Exploiting Shadows pirates

[Jeeves]

I am into the 5th year of my current Shadows game as a regular empire in classic age. Here are some observations.
1) Total payoff for peace with all pirate gangs costs less than facility maintenance once you are a military superpower, and even those furious at you for attacking their ships and bases will fear you enough to make peace.
2) If all your colonies are kept with active smuggling of any resource in shortage, you can get your spaceports built in a couple of years rather than three to five since their freighters actually move goods rather than running empty all over the map.
3) If you have a spaceport completed and plenty of troops at a colony, you can entice the pirates to start a facility at your colony. The corruption hit is low. Then bring in your fleet of troop ships and land all your spare troops at that colony. Once they are all landed spend a day or so destroying the pirate base, training tons of troops and removing all pirate influence. Load up your troop sips and leave the system. Rinse and repeat.
4) Of course if a pirate gang is in another empire's territory, you can get some reputation from destroying their base, or alternatively capture it and sell it to the AI empire, Once all of their mines have been captured and their constructor destroyed, a new gang forms which will be eager to trade with you for a very low fee with no history of diplomatic relations.
5) When a gang disbands, it often leaves behind a few mining ships, which you can spot if you have ultra long range scanner equipped explorers deployed throughout the map. Just move to ship with the nearest explorer, claim it and return to surveillance duty.
6) Gangs will join if you do simultaneous attacks on them in the same region, just see to it that one attacker gets to target much sooner than the others.

Lonnie Courtney Clay

[Kayoz]

ORIGINAL: Jeeves
1) Total payoff for peace with all pirate gangs costs less than facility maintenance once you are a military superpower, and even those furious at you for attacking their ships and bases will fear you enough to make peace.

So, you're advocating paying them off? Or increasing your maintenance a bit to sustain larger forces to shut them down?

ORIGINAL: Jeeves
2) If all your colonies are kept with active smuggling of any resource in shortage, you can get your spaceports built in a couple of years rather than three to five since their freighters actually move goods rather than running empty all over the map.

Sadly, the freighter algorithms are still crap, despite repeated assurances they've been "vastly improved".

ORIGINAL: Jeeves
3) If you have a spaceport completed and plenty of troops at a colony, you can entice the pirates to start a facility at your colony. The corruption hit is low. Then bring in your fleet of troop ships and land all your spare troops at that colony. Once they are all landed spend a day or so destroying the pirate base, training tons of troops and removing all pirate influence. Load up your troop sips and leave the system. Rinse and repeat.

Please explain "entice the pirates to start a facility at your colony" - I don't understand how you should accomplish this. Pay for protection/defence missions so that the military ships in orbit will drive up their influence?

ORIGINAL: Jeeves
4) Of course if a pirate gang is in another empire's territory, you can get some reputation from destroying their base, or alternatively capture it and sell it to the AI empire, Once all of their mines have been captured and their constructor destroyed, a new gang forms which will be eager to trade with you for a very low fee with no history of diplomatic relations.

Assuming that the "respawning pirates" has been selected when setting up the game.

ORIGINAL: Jeeves
5) When a gang disbands, it often leaves behind a few mining ships, which you can spot if you have ultra long range scanner equipped explorers deployed throughout the map. Just move to ship with the nearest explorer, claim it and return to surveillance duty.

I don't see much benefit to this. I suppose that you get some resources from whatever they're carrying - but a few more civilian ships won't make a difference.

Iirc, construction ships are also marked as "abandoned" when a pirate faction "dies" - these are worth grabbing - far more valuable than a few more freighters or mining ships, imo.

ORIGINAL: Jeeves
6) Gangs will join if you do simultaneous attacks on them in the same region, just see to it that one attacker gets to target much sooner than the others.

Please explain.
1. I thought remaining military ships of a "dead" pirate faction join other pirate factions - specifically not empire factions. Is this WAD or a bug?
2. What is the importance of simultaneous attacks?
3. What do you mean by "the same region"?

[Jeeves]

ORIGINAL: Kayoz

ORIGINAL: Jeeves
1) Total payoff for peace with all pirate gangs costs less than facility maintenance once you are a military superpower, and even those furious at you for attacking their ships and bases will fear you enough to make peace.

