How do I deal with pirates?

[Jesus Cat (Fwyrl)]

They're spawing 2 tiles from my capital, before turn 20, and blocking my way to the rest of the galaxy. How do I deal with this? Am I just supposed to have a full fleet before turn 20?

Also, what makes them do so much damage? I find I need to go almost 5 v 2 to get even a stalemate. I've tried focusing on Anti-Energy shielding, and using projectile weapons, but this hasn't helped.

[Proteus]

Their weakness are kinetic weapons, as their defenses concentrate on Energy weapons.

Also they seem to have a slight preference for Energy weapons (at least in my games).
What ships did you use for fighting against them? Your initial patrol ships?
They are quite ineffective, rattther scouts than fighters.

Wait till you are able to equip your first real combat ships (Egezrey class)

As for what you can do:
Ignore them ... Unless you actually end the movement in their system, you can usually bypass their lair system without problems. And don't keepp you fleets
Occasionally they will blockade a system, but usually it won't last all too long.


And next time you start a game, better use pirates on "easy" difficulty ... your AI opponents will thank you for this as well (as they, even more than you, may have problems with the pirates and may remain with only few systems as ther expansion gets blocked by too much pirate actity)

[Holce]

You should at least use size1 attack ships. Missiles works well again them. Attack ships focus on one ship and missiles will be too numerous for their machine guns. You will not be able to deal with them until more late in the game (40-50 turns depending on pirates difficulty). You will have to fucus on military and let IA take a good lead in economy.

If the pirates spamned near the player, it Is a huge boost to IA. If the pirates spawned near an IA, it is one less IA in the game. The IA is as good as death.

[Jesus Cat (Fwyrl)]

Ok, so I'm not expected to have a full fleet (or two) of actual assult ships by turn 15?

Yeah, game 1 I lost my only two colonies to them >.<

Doing a bit better now - got lucky and was given the tech for the Egezry Class like turn 10, so I was able to smush the pirate base before they got their stronger ships.

[cobruh]

just research "Efficient Shielding" before or around turn 30, build a 3x4 or 2x7 (with autonomous construction) fleet.
camp their system with your first fleet and send reinforcements until you can crush them in ground combat. always use the bombardment tactic vs pirates, cause it deals huge damage and you dont worry about buildings. best served with a guardian hero if you can.

the faster you get rid of them the less impact they will have. they can stack stupid ammounts of gunfire if you let them.
think about using chain gang from the "N-Way Fusion" research, it really buffs your fleets if you have enough manpower to fill the ships.

edit: you can bypass them by not clicking a move order TO their system, but the starlane behind it, just a hint. always works unless your movement ends IN the system, cause they dont lock down normally.
dont know about high difficulties though

[cobruh]

Originally posted by I RuBiiX I:

By turn 15 you could have a fleet of attacker class vessels but you need to start researching them right away. Then once researched, edit their design and put on a few more weapons and defenses.

i just realized we should talk gamespeed. on normal they might spawn at turn 10 or so, but they dont do ♥♥♥♥ until turn 30

[Rockstarmerc]

Pirates are no problem once you know that you can leave 3-4 small ships to siege the base meanwhile you can get on with your game. Until you play a couple of times maybe turn them off but know that the AI also has trouble against pirates, so turning them off will let the AI roam free.

[Frogsquadron]

Originally posted by I RuBiiX I:

Pirates are a bit OP right now, even the developers said they are working on toning them down a bit.

Mostly making them appear a little later in the game, and ramp up in power more progressively

[Fii]

I played in my first game with the slowest game speed settings and highest pirates and independents.

I was actually glad for pirates to be around or I'd have just continued 'naked' expanding without a single military ship. When my explorer ran into a pirate base three jumps away (about 4 turns, one star lane was very long), that forced me to do some military build up.

I actually managed to stick it to the pirates almost immediately by spamming the explorer class armed with missiles. It's cheap and having three colonies, I could just churn them out on my capitol without feeling like I was losing too much economy as I had already figured I'd spend my dust and influence for rush buying capitol improvements while it was busy on projects like this and wonders.
(It did cause me to lose the find 10 curiousities deed though)

I ended up sieging the pirates constantly, using doomed attacks so I could use the bombardment tactic in order to cause guaranteed damage even if I was attacking with just the base reinforcement of 20 troop strength. Destroyed the base about 15 turns later, none of their spawned ships ever left their system once I started my blockade.

It wasn't what I would call difficult, just needing to remember that calculation of about 2-3 ships per improvement building wasn't that high of a ratio. I won against the pirates around turn 40 or so?

[uncleaner]

Originally posted by Jseah:

I played in my first game with the slowest game speed settings and highest pirates and independents.

It wasn't what I would call difficult, just needing to remember that calculation of about 2-3 ships per improvement building wasn't that high of a ratio. I won against the pirates around turn 40 or so?

Even if you can deal with them you're better off just disabling pirates for now, they completely break the AI even at higher difficulties.