All about Pirates.

[Bloodly]

Everything we know over and above what the manual says, speculation, mechanics, etc, could go here-if you wanted, of course. Expect mostly speculation, due to being a new player.

Manual states that Pirates can have more than their standard 1 or 2 ships 'if they've been successful raiding ships and stations'. This implies they are credited somehow for kills. I wonder if other pirates count?

Pirates are very greedy(Secrets at 10,000 a time, protection, alliances). Where does that money go? Towards refitting their ships/buying new ships/researching tech? Is it possible to have pirates that are stronger than Empires? Lord knows it's seemed to happen a few times-pirates that seem to get ahead in the tech race-real hard to kill pirates who have twice your range. Maybe they've had success against other empires?

If 'Pirate Cloning of your vessels' is true, what happens if they cloned a combat ship with a Colony part or Troop part? Could they invade/take a world? More to the point, WOULD they? And would they still be Pirates then?

[PDiFolco]

Don't really care, as soon as I detect one pirate base I squash'em. You can buy the 1st 6-mo protection cheaply and buy a couple colonies locations from them, after that they become an expensive nuisance and more and more so, so don't let them live !!

[Fishman]

Pirate ships definitely clone your empire's designs. You can see them in the editor when trying to spawn a pirate ship, they have access to all your ship designs up to cruisers. These designs appear to be duplicated multiple times in the same list, suggesting some kind of memory leak is occurring, as a design will be listed individually 3 or 4 times, when only one such design exists. I have personally seen them flying around in my frigates. So....don't make good ships of the low-classes, or the pirates will get them, and you will be in a world of hurt. Alternatively, ally with all of them, sic them on your enemies, and build Leviathan Frigates that are gigantic capital warships in all but name. Honestly, it seems rather unfair that you have to pay for such a thing, but they just simply GET them. Plus there's gotta be a bug in there.

[JonathanStrange]

Successful pirating should lead to more powerful ships and unanswered pirate activity should mean increasing problems.

Pirate ships, I contend, are the result of desertions from different empires. A starship captain decides patrolling the Gamma Quadrant is boring and stops resisting the tempation "to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin to slit throats."   

[Fishman]

That does not explain how the entireity of one of my battle frigates, all 50 of which were known and accounted for by hull number, with the most advanced technolergies in the galaxy, managed to wind up mounted inside of a pirate ship. Admittedly, my somewhat lax attitude towards the sale of military equipment to civilians may be to blame and I accept responsibility for that, but the entire design, verbatim?

[JonathanStrange]

Heh. The ships are accounted for but the men? The missing crewman who disappeared at Mistworld? Maybe somebody's selling our designs! Or...a misguided gameplay mechanic to keep pirates competitive as at work...it is unfair,imo.

[Malevolence]

I have posted elsewhere about this, but I've noticed my operations center is very lax on their reporting.

I do get combat messages when they start, but it doesn't include the location of the attack. The messages do not differentiate between when I am attacked versus when I initiate the attack -- in fact, I get no message that my ships are initiating an attack (with basic information on location).

I get no messages when a ship is lost or presumed lost due to lack of contact.

All messages should contain these basic elements: who, what, when, where, why. I realize the why is difficult for the AI sometimes, but others I think are pretty easy to include. The when can be the timestamp of the message.

Negative reports and fog of war reporting is also ok --- "We have lost contact with an exploration ship in the Sol system."

As ships start warping off on their own to refuel, this is also going to become an issue.

"A frigate from 1st Fleet is moving to Sol 4 Star Port to refuel. They will return when complete."

Visual queues in the ship and fleet summary window (in the bottom left corner of the map) are not consistent. Red for damaged is there in the fleet summary. Yellow for under construction is not there. Refueling is going to be needed (orange?). How about a color for in combat? Let us see those states at a glance.

[Erik Rutins]

ORIGINAL: Malevolence
I do get combat messages when they start, but it doesn't include the location of the attack. The messages do not differentiate between when I am attacked versus when I initiate the attack -- in fact, I get no message that my ships are initiating an attack (with basic information on location).

You are aware that clicking on the message brings you to the location?

I get no messages when a ship is lost or presumed lost due to lack of contact.

Did you turn off the damaged/stranded ship messages or pop-ups?

Negative reports and fog of war reporting is also ok --- "We have lost contact with an exploration ship in the Sol system."

Ok, understood. I agree that a "lost contact" message would be a nice option to have when a ship is destroyed. Can you add this to the wish list please?

"A frigate from 1st Fleet is moving to Sol 4 Star Port to refuel. They will return when complete."

Seems like adding messages for this would pretty quickly drive you crazy from message spam though.

Visual queues in the ship and fleet summary window (in the bottom left corner of the map) are not consistent. Red for damaged is there in the fleet summary. Yellow for under construction is not there. Refueling is going to be needed (orange?). How about a color for in combat? Let us see those states at a glance.

Good suggestions, please add them to the wish list. We just started adding color coding to the ship screen, I think it will find its way to more parts of the interface fairly soon.

[Malevolence]

ORIGINAL: Erik Rutins

ORIGINAL: Malevolence
I do get combat messages when they start, but it doesn't include the location of the attack. The messages do not differentiate between when I am attacked versus when I initiate the attack -- in fact, I get no message that my ships are initiating an attack (with basic information on location).

You are aware that clicking on the message brings you to the location?

ORIGINAL: Malevolence
A frigate from 1st Fleet is moving to Sol 4 Star Port to refuel. They will return when complete."

Seems like adding messages for this would pretty quickly drive you crazy from message spam though.

Maybe my games are different, but when I am fighting, my map is focused on what the Germans referred to as the Schwerpunkt... the focal point of my main effort. During wars, attack messages are spamming, so much so, that I replaced your klaxon. Had I not been able to, I may have uninstalled. Text messages rattling off in the top chat window are cheap, I can watch those and the current battle with no problems.

So to answer these two points---

Bouncing around the map by clicking on the message is really a pain. Which is why I begged for location information in the ship/fleet summary window elsewhere.

Messages rattling up a chat log are no problem for me. Just leave the klaxon off. If I could move and resize that chat log, I'll buy a second copy of the game--just as a thanks. [:)]

[Gerth]

Yeah, the shrill klaxon and big sliding popup is distracting. I'd prefer a toned down alarm and a ticker in the corner of the screen.

[Malevolence]

ORIGINAL: Gerth

Yeah, the shrill klaxon and big sliding popup is distracting. I'd prefer a toned down alarm and a ticker in the corner of the screen.

Here is the LINK for from the mod section-- needs a sticky.

[Bloodly]

Do Pirates 'buy' their ships, or do they just auto-spawn after a time? If you kill all the ships of a group but leave the base, what happens? Are they neutralised?

[Gerth]

Hey, thanks, Mal! I was playing at oh-my-god-thirty the other morning and thought the sound was down further when I loaded the game. The klaxon O doom sounded, much to my wife's joy.

[Fishman]

ORIGINAL: Bloodly

Do Pirates 'buy' their ships, or do they just auto-spawn after a time? If you kill all the ships of a group but leave the base, what happens? Are they neutralised?

Autospawn, AFAICT. Otherwise they'd never have been able to buy one of those frigates.

[Bloodly]

Given this 'cloning', how feasible do you feel a 'Pirate Lord' could be? Alliances with all pirates, letting them raid your enemies as they please with your designs? Sure, your reputation might be in the dumps(Somehow everyone becomes aware, regardless of if diplomacy brings it up, and it drops your rep), but it'd be an interesting thing. Protect the pirate bases, even?