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Thrake -> RE: Pirates: worthless rabble? (6/7/2014 4:03:19 PM)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: loki100
quote:
ORIGINAL: Thrake
I bought the game recently and so far so good, but for one thing: pirates. I just don't understand how I'm meant to deal with them.
In my first games, I avoided any deals with them. I did through money to local bullies to be safe but that was it. Admitedly, throwing money felt too easy, so I stopped that in next attempts and experienced the first escalates in violence; more destruction means more expensive bribes, more raids,... I did get spanked more than enough but it felt more interesting than a cheap bribe to get out of troubles, especially since AI Empires look quite pacifist on average.
Then, I found out that only pirates "protecting" me would accept defense missions. I thought it would make it even more interesting with aan added layer of diplomacy and treachery, so I tried being in good terms with a local mercenary group to combine our efforts to fight off the local rabbles. After several attemps, I'm quite disapointed. Defense missions look a bit weird. AI accepts, sometimes there are no ships for a while, sometimes they disapear, the colony is under attack while no ship is around. Then AI sends some more ships and get paids in the end. It helps I guess, though I was expecting at least a continued protection. Attack missions are always accepted, but AI almost never seem to actually send a fleet, even with "highly contested" missions. So, they don't get paid, but the job is never done either while one might expect at least an attempt (yet there were interesting possibilities, as timing another attack to take back a station while pirate fight one another). I tried setting up an attack 5 times on a row on the very same base, each time accepted by different pirate factions yet not a single attack has been sent.
Overall, pirates are really an interesting concept, but I'm not sure wether I'm missing something about them, or wether it is the AI that might not be artificial enough (take my money and loot the bloody base of your sworn rival!!!), and perhaps not intelligent enough as well.
So, am I missing something? Any hints on how to effectively interact with pirates?
in general, like internet trolls and gremlins, don't feed the pirates.
Now you will early game have to pay at least one, maybe more, faction to leave you alone long enough to become established. But don't pay them for info or missions, they will turn your cash into ships and cause you more trouble.
Once you have a decently protected homeworld, the first hyper drive (so you can motor around your own star system) and a reasonable fleet (say 6-8), start stopping your protection payments. You should be strong enough to fend them off even if they plague you as you expand. Once you get a couple of ancient capital ships to add to your own fleet go hunting them.
Blowing up their bases is both fun and good for your reputation.
I like them as they are in the game, there are a major source of irritation and interaction in the early game phase before you have your own empire established and are feuding with other empires.
Sure. That's a way to deal with them, as one might pick an aggressive or a more diplomatic approach. Given the game gives me possibilities to interact and supposedly use to my advantage pirates, I thought giving a try to this strategy could have been interesting.
Overall though, going for slow teching settings and settings in favor of pirates, I use to find that they get the capital ships, or most of those before I do. Similarly, independant planets are often plagued, if not under they control by the time I get the opportunity to colonize it. I could ease the settings, but I felt it offered an interesting scenario as well as a nice challenge.
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