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[SteelHeart]

So I just founded a colony and literally within a day I get a message that there's pirate activity in the system and that there is a fleet of pirates coming to raid me. I went out to go try and intercept them and kill the base to find 4 massive pirate fleets which would easily overpower my fleet.

My question is: Is this intended behavior? And if so, why?

It just feels really unfair because I know that I wont be able to defend the colony and it will vary quickly turn unprofitable, very unprofitable. I really hope that this is being caused by a bug or extenuating circumstances because this really disinsensitives me to build and colonies.

[ZeCaptain]

scrap everything in the colony, abandon it, then make a new colony somewhere else, that's your only reasonable response to it. Probably fixed next version.

[Alex]

Yeah, this is definitely an issue - iirc it can happen if you build a colony fairly close to an existing pirate base. Generally speaking, it will take longer than that to attract pirate attention, and it would build up more gradually.

[Plantissue]

In mny first game with colonies, I had 2 pirate raids within a week of each other. In this current version, it took 3 months before a pirate raid and 3 months after. I don't know if it was just RNG, or bad luck on the first game, or something has changed in the base game. Either way, in both circumstances, if it wasn't for an already powerful fleet and lots of money in the bank, I wouldn't had been able to defend the colony and would had been in negative money. The idea that you can just plonk down a colony and make money from it safely is not occuring. You need money to protect that colony just from pirates alone.

[Alex]

What you're seeing in your "current" game is the "intended" flow, yeah - the only part that's seems off is needing an already-powerful fleet to deal with the initial threat; perhaps we're operating with different definitions of "powerful". Seems like worst-case scenario, you could put down an orbital station (which, alright, 250k - but it's not *that* much) and then the initial pirate fleet is not a threat almost regardless of what ships you have to support the station with.

But, generally the first pirate raid ought to be weak-ish, so if you have the resources to start a colony, your fleet ought to not be outclassed by it. Of course that can vary depending on how much you stretch your resources to found the colony...

[Agile]

Are you playing vanilla? If you are, don't bother with colonies late game till you have a death fleet, and never selling blueprints on the blackmarket, otherwise you will die to pirates.

The issue in Vanilla is the Player is the ONLY PERSON in the ENTIRE SECTOR that does base bounties, which means, if you never take out pirate bases, they will grow to maximum fleets and defense, and will use the latest blueprints they have available. This means if you sold them a Paragon blueprint and have a max level pirate base near your colony star system? Be prepared to get owned by a death fleet with paragons in it when they raid.

You can fix this by either destroying pirate bases periodically (when they get bounties on them or else its unprofitable) or constantly raiding pirate bases (which destabilizes them after a while while giving you free loot).

That or use mods like Nexerelin, which have factions send out base strikes on pirate bases periodically to keep them from getting too big (and you can do this with your own faction as well).

But yeah, you probably got destroyed by a start of game pirate base you didn't destroy which has grown to max level and has capital ships in its fleets due to that.

[SteelHeart]

So based on what I've read it seems that this is sort of intended behavior, but because I was just doing a bunch of exploring and trading instead of killing pirates there are max level pirate bases scattered around that can send out powerful raids. Looks like I'll have to drop my money on a a few capital ships of my own and go pirate hunting.

[Wyvern]

Seems like worst-case scenario, you could put down an orbital station (which, alright, 250k - but it's not *that* much) and then the initial pirate fleet is not a threat almost regardless of what ships you have to support the station with.

That... doesn't work.  Orbital Stations build very slowly.  If you get a message about an incoming raid, it is too late to start building one.

It has been my experience that, if you build anything other than the orbital station first, said station will not be online when the first pirate raid comes knocking.  (Though in some cases it's -close-, and a careful player can kite the pirate fleet around with a fast ship long enough for the station to finish building.)

This is one of the major reasons I've suggested allowing a story point to accelerate construction of a planetary structure - without something like that, you simply cannot upgrade defenses in a reactive manner, but must do so pro-actively.  Which is fine for players who've done it all before, but frustrating for someone who's just starting up their first colony.

[Alex]

I meant doing it proactively, yes. It clearly doesn't work as a response once you hear about the raid; wasn't suggesting it as a thing a new player might do, but as one of the options someone that has some experience might do to deal with early raids.

Not a bad idea as far as SP use, though.

[Megas]

It has been my experience that, if you build anything other than the orbital station first, said station will not be online when the first pirate raid comes knocking.  (Though in some cases it's -close-, and a careful player can kite the pirate fleet around with a fast ship long enough for the station to finish building.)

Same here.  I found that I need to build the orbital station as soon as spaceport for the first colony is done, if I want any defense against that first pirate raid.

[Thaago]

I think the main problem is lack of notification as to how drastically pirate raids increase in size depending on their base level. If the player has been knocking down pirate bases for the bounties, then the fleets sent by pirates can be handled by pretty small fleet of a half dozen destroyers and/or light cruisers (or less). If the pirates are at their max development, its going to take either a destroyer swarm of some actual cruisers + carrier support of one form or another.

(This is not counting mods. If you have Underworld or the other mods that add very dangerous pirate ships, you are going to need much bigger fleets.)

More information to the player would be good in this regards, as would a limited range for pirate expeditions (or decreasing strength with longer range). The more information to the player for example could be an overlay similar to fuel in the 'intel' map that shows "pirate level" - essentially rough circles around pirate bases that fall off in intensity (and for good measure are smeared out so you can't tell what star they are from). This information could be restricted - only being unlocked by announcements/bounties from factions that have been raided, or by the player finding bases - but that somewhat defeats the purpose of informing the player if its a dangerous area to settle. Once players know, they can either set up defenses ASAP (which is usually effective), or they can go hunting the bases to lower the threat level.

[Plantissue]

What you're seeing in your "current" game is the "intended" flow, yeah - the only part that's seems off is needing an already-powerful fleet to deal with the initial threat; perhaps we're operating with different definitions of "powerful". Seems like worst-case scenario, you could put down an orbital station (which, alright, 250k - but it's not *that* much) and then the initial pirate fleet is not a threat almost regardless of what ships you have to support the station with.

But, generally the first pirate raid ought to be weak-ish, so if you have the resources to start a colony, your fleet ought to not be outclassed by it. Of course that can vary depending on how much you stretch your resources to found the colony...

In my case in the current game, it seemed to be a 4 Atlas MK II fleet + other ships that I found along the way heading to my system. After I killed it, I got the message that it was defeated before entering my system. It could just be a coincidence and I just happened to have killed the wrong pirate raiding fleet. 3 months later I just let it raid and I got the message again that it died before entering the system. How weak is weak-ish supposed to be?

[Warlord-616x]

sry for the res but i think there are about 25 assorted atlas in my system right now, and i just killed 6-10 before this.  holy crap...

[Locklave]

The pirates asked me to contact you about this.

It was just a house warming gone wrong. I know it seemed like an attack but they were really drunk at the time and it's all a misunderstanding.

[Schwartz]

I don't think build times etc. need fiddling with just yet, when the pirate scaling and pirate raids are pieces of a placeholder system that should be toned down considerably in future releases.

It's also interesting that you had such a hard time. In my games the player-facing pirates were always weak. Only the core systems were in any real trouble.