I've never played 1.0, only 1.1...and in five quite long games i've never seen any pirates...i've seen mssages telling me that pirates are roaming the galaxy, and all the races are always listed as 'at war with the pirates'...but never any actual pirates...i was begining to wonder why...

The Pirates along with most of the random events occur MAYBE once per year. I played a 12 year game and had 2 events (Once where the Arcean switched to evil, and one where the Yor went good [ too bad THEY WERE BOTH DEAD then]) and that was it. It seems after 1.0x events got severely nerfed *Shrug* I have YET to see any pirates since the betas. And I have played a lot of games.

My last game I got the penal colony, which gave me a nice 50% production bonus. So I was happy right up until the pirate broke out and grabbed 4 ships. The next turn they attacked my economy starbase. Which was armed quite nicely -- so much that it took 0 damage from them while taking them each out in one shot. Didn't hear from the pirates again after that.

So yes, they do still exist, and I've seen them, even if only for a turn or two.

On this last game of mine I saw a message come up saying that pirates were around. I searched for the rest of the game and never once saw them.

I had 2 fleets of pirates in my game of 1.1. I threw 6 fleets of black hole tech ships at them and they destroyed everyone of my fleets without me getting 1 kill, talk about being overpowered, these where indestructible. Just spent the rest of the game avoiding them.

I played 5 games, mostly on 1.1 and I never seen any pirates.

I had lot of events telling me there is pirates and I see al civilization ar at war against pirates,

but I cant see any pirates ships....

I like long term games and won't trigger the victory conditions for as long as possible, so I've seen qute a few pirates with v1.11

The game I've just finished I had to rush to the technological victory as a fleet of pirates was going round wiping out everything I owned I had maxed out the tech tree and the most number of ships I could have in a fleet was five with a maximum logistics of 42. Compare that to the pirates with a logistics of 180, 20+ ships in each fleet including some wierd tiny hulls with about ten of the black hole guns and equivilant armour suffice to say I was well outgunned, even with ships specifically designed. And that's on beginner.

I'm now going to play with a cardboard box as I'm sure it's not going to cheat

Jason

More annoying than their random appearance is that they either got hundred ass kicking ships with ridicoulus logistics or only a few crappy ships without merging them in a fleet..

I just had pirates show up in my territory. I had just wiped out the Altarians, and a few turns later they showed up.
I had one of my fleets near by and took them out easily. There were only about 5 stacked ships, and not very powerful.
But I took them out on the same turn as the pirate message, so maybe they just did not have time to think.

Thats not the point. the problem is that they got hundreds of logistics points....and if a fleet of 5 dreadnaughts cannot beat them, a fleet of one dreadnaought and 8 medium ships wont do better.

hes right there good at absorbing attacks for the bigger ones

I'm running 1.2, so this might not be applicable to everyone.

I just wrapped up a long term game that had lots of pirates. I noticed two significant differences. First off, the pirates spawned by the "prison escape" event were small fleets (4-6 ships) with moderate weaponry & defenses. Nothing that I couldn't handle. This is a far cry from 1.1 where a "prison break" fleet would spawn in my core system and began ripping everything apart with insane gun weaponry and defenses that let them laugh at my ships despite multiple military bases and resources boosting their stats.

Second, are the pirate fleets spawned by "captains turned to life of crime" event. In 1.1 I didn't see a single ship from this event. In 1.2 they make themselves known, quickly. By the end of the game last night there were 4 separate fleets from this event. The SMALLEST fleet utilized 180 logistics. The biggest was between 210-230. This is not a result of their stacking, this is how they spawned. Their fleet defensive and offensive ratings were so high that all that displayed on the fleet stat window was "..." Now, just what the hell are you supposed to do about this? I (after saving) went after one fleet whose lowest defense was missle defense and strongest attack was beam. I had maxed my tech tree and spent about 30 minutes figuring the best offensive and defensive fleet mix (no frills, just weapons and defenses) and took out one, repeat, one fighter for my trouble. Tried it four more times with similar results.

So what's the deal, Stardock? I understand the desire to make pirates a credible threat but making them so powerful they can (and did) run rampant smashing anything a player can build is going a bit far.

Had pirates in 1.2. Never saw anythough. I could only imagine they are twice as nasty as before, since now you can't kill them before they fire on you.