Has anyone already tried to town down the pirates?

I had already noticed once that an AI player got totally owned by them: every system was occupied and in process of invasion by pirates.



It shouldn’t be difficult to already hex-edit some variables to something more enjoyable. I'm still not that sure though what to change for the better. This is how the PirateDifficulties.xml looks. I had to cut the rest due post size/limit.



[CODE]










PercentPerPlayer="0.04"

AllowedSpawn="-1"

CanMoveOnEmpire="false"

CanInvade="false"

NumberFleetPerSpawn="1"

MoveCoolDown="10"

PercentShipPerFleet="0.15"

TechnologyGap ="1" >


LimitMin="3"/>
























PercentPerPlayer="0.04"

AllowedSpawn="-1"

CanMoveOnEmpire="false"

CanInvade="false"

NumberFleetPerSpawn="1"

MoveCoolDown="10"

PercentShipPerFleet="0.3"

TechnologyGap ="1" >



...

[/CODE]



The variables explained:



ShipRaiderNormal Index (0-4)

– sounds like the spawn unit/type trigger name



PercentPerPlayer (0.02-0.08)

– Eh, well, the percentage of what? The amount of ships per human and AI players? From what base value?



AllowedSpawn (-1/1)

– Only the Crusade type has this allowed. No idea yet.



CanMoveOnEmpire (true/false)

– This could mean that this unit may not move into anyone’s territory or that it can’t move within someone’s circle-marked territory similar like normal players getting stuck without an open border treaty.



CanInvade (true/false)

– This should be obvious if a pirate fleet may initiate an invasion or not. This can be observed later in the game.



NumberFleetPerSpawn (x)

– Only the Crusade unit has 2 instead of 1 here. That should be obvious too then if a unit is spawned whenever how many fleets it will have then.



MoveCoolDown (10/5/3)

– Not sure, but pirates seems quite lazy and hardly move around. This could be the turns when they may do that again for whatever reason.



PercentShipPerFleet (0.15/0.3/0.5/0.7/1)

– Maybe an indicator how large a fleet may be? Only Crusade has 100% there.



TechnologyGap (1/3/4)

– The gap gets larger the more dangerous the types become. Looks strange. And what is that gap anyway? Does it maybe mean that this type is technology-wise 1 level behind someone – the most advanced faction maybe?



There are several conditions:



TechnologyLevel LimitMin=3

– This could be time when pirates start to show up. Not sure what exactly a TechnologyLevel is. The number of anyone’s researched techs? Pirates show up quite early, so I guess it could be after the first three techs in that case.

For example, ShipRaiderUltra has LimitMin=4, so that could mean it is just an additional spawn next to ShipRaiderNormal. Both could coexist, otherwise there would be something like LimitMax at ShipRaiderNormal to prevent that. Both types are identically besides the PercentShipPerFleet value.



ColonizedSystem LimitMin=4

– That could allow the spawn to only happen after these many systems beside the starter ones are colonized. The question is if this number is per player or in total. Per player seems more likely because 4 systems would be quickly colonized in the first few turns by all players after game start.



BlockadeStarted LimitMin=10

– No idea how this could be related to any condition. Maybe it could happen if the pirate faction itself has so many systems blocked by other types, in particular the SystemRaider, which is the first one that can move on empires.



NeutralSystemPercent LimitMax=0.2

– This sounds like the number of neutral systems left in the galaxy. When 20% are left, the pirates start their crusade with fleets that can more often and have 100% (PercentShipPerFleet=1) size.





The rest is about ShipTemplates what should be obvious.





The difference between Normal and Insane Pirate activity is only at PercentPerPlayer, giving Insane twice the amount of Normal.

I haven’t tested it with much lower values now but I guess this is a start at least to tone down their fleet numbers maybe.

What I’d also like to do is to lower their available technology. I’m not sure yet how to handle it. Increasing TechnologyGap or lowering it could be the thing to do.

If someone likes to reduce the general fleet power then lowering the PercentShipPerFleet value could be the solution.



Any other thoughts about that?

And again I remember why I should read code from that file.



