I just realized that something about this solution doesn't work as I expected. Checking the patrol fleet some years later I noticed that one of the two patrol orders got canceled.
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Piracy micro management has turned the game into Shelfware for me
- Thread starter Gray_Lensman
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Best suggestion of the whole thread. Thanks. Should of thought to look for one earlier.
And for those failing to understand the topic title, it should have stated more clearly that micro managing corvette patrols to boost trade protection and reduce piracy build up along trade routes is ridiculous micro management, especially when the patrols just don't work correctly when set up. Sometimes the patrol functions as initiated. Other times, a patrol will just stop at a point and need to be "refreshed", necessitating constant rechecking that the patrols are indeed "patrolling". i.e. needless excess micro management for little gameplay benefit, IMO.
By the way, I think piracy added to the game adds realism, it's just that the current system of suppressing it with "poorly" patrolling corvettes sucks in the early game stage before bastions, etc. so the "hammer" fix of nerfing the hell out of it for now will be my way of enjoying the game until something is changed/improved with the current game design.
Yup - I haven't set a patrol in any game I have played in the last 4 weeks or longer. I did have some pirates spawn in a game last week, but I squished them, plonked a starbase down in that system, stuck some hangar bays on it and never heard from the rats again.
Not sure why this is an issue or a "micro management" hell. Just another case (as seems to be the rule with a lot of complaints about Stellaris lately) of people not planning adequately or playing so badly, it hurts!
Personally, I never use patrol fleets. I just put some corvets into systems with piracy problems. How effective are patrol fleets compared to my approach?
Multiple times as effective obviously. Piracy problems are not usually just a 1 system thing, it's all the systems that passed through trade routes. If you protect just one system with corvettes, the pirates will still leak through subsequent systems. Early on maybe with 2 systems long trade route simply parking corvettes can be enough. But at some point you really need to move away from fleet parking and patrol fleets and just plop down a carefully positioned starbase with hangar modules.
Stationary fleets to suppress piracy are fine in some cases. On paper, it's exactly as efficient as a patrol- the piracy suppression is the same, the patrol just splits its time between several systems. The problem with patrols is that they spend less time in their start and end systems than the ones inbetween. On the other hand, if you insist on using stationary fleets, you will have to round up to counteract piracy effects- for example you need 2 stationary ships in a system with 15 max piracy, while a 3-ship fleet could cover two such systems on patrol.
By the time you get starhold/star fortress and hangar module techs available, you should be switching to stations as your main method of combating piracy.
Like I said upthread, I think it's a scaling problem. I've never had a problem either, but I typically play in medium spiral galaxies. Both of these reduce the problem -- spiral helps because the main trade routes tend to be linear, and can be easily controlled with anchorages
Hmmm, I always play on 800 or 1000 star systems, although admittedly I will re-roll the galaxy until I am on the edge as I hate being in the middle. Not sure if that helps.
In addition to galaxy size, I think planet count plays a large factor. I play 1000 star, 5x habitable and work to colonize everything. Even without commercial buildings, routes from my star fortress hubs have very hefty trade values within the first 60-75 years.
Ahh, I don't use that many planets as the game grinds later on - normally, before 2.2 I had 2x, but lately I have been setting it to 0.25.
After 200 hours in 2.2 I totally agree that piracy is just a pain in the ass and boring mechanic, especially when you are playing wide (which I almost always do). Wide empires already have a huge micro management needed for planets (100 times as much as 2.1).
All of a sudden when you are fighting some wars, pirates appear near your capital and crash the whole economy. The only way is to build some ship there to kill it.
I just can't take it anymore, thinking of using a no piracy mod for the next games.
All of a sudden when you are fighting some wars, pirates appear near your capital and crash the whole economy. The only way is to build some ship there to kill it.
I just can't take it anymore, thinking of using a no piracy mod for the next games.
Or you could just leave 2k worth of fleet power at home to counter this. Pirates don't spawn more than 2k fleet power themselves.
Hell, you know what ship in my fleet has killed the most pirates in my last game? The pet space amoeba. That's like sending in this guy to play against a professional MLB team, except it works.
Dude, I can manage all my piracy with like 6 fleets of 10 really cheap corvettes, because you don't even need to arm them to lower piracy. Max thrusters and drives for speed along the route, no guns, no utilities, 10 of them suppress 100 piracy. They cost less than 100 alloys a pop at that point. How is that micro? And it becomes a non-issue at the endgame when you can use gateways to route all the trade directly to your capital. Or just play gestalts, who don't use trade.
"Dude", it's not the fact of using the really cheap corvettes, even without arming them. It's the fact of the micromanagement of them patrolling that's a PITA. Quite often the patrols "STOP" patrolling, (something buggy) necessitating rechecking the patrols constantly to see if they're still patrolling. This is UNNECESSARY micro-management busy work that just clutters up the game play, especially if your attention is focused elsewhere in a battle.
At this point I'm quite happy playing Stellaris with a mod that removes this crappy piracy patrol micro-management necessity from the game.
If you like it playing your way. Go for it. Whatever floats your boat.
I don't think I've ever seen the patrols *just stop*.
I had one that got disrupted when a mobile hostile alien wandered in, and a couple that got wiped by bad routing (but then again, the whole trade route was done for by the routing) when I opened a wormhole and things redirected.
There's no real micromanagement involved in checking if your patrols are still patrolling. Use the outliner, name your patrol fleets as such, glance at them when you've got a moment to make sure they're still moving, not idle.
And again, there are the other ways of controlling piracy which make it (mostly) a non issue once you redirect and control the route the trade is taking - which mostly needs to be done once.
Calling the result of a bug "unnecessary micro-management" is technically true, but needlessly confusing.
"Dude," I've never seen a patrol randomly stop. And a bug isn't "UNNECESSARY micromanagement," its a bug, and if its doing so because of a bug, you should post that on the bug forums so they can get it fixed, not ignore it via modding. Name your patrol fleets based on the route they run (if a system with the trade hub they start/end at is called "x", name them "x patrol fleet." And if you think dealing with piracy is unnecessary for a nation you have poor ideas of how peacekeeping works. If you don't have a navy protecting trade routes, there's literally nothing stopping pirate bands from forming and attacking trade ships.
Exactly.
I am wondering are people talking about start or mid-late game? even with higher galaxy and planet counts I have only ever had issues early on or when I forget to patch an area, you can see how much max piracy is in a system and how much your bastions defend for to plan accordingly, and bastions stack defense. You should also use hangers as they have a higher suppression than guns/missiles, when possible.
I've done the bug reporting route for years. I don't bother anymore. It's up to Paradox to get it's stuff together and get a responsible QA department. Modding takes care of the gross design errors and if it doesn't there are plenty of other games to soak up the consumer dollars.