A pirates life for me...

[mac5732]

SJ, if it takes that long to build a LC and the pirates use capture to increase their fleet wouldn't we have to start them off with at least 4-5 ships or more, with capture tech in order to increase their fleet? Otherwise I don't see how they would be able to keep up in the very beginning as far as ship go. They should also have starting tech in order to scan the ships to see which ones were colony ships. Some players use Ca's and others instead of the colony ship design. As far as what Whojo and I were talking about only colonizing the tiny/small planets only, what if you used them as bases only with say limited 50-100 pop. These could be used as quick in system bases until they could build a base. just an idea. I know the AI is limited, i've been a wargamer since the 8th grade both board and computer and AI design & programing need work but it would be nice to be able to play both pirate and against them as well. Oh well, we can only try..
just some ideas. Mac
pirate race looking better all the time

[Suicide Junkie]

Let me tell you of my first years as a pirate:

It was a dark and stormy turn...

First think I built was a spacestation with a Space Yard.
First thing I researched with my 100k points was The military science required for Ship Capture.

After four turns, I had a pair of escorts retrofitted with ship capture and some wimpy little gun.

Immediately, I sent them out and captured two enemy ships (escort & frigate)

Analysing both, I got Frigates & AP Is.

Now, I changed my homeplanet & orbital factory over to frigate production (1/2 year)

Repeated captures with my escorts got me frigates that I could convert to capture ships.

Then it snowballed, as the drushocka showed up with LCs, basic Shields, some other guys with APBs and no shields, and I captured all those techs. Thank-you come again

Basically, I got ship con. From the drushocka, APBs from these silver aliens, Shields from the drushocka, and Engines from the yellow guys with the Shard cannons. I've also got missile tech from these blue aliens, but I don't use it.

Combining all these stolen tech areas gives me the highest number of tech levels in the game so far

[jc173]

I can understand pirates not having full fledged colonies, but how are you resupplying your ships?

JC

[WhiteHojo]

quote:

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Originally posted by mac5732:
From reading the different ideas, i think we need to first decide.
1. should the pirates have a chance to win the game or just be a fun playing pain in the neck race. if they are to have chance to win, what amount or same as other races
2. Should they be allowed to colonize or just capture planets in order to have a chance in the game.
3. playability, maybe some ideas should be made options that way everyone could pick which way they want to set it up and would the AI be able to play the pirate race without to much tweaking of game?
4. What should their largest ship size be?
Definitly nothing larger then a BB or BC
5. what should they be allowed to research?
6. Racial traits. such as Berserker, violent, schemers, high intell, high cunning, and the percentages. Also should they start with hi intel or research it,
7. What type of bases, small, med, large,
and what type of cloaking should they have?
8. do they get special (their race only) research areas, weapons, clocking, etc)
9. Will they be allowed to use captured population to colonize other planets?
Maybe hojo and/or SJ could make up a list and have everyone vote or give ideas on these or others you can think of. This could give us a starting point. Just some idea's
10. I forgot, maintenance,
mac
sorry about the double post, i over clicked

[This message has been edited by mac5732 (edited 09 March 2001).]

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Here's the Hojo 2 cents worth - and I think it's overpriced at that...

1) When a human plays any race that race will always have a chance to win the game - even playing a neutral or a limited pirate, a human will find a way to win.

I should state up front that I agree w/SJ in that I am not too confident that a Pirate race could be Modded to be a viable computer controlled race - too many problems, the AI's inability to perform ship capture comes to mind for one. I'm prefacing all my answers and commentary to the idea that the pirate race will be controlled by a human.

2) I think (and this is where me and SJ seem to disagree the most) that a pirate race should colonize, but at a very slow rate w/severe handicaps, such as colony ships that only hold 1M colonist, can only have 2 engines on the colony ship, can't have any cargo or supply containers (limits their range), should only be able to colonize Tiny Moons (maybe Small also but I'm waffling on that one), etc.
A pirate should NEVER use captured colony ships to colonize new planets - just don't seem right to me - to me, the proper pirate reaction to capturing a colony ship is jettison the pop and analyze the hull for tech or scrap it for resources.

