Fractal Softworks Forum
Starsector => General Discussion => Topic started by: Forvet on February 26, 2021, 12:50:52 AM
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I joined the forum specifically to ask this question. How do you guys deal with pirates? I created my first colony system, and I have anywhere from 8-12 various pirate flotillas, and a constant stream of 1-3 pirate fleets heading to raid it at any given time. I'm playing on normal. I'm completely overwhelmed, my security forces can't keep a hold of my own system. Frankly, I just have no idea what to do.
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Take out the pirate base that's raiding your colony. Go to any of your colonies, head to the bar and there'll be an option to buy someone "something more palatable". That will tell you where the pirate base that's raiding your colony is located, assuming you don't know already. Either way you can go there and smash it.
I should add that the way pirate bases work is that there's up to three pirate bases scattered around the map at any one time which will random attack any inhabited system, including yours, and these existing, established bases are not shy of rampaging through your newly founded colonies if they feel like it. In addition your colonies will consistently generate new pirate bases which will only ever attack your colonies, but they'll always start out as tier 1 bases (in the current patch), so even with basic defences it can take weeks if not months for them to become an actual problem.
What you're dealing with sounds like an existing tier 3 base randomly rolled your system and started rampaging around long before you had the chance to build up and prepare, for the record. The first raid from the scripted first base is...I don't remember exactly, I think it's like 1-3 fleets of 3-5 ships each? Point is that against a fleet that can take care of tier 3 pirate bases, which I consider the necessary minimum before founding colonies, it's nothing.
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#1 Don't start a colony until you have several 3-4 million minimum cash to blow. 5-6 million is a better cushion, the colony will not make money till much later.
#2 Rush max level starbase. I have never seen pirates beat a max tier starbase.
Optional #3 Take the colony perks unless you are planning to use AI
Optional #4 Use a skilled colony leader if you have the cash to spare
Everything else is secondary.
edit:
In the case that you are being overrun it's safe to assume you lack the money and fleet to deal with the pirate base(s) causing the problem, abandon this colony, they will continue to get stronger feeding off your losses.
You can resettle it later when you are prepared and have dealt with the pirate base assuming you don't find a better planet in the meantime.
Don't waste more time and cash on a lost cause.
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Alright, I'll try hunting down the Pirate Base. Next question, what do I have to do to make it so my ships being produced arn't falling apart at the seams? I built a pair of cruisers and they both had three (D) modules. :(
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The quality of the ships that your colony produces is based on three things: Your best Heavy Industry/Orbital Works (adding a Nanoforge, corrupted or ideally pristine, adds to production capacity and quality), the stability of your colony, and the quantity/quality setting in your faction doctrine. Note that for ships you produce to use personally the quantity/quality setting doesn't come into play, that only matters for your patrol fleets - custom productions always assume maximum quality setting. Also note that if you don't have any Heavy Industry you're forced to import ship hulls, which tanks your production quality as no one is willing (or able) to export high quality ship hulls.
For the record, production quality is measured up to an effective maximum of 120%. 100-119% quality produces ships with 0-1 D-mods, 120% or higher always yields 0 D-mods. I wouldn't recommend using custom production until you've got at least an Orbital Works with at least a Corrupted Nanoforge on a well secured planet, since otherwise you run too much risk of throwing tons of money at D-modded junkers.
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Next question: why is it, if I saturation bomb a pirate colony, the Hegemony and various other lawful factions get angry? Wouldn't they be happy that I'm wiping out a Pirate Colony?
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It's considered a faux pas to indiscriminately target civilians with anti-matter ordinance, even if said civilians aren't the most saintly blokes on the block. That said it is inconsistent that raiding a colony into decivilizing gets a free pass, but glassing it from orbit is considered a war crime.
Truthfully I personally turn off decivilizing altogether since it just makes the game flow better. That way neither player or pirates can delete colonies off the map without some manner of drastic action (read: Saturation Bombardment) and the repercussions they bring, but in return I don't have to worry about markets disappearing from the map because of repeated pirate raids either.
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Common answer: semi-constant wack-a-mole until you get heavy industry and a full military base in each star system.
My answer: go to settings.jsom and change the minimum pirate bases to 0 and the time to upgrade to 24 months.
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Common answer: semi-constant wack-a-mole until you get heavy industry and a full military base in each star system.
My answer: go to settings.jsom and change the minimum pirate bases to 0 and the time to upgrade to 24 months.
<this was a bot; deleted link and original post> -Alex
I'm not sure that's the link you meant to post.
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Next question: why is it, if I saturation bomb a pirate colony, the Hegemony and various other lawful factions get angry? Wouldn't they be happy that I'm wiping out a Pirate Colony?
Because the colony isn't seen specifically as "pirates" in the eyes of the core population and people who aren't pirates live on these places.
Those kind of bombings would establish a dangerous precedent politically, just like with nukes IRL. Just call or label a group/faction pirates and suddenly wiping out entire populations of civilians is fine. This would be the lore reason.
