Major Pirate Problems

Heya.

I'm a beginner in GC2, having bought the entire package only a few weeks ago.

But have you tried stacking military starbases?

In combination with tiny/smull hulls, and if it's TA some HP modules on them to maximize firstly firepower and secondly survival rate, that's actually a very good suggestion.

You might also consider (in TA only) using an Atlas module and either one or zero weapons on a huge hull, filling up the rest with defenses, and fleeting it up with enough tiny or smalls (full of weapons but an hp mod or two couldn't hurt) to hit your logistics cap.  The Atlas module makes the huge hulled ship the primary target, so you don't lose any tinies, and with maxed out defense, it should take a while to die to even 25 fleeted pirate ships.

Your other option would be suicide dreadnaughts, all attack/no defense in fleets of one.  Due to how combat works in DA and to a lesser extent TA, in a large number of instances fleets don't actually help you, and I'm fairly positive this is one of those situations.

Quite some time ago I had a Peacekeeper event where they were roaming the galaxy in fleets of 15-20 ships, with each ship at 400 beam attack/1400 beam defense, but I eventually managed to defeat all of them, simply because they don't get reinforcements.

I also just bought the whole package of the games. Decieded to start with the begining of them and to learn doing a custom game. But these Pirates are keeping me from winning that first game.

I have only attacked the pirates in areas where I have military star bases. After they defeat my fleets they then take out the star bases.

As I said it's nuts. They only use beam type weapons and so I have the shilds on the ships as high as possable for defence and then have Black hole torpedos as high as I can get them after the shilds. Shilds at 150 each ship in strength and torpedos at around 100 per ship in strength. It usualy takes 2 fleets of 7 ships to take out 1 pirate ship at a time. So about 80 weeks of building ships to take out 1 pirate at a time in a fleet of theirs thats 25 ships strong.

Military starbases won't help you in this situation. They work best when you can have hundreds of tiny ships, and you simply don't have the time to do that.

Don't waste your time on defenses. Your ships aren't going to survive anyway, so give them as much punch as possible. Same thing with engines and life support - don't worry about it. Just put as many weapons on there as the ship can hold.

The other alternative is running. Build really fast ships - those pirates are probably quite slow. As long as your ships aren't in range to be attacked at the end of your turn, you will be fine.

Or you could try for a tech victory.

I've had the same issues with pirates in the last round I just finished and I found it simpler to just let them blow everything up and boredly click "Turn" until I won via Tech Victory.

You can't outrun them (these tiny fleets have a speed of 25, somehow) and you can't outgun them (1100+ points of Railguns and 1900+ points of Railgun defense?) so there's really no point bothering.

Really I just considered them really, really awesome border guards while I tech'd to victory. Nobody else on the map could fight them either.

Though it was amusing to watch Mars "revolt" and some pirates appear that way, way outgunned any ship I'd ever built, as "escaped prison transports".

It's probably easier to just sit tight and wait for the pirates to disappear on their own than bother with them, frankly. As soon as they appear I'd just decommission all my ships to at least get SOMETHING for them.

Frankly, pirates are totally broke in my eyes. They just aren't working right, at all. Fleets of 25 ships with over 150 Logistics points? I thought the computer didn't cheat in this game.

I'm going to scour the menus to see if I can find some option to disable them.

@Dragoonkin

At least the pirates can't invade you.  If they could, now that would be broken.

Also, for the record, this is the MEGA pirate event we're talking about here, for which you need to have MEGA EVENTS turned ON to see.  In other words, if you can't deal with it, you might consider turning them OFF.  The normal pirate event doesn't spawn fleets of more than 4 or so ships a piece, although there are still a significant number of fleets-nor are they anywhere as strong.

Mega events would be great if they were a little less mega.

Acutally, it would be good idea to have galaxy map setting for how "mega" mega events are (instead of just on/off switch).

I gave up on them you just can't take them out. I was doing a NON tec win so with out killing the other races just could not end the game.

So I switched to trying out Dark Avatar and none of those pirate problems are in there at all. There are less pirate ships and what does show up you can take out like other normal fleets. So I guess it is just a bug with the Dread Lords add on.

Thanks for the help though guys it is apreciated from this new guy.

Although did run into a problem with the minor races in Dark Avatar. Invisable ships that only show up as a number when it is a fleet. My Guard ships can detect them and go after them but if one of my fleets fight them the game crashes. If a single ship fights them it shows a battle screen but just my ship and no shots fired then it shows a win and you end it. All of the construction ships they send are invisable but the star bases they create are visable. It is strange to say the least.

Nope, it's the mega events added in DL.  Mega events are meant to be super nasty and so big as to dominate the game when it takes place.  Turn Mega events off in the universe creation options and you'll still have regular DA style pirates, but not the super fleets the Mega events produce.

Yeah that pirate mega event is nasty, but I've never had it where they were that powerful.  The best pirate fleet I've seen was one with off-scale missile defense and I think 800 missile attack, along with 500 total HP or so and a speed of 7 (I think it was five ships).

As for how to deal with them, well... I'm not sure.  Perhaps you should let your military temporarily die and hope they move on before your neighbors get greedy.

Isn't it funny in a world where there is very little challenge to most games that people complain when a game finally has some. Lil Tommy Tucker could't beat the bad ole pirates the first time so it's time to nerf the entire project because HE couldn't. lol

I have to disagree here.  The game raises certain expectations of 'fairness'.  Not that there is a level playing field, but that the numbers you're playing with are relevant.  There are resources that can be utilised within limits.  The mega pirates break those limits without any rational explanation.

The mega pirates event is broken because it breaks the rules.  Some pirates appear from nowhere - fine.  That more ships appear than have been created in the universe up until then by at least an order of magnitude is ridiculous.  That they can disregard the rules that everyone else has to abide by - fleet size, speed etc. is silly.  The game looses suspension of belief.  Beating the pirates wasn't fun for me - it was a tedious operation of mopping them up.  Loss of belief, loss of fun - mega pirates are broken in terms of game.  When they show up, you don't win because you're a better strategist, you win because you grind them down (or just abandon the pretence of playing a 4X game and grind your way to a tech victory).

Now if you can come up with a better explanation for them being there and behaving the way that they do than 'magic', I'll be more supporting of them.  A little.

@randomkeypress

They're called MEGA events for a reason.

There is a perfectly non-mega pirate event that occurs with megas turned off that should satisfy you (and the majority of gamers, including myself).

And, just for the record.

Peacekeepers > Mega Pirates.