What controls the pirate threat level? (and attack target)

from Sins Forums
Hi,

This is probably adressed somewhere, but a search for "pirate threat level" returned something like 23 pages of stuff, and nothing on the first 3 pages was relevant, so I'm going to just post again.

What specifically controls the pirate threat level?  And which planet they attack.

I'm interested in strategies that involve sending high level pirate raids against my opponent.


There's obviously more to it than the size of the bounty. Because placing rediculous amounts of bounty on the enemy not raise the threat level.

So if sending pirates against the enemy is a critical part of my strategy, what should I be doing to take more control of the threat level and intentionally make it higher?  As well as making sure the pirates attack a location that will force my enemy to respond.

What i'm looking for:  If I'm going to build a strategy around pirates, what do i need to do to magnify their impact on the game?




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Reply #1 from Sins Forums Top
The threat level describes how much threat the pirates are TO YOU. It's a mix of how much bounty is out there against you compared to other players, and time to their next launch. I think it moves up and down fairly slowly, but am not sure.
As well as making sure the pirates attack a location that will force my enemy to respond.
Pirates select their target randomly, so I don't think you can actually do a whole lot about this.

Here's *some* thoughts on how to magnify their impact. I'm sure there's a lot more.
- Ensure your planets have reasonable turret defenses. Remember that if you are in a bounty-war, the other players will start looking at YOU as a fund-raiser too.
- Start saving cash to drop on bounty just before they launch. Throw in a lot more than increments of 250 - pound it to them so more pirate vessels will launch.
- Use scouts or other observation mechanisms to determine where the pirates are heading.
- Time your own fleet so you're attacking the target player when the pirates are arriving too. The pirates will distract them while you go for the pirate's throat.
- Try to have a capship in the area where they're arriving. You get a lot of experience just from being there when the pirates are destroyed, particularly if the target player doesn't have a capship in the area.
- Follow their siege ships in. They draw turret fire like mad, and if you can take out the turrets that are targeting them, you can actually get them to kill the planet for you.

-- Retro

Sins of a Solar Empire II
Reply #3 from Sins Forums Top
The pirate threat level is normally based on bounty + how powerful you are. For instance, let's say you somehow start the game with an entire fleet. You'll likely be at Severe before anything really happens.
Reply #5 from Sins Forums Top
Yes, if you either mod it in or create a map yourself with your own starting conditions.

"Bartender, I'll have a capital ship, please. Wait - make it a double!"

-- Retro
Reply #6 from Sins Forums Top
There are 3 modifiers in gameplay.constants file that increase the number of pirates:
strengthPerOwnedPlanet .10
strengthPerCargoShip .0025
strengthPerBounty .00003
This suggests that the pirate's power is based mostly on the size of the empires in the galaxy, and partly on the strength of your trade network. While the bounty seems small, keep in mind that it is added in chunks of 250/500, so it does add up pretty quick.
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Reply #7 from Sins Forums Top
Good find, but looking at that file, it looks like that statistic also governs the DISTRIBUTION of the pirate fleet's make-up (i.e. percentage of Kodiaks vs. Scouts).
I also found this under the pirate attack definition:
minSupply 1
maxSupply 220

...which leads me to believe that supply drives the pirate fleet size.

I couldn't find something that tells exactly how much pirate supply is produced from bounty, trade, and number of planets held. But I would suspect that bounty has a big impact on this stat.

-- Retro
Reply #8 from Sins Forums Top
Just convert those decimals to percentages, and you have a pretty good idea for how it works. When the pirates are at 10% they'd only send 22 supply worth of ships. When they are at 100% they send the full 220 strength of ships. In addition, at every "checkpoint" the fleet makeup changes according to how the randomizer is set.

I'm not sure how pirate strength changes based on the number of players in the game. When you start a 10 player match there are 10 home worlds owned, but the pirates are not at full strength.

I heard from other people that you can not set the maximum pirate supply over 300 without crashing the game.
Reply #9 from Sins Forums Top
I'm not sure how pirate strength changes based on the number of players in the game. When you start a 10 player match there are 10 home worlds owned, but the pirates are not at full strength.
I'm thinking it's directly based on the empiresize of the player(s) they choose to attack.

-- Retro
Reply #10 from Sins Forums Top
Well there's also this bit from the Gameplay constants:


raidStrengthThreshold:0 0
raidStrengthThreshold:1 .25
raidStrengthThreshold:2 .45
raidStrengthThreshold:3 .7
raidStrengthThreshold:4 .9


I'm strongly inclined to think that the "Threat Level" is a global thing, and does not vary depending on whose looking at it, or who they are attacking. First of all, that would be a very silly game design decision IMO.

And second of all, I made 2 player map with galaxy forge, one side had 13 planets each with trade ports, the other side had 1 planet with a trade port. With pirate base in the middle. I loaded up the map from both sides. And the threat level right at the start of the game was "Elevated" against both teams. That is the third threat level, which means it has passed "raidStrengthThreshold:2". Since there were 15 ownded planets, all of which had trade ports... this suggests that the translation from this:


strengthPerOwnedPlanet .10
strengthPerCargoShip .0025
strengthPerBounty .00003


into an actual raidstrength to be compared witht he threshold table is not simple arithmetic, there are other processes going on. I think discovering those processes is going to be very difficult, unless we get help from the people who made them.

I'm willing to call this case closed, satisfied with the knowledge that raid strength is primairly determined globally by primariy by planets owned, secondarily but # of cargo ships, and tertiarily by bounty.

Given pirate behavior, and their fetish for getting stronger when there are more trade ships, it seems like Pirates are best used to harass people who are relying heavily on trade. Could be very useful.... but to understand how useful, or how to make them most useful, we have to understand precisely how trade works, and exactly what trade ships are doing, and what happens when they get blown up...

moving on to that thread. :)

The next step is revisiting how to predict pirate raid targets.