Game does not need both Trade Protection and Piracy Supression

[Zenopath]

The game is needlessly complicating things by having these two things be seperate stats that work differently.

You get Trade protection from starbases, and they protect trade from pirates, so upto a value of trade, trade is immune from pirates, but pirates will still appear anyways. You can have a value of trade passing through a system safely upto the value of Trade protection and no matter how many pirates appear in that system, they dont hurt your trade.

Alternatively, you can rely on patrol fleets to suppress pirates But using only patrol fleets creates a situation where pirates will eat some of your trade in the time it takes patrol to come back. Parking corvettes in each system as needed (1 corvette per 10 units of max piracy not trade) actually works best, completely eliminating all pirates, but is pretty wasteful and clutters up your military fleets in Outliner UI. Corvettes generate piracy supression which kills pirates but provides no trade protection.

(edit: added in a detailed example)
Suppose you had a system like this one:
Trade Route Value: 100+
Max Piracy: 100
Piracy Effect (PE): 10
Current Piracy (CP): 100
Trade Protection (TP): 90

The PE is what actually causes losses to trade value. In this situation PE: 10 means you lose 10 trade value. If you move in a fleet of 10 corvettes, which each give 10 suppression each, that would be 100 suppression so it would gradually drop the CP down to 0. The thing is, that doesn't happen instantly, it takes a little while. if you watch the number will go down, but you might need more than 10 corvettes for the CP to go down to 0 in the time that the patrol spends in system. But stationing 10 corvettes would eventually reduce CP to 0. Having 10 corvettes pass through might not be enough though. Sending 20 would double the speed at which CP drops, which might be enough to bring it to 0 in the time it takes your fleet to pass through. Then depending on how long it takes your corvettes to come back on their patrol, the number will grow again.

This is where TP matters, while you might not be able to get CP at 0 with a 10 corvette patrol. You should have no problems keeping it under 90, which means the trade is safe. PE is equal to CP minus TP. If TP is higher than CP, then CP does not have any effect other than giving a chance of spawning a pirate fleet.

Keeping CP at 0 prevents fleets from spawning. Keeping PE at 0 prevents losses to trade.

In this situation, parking 1 corvette in the system would be enough to lower PE to 0 and protect your trade, because it would permanently drop CP to 90, which would be countered by the TP value. But you would need to park 10 corvettes to bring CP to 0 and completely prevent any chance of a pirate fleet spawning.

I think this is needlessly complicated. I think you should just scrap trade protection and have piracy supression be generated by starbases.

 

[Xeorm]

They do combine though. Trade protection represents the floor that the actual piracy needs to exceed before it can do damage. Suppression reduces the current piracy. Using protection lets you extend the length of the patrol route of corvettes and does a pretty good job of guarding low value routes entirely.

 

[Foefaller]

I think you are suppose to use them together. You do reach the point where no reasonable amount of trade protection will prevent lost trade or pirates, but since they increase the level which they *do* start affecting trade, you increase the amount of time there can be between fleets patrolling there, meaning you can send them on longer patrols, requiring fewer fleets (as long as those fleets can bring the piracy in a system to 0 without having to stop.)

And patrolling isn't a waste, Admirals gain xp when they are in charge of a fleet suppressing piracy, making it the assist research of training up future admirals of your primary fleets.

 

[Chieron]

They do combine though. Trade protection represents the floor that the actual piracy needs to exceed before it can do damage. Suppression reduces the current piracy. Using protection lets you extend the length of the patrol route of corvettes and does a pretty good job of guarding low value routes entirely.

The problem with the cluttering of the fleet section of the overlay remains, however.
Even moderately long trade routes are a pain to patrol. More so, as the trade does not necessarily follow the route a fleet would use when going between the endpoints. And the suppression sometimes is lackluster.
I'd much prefer it, if instead of a patrol route, we could give fleet a task to suppress piracy and it would do so automatically. Like rebel suppression in EU4 (and yes, that leaves much to be desired, too).
I suspect that the final solution will be to have a gateway in the capital system and each other system collecting trade so that there actually is no transit system where pirates could pop up.

 

[Pyoro]

I agree that I'd prefer the trade map to be a bit clearer on "where do I need more patrols/protection?" A better visualization of what's currently being protected by which star base and where my patrols patrol and so on. I'm sure there could be improvements.

What mostly drives me nuts about trade though is the way routes are calculated, and sometimes if you patrol a certain route it takes a different route than the trade. Which is just one of those gngngngn issues that really shouldn't be there ^^; Also of course patrol fleet spam; just annoying. And the AI being stupid about patrolling.

 

[Zenopath]

They do combine though. Trade protection represents the floor that the actual piracy needs to exceed before it can do damage. Suppression reduces the current piracy. Using protection lets you extend the length of the patrol route of corvettes and does a pretty good job of guarding low value routes entirely.

