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Starsector 0.97a is out! (02/02/24); New blog post: Simulator Enhancements (03/13/24)

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Author Topic: Raids make little sense  (Read 14920 times)

Agile

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Re: Raids make little sense
« Reply #15 on: August 13, 2019, 09:21:35 AM »

Yeah you need free port later but what I mean is even WITHOUT free port and AI cores im attacked, so really, there is no reason NOT to use free port and AI cores.

They give you more income, which lets you get better ships, which lets you fight off pirate bases and *** off death fleets from enemy factions that will attack you ANYWAY.

I know this isn't an empire building game, but it is a game with a decent plot, good mechanics, and interesting battles. However, colonies in the way they function have poor mechanics, break the established lore, and don't provide interesting battles.

TL;DR good idea, REALLY bad execution currently.
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Megas

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Re: Raids make little sense
« Reply #16 on: August 13, 2019, 10:30:18 AM »

Even pirate raids break lore.  How could the major factions survive for 200+ years if the pirates have been overpowering and fleecing the core worlds as often as the player can see them if he does not intervene.  I find AI wars and the like hard to believe when pirates are robbing and killing everyone in the core worlds with no one to stop them.  (Worlds will decivilize if player does not intervene for a long time.)
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Igncom1

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Re: Raids make little sense
« Reply #17 on: August 13, 2019, 10:37:20 AM »

Well there have been major pirate invasions before in the lore, just never and nothing like what happens in game.

If anything how the pirates behave and how the luddic path behave should be switched. Lots of luddic 'crusades' against the faithless where as the pirates sit back and passively raid from their far flung fortresses/fiefdoms.

That would at least make more sense, you get the occasional pirate raids on low stability worlds, but as for actual attacks mighty LUDD comes a-knocking!
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Plantissue

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Re: Raids make little sense
« Reply #18 on: August 13, 2019, 12:29:57 PM »

Everything about pirates barely make any sense. In reality pirates were never a threat to any civilisation. They only ever prospered at the wake of a gigantic trade boom, or were supported by powerful states or economies, or had a technological advantage or a combination of these. If they ever got threatening enough to a country without being supported by another country, said country eventually went and wiped them out. In starsector pirates do not have any of those conditions. That they can mount attacks beyond any other major faction is bizarre. It is as if they are the major faction and all other factions are just pretenders. They cannot possibly support themselves in food and fuel and whatever they can get from raids cannot surely recover their losses. Pirate raids currently feel like a placeholder for suicidal mysterious alien attacks from beyond the sector.
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Andele

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Re: Raids make little sense
« Reply #19 on: August 13, 2019, 05:54:59 PM »

Well there have been major pirate invasions before in the lore, just never and nothing like what happens in game.

If anything how the pirates behave and how the luddic path behave should be switched. Lots of luddic 'crusades' against the faithless where as the pirates sit back and passively raid from their far flung fortresses/fiefdoms.

That would at least make more sense, you get the occasional pirate raids on low stability worlds, but as for actual attacks mighty LUDD comes a-knocking!

While making the luddic/fringe extremists that cant even do ramming strats properly actually threatening by giving them pirate behavior could work (tho IMO for realism it wouldnt, vast majority of idiot thieves that are only good at blowing themselves up dont have the guts nor balls to attack anyone that isnt drastically weaker than them IRL based on standard psych profile), maybe making pirate raids and attacks more tied in to reputation system and giving the player, colonies and characters/officers "notoriety" among pirates could work out better?
Hell it would be a amazing alternative to "end game colony building/system domination" if it also allowed the player to actually create a piracy colony, recruiting high profile pirates or trying to convert "skilled pilots" from other factions to work for you (as in actual pirate base with just food/entertainment req that gets attacked by patrols, negative or positive rep with pirates also influenced or influencing said notoriety among pirates, allowing you to recruit officers via that fame/infamy instead of credits but they take their share of salvage based on performance thus can leave if unhappy, more damaged mod options with the announced story points to permanent mods thing, etc).
Remember, pirates are everything from a random dude that decided to rob ships to massive armada worth of ships and troops that decided to defect.


Tho all of this might be just me talking nonsense/extreme personal bias since its not pirate raids but hegemony routinely yet randomly dropping the exterminatus button-headslams on one of my colonies despite being relatively ok with them that irks me.
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Megas

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Re: Raids make little sense
« Reply #20 on: August 13, 2019, 06:13:54 PM »

Pirates in Starsector are (probably meant to be) unrepentant chaotic/stupid obviously evil cartoon villians, possibly hammy and chewing up the scenery.  Those who do evil because that is their job and they know it and enjoy it.  When foiled, they snarl and scream "You haven't seen the last of me!" and come back for another episode to twirl their moustache, gloat, and be a thorn in the hero's side with the next evil plan.  In any case, they do not want to be friends and mock any "power of friendship" gestures from idiot heroes or magical girl protagonists, or always break deals and bargains because they think the other side is a fool.

