While kinetics had their accuracy improved, I hear, they're still not quite on the level of beams—or so goes the consensus. If pirates are being balanced to being a constant nuisance, why not lock them into beams? They get a slight damage boost thanks to the increased early accuracy but their use of the deadlier weapon compels all empires to research defenses against beams, thus weakening the stronger weapon in the strategic view.



Of course this makes pirates that much deadlier in the very early game, before anyone's researched much in the way of weapon techs and so cannot use shields yet. Perhaps everyone starting with basic shields and flak would be in order (something a touch weaker than the current basic model).

I don't think you should lock the pirates to any weapon type. Currently I've notice they change their weapon type to best do more damage against an empire. Also it would be extremely easy to counter pirates just stack beam shielding on your ships and pirates are just annoying afterwards.

Well that's exactly the idea: pirates should be nothing more than a nuisance to your military. Whatever they're named, no faction without systems of its own should be an actual threat. This way the pirates get to keep their big, scary ships without being something you worry too much about. However, they are a constant incentive to be good at defending against beams, meaning the value of beams drops a little bit since everybody will have a counter ready to go rather than a dozen turns of research away. Beams are still very good weapons, just one you know everyone probably had a fleet or two that already defends against.

I wouldn't say no faction without systems should be a threat. Whether they had a system or not, they're still getting the tech and the ships that they have, and that makes them a threat, especially in the early- and sometimes mid-game. I've lost system to them in a few games simply because I had no way to fight them off, with the starting position I was dumped into.



But how would they start with beams? How do they have that technology that no one else has, especially if, as you say, they're a faction with no system to be researching it? Kinetics are easy to start with, they're just huge versions of the guns we have today, and it makes sense that would be what we start with. I think they should simply scale with your empire, and make their builds to be whatever is your fleets weakness. After all, it's better that a weak pirate fleet shows you your weaknesses before another player does.

FinalStrigon wrote:
I wouldn't say no faction without systems should be a threat. Whether they had a system or not, they're still getting the tech and the ships that they have, and that makes them a threat, especially in the early- and sometimes mid-game. I've lost system to them in a few games simply because I had no way to fight them off, with the starting position I was dumped into.



But how would they start with beams? How do they have that technology that no one else has, especially if, as you say, they're a faction with no system to be researching it? Kinetics are easy to start with, they're just huge versions of the guns we have today, and it makes sense that would be what we start with. I think they should simply scale with your empire, and make their builds to be whatever is your fleets weakness. After all, it's better that a weak pirate fleet shows you your weaknesses before another player does.

Adding on to what FinalStrigon said, I'd too would rather be shown what I'm weak in by a non important faction like the pirates (Yes I know they're not a real faction) instead of getting steam rolled by the AI. Also I like the challenge, if they're gonna be there then why not have them be threatening? The DEVs put them in game to be a challenge, and if they're not in the game to be a challenge then I see no reason why they added them in the first place. Sounds like a waste of time to me to just add something that would just annoy you all game. I like how the pirates are they're not as strong as another race, but they're not too weak either. A nice balance.

Mind worms in Alpha Centauri were nothing more than a nuisance. They existed to force you to garrison bases, basically. (Though you could capture them and/or build them, so the equivalent would be having privateer units in Endless Space.)



Sure, AC also had the mind worm attacks when Planet got really mad at you late game, but you could easily avoid that if you watched your production.