I agree that the constant growth of Pirate ship stats is a bit out of hand, but I really don't think I've been playing long enough to offer an unbiased opinion... (In other words, they have indeed kicked my arse a few more times than I'd like to admit.)

But another small change that I think would do quite a bit of good is to add another small linear growth; namely, that the strength of each raid decreases proportionally with time in respect to the amount offered via public bounty. As it is, the big problem with large endgame pirate raids is not only that they have some amazing firepower and defensive capabilities, but you can unleash a veritable SWARM of pirates with a paltry amount. Logically, I think it follows that 5000 creds spent on the first pirate raid should be "worth" far more than that same 5000 spent four hours into a standoff. Once you've got a steady income at your disposal, it is rather viable to just have the pirates do your dirty work for you, and I think some scaling along these lines would help to kill two birds with one stone. Instead of a guaranteed personal mercenary force when you can afford toss 40,000 in bounty onto someone lategame, you get less relative power than the early raids, sort of adjusting for inflation as it were. I think it would additionally help to deal with the scenario that a real angry mob of lategame pirates won't exacerbate the problem that they can severely outclass faction capabilities. If you've got some robust defenses set up, some of the stats mentioned in posts above don't seem nearly as intimidating when you've only got a dozen or so ships from the 'super-pirates' to deal with. At least until you decide their asteroid is a galactic eyesore and must be dealt with, but it's your own grave if you want to talk a walk through their backyard.

Hold Shift for 1k increments. Can't remember if there are any other increments...

Again, my ratio suggestion would take care of the "beating me to the punch" issue nicely

I think pirates are both overpowered and not following their traditional role of piracy enough.

Previously, pirates bacame irrelevant on the late game, and an atempt was made to make them important mid-to-late game, and not just a xp filler.

I will try to organize my ideas scattered on several posts here, I hope I can remember them all.

Pirate Skills

Pirates should be a harassing force. They should harm the effectiveness of all civilian operations. Skills pirates should have:

Override - targets any one civilian structure: Pirates gain temporary control of target civilian structure. Effect lasts until the pirate ship leaves the gravwell or is destroyed. While the pirates have control of the structure, the benefits of the structure becomes a penalty, thus:

A trade port counts as -1 trade port, generating negative income. with 2 trade ports in a gravwell, if 1 is controlled by the pirates, it is the same as having 0 trade ports in said gravwell. If the player had 3 trade ports, having 1 under control of the pirates would be the same of having only 1 trade port.

A military or civilian lab would count as -1 tech level. If a player has 4 military labs and one is overrun by the pirates, that is the same as having only 2 military labs. This would halt research and the ability to create higher level ships.

Pirate controlled refineries would give penalties instead of bonuses for the metal and crystal resources.

Media hubs would also negatively impact culture.

Controlling a frigate or capital ship factory means the pirates can build ships of the race from which the factory belongs to (!!!).

Ion cannons - targets ships and tactical structures: can temporarily disable operation of ships and structures. This way pirates can bypass strong defenses and get to the civilian structures, or disable them so that they can actually pound them into oblivion.

Flak burst - Pirates dont have fighters,  they should have a way to pound strong waves of strike crafts when outnumbered, beyond the flak frigates.

Salvage resources - pirates should consume debris from destroyed ships and structures and scavenge resources from them.

Game mechanics

Pirate raid - Pirate raids should not have a fixed timetable. The 5 min could be a rough estimate, but the level of success of the previous raid should influence the time until next raid. The more successful the previous raid, the shorter the time until the next raid.

Pirates should have a 'cheat level intelligence', always knowing the planets gravwell contents. This way, they can weight the planetary factors:

• least defended
• most civilian structures
• least number of jumps through hostile gravwells to reach target
• strenght of intermediate hostile gravwells

To decide the best target to raid for maximum profit.

Pirate raids should have a hidden 'minimum bid' which starts small and grows over time, together with pirate strength. It makes no sense for a late-game raid be decided by a 500 credit bid. If the minimum bid is not met, the pirates pick (at least) one target randomly.

Calculating the minimum bid - The pirates will plan to send at least X ships. Each ship has a bid value, according to ship type. Summing the value of the number and type of ships the pirates intend

Pirate tech should have a cap much like the players to avoid the 4000 hull frigates. Once that level is reached, pirates will get stronger by sending more ships and multiple raids, and reducing the time between raids.

