I think your best bet to avoid having to deal with pirates is to play multiplayer. They are a necessary mechanic to keep your economy under control in singleplayer.

Maybe, I did. But I don't find the Pirates to be a core game mechanic at all. I'm working on a single player 5v5 with pirates on a locked teams, when I'm not playing with friends. In that game, the pirates are a complete non-factor.

I think the only times it would be a factor is on a free-for-all. That is mostly because all sides are fighting for an advantage and having something come in and be a burden and hammer down the opponents forces enough to launch your own strike. I won't say how many times a pirate raid has gone into my favor during combat.

But after the next patch, pirates can be removed. So, it kind of a moot point now.

i was really surprised that pirates numbers increased in early game since BETA3. but i wa pleasantly surprised. i played some 1on1 with my friend and one multiplay in ico and i think pirates are good as they are now. they add a little edge to the game and are another factor that you dont get rushed down by your opponents. also good to know that your opponents money to pirates so you can imagine that he they couldnt spend it on other things. the one multiplayer i played i had like 10-13k bounty on my head and i still managed to defeat pirates and my opponent. sometimes its even better to let pirates destroy one of you colonies while producing a new fleet in the background to counter them.

in short terms : pirates are a challenge and fun , i likem, yarrrrrrrrrrrr

Has anyone managed to destroy a pirate base? I'm all for the bidding war/nuissance factor of pirates but what I don't like is how their forces scale so ridiculously with 0 economic growth. It seems like no matter how many planets I conquer and how advanced/large a fleet I make, going to the pirate base is just suicide being outnumbered about 4 to 1. I enjoy paying them to harass my enemies early on.. but when I've conquered 90% of the known universe I -should- then be able to crush them for their insolence! What I get instead is a magical planet able to produce 150 cruiser fleets with no resources.. What's the point of expanding my empire if the pirates will always be the true power and I'm just a shlub making credits to buy them off?

And there you have your inflation/fudge factor (along with the fleet support line of upgrades).

I built my first Novalith Cannon *just* to shoot at the pirate planet until they were all dead.

Dead, dead, dead.

I kept shooting while bidding it up on my opponent until I was told I couldn't shoot at a non-hostile target.

Then I sent in my cap fleets for practice.

Early on I realized in the reality of the game the Pirates where the galaxy bullies. You don’t want them to bother you offer bounty rewards on your enemies. I did not realize until last night how fantastic an idea it was to put them in the game.

From reading the forum here I realize I am in the minority of the players that enjoy the steady pace the game offers rather than the “Run, Gun, Crush” the majority likes. Anyhow, I was playing a small map with one A.I and a very favorable map (Dark Space) over a lighter rendered environment. I am still puzzled if being able to see every move your opponent makes when entering Phase Space by panning the camera view out is a feature or a bug?

I digress, having acquired five territories and maximized their growth potential the slow realization that the TEC continued to up the pirate bounty on me. I started to match them in price when I noticed massive TEC Phase signatures. They where heading to the gas giant just past my small clump of rock, took common sense to see an invasion force and prepare to repel them.

Having an ample fleet I started reinforcing it, all the while continuing to over match my opponent’s bounty and fending off the pirate attacks (The bliss of stationary gun platforms)
The TEC started sending scout ships for an update of my force and the more I reinforced it the more I saw TEC reinforcements entering Phase Space.

They tended to send a large part of their force to another pocket boarding my zone. I saved (Thank the gaming gods for anytime saves) and watched for the fleet to enter Phase Space back to the gas giant, and from watching this move I knew I had to start the process of getting my fleet to Phase Space before the TEC did. With timing on my side I entered the gas giant five seconds before the TEC.

Now to point of this topic, within a minute of the beginning blood bath a large force of pirates jumped and began attacking the TEC, as my bounty reward exceeded the TEC bounty on me. Granted they where a 20% smaller fleet but they went after the TEC support units allowing me to pound the TEC Cap units.

After destroying all the Cap units and several support units I jumped back to my small rock with more capital units than the TEC. The priceless thing is the Pirates mopped up the remaining TEC at the gas giant.

The event I just detailed happened in about 12 minutes, and made me a firm believer in the pirates in the game, don’t hate them use them like the bullies they are after all pirates have to work to.

Ryde…

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how does one open that gameplay.constants file in order to modify it? it asks to select a program to view it with and i dont want to screw it up by selecting the wrong program

there is a patch that turns pirates on and off though, right?

People keep talking about some text you can change to get rid of pirates. Where is it?

Not that i intend on using it, but it would be nice to know.

Can somone explain why the pirates of bases with fleets multiple times larger than a private empire has? With one planet/base? Also, what is the explanation for the suicide runs that they do? Also, the designer noted that pirates are important in the TEC lore, but I see none in the manual. How is a civ that bans an entire planet of people tollerant of a pirate base and actions in its area of space?

Pirates are a worthy feature. Honestly I wish they were a little tougher. They should be able to support more sizeable fleets based on the bounties they collect...although, if they come after me, it won't be much. Seriously, hangar defenses around a trade port are enough to wipe these guys around the floor. They target the traders and meanwhile my bombers have a hayday.

