Weak Pirates and Me

[Lucian]

If I'm playing as a pirate and I choose "weak" or "very weak" pirates from the setup menu does that also make ME weak too or does it only apply to NPC pirate clans?

Hope someone knows the answer to this slightly obscure question as I cant find it in any of the documentation.

[KevlarAxis]

I am almost certain that it would only pertain to the AI pirate factions. I don't think there is a way to specifically handicap yourself.

[Lucian]

That would make perfect sense. Unfortunately things that make perfect sense sometimes dont apply to DW.

Since it seemed that nobody on the forum actually knew for sure, I did some testing and found that if you are playing a pirate and choose "weak pirates" you ARE affected, your maintenance costs are considerably higher (which is how I assume the weak setting actually weakens pirates). Same thing if you choose "Strong Pirates", you as a player will have lower maintenance costs than vanilla.

Nice programming Matrix.

[Bingeling]

I think it makes total sense.

Weak vs strong pirates. Affects the state of pirates in the galaxy.
Very easy vs extreme difficulty. Affects the player's economy (and more) compared to every AI opponent.

So use the pirate slider to decide how powerful pirates should be overall in the galaxy. Then use the difficulty slider to adjust your own difficulty.

Also keep in mind that pirates benefit from pre-warp and slower research, it gives them more time before empires reach space. They also benefit from many independent colonies to feed on.

[aaatoysandmore]

ORIGINAL: KevlarAxis

I am almost certain that it would only pertain to the AI pirate factions. I don't think there is a way to specifically handicap yourself.

It's called hard, harder an extreme difficulty and aggressive, restless etc etc on the other selections.[:D]