If I have one more 4X game that does pirates just like everyone else, I will... well... sit there miserably hoping there is an OFF button for the pirates.



SO - I was thinking of gathering some ways to improve Pirates. As they are, they randomly appear, usually in groups of two, and go from there.



This is not how pirates work. They DO : (this is automatic)



- Hijack vulnerable targets and demand a ransom (colony ship just got abducted gentlemen? Cough up 100 Dust or they all die.

- Reduce trade efficiency

- Encourage corruption



They DO NOT : (they won't!)



- Engage military vessels (unless you hunt them down and click engage, or they can most definitely win)

- Sit in a single system stupidly waiting for you to gather an armada



They MIGHT : (random chance)



- Blow stuff up and move on (another reason to invest in planetary / system defences when they get up and running)

- Hack your systems and steal dust

- Have hidden 'safe ports' that must be actively looked for, or be a very observant player to find

- Hide in a system (perhaps a 'patrol system' button to flush them out and engage them)



What else do they DO and NOT DO, and what MIGHT they do that could make all of this much more interesting to engage with?

Pirates at the very least need to be balanced and not occasionally come at you 15 turns in with 20 ship fleets.

What about player funded pirateisium?

They might be open to bribery to make the life of another empire difficult for a while

I dident really mean like bribing them, i mean like actually (although quietly) supporting them so they can fund you the spoils of raiding.

Hm. I just want pirates not to invade my systems, but to goddamn loot and pillage them, instead.

Slavetrading, people abducting, dust stealing pirates are just horrible enough for my tastes. XD

Nosferatiel wrote:
Hm. I just want pirates not to invade my systems, but to goddamn loot and pillage them, instead.

Slavetrading, people abducting, dust stealing pirates are just horrible enough for my tastes. XD

But it's really cool to have pirate owned systems.

ArrowLance wrote:
But it's really cool to have pirate owned systems.

But it's not really... "piraty" to invade systems and take over the whole populations. Pirates should have their own safe ports, come out to loot and pillage and be gone, again.

Added latest ideas

For a while I was confused as to why people complained about pirates being tough in this game, but I've just for the first time come across my first large groups of pirates who were packing a much more impressive set of ships than the other races.



But in general yeah I do agree, they are rather lacking in 'colour', they could do with some more fleshing out. They could be potentially pretty cool as an un-aligned faction you can interact with, rather like the Yaki and other pirates in Egosoft games, if anyone plays those .

I agree too. Especially its anoying if they transmutate in another armoured Faction you have to worry about. In my last game, at turn 150 something, there appeared 4 fleets 15/15 in my backyard an turned system after system. I definetly will turn them off next time. A Pirate should not behave that way.

Could not agree more. Sins of a Solar Empire was the best pirates I seen so far, but they were just a cheaply paid overpowered fleet. I also turn pirates off if they are boring. Great suggestions on what they could do with pirates. Ransoming population units in terrorist like fashion would be a nice change.

I already went past turn 200 and pirates have taken a few systems of other races.. making ridiculous large fleets and can have over 20 command points in their fleets. They are actually killing off AI controlled players.. lol. I´m just glad I revised all my ship designs, even the standard ones cause auto upgrade didn´t quite work for me anyway.