The patch isn't out yet as far as I know.

Use your wordpad to open the file. Its just a text file.

Pirates are the EXP gravy train that keeps my Caps well-fed.

They are annoying but early game it can be boring if there is space between you and your opponents, just build build explore capture build upgrade upgrade build rinse and repeat.

Turning off Pirates the easy way! No need for the in game map editor.

Sorry if this has already been posted, but I didn't want to read 5 pages of form talk.

Note:You may want to make a backup of a galaxy before modifying it.

*This method has only been tested with Random galaxy maps, not any of the others because I only like random maps*

1. Go to the install location for the game for example c:\program files\stardock games\sins of a solar empire.
2. Go into the galaxy folder. Inside you will see all of the current galaxy files.
3. Right click one and choose properties then on the properties box that opens up find the part that says "Opens with" To the right of the text click on the "Change" button.
4.Choose NOTEPAD from the list of programs. Make sure it is notepad not wordpad! Click ok out of the properties box.
5.Double click the file to open it.
6.With the file open do a search (hit ctrl+F) for the word pirate.
7.The search should find a line of text that says "PirateBase"
8.A couple of lines of text above that you will see the words "Planet Group" with min count and max count indented under it.
9.Set the min count and max count 0.
10.Save the file.
There you go no pirates.

As a side note I offer no support and I am in no way responsible if this does not work or causes unwanted side effects, but it makes you happy and works great I take all the credit.

Also just about everything can be changed from these files so go have some text editing fun. Graphical tools are for weenie men.
`Brianboy

After playing a few games, I'll throw my 2 cents on the pile.

My only complaint about the pirates is the steady increase in raid sizes and in particular the ridiculous amount of ships they accumulate around their base. Every time I peak my nose in there they seem to have 3-4 times the number of ships I do. Once your empire becomes large enough to envelop the base it turns into a huge hassle to manage the zones around it, and you can't just wipe it out because that single planet cranks out ships faster than your whole empire. There's something very wrong about being able to take over the galaxy and after massing all your fleets together you're still not able to make much a of a dent in their numbers.

I'd be more than happy to put up with the pirates if I thought I had a reasonable chance of doing away with them once I get to the point where I have a handful of cap ships & escorts to spare. I'm not so happy about them when they're the most powerful force in the galaxy.

not a huge fan. there colonys are worthless and it takes alot of money to pay them off. but they are good for leveling up your fleet.

The concept of piracy is a great idea in a game like this, but the implementation is simply atrocious. It seems like the devs said to themselves: "Hey, it's to much work implementing a believable piracy system, we'll just keep spawning a neverending supply of free ships and send them to the nearest target planet."

My first, and partly because of this issue, only game of Sins up to this point went something like this. Small map, both me and the easy AI had one planet and an asteroid. His fleet of 1 capital ship and 9 basic frigates just jumped in near my asteroid and I sent my own fleet of a capital and 7 frigates to intercept. We duke it out, the battle is going well with some micromanagement untill suddenly 40 pirate frigates and cruisers jump in and destroy us both. Oh, what fun I had.

It seems the solar empire in the title references to the pirates, not the actual players in the game. Because that single pirate asteroid had more than enough ships to wipe out both me and the AI without any real trouble. And while we were still teching up to the more advanced frigates, he already had a full complement of cruisers at his disposal.

This game just doesn't feel polished. Ships sit still in space during combat, turrets don't even move making the models look very unfinished, the tutorials explain absolutely nothing you don't already learn from tooltips the first 2 minutes ingame, the research is over in ten seconds and consists of things like better laser -> even better laser and the piracy option feels ridiculous.

Why not implement a pirate group as a single frigate or small group of frigates who run in, capture some freighters or a mining facility and run off at the first sign of trouble. Maybe base each frigate group from a cruiser or asteroid hidden somewhere in space. It would force you to keep several frigate patrols near your important tradelanes and economic bases, and give the player the option of setting ambushes to lower the piracy threat. Maybe have several competing groups, and let the players have the option of certain groups working exclusively for them (as long as the pay is good of course). You could even promise rewards to other players for taking out notorious pirates. You know, make the pirates act like cowardly pirates instead of the uberfleet of kamikaze doom that only exists to level up your ships.

I was looking for a 4X game that lets me rule a galactic empire. However, it seems this is some RTS combination of WC3, where I search AI critters to level up my hero and buy skills, and a stripped down version of Supreme Commander, where victory is decided by whoever brings more DPS to the fight. After that pirate massacre described above and some reading on these forums about the limited strategy I tried out Sword of the Stars (borrowed both games to try and get my fix of 4X for the next couple of years) and it looks a lot more polished and fun than this one. I actually could employ a strategy that doesn't consist of mass fleets smashing through planet after planet, something I haven't encountered yet on these forums. Maybe next time Ironclad should consider doing open beta's instead of only allowing the "fanboys" who preorder.