Where are all the space pirates at?

[Xeldrakka]

Except that now you have pirates who are getting way too out of the realm of being pirates. Where did they get the capital to build all your structures and ships?
They've become a nation at that point. I have no problem with nations that engage in state sponsored piracy in game. But some randomly generated pirate group that magically gets free infrastructure and production facilities? How? That's just not for me.

I agree. This would not be the conventional roaming band of miscreants that we all know and love. This would be like the Barbary pirates, who were effectively a power unto themselves, complete with ports, stable economy, and military vessels. I believe that such a group of pirates would be far more appropriate in a Grand Strategy Game, where we will have dozens of full fledged empires vying for control and supremacy of the stars. At the scales we're going to see in this game, conventional bands of pirates are nothing more than an early game roadblock, only suited to be crushed and used for research boosts.

 

[Hamsterix]

Pirates with alien skulls plz! and SOL!

 

[GC13]

That would be a bit difficult to represent. A planet has say 12 pops and you come along and raid it. How many pops do you steal? 1? How many ships do you need to raid 1 pop (considering it's representing a billion people). Only way i could see it working is if you could have "incomplete pops" working tiles. So for example you raided 3% pop, and next raid gets 10% pop, now you have 13% pop, but the issue with that will be difference in species and ethos. Not sure if they can represent this well at all with pops.

You need to stop thinking about it realistically, since Pops are a completely unrealistic mechanic; just like how in Distant Worlds your population growth was tired directly to tax rate, to the point where you could get 12% annual population growth at no taxes, you have freakishly high rates of growth in Stellaris that are tied directly to your surplus food and where the larger a population gets the slower it grows (regardless of how much room to grow it has).

The only problem is that it would be annoying to require several ships to take one Pop, but there's no way a player would be happy if the ships were expensive enough to make it so that each ship could grab one Pop. I don't know though, it would take some work to make the system good.

 

[BrokenSky]

Looking at some mid to late game maps that leaves basically no space to actually place pirate bases.
I mean Where would you place pirate bases for the mushroom friends in the blorg stream?

I don't mean outside their borders, I mean inside their borders but near the edge and not inside active sensor range. If some empires invest in lots of extra stations to constantly keep all their systems inside sensor range then piracy is already costing them money to prevent.

 

[DarthUsopp]

You need to stop thinking about it realistically, since Pops are a completely unrealistic mechanic; just like how in Distant Worlds your population growth was tired directly to tax rate, to the point where you could get 12% annual population growth at no taxes, you have freakishly high rates of growth in Stellaris that are tied directly to your surplus food and where the larger a population gets the slower it grows (regardless of how much room to grow it has).

The only problem is that it would be annoying to require several ships to take one Pop, but there's no way a player would be happy if the ships were expensive enough to make it so that each ship could grab one Pop. I don't know though, it would take some work to make the system good.

A way I can think of is implementing a special class of slaver ships, with each ship being able to grab one pop once your ground forces have taken control of the planet.

 

[Garfazz Steamfang]

Until we don't have an espionnage or/and a enhanced trading system(like trade roads, embargos etc...) via DLC space pirates are don't really important. But if we have a DLC focused on trade and/or espionnage mercenaries and pirates need to be a thing!

 

[LastLeviathan]

I don't mean outside their borders, I mean inside their borders but near the edge and not inside active sensor range. If some empires invest in lots of extra stations to constantly keep all their systems inside sensor range then piracy is already costing them money to prevent.

Your post made me think of Civ 5 spawning barbarians. An idea could be that pirates could spawn in zones of unrest or on the edges of your empire. Maybe even have a chance to spawn a small spaceport on a moon.

 

[Guilu]

The typical Space 4X pirates are just space barbarians. They force you to make a fleet in the early game while making little to no sense.

By all means, introduce privateers and wandering armed fleets, but don't make them into the omnicidal animals of other games. You should be able to pay them off your backs, hire them against your enemies.. Make them interactive. A good thing to develop for the eventual "space nomads DLC" that keeps being discussed here.

 

[Vasious]

The Purple Vassals for the Blorg has Pirates to deal with, as well as those automated miners.

Perhaps pirates only spawn as part of an even when you are below a certain size

 

[LastLeviathan]

The typical Space 4X pirates are just space barbarians. They force you to make a fleet in the early game while making little to no sense.

By all means, introduce privateers and wandering armed fleets, but don't make them into the omnicidal animals of other games. You should be able to pay them off your backs, hire them against your enemies.. Make them interactive. A good thing to develop for the eventual "space nomads DLC" that keeps being discussed here.

Sins of a solar empire did something interesting with them, building on those ideas might be a good start.

 

[Exemplar Voss]

After watching 17 Blorg stream episode, I noticed that there are no pirates occurring ever since episode 1( or was it episode 2?).

There were- when they first encountered their vassal (Big Purple), they were fighting mining drones, and then a bit later in another system, they were wrecking a pirate base.

 

[Baldos]

Historically pirates have existed at the edge of civilization were law enforcement was week and trade was available for theft. Privateers were state sponsored asymmetrical warriors that also operated at the fringes of the reach of the major trade powers. I don’t see them as a start of the game early opponents ( there is nothing to steal in the void) but as a mid to late game law enforcement and diplomatic problems

 

[doomdude1]

Honestly I'd love to see pirates along with sector fleets. The idea is that with poor sector governors (or poor player leadership for the core worlds) pirates would appear and reduce trade, attack mining outposts that sort of thing. Sectors would have their own autonomous (player toggle) fleets which they would invest in, same as they invest in tile improvements. Capped at 5% total ship capacity?