Late-Game Pirates - Game Breakers

Most people agree with you. Which is why most people play with them off. Before diplomacy they were too weak and now they are too strong. They are getting weaker with every patch, so maybe one day we'll finally have pirates that are "just right".

Yes, this is a big issue. Currently working with devs in fixing the issue in the beta patch.

oh, and one more thing.  I am allies with the two remaining players.  they will eventually turn on me.  But right now there are no bids in the pirate menu.  It is zero!!  and yet, I am listed as the target they will go to by default unless I bid to send them to my allies and that is not my style.  Probably broken.

That's, unfortunately, the way the pirates work.  They will go after people who have miniscule or zero bounty, and the only way to redirect them is to make someone else have slightly more bounty.  I requested long ago a system where pirate raids are sporadic rather than periodic, and their attacks are entirely based on current bounty (ie, will not attack unless bounty reaches a minimum threshold, but will gladly attack multiple players if both satisfy).

but when the bounty is zero????  who attacks for free???

I love that idea Darvin, I really hope the devs take notice of that one.

I've brought it up a few times before, but never gotten a dev response on the matter.  I suspect such a change is infeasible at this point.

The pirates have to be operating at a substantial loss to begin with.  They're losing dozens of frigates on each sortie.  Even presuming pirate units cost half as much as their TEC equivalents, you're still looking at 5k-10k for a medium-sized raid.  Bounty almost never goes that high to begin with!

This would be a massive improvement over the current system.

good point.

Indeed. Thankfully with the current beta patch, things have been improved on a lot regarding pirates. They're nowhere near as overpowered as they are in the current "vanilla" version of Diplomacy.

As Advent I've had raids break through fully upgraded Starbases that had full tactical slot support, including Augmented Defense Grid.  Each one of their ships becomes stronger than a fully upgraded capital ship.  As for their base, only a TEC's Novalith stands a chance in a game.  Otherwise you need a serious Advent ball to clear the defenders, and even then you'll take casualties, and will want to wait outside the visible gravity well while bombers suicide against the super flak of pirate turrets.

with the beta?

I didn't get the feeling TC was referring to the beta.  I haven't had the chance to try the beta yet, as I have a saved 2v2 to finish first before loading it (and thus invalidating all my saves).  I hear they are weaker in the beta, though some think the initial raids are still a bit strong and that 250 credit bounty might swing the entire game.  I hope so, as it would be fun to turn them back on without it ending in someone getting steamrolled by them.

Pirates as they are in Sins just seem intrusive without any real purpose. To me anyways. Yes, I understand their use as a club with which to secretly harass opponents; I would rather harass the opponents myself!

In the Civ series Barbarians provided a bit of combat during buildout which was otherwise deader than mud. They were mostly gone by later stages of the game.

I would suggest just make them trash mobs, no bounties, unpredictable strikes. Good for getting a level maybe two on new cap ships. No more than that. Whoever heard of pirates with a home base, much less a home world? A home world with a sophisticated naval yard? Pirates by their very nature are disorganized, mean drunks who are always drunk! Port Royal was an exception, but it got its start as a privateer port only later going full pirate when letters of marque ceased to be available.

Just gen the pleasant revised drunken pirates in some random place on the map. Really their primary interest ought to be unarmed trade or refinery ships, but if there are none nearby probably they need to take their shoddy ragtag fleets in to planetary space and demand ransom from undefended worlds. That would be a good place for bounty, change it to ransom!

I'm going to play with them off.

Actually, something cool with the pirates happened to me today. I had been just assaulted by the pirates when an AI fleet showed up at the same planet. at first the pirates seemed content to leave, but then i figured I'd throw some bounty at that AI seeing as how they were my biggest competitor. the pirates stopped and defended my world. Its possible they would have done that anyhow, but at the time they seemed to ignore the AI's ships.

On the other hand, the pirates totally decimated my early fleet and at a planet i had 2 factories at and in the end had a repair station (but by then i had no frigates left). Look, I have this feeling that people who suck, like me, are going to have some very big problems with the pirates. I also think that the  'skilled' players might think the pirates are too easy. I feel this will be an issue because with the early game either the pirates will be too strong or too weak, you cant have it be just right. I almost think that pirate intensity should be a game option. maybe raid frequency too. both these settings would allow people to put it in the just right spot while keeping the pirates on and providing an extra challenge.

