i think there a few good fixes to the problem.

1 - Pirate strength is proportional to bounty. So what happens is that every player bids an amount as a sort of 'contribution' to the pirate supply.

After time limit - pirate attacks the player who paid the pirate least with a strength and fleet size that is proportional to the total amount of contributions from other players.

(And they would whisper things like "Where are you hiding the rest of the money!?" or "So... you look down us pirates do you?")

1a - Pirate strengths would of course increase with the passage of time but to a limit that makes them less powerful than Kodiaks or strong cruisers. Empires would pay pirates, but definitely not supply them with powerful tech.

1s - S is for summary. This way, players can choose whether they want the pirates to be strong or not, because if no one pays, then the pirate attacks all or one person randomly with a 'midget fleet' and the guy shrugs it off with a starbase.

(The following is inspired from the many "O the bad guys have captured the Big Guns so they are now the Big Bad Guys!" scenarios)

2 - Pirates have captured a deathstar, (Thats their base, at least its better than a glowing asteriod right?). And they collect money from players who DONT want to get shot at with the deathstar. Of course all this deathstar does is shoot at planets and make the units in that grav well take damage.

2a - Well perhaps the person who pays the most gets to bribe the pirates into attacking a target of choice. Or one could do "Underhand deals" that no other player would know of. BUT there is a 40% chance that the pirate would "let slip" such info to the target, causing the target to know and try to outbid the pirate into attacking the original targeter.

E.g of 2 and 2a.

Player 1 = Tom

Player 2 = Jimmy

Pirates = Pirate.

E.g of 2:
Tom outbids all players to hire Pirates to use deathstar to blast one of Jimmy's systems. Jimmy's system gets blasted (but not his homeworld of course)

E.g of 2a:

i   )  Tom Offers Pirate a mission (under the table) to blast Jimmy.

ii   )    Theres a 40% chance that Pirate would tell Jimmy that Tom offered Pirate to blast Jimmy with a bid of 10k, but Jimmy CAN outbid Tom in like 60 seconds. (GONE IN 60seconds pun INTENDED!)

iii  )    If Jimmy choose to outbid Tom (There'd be a screen with a "Outbid by 500?" screen shown, and its 500, no more no less).

iv   ) Tom is now targetted by Pirate, but theres a 54% chance that Pirate would tell Tom that Jimmy outbidded him, and can now choose to increase his Original offer by 600). [THIS IS FINAL]

v     )    Pirate then nukes Jimmy. BUT there is probably like a 1-2% chance that Pirate takes both players money and nukes them both lol. That'd be friggin fun, then both players would set aside their differences temporarily (Think fast!: Offer Ceasefire) and attack the pirate base.

vi   ) If pirate base is attacked, and the deathstar's hp is reduced, then the pirates have a 65% chance to whisper "GARRRRGGHHHH There will be more after us!) [Since pirates are but vagrants, and there is ALWAYS a Pariah class]. But they have a 35% chance to whisper "You will go down... not later, but NOW WITH ME!" , he then overloads the deathstar and all player ships have 4 minutes to get the hell out of the gravity well or take 8k damage. (4mins is lesser if Ship Speed is increased). This Overload also prevents both Jimmy and Tom to turn their ships on each other after killing the pirates.

vii) After a period of time, pirates return to system as vagrants and start rebuilding forces. (There is of course an option called "Pirates can rebuild deathstar?" in Game Options, set to FALSE)

What do you guys think?

Give them shields with miti case closed.

SOMETHING MUST BE DONE. I made 100 planets scenario with 4 Pirate bases (before running Diplomacy) and everything I do now is:

1. Hire Pirates

2. Colonize destroyed world

3. Loose another planet due to pirate raid

4. Recolonize it

Pirates are far stronger then coalition of mixed enemy empires.What is the point of playing the game? Building Empire and conquering galaxy OR Hiring/evading pirates all the time???

You know, I LIKE the idea of paying them to stay AWAY. Instead of a bidding war to get them to attack someone else, you are paying them to LEAVE YOU ALONE. It goes in hand with a pirate force, right now pirates are a for-hire mercenary force and not parasites.

Make it a tribute waiting period instead of a bidding war. You do not know how much anyone is paying them. In the end, if the pirates think you paid them enough (based on your economy- after all, they are pirates, they know their victims) they leave you alone. If they think you are not giving enough tribute, they come after you TAKE it. If everyone snubs then they go for the weakest place and take what they want.

The 'tribute' then is used to upgrade and expand their forces.

I wish I had thought of this a long time ago and suggested it. It is really a marvelous idea when you think about it.

The pirates where not that bad in vanilla Sins, but they could have used a small buff.

