game spawns pirates in bursts, because as I ended the turn, three similar pirate fleets came into sensor range in the far, less-colonised reaches of my arm of the galaxy, and proceeded to besiege two of my large science systems. I had eradicated pirates in that arm some 60 turns ago and never seen any since, and then three huge fleets of them appear? So, seems like my reserve fleets were needed more urgently elsewhere. Long story short, retrofitted fleets with even more and better shields and even through some BBs in there to beef them up and went to mop up the pirate scum, there's no point whining about bad luck, I thought to myself...





...And they royally stomped all my fleets - they had a similar setup, but not the pirates had cruiser-sized ships with unholy amounts of beam damage that cut through by shielded BBs like butter. And then I rage-quit.







So, I guess here are my questions (also, TL;DR here):

• Where precisely can pirates spawn - what effect do sensors and influence have on their spawns?
• Why the hell does the game engine decide to spawn a huge wave of pirates all at once, instead of a continual stream of harassment
• Why (why, God, why) are pirates able to spawn with technology and firepower far in excess of anything fielded by any of the huge, scientifically advanced empires in the galaxy?
  
  

Right now, I'm thinking of playing ES with pirates disabled, because this is the second game in which something peculiar like this has happened (and with no global event I add; it's not been some special occurrence). Around mid-game, as factions start to clash, huge waves of pirates start spawning with vastly overpowered stats, and it's making the game (which by then the player has spent hours on) quite un-enjoyable, as they have no logic or balancing factors and seemingly just unlimited fleets of destruction.

The pirates in stock ES spawn in empty systems (or captured ones) outside your influence area. They don't use any defense or support modules, they are filled with weapons. They never retreat. They spawn according to % of best player power (or something along the line), and often end up spawning faster than you can build ships to fend them off, and due to how blockades works, are terribly crippling for any unlucky empire plagued with them. In summary, they are unbalanced and just wreak games when they are enabled.





If you want to face balanced and far less annoying Pirates, head to the modding forum and try Fair Fight (self promotion ).

We need a mid/late game threat that isn't just pirates.

I may be a newb (constantly winning on normal difficulty and struggling with hard currently), but I think pirates should be weaker, but only a bit. I realize you can beat them with clever support/defense modules, but it seems strange that they're biggest problem in a first half of game. Maybe they can only blockade systems, not conquer them? I think they're designed as a artificial problem that forces you to develop some military so you don't instantly loose in case some Hissho decides to fight you, but the seriously cripple economy even if you try to research military techs and have pilot hero. Though yet again, maybe I'm noob.

The pirates should be weaker, and the galactic event (or however the name is) that spawn huge fleets of them at each faction's home system should be nerfed, or at least scale to the faction's strength. Often than not, it's better just restart the game if one's on the receiving end of such event. (I've had it happen on (literally) first round of a game).



Local pirate on uninhabited systems are spawning too fast, and can be overly powerful. Players shouldn't be colonizing unfavorable systems just because having an uncolonized, resource-poor system near home system can potentially mean a large fleet of pirates invading nearby systems.



In mid- and late-game, pirates should be a check and balance force. There should be a way to "sabotage" a faction to cause pirates spawning within its territory (of course, scaled with the target faction's overall strength). This is one way of keeping some expansionist faction in check so their forces don't grow exponentially with each new system they concur.

yeah, right now Pirates are less of a pain in the neck but a substancial threat to your civilization. Or irrelevant - and outright stupid.



I think Pirates should be less "space rebels", that's already the Pilgrims job, but more ... Pirates. evading your fleets, crashing your Transports and scouts, blockading your Trade hubs. Imho early pirates should be just slightly stronger than player scouts and later pirates should show up based on Trade volume and focus on blockading systems. on ship design: I think they should get engine modules, to ease their escape and seek power in numbers rather than size, what gives with these 3 or six ship fleets of "siege ships" ?!?!

