Playing as pirate not as fun as expected :(

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Playing as pirate not as fun as expected :( - 8/1/2013 4:05:00 PM

mSterian

Posts: 155
Joined: 7/25/2013
Status: offline

Hi guys.
I've started playing as pirate... and I have some problems understanding a few mechanics.

1.Colony influence:
As i've noticed, a big emphasis is made on getting facilities set up on colonies as fast as possible. Meaning hidden base and fortress. The problem here is that pirates compete so much over the same colony sometimes, and building those facilities take so much time, that even if you manage to get a base/fortres, it most certainly gets destroyed in raids and it always happens to me that the colony eventually reaches a too high population. When that happens, I am unable to gain enough influence over it to build a facility anymore. I'm usually ending up with no more colonies to influence because they've grown too big. All that's left then is to fight other pirates. This is quite boring to be honest. Pirates haven't enough depth as it is. Only colony interaction remaining now is Protection Arrangements and missions. Is there something I'm missing. Can I benefit from a 3.5+ Bilion pop colony somehow other than raiding it? What else is there to do other than fighting other pirates at this point?

2.Colonization
I've noticed the advisor NEVER suggests for me to colonize a planet, even if I have a coloni ship already built (captured or found). Any reason for that? Is it because I can't get taxes from it? Is it because I open my own budget to raiding?(if pirates raid my colony). As far as I know, though I've never been able to, when you build a criminal network (for an insane amount of money mind you) on a colony, it actually makes it yours as if you colonized it yourself.
So I ask you this: if, as a pirate, I'm supposed to get colonies with Criminal Networks facilities, WHY THE HELL wouldn't I want to colonize planets when I get that posibility?

3.Reputation:
I've seen indication here and there that I gain reputation. Either with a specific faction(be it pirate or empire), either a global type of reputation. I'm wondering what the hell is the use of that. There is only 1 thing I can think of: the likelihood of getting a protection/truce agreement. Is that all it is to it? Any other importance it might have?
I'm also a bit confused when I have to decide if to report the intercepted messages I get.
You know, it's when a popup screen appears telling you that you have uncovered the fact that someone made a contract with pirate to attack another pirate or empire. I find it a bit hard to calculate my gains for the 2 options: 1. Reveal my discovery to the attacked faction ; 2. Keep information to myself.
Anyone care to elaborate on this?

4. Diplomacy:
Any strategy tips on diplomacy?
Like.... when to suggest truces with pirates, and when to ask for protection agreements and when not. Stuff like that?
And, even more important, what kind of relations should I strive for as relations with the other factions.
Should I try to get an empire to like me by refraining from raiding them. Would that benefit me in any way other than have an enemy less? Should I ally with weaker pirates or with stronger pirates? Any depth as far as diplomacy goes when playing as pirate that I'm not aware of maybe?

5. Pirate mission:
To be honest, these ones seem very stupid as far as bidding go.
First of all for attack missions, it's stupid to allow the lowest bidder to get the mission. It should have a fixed value, and given to the player that has the highest Firepower available for the mission. I noticed the mission box tells you how many ships/firepower you have available.
The same for defense missions. It should pay you per month relative to the firepower assigned to protect the target.
Also, shouldn't the relation/reputation with the empire oferring the mission count for something? As I said above, relation/reputation at this point seems rather useless.

This is all for now. Frankly, I find that playing as a pirate is a bit shallow. I think more mechanics should be developed and the ones present improved. It's just not that fun playing as a pirate.

Any insights?

Post #: 1

RE: Playing as pirate not as fun as expected :( - 8/1/2013 11:01:41 PM

Thourion

Posts: 2
Joined: 7/23/2013
Status: offline

Im new to the game, so dont take my words as insights or whatever, but just as personal opinions.

1. Colony influence:
Well with my little experience on this matter, i usually only go for planets with the following in mind:
a. Are they independent?
b. Am i close to them?
c. Are there any pirate bases around?