If two players engage a bid war, it is possible that two targets (or more) have a big bounty on them. The pirates will likely send two raids ( or more) at once if the bounties are big enough, so that they can profit more.

Private bounty - For a player to hire the pirates against a specific target, the number of targets should automatically calculate the 'minimum bid' value. If the player does not meet that minimum, he cannot launch the private bounty. Adding more money will make the attack force stronger, calculated by the cost per pirate ship like above.

Beefing up the bounty - The player should be ble to donate ships to beef up the pirate attack power. The number of fleet points of all ships would be summed, and for every 25 points of ships given to the pirates, the player will be untargettable for 1 raid. So, if a player donates 1 cap, he will be immune to the next 2 pirate raids.

Pirates controlling shipyards

There are ships that the pirates would prefer to build if they ever have a chance of controlling, according to their role. They would be able to build whichever ships the player which had the shipyard hjacked can build. They would try to build whatever counter they need against the target, according to context.

Hoshikos - best mobile repair skil.

Advent carriers - more squadrons per ship, also lays mines.

Vasari mine layer - can leave a wake of mines when running away, or thrown around in the fray.

LRFs - any faction, for more firepower.

Anti-structure cruisers - especially to finish off tactical defenses and SB.

Starbase constructors - they would send those back to the pirate base. once it is defended though, they would attempt to deploy offensively.

The egg - the best combination of offensive and defensive skills. The level 6 is the best skill for pirate pillaging.

Radiance - for that ship controlling skill.

Marza - MB. Nuff said.

It does not mean they will only build those, only that it will be a preference.

Pirate base

I think the pirate base should have 2 slots for starbases and a great amount of tactical slots, just to make them a very tough nut to crack.

If a faction wipes and colonizes the pirate base, it would be constantly stormed by pirates attempting to get it back, so it would be a high maintenance prize.

https://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/376151

Can't wait to play the changes!

By the way, no matter how powerful (or not) they are, they still have one major weakness: their planet still only has 6k health.

So my task for here:

Augmented so that I had about 24 Karrastra Destructors instead of 12 was effective at taking out their planet when I simply focused on attacking it. After I destroyed their planet, I pulled my forces back away from their defenses, retreated the Karrastra's and then with my remaining fleet polished off the rest of their ships. In the meantime I built a Starbase and colonized the planet, and then my Starbase had no problem dealing with their defenses.

Well, we'll see what Thursday's 1.01 patch brings!

The real damage is not to people who read this forum.  It's to people who know nothing about Sins, who purchase Trinity, and don't even know that these forums exist nor that you use Impulse to update the game (unless it's integreated into Trinity and Diplomacy, I dunno).  The danger is that people will play the game for a week and then throw up their hands in frustration and conclude that Sins is garbage.  I really do think this was a big mistake the more that I think about it.

<Edit> Download Updates button does in fact bring up Impulse.  I don't know if it comes with Trinity or not though.  I would assume that it does.

Get the game fairly well in, when you're sitting on 1,000+ supply and the bounties are in the thousands... then tell us how the pirates are. I'll do the same if I beat you to it

Is there a "deplomatic solution" to the pirates? I don't see how.

The stupid bidding system should have been changed. It was garbage in 2008 and it is still garbage in 2010...go figure!

Why do I have to babysit the damn thing all the time? Its boring and very frustrating, especially when you're in the middle of a battle. 

As they are right now, Pirates are broken and they do not add anything fun to the game, in fact I think they take away some of the fun from what I think the game should be (empire building, colonizing/researching and fleet managing).

BTW, Pirates were not in need of a nerf during the first few raids. The problem was that their ships were uber OP mid to late game.

Well, until IC changes the way the bidding works, Pirates are off again!

that might be an answer, make it so diplomacy is extended to pirates. This way going diplomatic at the start of a game is not suicidal.

my "deplomatic solution" is 'Attack me and i'll send my fleet over and Hit you like a cake'

agreed. to the mizax. it makes no sense that pirates would send 20 ships if they are only making 500 dollars

this is really super balling. wow. unfortunately it would seem like too much work to simply put in the next update. but this is a pretty fricking good system for pirate activity in any war game set up

Well maybe for sins 2.. 

  Also forgot to add that the amount asked for would be directly controlled by how powerful your empire is. this would balance it better... right now the richest person has control of the pirates and the poorest cant win the bidding making it very lopsided.