Then came entrenchment, that micro expansion brought starbases in play, but the pirates where never taken into consideration. No one ask how they would behave when faced with super-fortresses, so what started in vanilla has a: not that bad raid, turned into a: I dont care at all if they attack me raid.

Then came Diplomacy, and people where saying that Pirates were not strong enough (I'm one of does people). They needed a buff to keep then interesting and fun. The devs did what we wanted, but they did it a little too well.

The reason that people where saying that they needed to be buffed was because they needed it in the first place in Vanilla sins, but they became a joke in entrenchment BECAUSE OF STARBASES. They had not way of dispaching a fortified installation because they dont have... an ASSAULT CRUISER.

So why not bring the pirates down closer to the level they were in Entrenchment (just a bit stronger: about +15%), and give them

Ogrov Torpedo Cruiser to deal with starbases and other defensive weaponry.

Hoshikos with DB for support/repair

Cielo with DT for additional damage

Percheron for strikecrafts.

SHIELDS for mitigation...

And the raids should only grow in numbers (never in ship strength) something like this:

first raid: 10-15 ships

second raid: 15-25 ships

thrid raid: 25-35 ships

fourth raid: 35-45 ships

and so on...

All these simple changes would make them a real threat and would make them a lot more fun to deal with without turning them illogically stonger then my ships and/or OP.

It would also make them TEC.

https://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/375601

i definitley agree with this...

I like the harder pirates but they need to be SLIGHTLY nerfed

They are already TEC with more hull and no shields...

Whats your point?

TEC strategy vs. pirates in single player games vs. the AI:

Build the economy and win the bidding war every time the pirate raid comes around.

The pirates tend to have a preferred world to strike when they attack you.  Set up an Argonev with 2 levels of self-destruct to blow them all up when in range. Add some hull reinforcement to help waiting for all the pirates to come in range.   

Relying on self-destructing starbases permits a fleet to be freed up for offensive campaigns.  Use dual Marza fleets (dual missile barrage) to claim former enemy worlds being camped by pirate fleets.

A pirate base can be destroyed with 2 novalith cannons hitting close together.  Don't take the pirates out of the game until they take out all your enemies.

Yawn.

Not to mention a very expensive tactic. It works, but if you have the money to constantly do that you might as well send a massive fleet in to gain some XP and be done with it.

But the point is that you don't want to be done with it.  There is no victory condition for beating the pirates, so why bother?  Late game Pirate attacks on the other AI's are a massive benefit.  If you want to get rid of the pirates early, just click them off in the game options.  When it finally becomes time to eliminate them, use the novaliths.  No fuss, no muss.

pirates just need to not be able to defeat a fully upgraded star base..... The whole concept of the starbase was so we could all stop moving armies around like a chicken with its head cut off remember.?  Now my starbases feel cheap and useless

I know, I spent my credits researching "Confidence Boost" in the defense branch.

ow i ALWAYS LOVE THIS THING its really a BOOST to ur caps level

There is a way to soft mod the pirates back to their pre diplomacy state (until we get a fix from the devs)

..\Stardock\Sins of a Solar Empire\Diplomacy\GameInfo\Gameplay.constants  (it can be edited with any text editor)

look for :

upgradesPerRaid 2

and change it to

upgradesPerRaid 0

This will prevent pirates from becoming uber in a long game. (their ship stats will remain the same throughout the game)

This is just a quick fix for those that who don't want to disable pirate activity, but note that the pirates become a pushover once you start getting a sizable fleet due to the lack of any improvement to their ships.

I Like the Pirates as they are. Its a real challenge. I destroyed their base last night. I am Vasari. I fired my cannon to disable their structures and abilities, then i sent in my massive fleet. about 8 caps. i also sent a migrator and buit a starbase their as well. this was only 4 hours gameplay.

Pirate base should be never more challenging then fully developed enemy empire. Now entire game i focused on hiring pirates and avoiding pirates... It should not work this way.

Indeed, I save up 40000 creds for a 1000 supply pwnage at a target of my choice, usually near the pirate base and I time it with my own raid too

see this post for tested pirate settings that keep them dangerous without being a fleet of starbases:

https://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/376093

you just need to modify 5 entity files (the research pirate ones for each option), to decompile and recompile takes 5-10 min depending on how long it takes you to read through the files once in text format to find the right lines to change.

I just finished my first game of diplomacy, WOW, in the beginning the pirates seemed a little stronger than normal, of course no match for my experienced forces. late game was a different story.

I kostura'd the base to stun everything then assaulted the pirate base with maxed tech & maxed fleet and caps, had like 90 something lrms, I even tried building a starbase in the grav well but my forces were obliterated by pirates with almost as much hp as some of my caps. even with the kostura it was over in less than 5 mins.

While I like the idea of stronger pirates this is waaaay to much pirates should never be as powerful as empires, they're PIRATES.