I've been playing Sins on and off for years. I recent;y upgraded to Diplomacy and played three games. everything you said is spot on. The pirates are too damn powerful. Sure, they can be beaten with enough effort. However, allying yourself with other teams in order to defeat the pirates became the focus of all three games I've played. I'm not sure there will be be a fourth.

The AI doesn't know what to do with it. All one has to do to win the game with any race is develop your economy enough to pay the bounty. Then follow the raids around with colony ships to scoop up the decimated planets from the unfortunate race that lost the bidding war. To prove the point, I won my last game with ease without building any cap ships or a single bomber.

A fully developed planet with most of the defense and military research is still wiped out by a single raid. The only hope one has is to build extra frigate factories and hang on long enough to get a respectable fleet there. The unsettling aspect is a fully developed planet with 10K credits of upgrades and defenses can be raken out for a 250 credit investment; in one word: imbalanced.

One side effect I've noticed is the pirate base overpopulation. When a raid starts, new pirate ships are created. They wipe out a planet, then go to the pirate base. Then more and more and more come along. At the victory point, there were over 500 high hit point, tough as nails pirates at their base.

The only other option is to turn them off. Perhaps, in future updates, they could be dialed down instead.

This is a serious imbalance to the game. In my humble opinion, it's a game breaker.

There is no problem with pirates gentlemen.

First off, most multiplayer games disable the pirates, to allow for a pure strategic experience. If you don't like them, disable them. Period.

That being said, if the pirates are defeating you easily, you are doing a wide variety of things wrong. In multiplayer, the pirates are used to level-up titans, which become much more powerful as they level. Many of the titans can defeat the pirate base with the help of just a few supporting frigates/cruisers. In the rare case where pirates are enabled in Multiplayer, players frequently bid to send them to an allied player, so that they may be used to level cap ships or titans.

How to defeat the pirates with ease:

1) Kill the siege units, then leave the planet well.

This can be done easily with a handful of frigates. Once the pirates are done destroying your buildings, they will leave (since they have no planet siege), and your planet will be intact.

2) Build a bigger fleet.

The pirates always send a fixed number of units, depending on level. A larger fleet will defeat them every time, easily. This doesn't mean building 7 frigates instead of 3. It means building at least a couple of cap ships, and 40-50 frigates, which can be done even on tiny maps.

3) If by some strange miracle you manage to do tremendously badly in expansion, and you can't afford to lose structures or build a fleet, you can still beat the pirates. Simply build two trade ports linking your planets. The pirates will chase the trade ships first, and can be killed easily by a relatively small fleet while they are doing so. You should never do this badly while expanding, but even if you do, the pirates are still beatable.

4) Pay more bounty than the other guy.....

If you can't manage to do at least one of these things, you don't deserve to beat the pirates, or any other player for that matter.

The pirates were ridiculously strong in Diplomacy, especially in 1.0. Basically the expansion before that, Entrenchment, made pirates a joke since they had not chance versus starbases. People complained about pirates being too weak, so the devs made them strong enough to take out starbases. Then another equally sized group of people complained about pirates being too strong. That is basically what has happened with every single change to the pirate strength the devs have tried. It's zero sum game, just as many people will be unhappy with the change as will like the change.

Rebellion pirates are just a bit stronger than they were in Entrenchment, certainly no where near Diplomacy 1.0 values. I don't remember how they were changed in later diplomacy patches.

I appreciate that condescending may be how the post comes across, and I apologize for that, but you don't need weaker pirates, you need the capability to beat the pirates, and you need your opponents to have that capability as well.

I played diplomacy too, and although the pirates were strong, they could be beaten with the right tactical approach, which I provided above.

If you win your games by following around the pirates, you need to either play against stronger AI, or explain to the friends you are playing against how to deal with the pirates. Even when in very large fleets, the pirates are tactically "dumb" and can be tricked in a number of ways beyond what I described above. This might include luring them onto a mine field, building powerful defensive structures in close proximity to your structures/planet, or running them around after a high priority target while you destroy their vulnerable siege units.

I don't think it's asking a lot that you try to improve your game before asking the developers to make a code change.

If there's no problem with pirates, then why do all competitive MP games turn them off?  Seems a little contradictory, but I'm willing to look at your elaboration for some type of reconciliation....

Let's first consider the ways to defeat pirates, the best of which is to build trade ports....think about how ridiculous and unintuitive that solution is, you "defeat" pirates by building unarmed civilian buildings that you would want to build anyway since they generate income....I mean seriously, how stupid of a solution is that?  How can you consider pirates to be a fine mechanic when it is so easily defeated by basically doing nothing?  Of course there are those other vague solutions like "build more ships" and "pay more bounty", which are not really solutions but just veiled euphemisms for "ur a noob"...

Now let's consider your stated pirate strategies, such as farming them for titan XP or sending them to allies in order for them to farm XP....calling this a fine system has to be the most absurd logic ever....you have a system that is clearly designed to punish players and yet it is actually consistently used to help them...imagine if every time you shot enemy ships they actually healed and every time you built a trade port you lost money...such thinking is completely devoid of logic and frankly shows you are more interested in telling the OP how stupid they are than actually considering the issue...