Now what you have to notice first is words:



PirateStep Name="ShipRaiderNormal"



PirateStep Name="ShipRaiderUltra"



PirateStep Name="SystemRaider"



PirateStep Name="SystemConquest"



PirateStep Name="Crusade"



Basically Pirates have 5 different phases in normal pirate difficulty:



ShipRaiderNormal happens when:

Condition Name="TechnologyLevel" LimitMin="3"



this means that when ever first play reaches to 3 technologies pirates starts to come.



After that they have:



PercentPerPlayer="0.04" chance to come, where this depends hugely about number of players (I am fairly sure that calculation is 1d100+x*4 => 100)



NumberFleetPerSpawn="1", this means that when they spawn there comes just 1 fleet.

MoveCoolDown="10", means as you said that they have to wait 10 turns before moving again

PercentShipPerFleet="0.15", this means that if fleet size would otherwise be 200 there is just 30 pirates (explains why I was once attacked by 1! pirate)

TechnologyGap ="1", this means how much higher players tech can go before this phase changes to following.





Difference between phase 1 and 2 is that in phase 2 there is double of amount of Pirates.

The difference between Normal and Insane Pirate activity is only at PercentPerPlayer, giving Insane twice the amount of Normal.

I haven’t tested it with much lower values now but I guess this is a start at least to tone down their fleet numbers maybe.

What I’d also like to do is to lower their available technology. I’m not sure yet how to handle it. Increasing TechnologyGap or lowering it could be the thing to do.

If someone likes to reduce the general fleet power then lowering the PercentShipPerFleet value could be the solution.

That spawning rate also affects to how techonologially advanced they are and how powerful their fleets are. Notice that game first decides what pirates comes and then rolls a dice.



If you want to make game easier rise techgab, but also rise then Condition Name="TechnologyLevel" LimitMin="3" too to adjust gab



and yes, reducing PercentShipPerFleet="0.15" should make pirates power way smaller.



Now if you want to really affect to their technology you have to edit:



[code]







































[/code]

Alright, thanks for more insight there. I’m trying to accomplish the tone-down by as few tweaks as possible. My first trial will include following changes:



1. PercentPerPlayer values will be halved, so you still got the normal spawn rates of vanilla at Insane setting.



2. TechnologyGap values are everywhere 4 now, like the vanilla Crusader spawn.



3. TechnologyLevel LimitMin values are set to 5, 7 and 9 for the first three spawn types. That should hopefully prevent any complications with their technology at beginning and slightly delay the appearance of the spawn types, so they can’t spawn at same time right from start.



4. NumberFleetPerSpawn set from 2 to 1 at Crusader spawn. The SystemConquest spawn with 0.7 fleet size has already the feature of invasion, so no real need to exaggerate with their numbers.

Yeah they NEED to adjust the base pirates. There is no reason pirates should come into the back corner of my space and have a fleet more powerful than any of my enemies. I'm in my first game and I'm having to send my primary fleet to deal with pirates. Very stupid.

Some more things I’ve discovered with pirates bother me:



They seem to adopt even faction-specific traits like Big Fleets from Carvers. Normally, they should start with 5 command points, but they do with 7. Starting games without Carvers let them have 5 points at beginning as it should be normally for factions.

I’ve once replaced their slow travel trait (-2) with a command trait that reduces these points by 2. Same result with Carvers in play: 5 instead of 3 without Carvers.

Pirates normally have only the Evil Alignment (no effect) and a Slow Traveler trait (-2).



Pirates also don’t seem to care much about the TechnologyGap setting. If you start with Hissho in game, they can already spawn with the High Isotope Slugs at turn 5 as they would adopt the Isotope technology right from start from the Hissho.



Another point is the ShipDesignTemplate with ShipClassMediumPirates hulls. In Hulls.xml, there doesn’t exist any Medium, only Medium1 and Medium2.

If I replace the standard ShipClassSmall2Pirates hull with Medium or Medium1, no pirate will show up in the game.

In the last long session I played, I hadn’t noticed any different ships of them either but I could be mistaken. Maybe they need to obtain the other technologies to gain their medium hull. No idea yet.