Ca_Putt wrote:
yeah, right now Pirates are less of a pain in the neck but a substancial threat to your civilization. Or irrelevant - and outright stupid.



I think Pirates should be less "space rebels", that's already the Pilgrims job, but more ... Pirates. evading your fleets, crashing your Transports and scouts, blockading your Trade hubs. Imho early pirates should be just slightly stronger than player scouts and later pirates should show up based on Trade volume and focus on blockading systems. on ship design: I think they should get engine modules, to ease their escape and seek power in numbers rather than size, what gives with these 3 or six ship fleets of "siege ships" ?!?!

Yeah, like Nasarog was saying, why do we have a threat in the early game but not in the mid/late game? I mean, its fine if you turn pirates off, then the game is consistent. But if you leave them on, what is their equivalent in mid/late game? And yes, they should be able to be turned down a few notches lol

Stealth_Hawk wrote:
Yeah, like Nasarog was saying, why do we have a threat in the early game but not in the mid/late game? I mean, its fine if you turn pirates off, then the game is consistent. But if you leave them on, what is their equivalent in mid/late game? And yes, they should be able to be turned down a few notches lol

Their number and tech levels do increase as the game progress, and they are just as crippling to be plagued with. But who they focus on is random and that can seriously cripple the poor player who have to deal with them (especially due to the effects of blockades that reduce research to zero).

Foraven wrote:
Their number and tech levels do increase as the game progress, and they are just as crippling to be plagued with. But who they focus on is random and that can seriously cripple the poor player who have to deal with them (especially due to the effects of blockades that reduce research to zero).

True, but the player would have to be so weak that s/he would have 0 chance of winning the game.

Well Pirate ships are usually 1-3 tech tiers below the most advanced player, and come with one hell of an alpha strike when equipped with all of a weapon type.



I personally love them, but yeah the glass cannoning stuff is kinda weird strong...best best is to use glass cannon destroyers and beat them at their own game.



Id love for mid-late game pirates to be better organised with omni-weapon/defences fleets and to spawn off map for war travel to the map, that way it could be an even of a migrating horde of pirates bent on conquering the area of space that the players game takes place at.



The random even pirates too could spawn X number of turns travel from their destination in-order to give prior warning and prep time.



The pirate difficulty doesn't concern me, but their randomness, Id prefer pirates that try to forge little empires over a marauding menace of ultra glass cannons.....and the ability to bribe them would be a cool way to get them to leave a system.

Igncom1 wrote:
Well Pirate ships are usually 1-3 tech tiers below the most advanced player, and come with one hell of an alpha strike when equipped with all of a weapon type.



I personally love them, but yeah the glass cannoning stuff is kinda weird strong...best best is to use glass cannon destroyers and beat them at their own game.



Id love for mid-late game pirates to be better organised with omni-weapon/defences fleets and to spawn off map for war travel to the map, that way it could be an even of a migrating horde of pirates bent on conquering the area of space that the players game takes place at.



The random even pirates too could spawn X number of turns travel from their destination in-order to give prior warning and prep time.



The pirate difficulty doesn't concern me, but their randomness, Id prefer pirates that try to forge little empires over a marauding menace of ultra glass cannons.....and the ability to bribe them would be a cool way to get them to leave a system.

To me the pirates are rough at the start of the game. Mid and late game needs to have their own threats. I find pirates kind of fun.

Pirates only spawn on unobserved systems, even if it's within your influence area. Be on the lookout if you get that supernova random event.

Nasarog wrote:
To me the pirates are rough at the start of the game. Mid and late game needs to have their own threats. I find pirates kind of fun.

I like the idea of minor factions that can intrude and attack (like pirates) but you are right in the fact that they should be something besides pirates.

Stealth_Hawk wrote:
I like the idea of minor factions that can intrude and attack (like pirates) but you are right in the fact that they should be something besides pirates.

Something like the Grand Menace of Sword of the Stars... But being able to bribe Pirates to attack our enemies could nice as well.