Pirate raids are where over confident and over extended players go to die.

I gave 11 ways in which they add to the game in post 29. I can add more if needed.

I gave our reasons in post 29.

The pirates are important part of the TEC's history and this is described in the faction section of the manual.

For those interested here are the maps without pirates:

Balance Of Power
Derelict
Gateway
Voruk's Labyrinth

More coming.

 

Blair, honestly, there are really two things that need to be considered for the Pirate integration with the game to work out well in a ballanced way. With two somewhat-interesting changes, people would be more sanguine about the presence of pirates even without new non-piraty maps (though there is a massive demand for that as well, so don't think I'm suggesting going away from that).

1) Perhaps the most important one, the speed of the game should scale the time between pirate attacks. On a Slow game (which I prefer), the resource flow is too slow to make a pirate attack every 12min reasonable to deal with. Scale the basic numbers along with the rest of the delays and the ballance'll be retained with only minor coding requirements.

2) On the random maps, add an option for No Pirates. Then the node/planet generator for the maps just won't use PiratePlanet as a possible entry at all. Bingo, infinite number of random maps with no pirates and everyone playing random gen'd maps wins. This is non-trivial programming, but there should likely be some more options for random map generation anyway, much like the random map options in GalCiv. No Pirates is the obvious first one to get in there.

With just those two changes, I think you'll see more people enjoying the pirate threat as much as you do, when they want it, at the pace that keeps it balanced.

I do appreciate your interaction and contact with the community, and I want to encourage you to view the passion with which your community engages with you to be a good thing. People love your work. The more they love it, the more glaring the pieces they love less stand out.

Pirates are fine, easy to deal with, even in large numbers. Their ships may as well be made of paper and are easily repulsed by even a small defense fleet with a cap-ship. TBH, learn2play.

This should already be implicit. The pirate size is proportional to the amount of money involved. Slower income means less money for bounty which means less pirates.

Possibly. Like I said earlier we need to take some time to evaluate all the options and consequences.

Oh for sure we do! We wouldn't have had an open beta since March if we didn't appreciate everyone's feedback - that is how Sins got to where it is today. Infact the existing pirate system is the product of the majority's feedback and creative input. We couldn't have honed it was well as we have (clearly a subjective opinion) without them.

Nontheless, everyone is a paying customer and we are looking at ways to improve things for everyone. It may just take a bit of time to sort out the details.

Not when they listen to you of course though, right?

Cause the game soo definetly has to be like you want it

As it should be.

wooo, so the more you pay the pirates, the bigger they get.

This could prove VERY useful.

I'm not sure that this is actually the way it works given the current AI, though. They're happy to pop up at least a small 250 gold bounty even when it isn't necessarily a great idea. Which is why shifting the timer a bit would help with that.



The advantage as an option for the random maps is that it's the decision of the players so impact is minimal. As long as it's one of the traits mentioned on the multiplayer map description, the impact to balance isn't really a developer issue, in that sense. Just like the fact you can create a map without a pirate base by hand, making it an option for automagic creation doesn't really have more impact.



And that's why you have a fanatical fanbase.

I've been playing Sins since..... well... I was in the first batch o download beta 1 (back when the Arcova was the main frigate - before cobalts were added), and I absolutely love pirates. Granted, I took a couple months off shortly after beta 4, so I'm rusty getting back in.

Anyway, I use pirates to my advantage every time; I get my games quicker and cheaper without copy protection crap.... oh wait, LOL! <-- joke

-->Real: In regards to the ones that actually attack you; I use pirates as a means of rather effective proxy war. I ramp up the bounty (yes I usually have the money to do this) and let the pirates do any one or combination of the following:
-Soften up enemy fleets and defenses,
-Stop an enemy from rebuilding or finish them when I can no longer spare required forces to do this my self (happened in a 4 way FFA today with great results),
-Use them to hold back a main enemy force when to hit a junction/area the enemy needs to pass first while I hit their rear planets,
-Draw off enemy forces for me to slip in,
-and cause general havoc with the enemy.

As for the local militias (pirates who start and stay in a single system), they are good for the following:
-Leveling up cap ships.
-Stopping rapid over expansion.
-Stopping or hurting early rushes (unless you're really good).


I say do no remove pirates, but like all things I believe, they should be an option dictated by the user.

I'm sure if we shoot eet at their planet through the novalith, that'll be all the loving they'll ever need.

No one is asking for the Pirates to be removed completely.

What kind of study needs to be done to determine whether the user should have the option to turn pirates off in a random map? The question is why the user is forced to deal with pirates now, whether he wants to or not.

As I said earlier, if the Pirate concept is so integral to the functioning of the game then it raises much more serious questions in my mind about the game, itself, that goes beyond simply the ridiculous nature of a large roaming fleet of interstellar buccaneers with super-advanced ships that overly influence the early game and are quickly destroyed or dispersed later without trouble.

If I could turn them off with a simple click on the random map generator, I wouldn't be here posting about the game. I'd be playing it without reservation for the entire evening. As it is, I'm not sure where I'm going to want to sit through another game. Having played for 4-5 hours tonight and dealt with pirates dozens of times just in that space of time, I'm kind of SIN'd out.

As for the idea that since I can design my own map without pirates so its not valid to ask why the option to simply turn them off isn't present in the random map generator, that's complete nonsense. If the Pirates are absolutely integral to the game, why are they not present in some maps and why can they be turned off in a user created map? And if they aren't so integral that some maps don't include them and the user can disable them by creating their own map, why not just include a simple option when generating a random map to remove them?

I just don't understand some of the posts on this thread at all.

Again, not a single person who has criticized pirates in this thread has asked for them to be removed completely.

That is a "straw man" proposition put up by the people who like the pirates to mask the true question in the thread: why some people aren't allowed to turn them off in the random map generator.