Pirates?

[GregElSho]

I never had much problem with Pirates. Put a barque every four coastal provinces patrolling and pirates are a thing of the past.
They could be more interesting, but I don't want to suffer modifiers (like lower income) from Pirates when I possess a fleet that would allow me to completely crush any opposition I could face at sea.

Put your fleet on duty on said trade lanes, and voilà, no nasty modifiers to suffer.

 

[brovahkiin]

I agree with whole pirates are modifiers and more piratey route have little wrecks and pirate ships on them.

 

[Terantor]

maybe i unterstand this whole thread wrong, but at least from DW on i never had a Problem with Pirates. i just had One ship every 4-5 provinces, and not One pirate appeared. ever. maybe you should not Patrol your fleets...

 

[Baneslave]

maybe i unterstand this whole thread wrong, but at least from DW on i never had a Problem with Pirates. i just had One ship every 4-5 provinces, and not One pirate appeared. ever. maybe you should not Patrol your fleets...

However, that is rather boring and doesn't really represent the fact there were very few pirates patrolling Iceland, and that single (transport) ship couldn't pacify almost whole Caribbean.

 

[mattkunz]

But pirates were always easy to crush with your fleet, if you could find them. Pirates should definitely stop being portrayed as on the map navies, they just never were. I'm for modifiers or similar mechanics, but as has already been posted with the ability to counter them with ships.

 

[Peonage]

But pirates were always easy to crush with your fleet, if you could find them. Pirates should definitely stop being portrayed as on the map navies, they just never were. I'm for modifiers or similar mechanics, but as has already been posted with the ability to counter them with ships.

For me there is just something to be said for visual representation. I can understand why people might like it as a modifier but I, personally, would rather have them shown.

 

[mattkunz]

For me there is just something to be said for visual representation. I can understand why people might like it as a modifier but I, personally, would rather have them shown.

I didn't mean, that I was against showing them. I just don't want them floating around as navies, just waiting to be crushed. There have been a few Ideas in the thread about them being part of trade routes and shown there, that would be great. It would actually be pretty awesome considering the very straight orderly lines that seem to represent the routes, to also see some pirate infested ones, being totally chaotic.

 

[Comrade Chaos]

Pirates are just robbers. Bands of brigands with big, expensive ships, shiny cutlasses and amusing shoulder-parrots. They attack commercial shipping. Mostly because they want to separate the commerce from the shipping, so they can bury it on desert islands for no reason. They also steal ships and hold crew members to ransom. Occasionally they do a bit of smuggling, or perhaps raid a few coastal settlements. What they don't do is send out a fleet of warships to contest the seas with the crown. That's what navies do, not pirates. If the crown comes along, the pirates don't sit around in battle and hope to survive their inevitable destruction, they run and hide until the crown goes home again.

That's not romantic enough for me!
[video=youtube;f_MG0ja2iD4]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f_MG0ja2iD4[/video]

 

[Baneslave]

But pirates were always easy to crush with your fleet, if you could find them. Pirates should definitely stop being portrayed as on the map navies, they just never were. I'm for modifiers or similar mechanics, but as has already been posted with the ability to counter them with ships.

Yes, if you could find them. However, single transport ship shouldn't clear out half of Caribbean while sitting in a port.

 

[mattkunz]

Yes, if you could find them. However, single transport ship shouldn't clear out half of Caribbean while sitting in a port.

That post was an answer to another post, which has disappeared. I can't remember the post exactly, but it was along the lines of not wanting pirates as modifiers (or special mechanics), because then it would still be possible to have a pirate infestation, even though you have a fleet big enough to destroy the pirates. I actually wanted to emphasize, that you had to find them first too.
And I was promoting the idea of the trade lanes themselves being infested with pirates and the ships sent to control that lane also fighting pirates. This part would be especially good for gameplay, because then it would still be necessary to assign ships to trade lanes even if you control all the land around the cot, i.e. Spain still has to protect it's trade colonial trade from English privateers, even though it controls the whole trade lane home.
Although come to think of it this might be a problem around heavily contested trade lanes, such as the Mediterranean ones, because all the ships vying for control would effectively wipe out all the pirates, which definitely wasn't the case (this was also a problem with the old system).