Pirates: The Worst (or Best) Part of the Game?

Make your own map without pirates?

I think of them as experience buffets. Nothing like a pirate fleet or two on the way to the enemy homeworld to put a shine on things.

I love the pirates

Just make a map without them if you don't like them

you can do what the poster above said or you can mod it and change the time of first attack and reocurring attacks to some huge insane number so you will still have pirates but they shouldn't attack until that first attack timer runs out

The purpose they serve is to do exactly what annoys you - make it difficult for a certain player (be it human or AI) to expand.

I believe their fleets are scaled by the bounties on a player, even early on it isn't a terrible thing to defeat.

As for the immersion thing, well there are other things that break it - you can find plenty, but what is your real beef with the pirates?

So the only way to play a game without the Pirates is to design a new map any time I want to play the game and leave them out?

Doesn't that seem an excessive amount of work to turn this "feature" off?

I pay people to make games, not to give me a map toolset.

sorry to say that is what you paid for then, they can't make everyone happy which is why sins is heavily moddable

You didnt pay anyone to make a game...

rather you bought a game someone was nice enough to sell to you, that they spent years making

Yes, it is.

Question is, why you are complaining about pirates in the first place...

That said, there are maps without pirates.

not really it takes maybe 5 minutes to get a random map made using the ingame map designer

Good thing they made the game easily moddable, then. Carry a couple ones in a text file and the pirates will attack roughly once every fourteen years.

I see.

Its inconceivable that someone would find random fleets of space Pirates to be slightly annoying in a space strategy game?

Let's say that I wasn't even interested in the game's immersion (where giant advanced fleets of space buccaneers seems ridiculous). Let's say that I wasn't even the type that preferred a sandbox type game where I can develop a large empire and challenge a few reasonably intelligent AI opponents. Let's just say I was a RTS junkie. What other real time strategy game features roaming bands of units that play an enormous role in determining development speed for my base? Warcraft? No. Starcraft? No. Europa Universalis? No. There's nothing comparable to Pirates in any RTS I've ever played. The entire idea is so foreign to me, it never even occured to me that something like this would be in a RTS or a serious strategy game of any kind.

And yet, not only is it present, they are prevalent and can't be turned off? How is it so absurd to be upset by this?

Pirates are awful and I wish they could be removed, gets rid of a lot of the strategy imo

It's actually really easy to whip up a random map with out pirates, as the Pirate Base is just a planet type. Just go into the map maker interface, set how many players you want, and remove the PirateBase planet (it's going to be the first planet group, I believe) and save that as a map called "RandomNoPirate" or something. Just tweak from there, as desired. Easy.

Um no not really.

What you have to relise is that when the Vasari Empire invaded Trader Space lots of planets broke away to do their own thing. And with the huge amount of wealth that was present in this sector it wasnt hard for anyone to build large enough fleets.

Plus the conflict has been going on for 10 years. Plenty of time or large fleets of space pirates to develope. Not to mention the fact that you aren't 'just exploring' a new sector. All sectors of space in the game are already populated by humans. What you are doing is uniting planets in your cause.

Not to mention the fact that they are reasonably easy to deal with, you just have to know how to play the game.

Some maps have pirates. If you make your own map, you can remove pirates.

Pirates add a lot to stratagy. They are good to keep econnomic player in the game.

Lets face it, economic players wont have strong fleets, but they can bribe pirates to work for them. This means that the military tree and the ecomonic/industry tree are important.

Pirates act as the "RTS" balance. Computer too strong? Well, pirates will act as a speed bump. Its a new concept to a RTS but SOASE proves its a very viable and important one.

no one is saying they cannot be turned off, the predesigned maps are just that they are well predesigned just like any map in any other game just these has the pirate bases as a planet type. You could download the galaxy forge tool and edit the map to take out the pirate bases if you are hell bent on playing the premade maps. Also If you use the ingame map designer you can design any type of galaxy you want with as many stars/planets/ and pirates to no pirates at all. It takes only a few minutes to set up a small to medium size map.

I understand and like the concept behind the pirates, and when I get attacked by them, I try to look at it as an opportunity to level my capitol ships, which seem to slaughter them fairly well. My problem is with the frequency with which you have to play the eBay mini-game with them. Instead of snarky comments, can someone post the line and the file where one can change the frequency manually until they put in a slider?

WWW Link

(If you don't outbid on this, they are coming to your house!!)

goto your sins of the solar empire/gameinfo folder, open the file called gameplay.constants and search for these lines

firstWarningTime 900
normalWarningTime 720

Change values to whatever you want, but make a backup copy just incase

awesome , thanks. I assume those numbers are real time seconds?

Thanks man, I hope our reviewers recognize our innovation as well

yes they are, 900 is 15 minutes for the first attack, then after that its 12 minutes from there on.

I think theres a little variation as to the actual times, I think those are just values.

i have noticed though in the retail the pirates are a bit more of a pain now than they were in the beta. they are a bit tougher now and im not sure if its just me...but they almost feel like they attack a bit more often too now. it doesnt really bother me too much since sometimes i just let them come and use them to knock up some experience on my caps...but i do tend to lose small fleets early on against them because they are a bit more powerful than i can handle at times considering im also having to deal with the real opponent's fleets aswell.

(early game also feels a bit slower in growth than it was in the beta aswell...so that could also be adding into the slight difficulty)

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