First impression: Pirates are tough!

First impression: Pirates are tough! (Full Version)

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RichM -> First impression: Pirates are tough! (6/5/2015 1:17:46 PM)
So, I'm playing a custom game as my first. Everyone's starting in the pre-warp era. Since I know nothing about the game I've got everything automated and am blindly taking all advice from my advisers. At first they advised me to pay the pirates for protection, but as soon as I cranked out a few military ships, they advised me to end that arrangement. I now have 3 colonies, and I'm finding that the pirate ships are individually extremely powerful. They are taking out 5 of my best ships with any one of theirs, so it looks like they have significantly higher tech than I have. Two different pirate factions have fleets of 8 or so ships at each of my outer colonies, and I don't see how I can protect those against that. Do pirates start out with a lot of high tech that I can overcome eventually? How long should I be paying them off? My advisers gave me bad advice right?

mordachai -> RE: First impression: Pirates are tough! (6/5/2015 1:38:53 PM)
I play custom games and set them to low/rare, far away, and bribe them liberally. I only ever go after them mid game when I can kick the hell out of them, but even then then can become spread like a cancer through your empire (or on worlds you take from an AI enemy), and can be nigh impossible to eradicate. Bribe early & often (don't renege until you're ready to take them on - they will come after you for retribution), and then hunt them down when you're ready (you'll probably need to change troop management to manual so you can raise enough troops everywhere you're infected to fight them off - and that takes money, time, patience).

RichM -> RE: First impression: Pirates are tough! (6/5/2015 1:47:29 PM)
Hmm, so pirate eradication is more of a mid-game thing. I suspected as much, thanks.

mordachai -> RE: First impression: Pirates are tough! (6/5/2015 3:34:51 PM)
Just my 2c. Others may have other approaches.

RemoteLeg -> RE: First impression: Pirates are tough! (6/5/2015 4:15:20 PM)
Mordachai is right. The pirates start with better tech than you (they even get warp drives when you start the universe in the pre-warp era) and there is no way you can beat them early in the game. Pay them off. However they don't spend much on research, so you will eventually be able to beat them once you tech-up a bit. Also, your advisers tell you to break the protection agreement way too early. Just ignore them and break it when you're ready. Every time you see pirate ships examine them closely to see whether you're ready to take them on. I particularly look at the firepower of their ships - if it says their frigate has a firepower of 180 and your best frigate has a firepower of 40, you're not ready. Be patient.

Kaien -> RE: First impression: Pirates are tough! (6/5/2015 5:07:49 PM)
I start too. So maybe I do somes mistakes. For pirate, I pay the strongest/closest, and I dont care about the others. If I need, I pay for defend my world. When I see a ship, I try to attack 5 vs 1. I send some spy for techno, and I try to capture some good pirates's ships alone for stole techno. But even with a agressive breed, often, I lost half of my fights and I stop to try to attack. I hope be stronger after and have a second round.

Radishgast -> RE: First impression: Pirates are tough! (6/5/2015 5:59:54 PM)
I'm glad I'm not the only one who likes to set pirates to week/few/far away. :P It's always a supreme challenge for me to survive harder pirate settings early on. I should probably push myself, but I enjoy the build-up of the early game the most, and having pirates zooming around ruining my economy and blowing up all my outlying colonies is rough.

Bingeling -> RE: First impression: Pirates are tough! (6/5/2015 6:08:11 PM)
The pre-warp setting (form the Shadows expansion) is based on all the races having been nuked back to the stone age (or similar), but that some remained in space and became pirates. This means that as the empires are getting into space, the pirates have been there the whole time. They are more advanced but research way more slowly. So as time goes by, the upper hand shifts from pirates to empires. The best way to fight pirates is to take down their bases. If they got no base within range, they won't bother you. This may not be so easy to achieve, though, depending on your settings and specific situation. The ships you would need to defend 3 colony system from pirate attacks, can probably quite easily destroy the pirate base. It is easier to handle the pirates in a cheap research normal game, than in a slow research extreme game. If you expand too fast without control of the pirates (and no protection deals) your are in for some pain and colonies infested by pirates. If you pay lots in protection, you feed the pirates with money they can use to build their own strength.

Ashery -> RE: First impression: Pirates are tough! (6/5/2015 6:40:24 PM)
There are also other factors at play here. The frequency and size of independent colonies, for instance, will greatly influence how strong pirates are able to get. It's also possible that those powerful ships haven't been built by the actual AI. In the exploration phase of my previous game, I managed to find three end game ships in ruins. And that's with the story events turned off. The first one was only size 725 with 280 firepower; the last two were each over 1100. And if a pirate faction happens to get hold of one of those massive ships?

RichM -> RE: First impression: Pirates are tough! (6/5/2015 7:30:24 PM)
The pirate ships that were destroying my military were of a type commonly used by them. Some kind of cruiser that could kill my destroyers with 4 or 5 hits, while my ships weren't doing much damage at all. In this case it wasn't some lucky capital ship they found. I think it's just really early in the game and the pirates start with a boost.

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