The way pirates are now, they become the strongest faction in the game.  And, their stat scaling accrues too fast for players to keep up realistically without compromising their game and inviting defeat from anything else.  I hear the next patch will weaken them a bit, which would be nice.  I'd like to turn them back on to add a bit of uncertainty to games, but it just doesn't work out that way in standard Diplomacy.  Once I saw a standard raid obliterate a fully upgraded Advent starbase with 45 tactical slots filled to the brim with upgraded structures I just kept them off from that point on.  It also sucks in team games when the TEC faction can boom credits and send unstoppable juggernaut waves against opponents. 

Hi guys, I just bought the game after watching some "Let's Play"s, been interested in it for a while but there was always another game I'd just happened to have spent some cash on. I can see myself putting some hourage into Sins though, maybe not as much as I poured into MoO2 over the years but I'll defo be playing a fair bit!

Anyway, an odd place for an introduction so back to the topic!

I've only played a few games so far, but my last one was a 3 player FFA with all settings normal, Pirates Active. After about 2 hours or so me and one of the AI's were trying to out-Bounty each other every time the Pirate Riad counter reached zero, it was a SERIOUS drain on my resources, not to mention the fact that the Pirates seem to field quite large fleets compared to what I was able to produce!

It might just be my inexperience but it seemed to me that the longer the game went on the more rediculously difficult it would be to stop Pirates killing you, maintaining a higher bounty than the one on your head AND actively engaging an enemy.

Maybe if the game could make it so the Pirates were more of a nuisance than a total threat to your Empire. By that I mean a nuisance thats easy to clean up but if left unchecked WILL cause you serious troubles.

What version of the game do you have? The pirate vary a bit between versions so we can give more specific advice if we know what it is.

The pirates certainly can get quite powerful in Diplomacy, which is why many player play with them off, and that's the standard option for online play as well. Especially while you are still learning the game its no dishonor to do the same.

For the first few pirate raids, its probably better not to put up bounty. A capitalship and some frigates support by some repair bay or an unupgraded starbase can take out a pirate raid easily, so its only a matter of predicting which planet the raid will attack. They can also be a good source of capitalship exp.

With the most recent version of Diplomacy, the pirates are a non-issue in large FFA games because the AI will now bid against each other, which makes it rather unlikely they will bid up against you. Also the pirate raids now somewhat correspond with the amount of bounty offered, so even late game 500 credits of bounty will spawn far fewer ships than 5000, another reason why its often better to stay out of bounty wars.

Also FYI, unless you like long epic games, fast or faster settings are used by most players (I personally only exclude diplomacy rate), and quick start is also the norm for almost everyone.

Definitely upgrade to v1.2 as soon as you can.  They are quite manageable now.  They don't even deploy siege frigates or heavy cruisers for the first hour of gameplay.  Also keep in mind that the pirates are rather dumb about the path they take.  If you have an asteroid near their base, just fortify it to the brim and toss on a starbase.  With v1.2 you'll bust them up every time. They also have a maximum upgrade level now.  So no ships with 5,000hp, 50 armor(with super secret pirate modifiers that makes it behave like 150 armor), and 100 attack power.

If you want to easily bleed off credits from bounty wars, build a hangar at the back of your fortification line.  The strikecraft will deplete bounty as they get destroyed.

When it comes to settings, I usually pick 'faster' for income and research time, along with Quick Start. 

Setting Pirate behaviour needs to be added please. I'd like them to attack randomly, but it'd be great if they had their own goals to create some diversity.

Pirates were so much of a problem I never really played Diplomacy until the update, but I have been enjoying it now that 1.2 came out. I think they are gettng more ships based on how much money that particular base takes in? I am playing Huge Multistar Random map and the "lesser" stars had easier-to-take-over pirate bases. This morning I managed to take out a big one by throwing a few walls of ships in there and then setting up a series of planets and starbases (I am playing TEC this time) to funnel ships into the gravity well as they got destroyed. It was a good zerg-rush strategy. Actually, I had more fun taking out the Pirate base than any of the other AI players.