If the medium ships can’t show up, the Crusade phase would theoretically never happen.





I think an elegant solution to weaken pirates with their cheating trait adoption is to replace their Slow Traveler trait with an Optimized Hull trait type that lowers the tonnage by 20%: replacing the pirate trait TraitFleet01Alt2 with TraitFleet05Alt2.

Pirate ship designs – at beginning at least – seems only filled with weapons and no defense stuff what normally makes them look pretty strong. With the reduced tonnage, they will look like to have primitive weapons then. I think it also sounds plausible that they need the cargo space for their booty and rum.



I’ve also replaced the standard ShipClassSmall2Pirates hull with the ShipClassSmall1Pirates one, the explorer type with +1 speed bonus and no weapon module tonnage bonus. Pirates usually favor fast and less powerful ships. I don’t really mind how fast they are but only 2 parsecs is way too silly slow.

Maybe all these tweaks together with those of my last post should be finally enough to make them more enjoyable. I don’t want to turn them into a fleet of escape pods either.

I encourage you to put your changes into a published mod, as I have done with balance and corp hero. This way you can get feedback from multiple players, who may not have the patience to make the changes themselves. Personally, I turned off pirates within a few days of buying the game and never turned them back on. If your changes give a small difficulty, without wide variability, then I would be happy to turn them back on.

Oh Davea you read this post way before me, you could have answered easily to these

Jarus wrote:
Some more things I’ve discovered with pirates bother me:



They seem to adopt even faction-specific traits like Big Fleets from Carvers. Normally, they should start with 5 command points, but they do with 7. Starting games without Carvers let them have 5 points at beginning as it should be normally for factions.

I’ve once replaced their slow travel trait (-2) with a command trait that reduces these points by 2. Same result with Carvers in play: 5 instead of 3 without Carvers.

Pirates normally have only the Evil Alignment (no effect) and a Slow Traveler trait (-2).



Pirates also don’t seem to care much about the TechnologyGap setting. If you start with Hissho in game, they can already spawn with the High Isotope Slugs at turn 5 as they would adopt the Isotope technology right from start from the Hissho.



Another point is the ShipDesignTemplate with ShipClassMediumPirates hulls. In Hulls.xml, there doesn’t exist any Medium, only Medium1 and Medium2.

If I replace the standard ShipClassSmall2Pirates hull with Medium or Medium1, no pirate will show up in the game.

In the last long session I played, I hadn’t noticed any different ships of them either but I could be mistaken. Maybe they need to obtain the other technologies to gain their medium hull. No idea yet.

If the medium ships can’t show up, the Crusade phase would theoretically never happen.





I think an elegant solution to weaken pirates with their cheating trait adoption is to replace their Slow Traveler trait with an Optimized Hull trait type that lowers the tonnage by 20%: replacing the pirate trait TraitFleet01Alt2 with TraitFleet05Alt2.

Pirate ship designs – at beginning at least – seems only filled with weapons and no defense stuff what normally makes them look pretty strong. With the reduced tonnage, they will look like to have primitive weapons then. I think it also sounds plausible that they need the cargo space for their booty and rum.



I’ve also replaced the standard ShipClassSmall2Pirates hull with the ShipClassSmall1Pirates one, the explorer type with +1 speed bonus and no weapon module tonnage bonus. Pirates usually favor fast and less powerful ships. I don’t really mind how fast they are but only 2 parsecs is way too silly slow.

Maybe all these tweaks together with those of my last post should be finally enough to make them more enjoyable. I don’t want to turn them into a fleet of escape pods either.

My main problem right now is that I can't trace AffinityPirates anywhere, I just do not know what it does.

It can easily steal other races traits and use those or even other players affinities... these really are something I do want to know because it's last step for me doing own races.



About TechnologyGap, I don't know whether I explained it poorly:

Basically: If (Techlevel) + (Techgab) => next seriousness level then pirates fleets gets bigger and better.

they can appreantly use any items which fills that slot and what they just can stuff to their ships.





To that ship thing: 10 points! you just noticed bug in coding:

can you try following change:

[code]













[/code]



likewise you should replace all ShipClassMediumPirates with ShipClassMedium1Pirates (otherway works too but this looks better)





Can you also try following change:

PercentShipPerFleet is for all fleets between 0.1 and 0.8.

