Well, every morol deserves at least one good moral. Doesn't it?

Eh? my spelling of moral? yea i'm not sure morol is even a word??

Just wanted to echo the OP's comments, and add a few others:

I agree that the "conquer everybody with fast transports" exploit should be remedied. Whether or not the pirates are too powerful is a separate issue (I've had them in several games, and only had them really destroy the game once. The other few times, I've managed to fight them off, but only with literally years of game time to clear my own sectors). My problem with the event is as follows:

I would emphasize what Wheeloffire and JonSarik said above -- the pirate behavior with this event is entirely un-pirate like. Pirates rely on the ratio of plundered resources to non-plundered resources being low enough that the economy and trade environment can survive. That is to say, as much as pirates take advantage of regular commerce and trade, they also rely on it. Pirates don't create wealth, they steal it, so they need other people to have the wealth so they can plunder it.

One or two pirates attacking trade lines is normal. A whole fleet of overpowering pirates annihilating everything in their path, galaxy-wide is something else entirely. Ordinary pirates wouldn't do that -- it wouldn't be sustainable. They'd smack all the military, trade, and transport ships, and then.. having nothing to plunder.

Since the pirates don't have the resources for planetary invasion, they couldn't be trying to take over worlds. One plausible situation, though, would be for the pirates to take over the trading lanes, then demand tribute. Civilizations who negotiated terms with them could resume their trade, transport, colonization etc. activities (at a presumably steep price that could involve money, ships, starbases, etc etc -- any kind of tribute), while civilizations who refused to deal with the pirates would be isolated on their worlds (unless they could successfully take on the pirates). The pirates could even be given the ability to "take over" some starbases, converting them into limited-use facilities for regrouping, refitting ships, etc. Pirates could be made a sort of special-circumstance faction or minor race, with their own rules and abilities.

Anyway, the possibilities are endless, but as MarshallONeil said above, in its current incarnation, the pirates mega-event is stuck somewhere between infestation and invasion. Too much firepower for casual pirates, not enough firepower to take over planets.

I started playing a game yesterday, medium galaxy with 3 opponents. Since im a little nubie I set the difficulty on 'normal'. I played CalCivII on 'bright' but got bitchslapped a few times so wanted to take it easy with my first game in DA.

After I researched medium hulls and pumped out my first warvessels to start a war with the korx for building military starbases in my influence sphere I got the Pirate Event. I was by far the strongest Civ at that time and 3 turns at war with the korx (I wasn't strong but the AI was just alot weaker with only a handfull vessels each).

Korx best vessel : Att: 3/0/0 - Def: 0/0/0 - hp: 9/9 ( small hull)
Yor best vessel : Att: 2/0/0 - Def: 0/0/0 - hp: 9/9 ( small hull)
Altarian best vessel : Att: 2/0/0 - Def: 0/0/0 - hp: 9/9 (small hull)

(don't think any of the AI's had medium hulls yet)

My Best Vessel : Att: 0/0/12 - Def: 0/1/0 - hp: 24/24 (medium hull) (My choice for 0/1/0 was because the lack of room and missile defence being the cheapest def available at that time)

The pirates best ships: Att: 0/0/30 - Def: 0/0/5 - hp: 24/24 (medium hull).

The Pirates landed with around 8 to 9 fleets in my territory alone (i have 25% of the map). My fleet was no match to them and it got squashed like flies. Within 5 turns the korx surrendered to me because they lost their fleet (they made it sound like it was because of me). I thought the pirates only landed near me because I was the strongest, I was wrong. When the Korx surrendered to me and I got a good visual of their territory I noticed another 9 to 10 full fleets around their planets. I can only expect the same amounts of Pirates in the regions of the 2 remaining civs.

Within 20 turns of the pirate Event the 2nd event came. The Dreadlords had landed in the galaxy claiming 1 world in the Altarian region. The AI (normal ai) were unable to handle the pirates and just went numb. I continued researcher better technologies and so after x more turns I was able to start clearing Pirates. I've yet to start with the Dreadlords but all in all the game kinda died due the inability of the AI to overcome the pirates.

Allthough the AI was set to normal I think the Pirates are way overpowered. It took me alot of turns to get the technology needed to handle the pirate vessels and still I was burning around 2 ships for each pirate ship. The invasion should Scale with difficulty and the status of the civilizations ingame to prevent the game from dying. I have to admit that normal difficulty was perhaps a tad low (i could have set it max 1 or 2 higher) but someone playing a normal game because its his max should not have to fend of pirates like this which completely destroy all civs expect the human which can handle it in the long run.

My 2nd observation was the Carinoids (minor civ) who were present in the game. The pirates killed everything except for Carinoids vessels/traderoutes/starbases. It just passed them by like they weren't there. I wonder if this is Intended or an unforseen effect?