From there i set my plan. As you already know indy planets are easier to approach, closer planets as well because it takes shorter time to move forces for raiding and/or protecting the planet from other pirate raids. Which brings us to point c. where the count of pirates in the area, as well as their strength compare to mine, is the thing to look for.

In the end, if i do good in getting my influence/money up accepting smuggling and defend missions from them, where like i said i already plan to have a force there anyway, and of course along with gaining money from raiding them myself heh. Then everything goes well, i build the bases fortess network etc, and maybe capture a pirate ship along the way when im defending it.

So in general pirates are about fighting, but you can do decent with just smuggling, although you still need military force to protect your mining stations etc.

2. Colonization:
Well, a new planet will only get you negative income by itself, so basically you loose money. Then you need star ports, defenses and all the normal stuff, which need maintenance money, and as you said it gets raided so you loose more stuff.
So yeah at the initial period of your game, i dont think its a good idea to go that way. Maybe later on if it fits your budget to sustain it until it turns profitable, and for a planet thats somewhere safe, like in a distant corner, or something which suits your starplan anyway.

3. Reputation:
Usually when a message like that pops, i open the diplomacy screen to see my relation with the parties involved, and act accordingly. For example to give a boost to the empire i want to please or be in good terms with.
Kepping the info for yourself, i dont think it does something, except maybe prevents the relationship drop of the 2 parties. (That could have some purpose, especially in empire/empire situation)

4. Diplomacy:
I am always offering truce to pirates, or accept theirs. Theres no point in geting in fights, when you dont have the military capacity to go aggresive.
After you get strong, we got a different story. Especially if the other faction is weak.

Protection agreements, usually for me, work just right from the first contact with a Race. I offer it immediatly.
If for some reason they dont accept, i go and harass/raid a bit, and reoffer again.
And if i see that i have way more firepower than them, i first cancel the initiate agreement (if already had one), and reinitiate it a bit later. It seems to raise the price that way, probably because the race sees your stronger force.

As for the last part, i dont think you can get that much friendly with another race. Only thing you can get is what you said "an enemy less", maybe for a period until you can handle yourself better. I suggest you keep raiding though as the income is good, (especially as a Raider).

5. Pirate mission:
As far as the pirate missions, and that goes only for the defense/attack missions, because smuggling is free for all. I believe that the system is just fine, since that way the game prevents you or any other PC pirate faction, to get all the money, and not to mention BIG money.
With this bidding in effect, you get the chance to do a mission independent of your strength. As well in the case you think the reward is not good enough for your trouble, the lower biding PC faction gets that job.
So no strength monopoly here.

Now for the last part im not sure. In the case where you play a normal empire, game has an option to offer Pirate missions only to pirates you trust (meaning decent relations from what i get).
I dont know if that also can take effect for the computer empires, when you play as a pirate.

Hope i helped a bit, although im sure a more experienced player will "light" us more both

< Message edited by Thourion -- 8/1/2013 11:05:42 PM >

(in reply to mSterian)

Post #: 2

RE: Playing as pirate not as fun as expected :( - 8/2/2013 5:11:58 AM

flight2q

Posts: 18
Joined: 7/18/2013
Status: offline

5. It seems that some computer empires/independents are set to offer defense missions to anyone. So, if you are a pirate on bad terms with them, you can make sure you win all bids for their defense missions. It will worsen your relationship with them when you raid again, but so what.

4. If you have a truce with some pirates, and take a defense mission, they will go right through your forces and raid!

[2. You don't have the population to colonize using a captured ship. You need to build the Criminal Network before colonization gets unlocked.]

< Message edited by flight2q -- 8/2/2013 10:12:35 AM >

(in reply to Thourion)

Post #: 3

RE: Playing as pirate not as fun as expected :( - 8/2/2013 7:32:46 AM

Canute0

Posts: 616
Joined: 4/30/2010
From: Germany
Status: offline

At first, you play as Pirate, you arn't an Empire you are a Pirate. You have totaly different goals then an empire. Other Empire arn't your enemys they are just cows or maybe wulfs . Your enemys are other pirates.

