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Author Topic: How do you deal with pirates?  (Read 11089 times)

Forvet

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How do you deal with pirates?
« on: February 26, 2021, 12:50:52 AM »

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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AcaMetis

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Re: How do you deal with pirates?
« Reply #1 on: February 26, 2021, 01:57:18 AM »

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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Locklave

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Re: How do you deal with pirates?
« Reply #2 on: February 26, 2021, 02:24:17 AM »

#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.
« Last Edit: February 26, 2021, 02:32:59 AM by Locklave »
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Forvet

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Re: How do you deal with pirates?
« Reply #3 on: February 26, 2021, 03:06:39 AM »

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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AcaMetis

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Re: How do you deal with pirates?
« Reply #4 on: February 26, 2021, 03:49:10 AM »

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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Forvet

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Re: How do you deal with pirates?
« Reply #5 on: February 26, 2021, 05:37:26 AM »

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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AcaMetis

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Re: How do you deal with pirates?
« Reply #6 on: February 26, 2021, 06:00:18 AM »

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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sector_terror

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Re: How do you deal with pirates?
« Reply #7 on: February 26, 2021, 09:39:59 AM »

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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Kakroom

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Re: How do you deal with pirates?
« Reply #8 on: March 01, 2021, 07:33:16 AM »

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.
« Last Edit: March 01, 2021, 09:15:31 AM by Alex »
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Locklave

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Re: How do you deal with pirates?
« Reply #9 on: March 02, 2021, 02:09:33 AM »

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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Zelnik

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Re: How do you deal with pirates?
« Reply #10 on: March 03, 2021, 02:43:42 PM »

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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Thaago

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Re: How do you deal with pirates?
« Reply #11 on: March 03, 2021, 08:11:17 PM »

@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.

On a more personal note to everyone else: thank you for this excellent thread of constructive solutions and answers.
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ubuntufreakdragon

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Re: How do you deal with pirates?
« Reply #12 on: March 03, 2021, 10:48:44 PM »

I start my game by taking 3 surveys for the pirates and after this everything is fine.
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sector_terror

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Re: How do you deal with pirates?
« Reply #13 on: March 03, 2021, 11:26:20 PM »

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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Locklave

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Re: How do you deal with pirates?
« Reply #14 on: March 04, 2021, 01:47:40 AM »

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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