This "AffinityMappingPirates" only gives technology-package "TechPlayerStart" what every other faction gets too (colonizing terran planets, etc.) and following:



[CODE] [/CODE]



There is no word about special traits, like Big Fleets of the Carvers, only the ship hulls.

The traits they should normally only get are those defined in Factions.xml:



[CODE] [/CODE]



What TraitFleet01Alt2 does is defined in EmpiresTraitsDescriptors.xml:

[CODE]



TargetProperty="Speed" Value="-2" OperationType="Addition" Path="ClassEmpire//ClassShip"/>

[/CODE]



Like I mentioned, I've already tested this ShipClassMedium1Pirates hull, and no ship ever appeared in the first 20 turns. Maybe I did something wrong while adding the extra space in the ASCII code. Hex-editing is so uncomfortable. I do another test later before I give up with those medium hulls. ShipClassSmall1Pirates, the explorer hull, works at least fine.



The pirate technology is still too obscure to me and very time consuming to track.

Technology gap is supposed to be a delay, isn't it?



E.g.: if any faction researched technology #3 aka. TechnologyLevel=3, Pirates will get technology #2 with TechnologyGap=1, correct? If not, show a clear example, please.



What I still don't understand: if different factions now research several different technologies at same time. Which technology do the Pirates actually adopt then?

For example: 4 factions research a different technology #2 after game start. Will pirates benefit from all different technologies later then? So they get basically 4 new technologies at same time whenever their TechnologyGap hops onto the next level?



Let's see if I release something about pirates later. I've already included my own colors and own admin/corp ability tweaks too in my sharedassets17.assets. These hex-edit mods aren't very comfortable for other users to use if you can't choose single desired changes. Also, if the devs keep updating the game every day, updating the whole sharedassets17.assets by hex-editing gets annoying. Hello open xml file structure, hello mod tools?!

Jarus wrote:
Hello open xml file structure, hello mod tools?!

Hello soon.

This "AffinityMappingPirates" only gives technology-package "TechPlayerStart" what every other faction gets too (colonizing terran planets, etc.) and following:

uhm, it does more, I just really can't trace it. Basically for example SowersAffinity should cause that -x% food +x% from food to production.



In some cases it's easily understandable and tracable:

* Sophons are inbuild in taxes

* UE is inbuild in taxes

* Locust system is easily findable

* "what ever that warrior race was" is in combat formulas



in some cases I just can't trace it:

* Sowers, god only knows where they are

* Amoebas, I suspect technology but don't know



I have studied what you have pasted and actually told how to edit those.. but honestly those don't tell anything about Affinity and how it really works

Do following search with notepad++: AffinityTerran, show all cases . Thats the stuff what I'm right now finding and editing, trying to figure out how it works and why.



Before I can be sure of that I just can't tell how AffinityPirate works.



You know, randomaffinity isn't declared anywhere and yet it can be anything... same can easily happen with pirates.



for the example you asked



*example time* (my examples can be quite crazy then)



Imagine that you are selling 5 different bags of fruits, first has 1-2 apples, second has 2-3 apples, third has 2-3 apples and 1 orange, fourth has 2-3 apples 2 oranges, fifth has watermelon



Now you have set following price for products:

Person gets bag 1 unless he pays as much as you have paid for those fruits and then some extra

same for bag 2 and so on



Buyer never knows what species those fruits are or what they look like, instead they know that they get fruits what you are selling.



Buys does know that the more longer time Seller is working the better quality fruits he is selling



*/example*



Thats basically what I have tried to say



Once again I though have to wonder, Davea is here way before me but doesn't want to tell these but leaves it to me

davea wrote:
Personally, I turned off pirates within a few days of buying the game and never turned them back on. If your changes give a small difficulty, without wide variability, then I would be happy to turn them back on.

My feelings exactly !! I've got Pirates turned off now and enjoying the game much more.

I'll keep an eye on this mod & hopefully it will fix the problems with pirates so I can turn them back on.