1. Sure other Pirates will destroy you base/fortress to reduce your influence on this planet. You are doing the same to their planets or not ? :-)
On short term you need to protect the valueable planets with some ships on patrol. But on long term you need to find the other pirate base and destroy/capture it. Only when the base is gone further attacks will stop.

2. You goal isn't to colonize other planets, sure it can be some usefule to have an own planet, but it isn't nessesary. Thats why the advisor don't do any colonizion by it own.

3. You are pirate, how bad can your repution be ? :-) Oh you wan't be a pirate with honor ? Ops sorry all honor got eaten by a sand slug.

4. You are a criminal, other empire wouldn't talk to you much anyway. Basicly you are at war with all other empires and there are no peacy possible until you or the other empire are destroyed. Diplomacy are just to get the protection fee, or to sell some discoverys when the empire got some cash left.
Diplomacy with other pirates are basicly the same, they never can be your friend, just neutral for a short part of their life.

5. Why do you think the bidding is stupid ? Did you ever hire workers to do something for you ? Didn't you ask some different workers how much they wan't and take the one with the lowest cost ? The bidding is the same.
When you loose the bidding for a protection mission, you should just go and raid that planet, at this way the other pirate don't get paided ! :-)

Some tips:
When you got an empire homeplanet close to you, go and raid it. Raise your influence to 100% with raids even when you don't get loot from it. Build base/fortress.
After you got the fortress build you have 2 options
1. stay there and keep the empire down. The homeplanet is a good income, even when the empire can't do anything else.
2. Leave the empire alone. the empire will grow up and can protect the homeplanet by itself and your Fortress too. But late the empire can cause you trouble when it become bigger.

- Build a Spaceport next to independet planets, so close as possible. I allways use Gas giants with Caslon+Hydrogen so i never got fuel problems with this base. Your protection fleet of this planet got a close refuel and repair point.

- Capture amd don't destroy ships if you can. Since your research isn't that good like an empire, you can gain tech at this way. You can get componets/resources from disasamble these ships and sometimes you can reveal other pirate bases.

- Keep your inteligence agents busy, do sabotage mission or do espioange mission whatever your agent prefer. But don't do risks. Later they can steal technology, destroy Defence bases or Spaceports and reveal locations from other pirates.

- Your resupply ship. not only a good forward resupply point, it is a 1 ship fleet, a Base buster special when you can refrofit and improve the design. Keep a Constrution ship close to the ship for repairs special when it is far away from your base.

(in reply to flight2q)

Post #: 4

RE: Playing as pirate not as fun as expected :( - 8/2/2013 9:42:36 AM

flight2q

Posts: 18
Joined: 7/18/2013
Status: offline

You make it sound easy, but the resources to do these various things don't come out of nowhere. Playing as a pirate is definitely the challenge mode for this game.

Scenario 1: You know of a standard empire. Not particularly close to you, but it's what you've got to work with. By the time you arrive they have a star base set up, but no completed research stations yet. You deal with the star base, are damaged, but carry off a raid. The empire is not interested in protection, but even if they accepted, you would need to devote all your resources to guarding the place, because if you leave them alone for a second they will build and cancel your agreement, and at 120k default research they will catch up fast if you let them. You manage to come back with enough forces to make another successful raid, but your budget is in the red. The empire is now turtling their homeworld, just recruiting troops. You soon find you need to bring in some ships that are heavier on troops and around this time another pirate faction shows up to ruin your day.

Scenario 2: You know of one independent colony and you send your 4 starting escorts to it and raid it. You now have 18% control. Another pirate faction shows up. You were born with torpedos while these guys were born with missiles, so they have an edge, but they only sent 2 ships, so you are still okay. You send your beaten up ships home. You make some ships that are faster and heavier on shields to deal with your rival. You bring these on your next visit to the independent and by the time you arrive there is a third pirate faction now interested in this colony. It turns out these guys have gravitic weapons and your ships are terrible against them. At least now that you don't have a navy, you aren't running so much in the red. Your starting spy didn't have any easy mission, so you had kept him home as a counterspy. But now your gas mining station has been blown up anyway. So you send your spy out on a 77% steal tech mission and he gets captured.

