Piracy

[LuckyGecko]

So, i just played a few rounds this week, and for some reason i just cant seem to get Piracy under control anymore. Did i miss some Update to Trade difficulty? In my last Game i had all 4 of my mainfleeds on Patrol simply to not go broke.

[Rage Clown ®™]

The game is completely unstable
Paradox knows this if you read the forums.
None of the features are consistent across stated supported systems.
A lot of stated supported system users report a plethora of bugs all they way to consistently replicateable crashes.
And
Based off of the actions by paradox after the dlc release to create a stable game:

They don't care

[kahlrasierter Affenarsch]

when you click on "trade routes" in the bottom right corner of the galay map, you can reroute trading routes and you can see were the problems are. often it helps to have few strong trading routes and put some stations in the systems. i normaly dont use patroling fleets, even if i play heavy trading empires.

also there are some polecys in the galactic council and in the traditions to help with piracy.

i hope this helps.

[Big mean bunny]

If the catchment areas cover the routs it should be ok. Adding catchment area and sticking hangers in trade route stations adds protection. Any red skull pirate activity routes can have defence platforms added without upgrading the station. Usually stops it from falling till you can get something there. Patrolling used to give XP to admirals I don't know if it still does.

[Kalemenos]

I hate the piracy feature, honestly. If there where an option to switch it off entirely at the game start, I would. IMO it does not contribute to the strategy aspect of the game, which is the part I most enjoy.

Remember that you can save money by not using your main fleets to patrol. Piracy suppression is greater with smaller ships, even unarmed ones. So in ship designer, make some anti-piracy specific corvettes with nothing on them. Create a handful for each of your trade routes, and put them on patrol. They suppress piracy strongly, and cost practically nothing. That's the band-aid/short-term cure, of course, but it's very effective.

Other things I do to suppress piracy:
1. Early game, build starbases close and on one line to make patrolling easier.
2. In addition to the cheap corvette suppressors, I design a couple fleets of corvettes (when I can afford it) that have firepower, so that when the pirates do show up, I can destroy them without moving my main fleet off my base. (It's much more cost effective to have them docked, especially at a Salvager's station with a Salvagers Works building on it.) Pirates only have armor, so put plasma guns on your ships; and (early game) only kinetic, so go armor... add a shield later when pirates, in mid/late game, acquire energy weapons. Again, this is the armored pirate suppressors, not the el cheapo suppression vettes.
3. A hanger on a starbase suppresses piracy one system over. Two hangars, two systems, etc. This little detail can help in odd little corners where the corvettes can't manage to get.
4. Later in the game, I want starbases in nebulae, on black holes, to mine ice if I have aquatic, for the cybrex miner if I have it and a system is rich, so I need gateways in remote and non-strategic locations. So I build gateways on every starbase, then connect the trade route directly to your capital system. The capital system needs to have a starbase first. (It's usually the first one I ever build, but not always.) You always have zero piracy on a sytem with a starbase. By mid-game I accomplish this, usually, and have absolutely no more piracy problems.

I realized also that an odd thing causes pirates to pop up. There will be a system that is no longer on a trade route, because I connected a local starbase to my capital with a gateway. That system is no longer in the loop. But then a pirate fleet suddenly appears on it. I think what is happening is that the former piracy value, which had previously accumulated, remained on that system, and the AI randomized that now pirates should appear there. So I send a corvette or two to just sit on those systems until the little red skull goes grey, then goes away.

If they pop up once in a while, when you blow up their station, you get a bump of minerals and energy, so you come out ahead in the long run. They're just annoying.

Anyway, some thoughts about how I manage piracy.

[Grubbs008]

Originally posted by Rage Clown ®™:

The game is completely unstable
Paradox knows this if you read the forums.
None of the features are consistent across stated supported systems.
A lot of stated supported system users report a plethora of bugs all they way to consistently replicateable crashes.
And
Based off of the actions by paradox after the dlc release to create a stable game:

They don't care

Of course they don't, they are a company, their bottom line is money. Caring stopped after the first few years of patching like with most games.

