If it's anything like the "Pirates Everywhere" variant that happened to me; I'd recommend concentrating on creating a few fast ships that they can't catch, and let everyone else get their arses shot off while you expand.

With the pirates, I just cashed in my starbases for the decommision money (they were going down anyway) upped my tech until I could beat them, then blew them out of the sky. THe real problems was that the vast pirate fleet had kept everyone holed up when the Dread Lords came in. Good luck if *that* happens too - {G}.

Jonnan

Brennan is right, they won't attack you as long as your ships don't have weapons. If you want to exterminate them, research down the Missile weapons branch of the Tech Tree. They are Beam weapon based, so research down the Shields branch if you wish.

And I would love to have Pirates for once attack my galaxy. I've never faced Pirates. I would love to go pwnzaur all over their sorry candy-asses. It would be a nice test of my skills.

Also, your starbases will come out unharmed, as long as you didn't upgrade them with weapons.

In one of my games the Peace Keepers appeared the turn after the Dread Lords appeared. It was quite epic, Peace Keepers and Dread Lords duking it out. Of course it turned out as a stalemate due to the fact that Dread Lords are Missile and Chaff based, and the Peace Keepers are Beam and Shields based.

Eitherway it was funny and I was able to mop up quite well.

Hope this helps.

Rock On!!!

So this is what happened....

My peacekeepers were mass driver and armor based so researching armor and beam weaons was the clue. It is true that they wouldn't attack me but their appearance slowed down my game, i.e. scroll speed and any actions taken as long as a peasekeeper is on screen! I couldn't believe it, as soon as all peacekeepers are off screen the game would run soomthly again. So due to this nuisance I decided to kick them out of the galaxy. It is an epic war, because they are superior to my ships but I got more. I seem to win the war as my ships become more up to date. They certainly made my game more exciting than before! and yes, I do not worry about the computer at the moment as its military was completely crushed by them.