The issue here is not the skill level of the OP, it is the game mechanic itself and clearly its treatment by skilled players shows that it is horribly flawed and easily abused....I'm pretty sure you know this though...

Apologies for my inability to do quotes, but most of this is directed at Seleucia's earlier post.

Competitive MP games turn off pirates in order to focus on the strategic battle between human players, and remove the AI from the equation.

The Sins Devs have done a great job creating a game that allows players to create a wide variety of different game experiences. Some of those experiences include involving the AI, and some do not. I don't think any one player can expect to speak for what the other types of players want, and I don't think it's productive to ask for changes to the game's code based on what one type of player wants. If anything, the only change to pirates I would ask for is an adjustable difficulty rating, to allow them to be applied to a wider variety of games.

That the pirates chase the valuable trade ships is really not stupid at all. Piracy is a current issue in our world in the gulf of Aden, and it literally involves pirates chasing valuable cargo ships and occasionally being killed or captured by naval forces while they are doing so.

I'm not even remotely trying to tell the OP how stupid they are, I am trying to give them the tools to defeat the pirates which are unbalancing their games. There has been a strange change in our culture recently in which telling someone how to do something better is somehow an insult. It's not. If a master blacksmith tells you how to craft a beautiful blade, you don't tell him not to call you stupid. If an olympic skier tells you how to ski faster, you don't walk away because "that guy is condescending." You learn, and improve as a result. I'm neither an olympic athlete, nor a perfect sins player, but I clearly have lessons to teach to the player who is unable to deal with the pirates, as I myself am able to deal with them.

I think the pirates are only horribly flawed if you expect them to fit into every single game of sins perfectly, and I don't think that's what they were designed for (given the opt out option). In some situations they will be an interesting add-on (I enjoy having them in single player), and in some they will be out of place (MP). Asking the devs for a perfect solution is just not reasonable, or even possible, given the wide range of types of players. What is possible is improving to the point where you can handle the pirates.

Last time I played Sins was like about 3-5 years ago? I remember the rebellion's titans for loyalists/rebels. But I still remember how I dealt with them.

Should be noted that I played exclusively as humans in Sins.

1) Try to figure out where the pirate base.

2) Succeed or Failure, establish where your frontlines would be at and position ships at interception posts.

3) Quickly Establish an super early starbase on 1-3 frontline areas. Cheap basic 1k credit starbase will sufficient this early in the game.

4) Turret Guns + Repair bays can help.

5) Should the pirates manage to be sic'd upon you, your 5-20 ships assigned to pirate interception role would help defeat the pirates with no trouble with combined defensive forces at whichever gravity well they're in.

6) If you happen to have any capitals nearby, have them join in the fun.

This should suffice for early game. In Mid/late game your defenses should have hardened.

This screenshot, I think this was when the first time I've assaulted an pirate base. Note how I invaded in force, and brought siege ships with me for pulverizing those turret defenses. I should have zoomed out and shown the entire invading force lol. Oh well.

But either way, direct your attentions to one of my planets at the left, the one with yellow symbol on it. I think that's my capital, and it's basically running my standard configuration of defenses to respond to all types of attacks.

Besides that, Pirate bases have a weakness that can be exploited. Their ships is scattered everywhere. Monitor the positions and decide how you want to enter the gravity well. You can kill quite a lot of them before they're fully engaged in combat with you or with some luck, all of them as they engage with you piecemeal. The defensive turrets have limited range if I remember correctly, so hang out at edge of gravity well to stay out of their range until you're ready. Bring in those scouts to detect the invisible mines too.

If you want, I might still have some saves left over that I can screenshot to show what your front line gravity well defenses could look like.

You don't mind the Devs being called "freaking dimwits," but you mind the veiled implication that the original poster isn't very good at the game?

I didn't construct any kind of argument to the original poster. I provided some context, then I told him how to beat the pirates, which seemed more or less like what he needed. It's not necessary to hang mountains of hate on me because I said "gentlemen" without 12 pages of fine print designating who I am addressing, in what context, and why. I spoke to the original post.

To refute some of your piracy wisdom, I will note that there are many types of pirates. The Barbary Corsairs roamed the seas for centuries, and competed successfully with professional military fleets for hundreds of years. They were known to accept huge payments from nation-states (including the U.S) in order to cease predation on that Nation's shipping. They would also continue chasing cargo ships while being shot at, usually because they were firing back. There's nothing thematically terrible about the soase pirates as they are now.

In addition, there is a spawn ships button...it's on the cultural buildings of the terran rebels, and on the vasari dark fleet beacon. There's also resurrection, but that apparently is perfectly reasonable?

I'm sorry you have such a sad perception of MP, and I'm sorry a minor post is capable of causing you so much anger.

Thanks for the friendly forum welcome.