[CrUsHeR]

You can simply build chains of anchorage starbases from your capital.
At strategic locations, add an extra trade hub starbase in the chain.

If there are any border bastion starbases unintendly collecting some local trade (and thus causing piracy), you can simply detach them from the trade network.

So basically you can run a full trade-specced megacorp without a single system generating piracy. Then you also don't need trade protection, not wasting starbase capacity on hangars.

[Pieshaman]

could be you are very unlucky with how the lanes go.
I only had it once that trade lanes went from all over and I could not get piracy down enough

On the play I am now I only need to patrol 1 route, so I guess I got lucky, cause I had worse.

edit: now I see your name OP maybe you not a lucky gecko lol

[mss73055]

It's a balance of income and protection. Trade got a boost, so you need more protection.
Devoting 2 starbases in your core sector helps.

[Geoff]

Originally posted by Kalemenos:

I realized also that an odd thing causes pirates to pop up. There will be a system that is no longer on a trade route, because I connected a local starbase to my capital with a gateway. That system is no longer in the loop. But then a pirate fleet suddenly appears on it.

Another possible cause for that is an empire you've opened your borders to can have a trade route running through your territory that you don't see but that does add to piracy. I get pirates in my little exclaves all the time from that. And if I let my own trade routes run through their territory they do nothing to suppress the piracy which breaks the route.

Bigger picture the advice you're getting is good. Once I'm done farting around against pirates, I wait till they appear then build 3 defense platforms on the outpost. Since they can't technically occupy the system, the starbase will keep pumping out defense platforms while the pirates will get worn down from attrition.

If you get a galleon, that's someone using espionage on you I think, and will probably need something bigger to handle it. But the nice thing about using the reactive defense platform technique is the defense platforms themselves have some piracy suppression and of course pirates strike the same spot twice about as often as lightning does (which is actually quite often) so your defenses will still be in place and fully operational when they try again.

[Rage000]

When spread out playing wide, invariably you will end up with locations you cannot protect with bases. So create corvettes with nothing but flight systems.

Create fleets of 4-6 ships that cost approximately about 50 alloy per ship. Cheapest components, No tech beyond starting tech.
Send each one of those patrol fleets on patrol in the problem area, I usually try to divide the patrols up to make sure they are not both in the same system for more than a few days. usually 2 of these patrol fleets are enough going back and forth. (I rename those fleets PATROL-1, PATROL-2 etc) makes them easy to see in the out liner.

Reroute shipping lanes. Also you can divert a shipping lane by marking a problem solar system as off limits and the shipping lanes path will change to avoid that system(s).

[Kalemenos]

I stayed with 3.7. In the newer updates, can you actually control either the trade lanes or the patrol lines the vettes fly on? I often which I could click on the line and drag it somewhere else, or give more detailed commands to my patrols (like shift-click on a series of systems). Have you ever clicked on one system, then given the command to patrol to "here," only to see the suppression fleet's flight pattern go the opposite direction to catch a local gateway? The player should be able to control such matters.

[LuckyGecko]

So hearing all this shows i kinda dont know much about trade after all.
Then again my last trade routes where mostly in a Line.
And Sending small corvette-fleets to Patrol didnt do jack.
And sending out my mainfleets Actualy made about +800 credits instead of -300 so yeah....
But gonna try the stuff you guys suggested.

P.s: That i never before even noticed Trade and Piracy much (except for actual Piratefleets) kinda tells me that they must have changed something.

[Kalemenos]

I was the same way, but I keep learning. I think you can do a game heavy on the merchant side, with lots of clerks and traits and who knows what, and trade can become hugely lucrative. It can be fun, I've "half" tried it on some plays; but my personal style tends to prefer a different kind of economy. About the corvettes: you'll see a "pirate suppression" value at the top of the fleet. If it's too small it won't suppress. If you mouse over the little red skull, you can see info on trade value (I do think that little window does not show enough info, and it's not entirely clear), so you may need more corvettes. It's the corvette that provides the suppression value, not any of the armor or weaponry on it.