Scenario 3: You are managing to do a little exploration and mine building without any great incidents in addition to developing influence at an independent colony. The independent is a moon circling a gas giant. Perfect! Things are really going your way. You deploy your resupply ship at the gas giant, and maybe even build a gas mine there. Everything is going so well you now have the funds to build a pirate base. You can almost sense the sweet smell of rum and parrots. But the independent has not a single troop on it, so all any other pirate faction needs to do is get one ship near the planet and boom they have a successful raid and destroy your base. And this happens over and over despite your throwing nearly all your naval forces into the defense of this planet.

(in reply to Canute0)

Post #: 5

RE: Playing as pirate not as fun as expected :( - 8/2/2013 11:41:42 AM

Canute0

Posts: 616
Joined: 4/30/2010
From: Germany
Status: offline

1.) You forget your resupply ship. A very strong warship. Get your resupply ship to the other homeworld system , form with the remain ships a fleet and follow the Resupply ship. Maybe let the Construction ship follow too.
At the system first deploy the Resupply ship at Gas giant with fuel gas, and let the other fleet refuel.
Got your resupply ship longer weapon range then the spaceport, set the stance of the Resupply ship at max weapon range, and let it kill the Spaceport.
When you don't got a longer weapon range, let the Resupply ship go point blank to the station, when the Spaceport are shooting back, let the remaining fleet join the fight.
So long the empire just got prewarp tech, you shouldn't have a problem.
After the Spaceport is gone, the homeworld is yours, start raiding to 100% influence, and you got enough cash income to build a base and fortress soon.
Protect the homeworld with the resupply and the fleet, when you got enough cash, build an own spaceport at a Gas Giant at the system or close by.

2.) Send Resupply ship and fleet to the colony. Raid it 1 time, maybe it got some Tech you can steal. Maybe raid it another time after you see the msg. that the colony is raided before is gone. But after this leave the Colony unraided so the population can grow up. Mosttimes you don't need to raid a colony to get to 100% because they don't got that much population like a homeworld. Only homeworld or very large colonies you need to raid after you notice your influence don't raise anymore.
Before you raid the first time, try to refuel your ship at the colony.
After you start to build the Base on the colony, you can either send the Resupply ship to another Colony if you know one, or the fleet. Reinforce the fleet with a few more ship at max. ship size.

3. Exploration is VERY important for anyone, Pirate or Empire. You should improve your Explorer with some extra Fuel cell and Engines ( i use 15 photon mostties) and extra reactor if the current design don't got enough energy for max. warpspeed. Build 5-10 Explorer at last, some people even build more.
My best tactik for exploration are, use 1 explorer to explore 1 sector, at this way you avoid to much useless travel and don't got to much micromangment.
You can find abandone ships and base, locations you can sell to empires (when they got cash left) and other indep. colonies and empires.

I don't build mining stations as pirate, they are to unsafe IMO. I improve my mining ships with extra mining engines + cargo hold and let them do the mining shop. They can't be raided or captured and they rarely got destroyed. 3 mining ships for 1 Gas mining ship.

But hey, try out different tactics, just use these as hints and tricks and explore your own way as Evil pirate !!! :-))

(in reply to flight2q)

Post #: 6

RE: Playing as pirate not as fun as expected :( - 8/2/2013 3:33:25 PM

mSterian

Posts: 155
Joined: 7/25/2013
Status: offline

@Canute:

2)Wait, I don't get it, you mean that even if my influence is capped to, f.e. 80% , I can still increase my influence through raiding?
I'm almost positive that if influence is capped (due to high pop) you can't get more influence. But I'd have to verify that again. Anyone can confirm?

