Massive Pirate Fleet?

[RasaNova]

I grabbed the Awakening expansion, and a couple of the little DLCs (Celestial Worlds & Untold Tales) and am in my first game playing with the Nalalim. Large galaxy, normal difficulty, normal speed.

I'm doing ok, getting the hang of the new faction. Right around turn 50, a large pirate fleet comes in out of nowhere from outside the constellation and proceeds to wreck me. This is 6 medium to large ships, fleet strength around 150K while me and the AI factions are still flying around with small ships.

So - where did these come from, and what's the best way to deal with it? I figure maybe this the Academy fleet that I've been hearing about, but It shows as pirates, and attacked without any message or declaration of war. Seems like a game-over situation, unless I'm missing something.

[ZumZoom]

It's definitely the Academy fleet, It probably shows as pirate because the empire that controls it has the Privateers tech. Or it could be some other reason, I only played this DLC once and I didn't have problems with the Academy faction.

[Groo the one]

Originally posted by ZumZoom:

It's definitely the Academy fleet, It probably shows as pirate because the empire that controls it has the Privateers tech.

This case Vaulters faction would be responsible for, as long as they start with privateer tech. One way to prevent from, would have been to be the one who contribute the most to academy demands (usually ressources, dust or influence) and to get the academy fleet "Spear of Isyander" for yourself.

[RasaNova]

I had considered the vaulters (in fact my favorite faction) but they can't have large ships in a privateer fleet, and it looked like a different faction had won that bid. But yes it was definitely a faction controlled Academy fleet, since on the final turn of the Academy appointments they launched a ground attack and the fleet disappeared the turn after that. (The ground battle was another story, but with the fleet gone I was able to outlast the attackers by ferrying in ground reinforcements 40 at a time with explorers)