Pirates?!

This happened in my game earlier today. I agree; it was absolutely devastating... to the AI's militaries.

The Arceans were unable to build any ships at all for fear of being blasted out of the sky by pirates. Although I had intended on taking the Arceans out after the more worrisome Korath, I changed my mind when I saw that the pirates were doing a lot of my pre-invasion work for me. A few fast transport ships to slip by the pirates and the Arcean empire was absorbed into my own in no time.

I had the advantage of being fairly high up in military tech, which I had been to protect myself from the Korath. Huge ships with high armour (or maybe point defense) were able to take on fleets of pirates and gain valuable experience from it. They did manage, however, to take out my active fleet of medium sized ships and most of my starbases before I was able to get the first huge ship out of the stardocks.

I supppse the pirates could have been more devastating had I not been prepared for them; at least they were an equal opportunity disaster!

In your situation, focusing on influence, you need to worry about quick AI transports hitting your worlds. But since you have high populations, presumably, that may not be a big problem. The AI ships tend to be slower and they have to get through pirates protecting your planets. You might find focusing on Soldiering techs helpful, just in case. Meanwhile, let the AIs deal with the pirate problem, if they can. If they can't, you're no worse off, at least until you can build a ship that can deal with them yourself.

Well, I had researched all the soldiering techs ealry on, to protect me a little if they decided to try to take my border planets. And currently, the Drengin have beena big help to my growth, since when they beat up the AIs, they usually surrender, and give me all their lands to gain my protection, but now, I cant leave my planets, and every ship I build, they quickly crush before it even leaves the planet. Im just hoping the Drengin and Krynn can crush those damn pirates!

If you haven't already finihsed the weapons trees (sounds like you haven't), the simple thing is to just research like mad until you *can* field a ship that will devastate the pirate fleets. Once you've got that it's just a matter of mopping up.

I'm having the same problem in my game. There are at least 200 very powerful pirate fleets everywhere. I've been building some nice fleets myself that are able to defeat individual pirate fleets, but there are just so many of them. I typically loose one of my huge hulled ships per battle and I've got like 200+ battles to go.

Unfortunately, I need to add a big ass hyperwarp drive to each of my ships so I can outrun them. Otherwise, I'd have a very difficult (impossible?) time putting together my fleets.

I don't know if I have the patience to continue.

I do find it interesting though, that although my entire civilization is utterly surrounded by these pirates, my tourism industry is booming.

it might be worth creating a no-engine "orbital protector" that's cheap and easy to build - loaded to bear with weapons and shields. This way, when it gets built and the pirate attacks, they get more than they bargained for.

Yea..they are slowly being killed in Krynn and Drengin lands, but they still rule my space. My economy is still booming, but they are crushing my ships faster than I can build, or rush them. My best ships cant survive against 200+ attack fleets, EVERYWHERE.

Haven't you ever been on that pirate ride at Disney World?