So, you're advocating paying them off? Or increasing your maintenance a bit to sustain larger forces to shut them down?
Pay them off, their miserable attacks are just not worth the hassle, and it costs less to pay them than to buy and maintain guards.

ORIGINAL: Jeeves
2) If all your colonies are kept with active smuggling of any resource in shortage, you can get your spaceports built in a couple of years rather than three to five since their freighters actually move goods rather than running empty all over the map.

Sadly, the freighter algorithms are still crap, despite repeated assurances they've been "vastly improved".

ORIGINAL: Jeeves
3) If you have a spaceport completed and plenty of troops at a colony, you can entice the pirates to start a facility at your colony. The corruption hit is low. Then bring in your fleet of troop ships and land all your spare troops at that colony. Once they are all landed spend a day or so destroying the pirate base, training tons of troops and removing all pirate influence. Load up your troop sips and leave the system. Rinse and repeat.

Please explain "entice the pirates to start a facility at your colony" - I don't understand how you should accomplish this. Pay for protection/defence missions so that the military ships in orbit will drive up their influence?
It hadn't occurred to me to pay them. If you have smuggling missions at a colony, their freighters see your military presence. So if you have all military ships leave a colony's system, then pretty soon a bunch of pirates will arrive to corrupt the colony enough to start a facility. You can then bring back your military ships and they will leave, allowing other empire's freighters to transact business unmolested. Have your fleet of troopships make a regular circuit of all your colonies destroying pirate facilities.

ORIGINAL: Jeeves
4) Of course if a pirate gang is in another empire's territory, you can get some reputation from destroying their base, or alternatively capture it and sell it to the AI empire, Once all of their mines have been captured and their constructor destroyed, a new gang forms which will be eager to trade with you for a very low fee with no history of diplomatic relations.

Assuming that the "respawning pirates" has been selected when setting up the game.
Of course.

ORIGINAL: Jeeves
5) When a gang disbands, it often leaves behind a few mining ships, which you can spot if you have ultra long range scanner equipped explorers deployed throughout the map. Just move to ship with the nearest explorer, claim it and return to surveillance duty.

I don't see much benefit to this. I suppose that you get some resources from whatever they're carrying - but a few more civilian ships won't make a difference.

Iirc, construction ships are also marked as "abandoned" when a pirate faction "dies" - these are worth grabbing - far more valuable than a few more freighters or mining ships, imo.
Well you can build all the constructors you want, but the civilians won't buy over 40 of each type of mining ship...

ORIGINAL: Jeeves
6) Gangs will join if you do simultaneous attacks on them in the same region, just see to it that one attacker gets to target much sooner than the others.

Please explain.
1. I thought remaining military ships of a "dead" pirate faction join other pirate factions - specifically not empire factions. Is this WAD or a bug?
2. What is the importance of simultaneous attacks?
3. What do you mean by "the same region"?

I haven't had enough reputation to have a gang join me lately, so that was old data. Anybody had a pirate faction join them in the latest release? In earlier shadows releases, factions WOULD join me, but that was before the change of weak gangs joining other gangs. By region I mean that if a pirate faction has explored nearby territory, it knows where the other faction which you attacking is located, then joins if you have military on the way to attack its spaceport at the time that the other faction is destroyed.

Lonnie Courtney Clay

[Plant]

1) What facility maintainence? I wasn't aware there is any facilities you should be building if you aren't paying pirates.
Anyhow paying the protection money isn't an exploit, it's a core game mechanic.

2) My freighters don't run empty all over the map. Don't know why though. They just work by themselves.

3) Why bother? it'll be better not to allow pirate influence to build up to such a level if you can avoid it. I don't think destroying a pirate base destroys all pirate influence either.

4) If you have enough power to destroy pirate gangs in another empire's territory, you don't want to pay for whatever tiny amount of resources the new pirate faction which pops up can give you. Not to mention that you have just helped your rival empire.

5) Mining ships are practically worthless at the stage of the game where you have mining stations everywhere and the frieghters to move them.

6) I don't understand.

[Jeeves]

ORIGINAL: Plant

1) What facility maintainence? I wasn't aware there is any facilities you should be building if you aren't paying pirates.
Anyhow paying the protection money isn't an exploit, it's a core game mechanic.

2) My freighters don't run empty all over the map. Don't know why though. They just work by themselves.