My 3rd observation was that the information provided by the techtree (about colonizing the harder worlds) was misleading in my opinion. The first research gives a colinize bonus of 50% which gave me the idea that a PQ12-planet would give me 6 available tiles until I researched the next one (advanced). Instead I got 12 tiles but a 50% reduction in production which doesn't really match the description in the techtree. Perhaps a better description of what the tech actually means in the techtree would be nice (this is only about the colonizing of new worlds techs)

Thnx for reading and I hope this feedback helps a bit

Greetingz

Zwelgje

Eh? my spelling of moral? yea i'm not sure morol is even a word??

It's not.

And your use of 'yea' is misplaced as well.
The correct spelling should be 'yeah'.

Yea is pronounced with a long 'a' - yA, while yeah is pronounced with a short 'a' - ya.

Yea is more commonly used as a 'yes' vote during an oral vote.

Perhaps the pirate event should take a percentage of each civilizations ships and starbases based on their trade/tourism income with the wealthiest civilizations getting more pirates than those with little trade.

Had this event several times, and when it killed off all my trade routes, economy starbases and morale mining stuff I was doomed. -1000 bc income per month with no expendature and a 23% approval with tax at 0%...

Okay, I might have done something wrong to begin with, but my game was going well (remember, this was just after the colony rush) with 75% approval and steady income of about 1500 bc/week with expendature maxed out....

I like the event, but not as crippling as it's currently is.

Only had one game in which, eventually, I could slay them all, and then I got taken over by another civ, cause I left my planets open (to busy concentrating on eliminating the threat).

Pirates mega event is ok in my book, it does what a mega even shoud which is totally tilts the balance of the game. Now my only problem is that (atleast in current beta) the human player is the only one actively fighting the pirates.

I have had couple of these Pirates events and they have killed everything in their path. But I have always managed to wipe them out eventually and win the game. So basicly Iam echoing some of the writers here.

I only hope the devs change this mega events name. It could be something like "Beings from 3rd dimension invade!" or something like that. Anything else but the pirates please

I've been wondering about "What is Mega Events, really?"

Therein lies the answer. Answer that and you also have your answer about the pirates.
It does shake the universe upside down, maybe it does what it supposed to.

My concern lies with exploiting it, and preventing exploits. I will share my christmas game with you -

This game I had plague, pirates, jagged knife, and dread lords. Holy Crap! I rallied myself out of it, but the AI was just crippled. I beelined to the cure, I also buffed up my weapons and defence research. I mass produced some ships to fight the pirates. I rushed the galactic privateer. I had lots of failures against the pirates but to my knowledge none other was able to dent a fleet of pirates. I would whittle them down. One of my fleets could maybe take out a ship in their fleet if I was lucky. Dread Lords... well I left them alone since they weren't near me.

I went on to conquer whomever I wanted. Population was down either from the plague active or recovering from it. Which meant less transports required. Nearly no defenses thanks to pirates. Many times I busted pirate fleet on my way to invade their worlds. I did not have to mess with the DL. I went for a cheap victory on influence.

My point, if I can do it. Someone else can duplicate it.

Holy heck!

I thought there could be only one mega event in a single game. I have had in my every game a single mega event and no more. Perhaps this is due to my game setup, which is always a medium map so games tend to be short.

I really do hope SD can pull mega events off and make them balanced. As they are, mega events tend to criple AI and give human player an easy victory. Frogboy is going to have his hands full this january

The pirates tend to show up later in my games when i've established several trade routes....which end up being the main targets. They don't tend to pick fights with my fleets(mostly comprised of Capital ships) but they do end up gunning down every freighter I build. They are grossly overpowerder though(my fleets have 24 logistics right now and they have something around 40+), and I can't seem to fight back. Although they do tend to dissapear after a while.

-Spencer

A vast ye swabs, if you be doing pirates, they should be an annoyance not a major power player with fleets of uber ships. Also, any good pirate worth his salt would not destroy all the bounty, they would run-off with it. If the resources were stolen, you would have a chance to take them back, which would be more fun. If you want to have a mega event of a vastly superior wave a marauders hell-bent on destruction dropping in, fine, just don't sully the good name of pirates.

Is it so that the pirates don't attack 'evil' leaning civs? I got this event and my space was right next to the Drengin. The pirates never came after my fleet in Drengin space nor harrassed any Drengin fleets on planets, but everywhere else I looked (and the military strength graph), all other races' fleets just went away.

One yarrgh! also for pirates being (at least slightly) overpowered. Took me a while to build fleets to match them, and as said above many times, AI didn't stand a chance.

I also think it is too much.

I spend about 50 turns just clicking although had just started a phase of war. The AI did not bother, so I was not willing to fight them either.

A very boring event as it is now.

There should be a strong incentive to fight pirates immediately!

But as it is now the cost to fight them in many cases will be a lot higher than the trade income lost.

Pirates objective would be to raid, not to destroy. So they should probably attack trade ships and nothing else. Pirates wiping out entire empires fleets just seems weird.

If they could do that then why not establish themselves as a major "race"?

Historically pirates have always been hit and run. They raid and then escape when the reinforcements arrive. Ive never heard of pirate ships taking on any countries navy head on.

pirates, AARG!

light swords, a cup'o drengin blood stew, and a nice bita' entertainment from those lil human's.

O THE LIFE OF A PIRATE