OK, yeah on checking it, I see that I was wrong about how trade protection works. It does seem to protect trade so long as current effect does not exceed trade protection. Thank you for correcting me. I still think they should just be combined into 1 stat, imo, as this is still needlessly complicated.

 

[AlanC9]

The display there isn't as clear as it could be, I think.

 

[Mztr44]

I think the point of the trade protection is because typically your fleet's patrol is going to stop and start at points next to starbases, so they are the systems that are going to experience the longest time between when the patrol hits. So it gives you an extra buffer before you start losing trade value.

What I would like is a pop up to tell me when piracy is nearing dangerous levels so I can be proactive. Too often a patrol scheme breaks and stops hitting a system, or my trade income becomes larger than the patrol can handle and unless i'm regularly checking trade view, the first I know about it is when pirates spawn. Since the energy income loss is so slow it can be mistaken for typical upkeep changes or pulling fleet out of anchor.

 

[Pavane]

How can Gun and Missile batteries on a station protect trade in adjacent star systems? It doesn't make any sense.

 

[Mztr44]

How can Gun and Missile batteries on a station protect trade in adjacent star systems? It doesn't make any sense.

The same way turning your front porch light on at night is a deterrent to thieves.

 

[Pyoro]

The same way turning your front porch light on at night is a deterrent to thieves.

This is more similar to turning on the porch lights on your vacation home on the Maldives and expect that it'll do anything for protecting your actual home from burglars ...

 

[Viljainen]

One of the worst aspects of the current piracy system are the randomly spawning pirate fleets. At least in EU4 we get a warning when rebels get enough support.

 

[Xeorm]

OK, yeah on checking it, I see that I was wrong about how trade protection works. It does seem to protect trade so long as current effect does not exceed trade protection. Thank you for correcting me. I still think they should just be combined into 1 stat, imo, as this is still needlessly complicated.

I'd somewhat agree. On one hand it seems needlessly complicated, but on the other it's not the bad skeleton of a system to get people caring about geography.

How can Gun and Missile batteries on a station protect trade in adjacent star systems? It doesn't make any sense.

It's less just a gun battery and more the equipment that goes into arming the station. With the extra budget the station's able to beef up patrols. Same as the modules increase other stats of the starbase beyond adding another big gun.

 

[Zenopath]

One of the worst aspects of the current piracy system are the randomly spawning pirate fleets. At least in EU4 we get a warning when rebels get enough support.

So far as I can tell, using the breadcrumb approach of parking corvettes in every system with trade route to eliminate piracy completely prevents fleets from spawning. I do not get pirate fleets in my game and I do not build any hangers or gun batteries on my stations...

 

[Pavane]

It's less just a gun battery and more the equipment that goes into arming the station. With the extra budget the station's able to beef up patrols. Same as the modules increase other stats of the starbase beyond adding another big gun.

Why not just create a new module called Gendarme Patrol Base, Convoy Escort Base, or something similar? These ships would be smaller than Corvettes, with less armament and higher sub-light speed, but limited endurance so that a couple of Hyper jumps is all that they can manage. They would have no effect on battles in their home system, just like you wouldn't expect the Coast Guard to join with battleships to fight a modern naval battle. That would be more palatable than interstellar gun batteries.

 

[DreadLindwyrm]

Why not just create a new module called Gendarme Patrol Base, Convoy Escort Base, or something similar? These ships would be smaller than Corvettes, with less armament and higher sub-light speed, but limited endurance so that a couple of Hyper jumps is all that they can manage. They would have no effect on battles in their home system, just like you wouldn't expect the Coast Guard to join with battleships to fight a modern naval battle. That would be more palatable than interstellar gun batteries.

I guess that's what the hangar bay module does now?

 

[Iam5not8]

I’d like to be able to assign a fleet to a space station on patrol duty.
This fleet will automatically suppress the pirates in the range of the space station.
At least for me, The patrol action is a real pain to use, it seems the patrol does not usually stay long enough to fully suppress pirates and the pathing of the fleet may be different from the trade route pathing.

 

[Mikhail_Mengsk]

The way trade works is really a pain in the ass. You have to sacrifice starbase modules to collect trade and defend it, then you have to assign micro-fleets of naked corvettes to every stretch to avoid pirates, and both those solutions imply cluttering your already overworked Overlay with things that takes away space for things you really like.

Why don't they adopt the simple yet effective Convoy/Escort system from HoI? It works, it's simple and it's user-friendly.

 

[the glory of plain]

patrol system are horrible
just add trade protection to any upgraded starbase will be fine

 

[Andrzej2]

One of the worst aspects of the current piracy system are the randomly spawning pirate fleets. At least in EU4 we get a warning when rebels get enough support.

With this warning about coming uprising rebels in Eu4 are just annoying joke not a real threat. So you basically want to import one of the most shitty mechanics from Eu4 to Stellaris? Please don't. At most some warning could be present on lowest difficulty level.