3) the playability, meaning to me the initial setup of the race along w/any special components designed specifically for pirates, is the most important and probably critical point in playing a Pirate race. SJ has some good ideas and so does Mac about initial setup - to me, the Maint point is a very import'nt area cause as SJ points out a pirate race doesn't have the resource income to support an even small sized fleet. The other areas will have to be delved into as we go along. I've just started a game as a pirate w/50% Reas, 50% Ground combat (don't think pirates should be strong infantry type fighters - more a skirmer mentality than a full organized infantry ground combat thing), 100% intell, 50% Resources (the min), 91% Reprod (min also), 125% Attack & Defense, Nat Merchant, Prop expert & Psyc traits - I can't remember all settings right now but I did have something like 1875/5000 left. Started on bad homeworld in large system (150) w/18 total races all hand picked. So far around 60 turns into it, it is fairly slow and tough going. I'll post on it later this weekend hopefully.

4) Largest Ship size - agree w/SJ, it's easier to capture one than to build - basically I can't think of any reason to BUILD anything larger than a LC - esp w/the use of mine & SJ's smaller Pirate Ship Yard Component idea (I use one that is 200kt, and build at a rate of 500,750,1000 for it's 3 levels.)

5) they should have access to all the tech that a normal race has access to (along w/the special Pirate Tech I use to grant access to their special pirate components)

6) Racial traits go back to playability to me - we probably need a whole new thread just to discuss this point - I select nuetral for culture type instead of trying to fit it into beserker, worker, scientist, etc. As far as Happiness type and Demeanor I support Bloodthirsty and Violent...

7) Cloaking and BAses - access to all

8) I'm in favor a special racial trait for pirates granting em access to special tech (unfortunately I don't know how to mod that, so I simply created a special tech area and didn't include it in any of the other computer players research data files)

9) As I said earlier, I am strongly against letting a pirate race use a captured colony population to colonize a planet...

10) Maint - to me it needs more play testing to find out the effect it has on the pirate race as a playable and balanced race...

hope this hasn't run on too long but I felt I needed to throw in my opinions...

feedback as always is requested...



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Character is best defined as that which you do when you believe nobody is watching.

[Suicide Junkie]

Thanks for asking

Resupply has been accomplished in three ways:

1) Theft. My fleet captures a ship, which the AI keeps fully supplied. He then graciously shares said supplies with my ships, before being sent to the homeworld to be scrapped/analysed/retrofitted

2) Transfer from homeworld. Every retrofitted ship gets full supplies when it returns for the operation. Returning to the fleet supplies the fleet. Occasionally, a large fraction of the fleet will return home for supplies, and regular ships need upgrades every now and then.

3) Supply pods
With the New tech graciously supplied by the yellow crystal aliens, Supply ships have come into service. These hold 2 Resupply pods (4000 supplies), and repair bays, which fix the pods each turn. This easily maintains the fleets, which can now retrofit alien ships on their own, due to the doozer construction ships that have been sent.

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Revelation for Pirates intel problem

THE INTEL PROBLEM IS NO MORE!

the simple solution to any intel woes is to abandon all your planets.

With no path to your planets (since you have none) other players will lose contact with you, preventing intel ops!

Booyah!

Since my pirates need no planets to survive, we're all set once we have a defended, hidden base.

[Suicide Junkie]

Ok: on the Pirate colony issue:

1) Pirates should be able to build their own colony ships only.

2) Pirates Should be able to use captured enemy colony ships only.

3) BOTH!

4) NEITHER!

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#4 is clearly not a viable option
#3 is built in to SE
#2 is my opinion
#1 is going to be very hard to mod. (ie. impossible)

My view: Think of pirates on earth. A colony in the new world is wanted.
Pirates aren't going to be setting up colonies in the new world, since they just can't organize anything major like that, and provide supplies & money.

