Pirate Problem

[cwayne59]

I'ev got a bunch of relatively strong pirate factions. Guess I'm mid-game for the first time. This one faction has 2 secret bases on 2 of my worlds. Got a little over 100 ships. I need to do something before he gets Networks and flips the planets. But it seems like it would be suicide to attack his bases since he would probably swarm me with all those darn ships.

Any suggestions on how to handle this other than starting a new game using some of the ideas mentioned to prevent pirates from growing in the first place?

[Admiral Kirk]

Try putting out colonial defence fleets and kill the raiding fleets and slowly grind down their ship count, then when they get a low number of ships go for ther mine/fuel bases. Their space ports arnt that strong so a small/medium fleet should be able to handle them fine. Also destroy any construction ships you see since pirates cant build new ones this can cripple them unless they take some from empires. Also always have a troop force ready to go in and destory any bases they build on your planets its costly for the pirates to build so they lose money everytime. Also if you have the cash garrison your most important planets and core worlds so if a pirate base is being build you can destroy it instantly. In the empire planet list you can see where they have bases and where they are building bases so you put troops on those world where they keep building so you kan just keep destroying them. You will make them bleed money while you hunt for rading fleets and constructors then you go for the main kill. Hope this helps :-)

[mjmenary]

I would start by attacking the 2 bases on your own planets ( with troops ).
The pirate faction will then at somepoint in the near future send a small fleet to that planet to start building a base again, this gives you the oppertunity to destroy the pirate fleets as they arrive. If you feel your fleet is strong enough to take out one of the pirates spaceports, then simply defend your colnies and pick of their ships as the arrive in your systems. If you have over 100 ships, i would be surprised if you could take out at least a small pirate spaceport though.

[cwayne59]

Well, I might as well go ahead and try to take out the base. I have troops garrssoned on my most important colonies. But I have only about 20 or so ships. I've got a hunch this is suicide, but if I don't I'm going to lose 2 planets to Networks so I might as well go for it I think.

[Malthusians]

Taking out bases isn't so bad, but you do want about 8-10 troops (and ideally a geneeral) to make it truly painless to take out 2 buildings (depends on your race too for troop strengths - more for Teekans, Boskarans can do it with less). Keep some ships over the planet for "space control" bonus, and they should go down pretty quick - plus some nice xp for trooops and general. And in the future, you can attack with only a couple troops if there's no completed base - ie as they're building the 1st base it's super vulnerable before it's completed, just check all your colonies periodically and you can smack em down with the couple trooops of the local garrison.

And don't be afraid to go after pirate bases - ideal routine: scout the system as the fleet is on the wawy, form up the fleet outside the system, jump in away from the base ideally to kill a constructor or at least a fuel mine, wait for his ships to jump away from the base to engage you. If they're beatable, kill them and then go kill the base, less rats to cause problems later. If there's too many, when they move away from the base to engage you go kill the base and then get out of there. If there's WAY too many, keep scouting the base and wait til they leave to go do something, then jump the base.

Bases don't really take *that* many ships to kill, especially if you have standoff ships that outrange them, then as long as you're wearing down their shields you can take your time and even if you're within their range your ships can rotate out of the fire when their shields start to get low.. I usually have close combat ships so I just swarm em, early on I'll probably lose a few but oh well.

Kill all their fuel bases anywhere near your area too - shouuld just take a few ships each, finding em is the pain. Long Range Sensors help a LOT finding that junk - I equip a few ships with it and make expanding sweeps around my area. Also when you damage pirate ships, watch the direction they flee - extrapolate that line to a star and there's likely a base there, ditto if you see one going by that's low on fuel - that's probably going towards a base or fuel mine.

ED: Oh, and it's well worth playing at least a bit of a game as a pirate faction - that opened my eyes to why they keep ships hanging around populated worlds and what hurts them the most and will keep their attention off you. The top ones are losing constructors, losing starbases, losing fuel mines, losing their influenced colonies, and getting their planetary bases smacked down, those things are expensive.