Pirates - Not gaining influence?

[MatBailie]

Last night I started playing as a Pirate

At the start of the game, my Explorer hanging around an Empire planet slowly gained me influence.

Then they cancelled the protection agreement and blew my explorer up. Soon I had built up a fleet and sent it over to remove that empire's space stations, etc. But even with a fleet hanging around the planet, I didn't gain any influence.

So I build a couple of ships with 17 assault pods each, and raided the planet. To my surprise a second wave of my assault pods landed (I guess the fight went on so long that they "recharged") and totally over-ran the planet. I still was not, however, gaining any influence, and all of the planets troops remained in place.


Bug? Something I don't understand? Or are the Naxxilian just really tough?


Cheers,
Mat.



Update : It appears that I can no longer gain influence over the capital planet of any empire, though I could at the start of the game. I can only gain influence over their subsequent colonies. Is that correct, or is something awry?

[Aeson]

A planet's population controls how quickly you gain influence over that world, and once the planet's population grows beyond a certain level it becomes impossible to passively gain influence over the world. Try reducing the target world's population. Planetary bombardment will do the trick.

[NephilimNexus]

At up to around 1.5 billion you can influence planets with your presence alone.

Past two billion and only raiding will increase your influence.

Past three billion population nothing you do will ever gain you any influence. As Aeson said, orbital bombardment is the only option at that point.

[Aeson]

I think raids might also kill population, though not as efficiently as planetary bombardment does, at least based on how the populations of independents seem to suffer when there are large pirate factions in the area. Beyond a certain population, they might have difficulty killing enough people to overcome the natural population growth, however, and bombardment weapons are much simpler if the goal is population control.

[NephilimNexus]

Correct, raids do reduce population a little, in the same manner all ground combat does. As you noticed, ground combats generate a certain amount of "strength" points for the defender based off the population of the planet. Doing so draws them into the battle as well, so yeah they take hits & casualties too. But, as you also pointed out, that is rarely enough to counter their own population growth. At best you'll slow it down a little - it takes a miracle to actually reduce it.