Remnants are probably supposed to be this menace that threatens the sector.  Currently, they are rich villagers meant to be robbed by a home invading player acting like a pirate.
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xenoargh

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Re: Raids make little sense
« Reply #21 on: August 13, 2019, 10:45:35 PM »

This, OP, is why on the last round after release, I wrote up the lengthy stuff about Diplomacy and basically, what I'm hoping we'll see in the final structure of the endgame.  Right now, we're still looking at an Alpha product where the major systems aren't feature-complete, let alone with all things polished to a nice glow. 

Be patient; I've been waiting 7 years, lol.  This is a very good game and it's quite likely going to be phenomenal when the last parts slot into place.
« Last Edit: August 13, 2019, 11:02:23 PM by xenoargh »
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tomtomtom

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Re: Raids make little sense
« Reply #22 on: August 14, 2019, 12:33:56 AM »

Personally i think these pirate raids make a lot of sense and here is why:

they are being paid/supplied to fight a proxy war on behalf of the core world factions


think about it, normally pirates are outfitted pretty *** but whenever they attack your colony they happen to have just enough to pose a credible threat to your colony, but not so much as to be a too dangerous threat to the core worlds(as a whole).

Further more the harassment fleets that core world sends are fairly insubstantial in comparison, why? Because they are not meant to kill you, that is what the pirates are for. After all, mass unprovoked genocide on a (probably) neutral colony would be bad for that factions PR and against their above table code of conduct, these fleets are supposed to be a token show of force to satisfy the public/shareholders/high command/business interests that have sway over the core factions military.

of course that is just a theory, be cool if there was an event that illustrates or alludes to this in-game. Could be a cool chance for some blackmail/causing political unrest if discovered with choices that either trade the pirates out for stronger overt faction fleets or causing them to stop all together, albeit with some sneaky shenanigans aimed at destroying/conquering your colony from within.



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RawCode

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Re: Raids make little sense
« Reply #23 on: August 14, 2019, 01:18:57 AM »

there is no logic

if player can build colony with money from two survey missions, why there are any empty spots after 100++ years?

cost of production of single pirate deathball can cover 10++ colonies...
if you lure typical deathball into remnant system, pirates will wipe remnants just fine, why system with remnants ever exist after 100++ years dunno...

probably there are not yet implemented features that will change everything...
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cerebus23

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Re: Raids make little sense
« Reply #24 on: August 14, 2019, 06:02:41 AM »

Yea pirate were used by nations a few pirates licensed to rob for england or whoever.

But you did not let them put their home pirate base in you english ports. either. Major factions allowing pirate hubs to just exist is broken also, even if allowing that pirates a tool of govts their hands off approach is daft and looks suspicious when almost every faction but yours had pirate bases inside their MAJOR systems and they do squat about it less you devastate the bases for them. few raids bit of destabilization the home systems start raiding the pirate base decivilizes. no more pirate base there for a LONG time by current mechanics.

So there is also systems where unrest causes attention. Pirates attention should be via that.

And faction wars need to be beefed up, to incite unrest and destablize a few systems when they goto war, pirate activity kicks in and then it makes some sense.

Luddites need a buff to cause unrest once you get defenses and pro build all the defense first sos not to have your stuff endlessly attacked the second you try to build it now. So luddites fail over and over and their cells tend to die out. they cant generate unrest currently to feed the pirates.

diplomacy will be nice when that is in game.

and the remenants should be the ones sending out the random i am gonna genocide your city because AI reasons. but that should be very random and not hey we going to attack you and attack and attack you even you you decivilized every established pirate base in game, they still seem to be able to send out waves of massive fleets, while spending millions on all the supplies i stole and somehow have a endless supply of ships money and people.  and no them being backed to that degree makes no sense, you might as well just fund an army if your going to go that far and stop fing around. I simply resorted to spawning fleets via the console to deal with the pirates so i could play other parts of the game like the story and etc.

