@jscott - For what it is worth, I don't think people are trying to twist your position. Your concerns are valid and many people have acknowledge that fact and yet other have disagreed. What yet others are saying is give the game a few weeks in the publics hand before trying to press the issue. There is something to be said for experience and exposure after all. I for one agree that that should be a simple none mod or custom map avenue for turning off the pirates with some variable settings as well as an in game timer and multi-monitor support for that matter as do some others. But those things are not options right now.

We had many debates in the beta about different things and in the end decisions were made and I lost on several points, but I did not give up and go away and neither should you. Just because things are different then you like right now does not mean that things cant be changed in the near future.

Remember this is SD & IC we are dealing with here and they deserve the benefit of the doubt even in the most dire of perceived situations. It is the lone voice of dissension that acts as the catalysis for change.

Wow, I have no words to express my disgust.

I'm through with this forum, and through with your game.

I'm not saying I agree with badken, but you can't say his feelings are "completely unjustified". When the producer of a game is changing the title of a post he didn't create, to highlight his own glowing point of view, that's a pretty big conflict of interest. I've heard of hijacking a thread, but this takes it one step further.

I've experimented with making the frequency of the pirate raids every 21 minutes, but it's clear to me they are meant to be an intregal part of the game balance. Knowing this it would have been nice if they fleshed them out a bit, I mean they wield huge influence in the game and they don't even have a name , just "Pirates". Lame. But I personally hold out great hope for mods in an otherwise awesome game.

My accountability: 

There were good contributions from both sides of the arguement. We adjust titles as minimally as possible to accurately reflect the content contained within so that users know how to find information or if the particular issue is resolved (esp since the search function is broken, there is no way to merge/split threads and there are so many threads).

I'm sure you can find plenty of threads on subjects where the content was highly critical of Sins and stayed that way and the title was not changed. In particular, check out the discussions on non-animating turrets(recent), phase lanes (early beta), siege rushes(recent) and many more.

We never censor, I was open about the change (see my post above), and I have over a year's worth of publically available proof of Ironclad's ability to accept, evaulate and encourage criticism. Believe me, sometimes it was pretty difficult to resist not deleting the entire thread. You can probably find these nasty ones if you probe through the history. 

I apologize for any offense, none was intended.

 

As I mentioned in the other thread, I think pirates would be less annoying / more interesting if they indeed *acted* like pirates.

Like bribes don't guarantee loyalty; they might or might not attack either side on a whim. Maximum loot for minimum risk. You know, capture the *essence* of a pirate fleet without all the tedious details.

The unpredictability of attacks would add a sense to tension that would probably be better than a fixed-timer event.

Okay, it might make pirates even more annoying, but it might make the game more interesting too.

I actually think that some of the problem with them for me stems from the fact that they are called "Pirates". It conjures up all kinds of pre-conceived notions that I don't think mesh well with this game world.

Think about if the were called "The Seekers". They would stem from a robotic factory complex (current Pirate base) left behind by a long forgotten precursor race who used it expand their now extinct empire. It continously builds new drone warships, but with it's masters long dead these ships have no orders.

The empire which spends the most credits on infiltrating / counter-infiltrating it's control systems each production cycle can obtain limited control over it's current fleet, which will generally seek to harm the designated enemy. The mothership's ability to control the fleet is modified by how much staff is assigned to controlling it, meaning more credits spent = a bigger fleet. At the end of each production cycle the behomoth factory's AI 'reboots' and the struggle for control begins anew.

There. All fluff, I know, but nothing changes to the game mechanics at all and the grey team seems to make more sense. Just a thought.

The idea behind the "Pirates" (they are actually Mercenaries) is a good one but executed poorly. There should be some sort of selection given to the user on how frequent they would like raids to occur. Currently its 12 mins, maybe give us an option to set it to either 12, 18, or 24 minutes?

IMHO, there should have been an option to turn pirates off. Sure, they can be beneficial at times, but it seems they can also be rather annoying. I can imagine one's frustration at having built a fleet, preparing to attack another system, but instead having to deal with a spontaneous attack from a random pirate fleet. Plus, I heard pirate fleets can get helluva large, and, in some instances, bigger than the players own. At that point, I'm not sure they'd be classified as pirates anymore.

Meh, the pirates *are* kinda random and annoying, especially once you get established enough to beat them back repeatedly. They also have a massive fleet thats not very pirate like. I would expect the pirates to do hit and runs and only maybe mass up when you have a weakly defended planet. Maybe even take a bribe to leave after they attack. I've never seen the pirates retreat and they have a limitless fleet.

I know they have the bounty and all, but in the first couple games I played even if I had a bounty that was 2000 credits higher than the AI in 1v1, the pirates would still attack me anyway so it seemed kinda pointless to even pay it after a while. Seems like the only way to get rid of them is destroy the pirate base.

The pirate concept is awesome!

Some of the games I've played I've over committed my credits and it made for some heated action when players realised I was behind most of the bounties.

What I'd like to see is different (AI) factions to further the pain inflicted to planets, economy, trading, etc.

i love the pirates... but...

played my first game today, on an easy map. Turns out, that smack in the middle, was the pirate system. And it was the only access point to the enemy players systems as well.
So i was expanding, and doing my thing, and when time came to attack my opponent, i had to clear out 400 pirate ships first. Took me quite awhile to find the perfect strategy to clear out that many ships without any significant losses.

after about 30+ mins of fighting, i had captured the pirate planet. And shortly after that, i just went from planet to planet and nuked the AI..

the pirates were damn tough, the ai was a pushover...

so i think someone forgot to scale the pirates when playing on easy...

Some maps have pirates. Some don't. Pick maps that don't have them or design one that doesn't.

I really like the pirannical bit of the game, but it's quite clear that some others don't - maybe you Devs could have them included in random maps in a similar fashion to resources, game/research speed etc.

For example :

Piracy -

High (every 6 minutes)
Standard (every 12 minutes)
Off (never)
Random (random)

Could be done with a single button (easier said than done, I know) and would improve the experience for those who really don't enjoy pirates, those who want more piracy, and those who enjoy the system how it is.

That'd be my solution, anyway.