Ya know, if you play with pirates in a 1v1 player game, it turns into a 1v1v1, and he who has the most credits wins. I've been racking my brain to figure out what's "missing" with the pirates.

I enjoy them in the game, but my buddy coined a game we played the other night as, "The game of wasted credits". There has to be a way to earn that money back...raiding the pirate base maybe (destroying them, earns some cash back? I realize if I just wanted 1v1 only game, a custom map without the priates would do this, but I like that element in-game too! It's not that it's unbalanced, it's just missing a counter (something other than by military might).

I poked my head into their base after the third raid against me (more like JUMBO fleet massacre), and holy crap...I had to bail quick. In the end, my homeworld was only two hops from their base and his economy was in one gear higher than mine, so he was able to pound me down by attrition. It was a nice final battle that lasted going through two systems for a hour. Oh well...let's hope IC finds some cool, new ideas to make the pirates even more enjoyable.

NOTE: This isn't a "I hate the pirates", big bash party post! It's more of me just typing out loud! hehe

I agree with all of you. Something needs to be done to alter the pirates. spiceant's idea isn't 2 bad.

Or just leave it up, and then he has to deal with double the bounty the second time around, since you (presumably) lost units to the pirates. (If you didn't loose units, then you weren't "worn down" by them, you gained XP from them... mmmm, XP!)

hmmm..interesting thought, blind bidding. Reiner Knizia uses this mechanic in quite a few of his boardgames. the man is one of the best in the business.

Playing against the AI the bounty game isn't too big a deal. You just put bounty on more than one AI, so that if whichever one is about to be attacked wriggles out of it by placing more bounties the cheapest option is for them to put bounty on someone other than you (at the start you just need to put 250 or 500 on two of the AI and they will then usually put bounty onto each other).

I still usually end up receiving one or two pirate attacks later in the game when I'm too busy to keep good track, or when the AI deliberately puts money on me with seconds left on the clock... just like a human. Even losing a planet can be turned to advantage, since if the pirate fleet is strong enough to destroy the planet they are strong enough I can use them as a defensive resource while I wait for the next bidding round. That way I just lose the use of one planet temporarily and I get a free defensive fleet that lets me deploy my own ships to a different front for the next ten minutes. Not always an appealing swap, but it is some consolation.

I like this idea a lot.

Here's an idea too...They ARE pirates right? Let's say there's the off-chance these said pirates, even if the bid on you is the highest, there's the random chance they could still attack the other player(s)?

You see this all the time in the movies. "Here, take this money, please don't kill me!"...BANG! You're dead AND he has your money too!!!