3)It would be nice if I could automate my explorers to search for only what I'm interested in. Like, automate it to look for independent colonies, or automate it to look for abandoned ships, or a specific resource and let me know when it finds it, etc.

(in reply to Canute0)

Post #: 7

RE: Playing as pirate not as fun as expected :( - 8/2/2013 3:43:24 PM

Canute0

Posts: 616
Joined: 4/30/2010
From: Germany
Status: offline

quote:

2)Wait, I don't get it, you mean that even if my influence is capped to, f.e. 80% , I can still increase my influence through raiding?
I'm almost positive that if influence is capped (due to high pop) you can't get more influence. But I'd have to verify that again. Anyone can confirm?

right, thats why you should start to build the base first until you reached 100%. It happen to me that my raid was destroying the base i just start to build.
With raids you can raise your influence to 100% allways.

quote:

3)It would be nice if I could automate my explorers to search for only what I'm interested in. Like, automate it to look for independent colonies, or automate it to look for abandoned ships, or a specific resource and let me know when it finds it, etc.

Basicly thats what are the explorer are doing. You are geting popup windows when they found an abandon ship/base and ask you what they should do, except you disable all popup msg. or set at the politity that they allways should investigate abandon ship/bases.
You are geting a popup too, for ultra rare resources like Koribian Spice.
And you are geting a popup for discovering Indep. colonies.
But the Galaxie are big, and the explorer is so small and lonely :-) At the beginning you should have at last 5, better 9 (for each surrounding sector and the homesector if it isn't full explored). You can build even more after you can afford them.

(in reply to mSterian)

Post #: 8

RE: Playing as pirate not as fun as expected :( - 8/2/2013 4:24:21 PM

Plant

Posts: 418
Joined: 4/23/2013
Status: offline

Yes, the lack of interaction with other factions other than protection fee / ceasefire, can make playing as the pirates feel empty.

When you finally manage to get a working Criminal Network, you tend to start creating a black hole where former civilised planets used to be.

Also it seems a bit odd, but the best action to undertake when you quickly find a homeworld near you is simply to attack and raid it endlessly to the point that it'll never be spacefaring as it cannot build a spaceport.

1) Getting a Hidden Pirate Base to a Criminal Network could be said to be the major aim of any Pirate Faction. It is supposed to be difficult, and if all else fails, you can try taking over a lower population planet instead. Once you do of course, a new level of pirate gameplay opens up with troops and colonisation.

2) You don't have to follow advisor suggestions. or in this case, rely on them. Go out and colonise the worlds yourself. Pirates is supposed to be for players that have played a normal game by themselves and show should be able to make such decisions under their own initiative. Interesting that they don't advice on colonies though, there's probably a programming decision behind it.

5) I find the pirate attack and defence missions a bit iffy as well. Not sure what's the best way to go about the deign of them though.

(in reply to Canute0)

Post #: 9

RE: Playing as pirate not as fun as expected :( - 8/2/2013 7:05:54 PM

mSterian

Posts: 155
Joined: 7/25/2013
Status: offline

1) I've never gotten to use actual "troops" until now with pirates. Just pods/raid. Is the troop option like for normal empires, to CAPTURE the planet? Also, no one explained how a pirate-owned planet works. Is it like you're an empire and you get taxes from it, or you still just get income based on corruption?

2) I understand that I should start making such decisions myself. But what I loved most about this game is the dynamic and smart AI, from which I actually learned to play. Having the AI play for me taught me to play actually. Sure, the game still lacks thorough explanation of what exactly is going on and how. But having the AI play for me in the first couple of games helped me get through the learning curve a lot faster and more pleasantly. Also, if colonizing is a good idea sometimes, I'd like my enemies to try and do that too. But even more important about a smart AI that helps the player out is doing the math for you. Of course, playing the game yourself and taking decisions should be the reason for your victory/loss. But having to calculate/do the match on every ship/fleet/cost/time/etc is not very fun. And in this case, I don't even know how I should calculate the benefits of colonizing to be honest. If the AI would have known that, I wouldn't have had to come here to ask on the forums :)