3) Why bother? it'll be better not to allow pirate influence to build up to such a level if you can avoid it. I don't think destroying a pirate base destroys all pirate influence either.

4) If you have enough power to destroy pirate gangs in another empire's territory, you don't want to pay for whatever tiny amount of resources the new pirate faction which pops up can give you. Not to mention that you have just helped your rival empire.

5) Mining ships are practically worthless at the stage of the game where you have mining stations everywhere and the frieghters to move them.

6) I don't understand.

1) You want troop cloning, military academy, armored factory, fortified bunker, planetary shield, and giant ion cannon everywhere. You want some big colonies to build spy academy, science academy, and naval academy too. They cost to maintain in Shadows as well as the purchase cost. In the middle of the 7th year of my game that costs me 152k while paying pirates is only 27k...

2) Well I have 450, and 2/3 of them have a mission to transport while running empty.

3) The message says all influence is gone. I'll have to check next time I destroy one, will be a couple of days and I'll let you know. The typical colony where they build has less than 50k revenue, while the homeworld has a couple million. So even if several colonies are throughly corrupt, you lose little income. If you train several hundred troops with a single combat, it is worth far more to you when it comes time to invade homeworlds than a few thousand lost revenue...

4) By destroying pirate bases in enemy territory you improve the survival rate of mines in their empire, increasing the supply of resources and lowering inflation for everyone. That increases available cash for you to get by trading technology, which pays for your own crash researching...

5) Although gas miners have a bug and refuse to work, mining ships paid for by the civilians do useful work, increasing galaxy stock and saving money because they deliver resources themselves, rather than running around like the freighters do. A mining ship is more efficient than a mine plus freighter in the current state of the game. That's just too bad, but until freighter routing improves, miners are valuable. Also when under attack, a mining ship can run away where a mining base might get destroyed.

6) What's unclear?

Lonnie Courtney Clay

[Plant]

1) I see, your wording suggests that you build facilities instead of paying pirates as a viable alternative to not paying pirates. If you read Kayoz's post, he thinks the same as I do. You should try to be more clearer.

As a point of comparison of facility costs, it is subjective to the stage of the game you are at and to each person's preference. In fact, I would use that as an argument to not build facilities everywhere if it costs substantially more than pirate protection!

2) When they run empty, they are running to a place where they can pick up the needed resources. Pirate smuggler ships do the same thing, only that you don't get to see them running off to colect the resource.

3) When I play as pirates the influence doesn't disappear. Then again I would have some ships above a planet that is building a hidden pirate base. Perhaps the message refers to the influence of the hidden pirate base as opposed to the pirate influence itself.

Personally I rather not allow the nearby pirates to recieve so much money that they can build hidden pirate bases on my planets in the first place.

4) Perhaps you should put in that that in your explanation. Inflation is minimal for me anyhow, and you'll help your rivals more than you would help you.

5) Well, I guess every little helps. Hardly a exploiting, more of natural game mechanics.

6) Everything is unclear.

[paShadoWn]

Paying pirates? You pay to cease the supply of free hi-tech ships?

[Jeeves]

You send a fleet of cruisers equipped with pods to meet any concentration of ships and capture them, then make peace again. For less than 5k per year even those who are furious with you will accept a truce if you are strong enough. Then the flow of smuggled goods from that faction resumes, usually uninterrupted if the battle is brief.

Lonnie Courtney Clay

[Jeeves]

Just thought I would bump this thread up, and add a note or two.

1) By having many pirate gangs of normal strength, you can get a lot of mines and ships which may have tech scrap value when you go on the offensive against pirates.

2) I pay protection to all gangs UNTIL I am large and self sufficient in resources, about game year seven. Then I capture all the pirate mines in my territory or nearby, getting a million of two from my civilians for retrofitting captured mines...

3) Destroy pirate bases unless in an AI empire's territory, in which case you capture and sell it. Don't molest their constructors or freighters... That way you have a steady supply of mines to capture. Of course if a pirate gang wants over 5k per year for protection, you wipe them out.

Lonnie Courtney Clay
Edit : Gangs accept a much smaller amount for protection if your empire runs a deficit of 100k or more. In my current beta test game I am paying 67 gangs only 88k per year with a deficit of 100k on an income revenue of 3 million.