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I joined the forum specifically to ask this question. How do you guys deal with pirates? I created my first colony system, and I have anywhere from 8-12 various pirate flotillas, and a constant stream of 1-3 pirate fleets heading to raid it at any given time. I'm playing on normal. I'm completely overwhelmed, my security forces can't keep a hold of my own system. Frankly, I just have no idea what to do.
The short answer is that there is no solution. They will keep coming no matter how many times you kill them. Pirates are suicidal and insane right now because Alex refuses to release the update that solves the problem (it is already implemented in the new update.)
Shortly after realizing this is a problem, people will call you entitled and a crybaby for complaining about a perfectly legitimate concern, wonder why you don't just cheat like the rest of them with mods. Questioning Alex's design is tantamount to heresy here, even if Alex himself welcomes criticisms of both the game and his release schedule.
You will then get increasingly frustrated with the game as this obvious gameplay bug gets worse and worse until you take a break for about six months. You will come back only to find the update has not been released yet, but the same people who insulted you are still defending the lack of an update the same way a baptist defends burning witches at the stake.
Then you will stop caring even more, use console commands to shortcut in the game all the time and slowly become a nasty little goblin like everyone else here, regularly wondering why everyone else doesn't just cheat like you.
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@Zelnik, please consider this a warning under the forum toxicity rules and derailment rules, both for this post and previous ones. The forum rules in full can be found here (http://fractalsoftworks.com/forum/index.php?topic=2668.0).
On a more personal note to everyone else: thank you for this excellent thread of constructive solutions and answers.
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I start my game by taking 3 surveys for the pirates and after this everything is fine.
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Next question: why is it, if I saturation bomb a pirate colony, the Hegemony and various other lawful factions get angry? Wouldn't they be happy that I'm wiping out a Pirate Colony?
to be fair: Even if they're pirates bombing people who arent even capable of defending themselves until they're mush isn't what we'd call a good thing.
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I start my game by taking 3 surveys for the pirates and after this everything is fine.
Ya, if you skip the tutorial which damages your rep with the pirates you can get them neutral really easy. This also means no easy money from commissions since they force you -50 rep with pirates, but on the flip side makes smuggling to pirate bases and systems under pirate siege (willing to pay inflated prices for goods) extremely safe. It also makes those systems great for scavenging.
You still have to watch out for those hidden beacons in debris, those event spawned pirate fleets will attack you even if you are allied.
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I should add that the way pirate bases work is that there's up to three pirate bases scattered around the map at any one time which will random attack any inhabited system, including yours, and these existing, established bases are not shy of rampaging through your newly founded colonies if they feel like it.
Apparently there can be at least up to four pirate bases at any given time, in vanilla. You can see this in the attached screenshot.
[attachment deleted by admin]
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With the power of friendship!
Pirates are the only ones who truly want to improve the sector, tearing down the tired and corrupt governments of before!
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The easiest way to deal with Pirate Bases is to sneak into the system via "go dark" (Dont forget to get millitarized subsystems on your freighters and tankers, it lowers profile ALOT!). Optimum to enter is via transverse jump or close to a gas giant or star. Then search the base, keep some distance and make your fleet for a brief period as visible as possible (active sensors, transponder, neutrino detector ect.). Then go dark again, evade and watch the fleets pass by (Keep in mind, that you should have the correct skills to get a burn of 7 and a not too big fleet or it won't work very well). Now the base and your fleet can have some private time. After that leave via transverse jump and anything is done.
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Apparently there can be at least up to four pirate bases at any given time, in vanilla. You can see this in the attached screenshot.
True, I mentioned as much in that post: There can be up to three "core" pirate bases, which are the pirate bases that are always around and will randomly attack any colonized system with no regard for how well defended or prone to being wiped off the map those colonies are. In addition to that the game will generate "player" pirate bases once you've founded colonies, which are pirate bases who's sole and exclusive purpose in life is to attack your colonies. So in total you can have four pirate bases on the map, it's just that the fourth one will only ever target your colonies and won't ever spawn until you've got colonies for it to attack.
In that screenshot specifically the Gamma Arcus base is a player base, and the rest are core bases. That means your colonies are under no real threat, because the pirate base attacking them will be sending raiding parties that a fleet fresh from the tutorial can slaughter mercilessly, let stand a fleet that's capable of taking out a two module pirate base. If it had been a core base attacking your colonies, however...well, hope you've got a late-to-endgame fleet that's capable of dealing with up to six fleets containing multiple Atlas MK. IIs each, or that your colonies have been build up sufficiently to deal with it, because that's what would come knocking down your doors.
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#1 Don't start a colony until you have several 3-4 million minimum cash to blow. 5-6 million is a better cushion, the colony will not make money till much later.
I disagree, if you can find a good terran planet it'll start making money immediately and having a waystation is extremely valuable.
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More important is to have a system, which is as self sustaining and small and close to center as possible.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qqhN-MuvQdM
These Colonies have grown up and make now in Endgame at size 6 an Income of 1,6 Million despite the fact, that none of these 6 worlds is below 150 % Hazard and any possible security measure has been maximized!
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I just want to add that I have realized that pirate bases, at least the ones attacking the player, seem to respawn always in the same system.