help, problem with pirates

To avoid pirates you need to raise the bounty on other players.
To increase the income rate, build Population Infrastructure (more people, more money) and build trade networks.

Set up hanger bays around all your planets that connect to something that is not one of your other planets (all the open passages into your empire).

Build 5+ of them, and some repair towers, and a couple gun platforms. Also cluster all your buildings up around the repair things.

I find that by maxing out my planets tactical cap and building two repair things and filling up the rest with orbital hangers, (also build that emergency thing on your planets, that increase the hitpoints) and then the few points i have left with guns, and then setting a strike craft ratio of about 2:5 fighters:bombers, that often times pirate invasions get taken care of just by the planets defenses.

I have also seen enemy invasion fleets turn tail and run after jumping in even when i have no fleet in the system=p

Though for dedicated attack forces you will still need to have a fleet on hand.

It can become quite expensive buying pirates off after a wile. I usually only put bounty on someone the first few times, after that its not worth it to keep outbidding. Spend the money instead on killing the pirates=P

This is also a great way to level up new capital ships Have their fleet consist of themselves a few long range frigates and just sit back and pick off the bad guys while they deal with your static defenses.


Pirates are a grand part of the game, you just have to factor them into your strategy. I would hate to play with out them.

1. Go read the excellent pinned thread titled « Siege Frigate and Pirate tips for newer players!», started by Annatar11.

2. Go read the « Pirates & Bounty » section in the game's manual.

I regularly press F3 and check which player has the most bounty on his head, and I try to outbid the other players at the last minute to avoid being the victim of the next raid.

Of course, you need credits to do that. The first, easy step to increase the credit-income rate is to upgrade your capital planet's « population infrastructure ». Then try to colonize a nearby planet or asteroid : it will generate credit income when colonized.

Those are only very basic tips.

Some good tips for you in this thread already, so I don't have very much to add

To increase credit income considerably, build a few trade centers - they'll help a lot! Especially as TEC, you can get them very early. Even 3 of them on 3 planets (1 per) will give you a big credit boost.

Upgrade your homeworld to level 4 pop as soon as you can! And do those Terran population researches, it's also a huge help.

When you move up the tech tree a bit, grab a broadcast center. Culture spread increases planet allegiance, which in turn increases credit/resource income. Just build one on your homeworld, and you don't need to do anything else, just get to watch more money come in

One thing I've learned is pirates force you to majority turtle in this game. Most of your time/money will be spent building defenses, tons of them. 1 out of the 3 games so far I've actually fought the other AI enemy. The other 2 games, 100% of the time I fought pirates ....non stop with no credit income (because I could not expand, because I was fighting pirates 100% of the time, having my defenses obliterated and whatever fleet I had wiped out). The 2 games where I ended up fighting pirates the entire game instead of actually seeing AI just once....I gave up LOL and started over. It seems like this game has random pirates as your main advisory rather than enemy AI.

Oh and GREAT info on how to raise your credit income. I've never actually made it to building trade 'stuff' just because all of my credits have been going to fighting the yaarrrr...mayties

fourfives45 same thing here, i just lost the game to pirates, the main threat should be AI, but i was fighting pirates all game long anyway, thanks for the tips, i'll try to use them and win

What the last two posters describe does not correspond to my experience of the game : I never have to fight pirates « 100% of the time » (not even 10% of the time).

My approach is simple : I press F3 regularly to check what's going on with the bounty situation, and in the last seconds (when the threat bar is filled and it's flashing, like the game manual says), if I am the projected, next victim, I invest credits to divert the pirates's attention to someone else. Against comps, it always work (if you have sufficient credits and if you invest in the last seconds). I do not play against humans : it would probably more difficult to do against skilled players.

On another thread (I do not remember which), a Stardock or Ironclad representative showed how to edit a text-file to change the frequency of the pirate attacks. It's easy to do : you change a few numbers with Notepad. But I have not chosen to do that, since pirates do not represent a major problem for me.

BTW, nasty trick for FFA games... if someone puts bounty on you, put bounty on two other players (higher than your own). The result is that whoever is highest tries to get off the "pedastool" by placing credits on the next highest player. Which isn't you. And then that new highest player repeats the process, and it spirals out of control...

Of course, this only works when someone placed credits on you just to keep the pirates from choosing him; if someone wants you SPECIFICALLY dead, your in trouble...