But if they happened to come upon one of England's colonization fleets, and captured them, the pirates would have everything they needed.

Of course, the colony they created would tend to be an easy target (no large country backing them up) and they'd be nuked to glass after a few turns.

Sorry for mixing Modern & historical like that wooden fort/city getting nuked

[Baron Munchausen]

The problem with implementing 'pirates' as opposed to 'nomads' is that detection and identification are much too simple and easy in SE IV. In RL, pirates rely on the ability to avoid detection and to pass themselves off as 'civilians' - or at least someone else - when they cannot avoid contact. In SE, you can see EVERYTHING in a system when you enter it unless it is cloaked, and if you get the right sensors you can STILL see everything in a system. There is no range effect on sensors, and there is no 'percentage' chance to see something or not. If it's there, you can see it. If sensors were changed to have a definite RANGE like 'long range scanners' then the pirate races would be much more viable.

But even then, identification is too easy. There is no such thing as 'disguise' and there is no representation of 'civilian' traffic in SE IV. When you see a ship, EVEN a captured ship originally built by another race, you automatically know who controls it. This also ought to be changed to allow 'pirate' races to exist. There should be some way to make your ship seem to be controlled by the original race which built it if pirates are to be a success.

Both of these problems are much reduced with a merely 'nomadic' race. Add the ability to have components which generate research and intelligence, and a "habitat" ability that lets population grow while residing in a ship/base component, and you could have a fairly useful nomadic race even with the current very simply system of detection and identification in SE IV.

[This message has been edited by Baron Munchausen (edited 09 March 2001).]

[Marty Ward]

I think Pirates should not build colonies but the should build bases. Pirates always operated from a base and I've never heard of a Pirate nation.
I think tiny or small planets should be used as these bases. Special buildings that have multiple functions just for pirates. Cloaking the planet is a must. Pirates should have to be found. Maybe they could be cloaked like mines but only to level 4.
I don't think a Pirate could win in a hotseat or PBEM game so they should count it as a victory if they survive a set number of turns, 400-500 maybe?
I think the AI could never be a Pirate.
I gonna give it a try this week with some ideas I have. I'll post back.
There seems to be a lot of people trying this idea out. We should be able to get a new race out of this somehow

[jc173]

quote:

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Originally posted by suicide_junkie:
Thanks for asking

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Not a problem I was curious about starting my own pirate game, always wanted to yell out away all boarding parties

quote:

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Originally posted by suicide_junkie:

Resupply has been accomplished in three ways:

1) Theft. My fleet captures a ship, which the AI keeps fully supplied. He then graciously shares said supplies with my ships, before being sent to the homeworld to be scrapped/analysed/retrofitted

2) Transfer from homeworld. Every retrofitted ship gets full supplies when it returns for the operation. Returning to the fleet supplies the fleet. Occasionally, a large fraction of the fleet will return home for supplies, and regular ships need upgrades every now and then.

3) Supply pods
With the New tech graciously supplied by the yellow crystal aliens, Supply ships have come into service. These hold 2 Resupply pods (4000 supplies), and repair bays, which fix the pods each turn. This easily maintains the fleets, which can now retrofit alien ships on their own, due to the doozer construction ships that have been sent.

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Does this limit you to kind of a small area of operations? Seems like you would need to wait for an alien race to sort of blunder over your initial start area before you could really get into action. It's too bad we can't build facilities on asteroids since the asteroid pirate hideout seems to crop in sci-fi novels etc quite a bit. I agree pirates shouldn't be colonizing much if at all, but the idea of hidden supply bases on moons or asteroids would have been interesting. Maybe even one pirate haven, the homeworld with minor intel facilities etc, although it should be possible to build a ship/base intel component.

[capnq]

An example of a pirate nation would be the Barbary Coast of Algeria. A U.S. anti-piracy campaign there is what the "shores of Tripoli" line from the Marine Hymn is referring to.

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Cap'n Q