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TypeyMcTypeFace

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Re: Raids make little sense
« Reply #25 on: November 05, 2019, 01:33:01 AM »

I haven't played StarSector for very long but in my latest game I got my reputation with the pirates up to about -15 so they wouldn't attack me on site and I thought that would mean they would leave my colonies alone. Oh how I was wrong my colonies still got raided. And I know that if I find their base and destroy it that will only put me back in the bad books with the pirates that will mean they'll send bigger and bigger fleets until all my colonies are destroyed. I don't get how a bunch of pirates can have the leadership or industrial organisation to field massive fleets. It seems that with pirates the lower your reputation score you have with them the bigger the fleet they'll send which doesn't make sense.

In my opinion the problem is that the pirates (and the Luddic Path to some degree) are not factions in the way that the Hegemony is considered a faction and shouldn't be considered as such. I can see how the game has tried to distinguish the pirates in the faction screen but it needs tweaking because pirates shouldn't be all on the same team just because they're pirates they should be just as prone to attacking each other as attacking anyone else. Pirates are lawless and chaotic and in general allergic to mass organisation/leadership. Therefore I think that pirate fleets should be capped at a certain personal level and ship count. Also the "Pirate" faction shouldn't even be on the faction screen because how can they even be a faction?

I thought that StarSector was a sandbox game that allowed the player to construct which ever type of faction they wanted from peaceful to belligerent and anything in between I didn't know that I would be up against a horde of kamikaze pirates who seemingly have infinite resources at their disposal. If they mess with me I can't mess back because they'll mess harder and harder until I have nothing left. I feel like it's pointless to keep playing this game at this point.   
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Megas

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Re: Raids make little sense
« Reply #26 on: November 05, 2019, 04:51:20 AM »

Quote
I don't get how a bunch of pirates can have the leadership or industrial organisation to field massive fleets. It seems that with pirates the lower your reputation score you have with them the bigger the fleet they'll send which doesn't make sense.
Pirates as implemented are zombies except they do not moan for brains.  They have infinite and overwhelming numbers, and they cannot be killed permanently.  Best to treat them as the undead or demon horde and not think much about it.

At least Pathers can be avoided, except thanks to Pather bug, they cannot sabotage your worlds as long as stability is 2 or more.  The worst they can do is -1 stability on your colonies.  Pather cells can practically be ignored.

Quote
If they mess with me I can't mess back because they'll mess harder and harder until I have nothing left. I feel like it's pointless to keep playing this game at this point.
Not only that they mess back, but unlike Pathers, they can mess back immediately after you kill them.  Pathers get disrupted for a year after you destroy a base targeting your world.  Pirates can put pirate activity right back at your colony after the base you just killed respawns immediately.

I have stopped playing because I do not want to play space cop nearly 24/7 to prevent colonies - mine or core worlds - from burning down because the pirates never stay down, and no one else can stop them.  (Instead, they join the pirates at attacking you!)
« Last Edit: November 05, 2019, 04:53:08 AM by Megas »
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Lucky33

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Re: Raids make little sense
« Reply #27 on: November 05, 2019, 05:58:19 AM »

Did you ever managed to observe pirates actually decivilize planets? I tried long runs but Core was completely fine. I even had to test if its possible to decivilize w/o glassing. Yes it was. However it needs to be more persistent than pirates actually are.
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Megas

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Re: Raids make little sense
« Reply #28 on: November 05, 2019, 08:02:16 AM »

Did you ever managed to observe pirates actually decivilize planets? I tried long runs but Core was completely fine. I even had to test if its possible to decivilize w/o glassing. Yes it was. However it needs to be more persistent than pirates actually are.
Yes.  One game, I completely ignored pirates attacking core systems because my colonies were at the far right edge of the sector, and I wanted to explore.  After years of neglect and reports of pirates successfully raiding systems over and over again, Asharu decivilized.

Letting all of core burn to attempt to eliminate babysitting does not work, because pirates then cause activity in your systems, and cannot be removed.  (Kill a base to remove -3/-50% activity, it respawns a day later and puts -3/-50% activity back on your system.)
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lethargie

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Re: Raids make little sense
« Reply #29 on: November 05, 2019, 10:32:03 AM »

meh, by the time 1-2 planet might decivilise you can see a colony become size 8, you have enough ship to wipe the entire sector and you would have explored every unsettled system in a normal size sector.

I'm not sure whats the point of keeping playing that game really. One thing for sure, you are firmly into the "endgame" that has not be implemented yet.

My opinion on raid and expedition:
Expedition are way too nice for what they represent. They are sent to destroy an upstart that managed to get a significant fraction of the sector wide market of a resource, they should hammer that thing into the ground like there was no tomorrow. The proper defense for early game expedition should to get some factions to formally recognize your sovereignty.

On pirate raid I aint got much to say that wasn't already covered. I find them to be properly sized to be a challenge to the player, but its hard to suspend disbelief around their existence
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