Diplomacy 1.01 is coming out today. Pirates are more balanced now.

What is the balance? I see almost nothing that hint towards that in the change logs, if you know anything more or any details, please tell

I don't know how much easier the pirates will get after this, but these should help somewhat, although they seem to be improving the pirate AI.

Hopefully they'll have toned the pirates down a bit in the patch.  I just hope we haven't lost a lot of brand new players to the pirates, players who threw up their arms in frustration and screamed, "F this!".  Ideally, the pirates should be something you need to deal with but not something that will be overwhelmingly bothersome.  They should be an annoyance and a serious threat that needs to be dealt with but they shouldn't be a game-breaker.  They should end up being capital ship food for players who expanded and build their fleet properly.

I built my fleet properly and balanced, because I crushed my REAL enemy and began subjugating all of the planets, and putting up lots of defenses and star bases, all upgraded.  Most research completed with only the last tier to go.

The pirates are a good element of the game BADLY implemented.  I beat off pirates many times, but the flaw is that they don't seem to have a capping point in their strength.  They just keep increasing their hull and damage with every new wave, to overwhelming levels, that are unrealistic and unfun.  And on top of that they launch unlimited waves every 10 minutes or so.  This should have been spotted long ago by the dev team.

I would have no problem with them increasing their numbers but capping their damage and hull to an average of all the factions top miltary tech is what should have happened.  Not increasing their hull and damage 10 times what I'm able to make.  Game breaking and unfun.

So instead of having a good first playthrough of the game, I'm left with a bitter taste in my mouth.  Oh well at least I have some other good games to play.  

And in response to someone on this topic, no, I don't want to make pirates gimpos.  I want them balanced.

Juvantei, replay the game with the new patch.  The pirates were never this hard, not even when the original sins was released.  It was just an "oops" and Ironclad fixed it very fast.  You can make the argument that it should never have been that way to start, but *shrug* I'd rather have a company that addresses issues in their game instead of saying "its perfect" and walking away from it.

I'll edit in bold italics.

[quote]Pirates will now prefer planets with two or more structures (rather than Dead Asteroids and the like).

Boost, though a realistic one that should be.

This is so that your low cost planets don't get slaughtered.

Pirates will always try their best to nuke a planet before leaving. It's the only way to be sure (we had to give them something).

Leaving? Since when do pirates leave? Maybe mine just hate me, but I've never seen them leave (unless they're heading to someone else and just pass through, which I hope isn't included here). Anyway, it's a boost.

Not exactly...  They will only attack so long as there is bounty on your head.

Initial Pirate raids are now less powerful.

Yea sure, hence "almost nothing". Has nothing to do with the the topic though, since he didn't talk about the early stages. Nerf.

Yeah, pretty simple nerf.

Pirate Gauss Guns are now less powerful.

Oh jeez, now I just have to deal with the ships? Wonderful! Nerf

Well, this has more to do with capturing their bases, but it still works...

Experience for killing Pirate ships has gone down.

What reward there was for managing such a pain is now gone. Neither a nerf or a boost, but increasing the pain.

Not exactly...  Since they are nerfed, they don't need to give you so much exp

The Pirates now have a unique armor type that will allow them to take less damage from all weapon types.

What is "pirate ships are too strong" is hard to understand? Boost, how big or small I dunno, but still a(n unnecessery)  boost.

This is to prevent them from getting slaughtered.  They don't have mitigation, which puts them at a huge disadvantage.

Pirates will now upgrade themselves more evenly instead of spending all of their credits on just one area.

Tbh I don't see how this will impact the game. For me they have massive damage and loads of hitpoints. What else is there to improve they can improve?

Its basically an AI fix...

When on a player mission, the Pirates will no longer stop at the first target owned planet they come across. When on a raid, the Pirates will try to stop at a sufficiently occupied planet (i.e., tastier targets are higher priority).

Boost, if an understandable one. Now you can't focus your money to make strong stabases at key locations. Now you have to put them up all over the place, making it harder to use some starbases as economic boosters.

Also, don't think that pirates are unstoppable.  You have something they can only dream of: shield mitigation.  It goes up over time and neutralizes a huge chunk of your damage.  That means that while their frigate may have 3000 hull, that is really only about the same as one of your ships with 1000 hull.  Mitigation is a huge thing in Sins.  While one of the hardest concepts to fully define the mechanics of, it basically knocks out 2/3 of incoming damage to frigates and up to 80% of incoming damage to caps

Sarlocal, have you played with the newest patch? The pirates max research as been halfed. Along side the nerf in the Gauss guns. Along side the new Armor type which basically gives pirates a composite style armor type. Nothing is great against them nothing really sucks. Ive not seen a new late game pirate raid yet. Just going of the game files.

Anyhow, I diagree with alot of what your said. Personally found the 1.0 pirates fairly easy...but my playstyle seems to help me out here.

I was eating cereal this morning and pirates attacked me in my kitchen.  Oh the horror.  I could not find my nerf rocket launcher and had to go hand-to-hand.  It was really brutal.  A perfectly good breakfast ruined and my cereal wasted.

Well, I played a game tonight...  I must say, they aren't that bad...  Sure, they are OP, but not unstoppable...  The key is to not let your enemies send them at you and by forming alliances with the AI's.  They are for the most part pretty stupid.  Just get the three generic upgrades and then get the other one that negates race differences.  Then AI's will be swarming you for cease fires.

But honestly, Juvan, you actually did really well for a first game (way better than I did).