5) There's actually A LOT that can be done with missions. Don't get me started on that. I think I'd have many ideas to make them more interesting, after which, of course, they'll have to be balanced out.
For example, being a mission offered by someone, the offering party should be a bit more intelligent of who to give the mission to. Cost is NOT everything. They want a mission and they want it done both cheap and effective. So here are some ideas
a) for DEFENSE mission they could pay you /month a sum multiplied by the firepower you have defending their colony. To prevent exploting this by having ships there NOT ACTUALLY DEFENDING, it could be made in such a way that if you accepted the mission, you assign a FLEET to defend the colony that would automatically cease control over their movement and stance. To regain control over the ships and stop getting payment for having them defend the colony, you would have to disband the ship you want freed, or disband to entire fleet. Also, as I assume, colonies have a budget, and they would only affort to pay for a certain ammount of firepower. You should be able to see that also in the mission offer.
Maybe this idea needs a bit more work but.. as you can see, I came up with it in like 10-20 minute of active thinking (+ some more passive/involuntary thinking while playing). I know this sounds complicated, but it would make such mission actually worth it. Honestly, how many of you still apply for defense missions? They are practically useless once you have 100k/year from trading.

b) I'm not sure how attack missions work atm, but the payment should be relative to the difficulty of the target. Like, ammount of firepower of the target, ammount of health/shields it has, and maybe even how well defended it is. Right now, you sometimes get missions to attack a mining station, for big bucks, which is usually very very fast and easy. Other times, you get mission to destroy a pirate base, with big firepower and health/shields, defended by an army of ships, for a cost that would hardly cover the loss of like 3 ships, when you in fact lose maybe 10-20. They could also refund you a portion of the ships lost while destroying the target.

I could come up with more ideas but I'd first like to hear from a matrix employee if such ideas have any chance of being adopted.

< Message edited by mSterian -- 8/2/2013 9:04:04 PM >

(in reply to Plant)

Post #: 10

RE: Playing as pirate not as fun as expected :( - 8/2/2013 9:35:10 PM

flight2q

Posts: 18
Joined: 7/18/2013
Status: offline

As long as this topic is all over the place in re pirating :)

a. I think the essential difference that makes pirating more difficult than a standard empire on default settings is that the pirates need a very early monetary growth to avoid being crushed by the weight of "Many" pirates. Perhaps it will come from exploration - if the explorers can find both of a standard empire and some salable locations - and provided the standard empire has funds. Or it can come from independent colonies, or from mining. But there's far from any guarantee that it will work out. Is that independent close by and not hotly contested and with fuel in system? Do you have mining, but somehow there are no smuggling contracts available, or none for anything you have? It's always precarious in the very early game for a pirate, while for a standard empire it's a guaranteed smooth ride at default settings. Standard empires have all kinds of ways to get ahead - population growth, research, troops conquering planets - for pirates, they need money and they need it fast.

1) Once you build the Criminal Network, it works for you like a normal planet. You collect taxes and can now build a colony ship at it.

2) You can watch the AI. But don't expect to duplicate the behavior. The AI is constantly watching and seems immediately aware of anything undefended.

b. Those attack-a-mine missions sound like milk runs, but more often than not I find that the station doesn't exist. It was already destroyed somehow or who knows. Now it's just an empty location in space with no way to fulfill the mission. The site is named after some moon/planet/whatever, but there's nothing there either.

c. It's much easier when playing as pirates to let the computer do near all the work. Just focus on ship designs or something. It goes much more smoothly when your ships show up at a target and it's often undefended. You will still find the computer wanting to build lots of bases and see them getting destroyed over and over though. There doesn't seem to be any solution to that other than spending an order of magnitude more resources on protection than what the base is worth. You really have to clear out an area to get a little pocket of temporary peace in the interior. You do of course get a research bonus while your bases are alive, so that's something.

(in reply to mSterian)

Post #: 11