Still no practical counter to Piracy

[Scoob]

Hey all,

Piracy vs. the Player, what a pain in the rear! It's excessive and there's no practical counter to it. I know Egosoft introduce the "Police" command but that only works in our own Sectors. Plus, it's not fit for purpose anyway as the Police ships just wander all over the sector so mostly miss the disguised SCA ship on the way to pirate me. It *might* help 10% - 20% of the time, that's it.

My main profit-making station - it makes stuff for ship building - just got hit again by an SCA Minotaur Raider. It sailed past the Argon fleets in the sector, flew right past my own large destroyer group and several Corvette wings. It then, in the space of a second, managed to eject THOUSANDS of units of cargo from my station, worth Millions....which then despawned within 30 seconds. With no workable counter - this station is in Argon Prime, so no "Police" option, not that it helps - I reloaded an earlier save.

What are we supposed to do in these situations other than Micro-manage and watch our stations? I've set up alerts to warn me if an SCA Ship is spotted, this works but only if the ship isn't disguised when it starts the Pirate activity. I.e. it approaches as another Faction and only reveals *after* it's ejected my cargo into space. Too late and I cannot even retrieve the cargo.

Piracy needs a bit of a rework as it's only frustrating when it happens to the Player currently. We NEED to be able to automate thwarting Pirates, perhaps having more "Police" mass-traffic at a cost. Then, any defending ships would be alerted quickly.

For me, it's SCA's fixed -5 Reputations that's part of the problem. They are neutral unless attacked or spotted pirating. I'd LOVE to be able to set a "Kill on sight" status vs. SCA Ships and be able to near-guarantee revealing them automatically.

What do people think? What additions / changes would make managing piracy less frustrating? The only option that works for me is to constantly check for Pirates (Disguised or otherwise) then kill them quickly. I don't mind Pirates if there's a valid counter I'm not using, that's on me. Early-game budget constraints might make the player ignore them, or decide to personally police their station while it's in its infancy. However, the smart / risk averse player would want to put counters in place from the get go.

As I typed this I was checking my station in Argon Prime (I reloaded after it was robbed) and this time an SCA Minotaur Raider hit the Wharf in the sector. I watched it travel-drive from up near the Shipyard towards the Wharf and before it'd even slowed down the Wharf had spilled a crap-tonne of cargo, which then despawned within seconds. All that time I had several wings en-route - I'd seen the SCA Minotaur Raider while it was near the Shipyard - but they over-shot it massively, heading for where it was, not where it is, so it got the chance to rob the Wharf.

Note: I know they reduced Pirate number s few versions back, but the somewhat broken "hacking" problem still exists, and now the dropped cargo despawns within seconds, so it's lost. I have ships of standby to scoop up my cargo, but they barely get the chance to launch before the cargo's gone - and this is OOS!

Thought: Perhaps Police Scanners should reveal any pirate in-range without a Scan? Police ships - in player-owned sectors - could be reserved for any-smuggling operations.

Scoob.

[sh1pman]

I just ignore the pirates these days. Even if they hack my station (which for some reason happens extremely rarely), all of the lost resources are basically free anyway. They’ll get replenished very quickly. Intermediates are always at max capacity, and most shipbuilding wares are usually full as well. I just don’t care that much about a couple million worth of wares when I really don’t know what to spend my billions on. If it was disrupting to my shipyards operation, then it would be an issue, I guess. Having an endgame-level empire gives perspective. FWIW, my factories are located in former Xenon sectors, so maybe pirates don’t like to visit them too often.

Also, I thought police ships can see through the disguise of pirate ships? Maybe it’s a bug if they don’t reveal them automatically.

[Scoob]

I can't really afford to ignore them as they cause so many wares to be ejected it's crazy. They can temporarily halt a production if a given war gets too low...plus it's MY STUFF and they can't have it! Not that they do anyway as it just despawns - I am on v3.3 Beta 1 and I think quick despawn was introduced in this version.

Police ships have to decide to try to scan a target first. In my own sector, I do have two Police groups. However, they're often 100's of KM from my station, trying to scan some random - while Pirates just fly directly from the Gate to my station.

I only have three stations, one In Argon Prime, the HQ and my own sector of "Nopileo's Fortune VI" and they're all being hit regularly, so I spend much of my time checking. It seems every time I get distracted for a bit - it just happened while I was boarding another ship - one of my station gets robbed. They cause so much stuff to be ejected!

Scoob.

[sh1pman]

Well, I play on 3.20 stable, and in at least a hundred hours on this save my stuff was only hacked twice. ~20 stations, most of them in Faulty Logic, Atiyas Misfortune and Rhys Defiance, claimed from Xenon. Plunderer pirates almost never visit my sectors. I do see quite a few FAF and SCA pillagers that try to harass my traders, though. Police gets them first But maybe early on pirates do indeed cause enough damage to be concerned about.

My preferred solution would be to have stations use cargo drones to pick up lost wares automatically after the hack.

Improving police might not be the best solution, because one day they’ll uncover a disguised Rattlesnake, and you know what will happen next...

[gorgofdoom]

I assign 2 elites to each trade ship. Since they are faster than most M's, and all L's, they never fall behind and thusly are on point when a pirate event occurs. All they have to do is distract the pirates long enough for the ship to get away. An added bonus is that they only cost 150-200k per, where my average M trader costs 750k. It's worth it financially imo because most of my trade runs are more than 200k in value. Even if i loose both elites, i save the 1 million credits of the trader and his wares.

If you can't be bothered to assign 2 ships for every M, you can use the teladi M "coromaont" (sp?) variant. It's slower, has less cargo space, but many more guns to deal.

L trade ships equipped with tracking missiles usually way overpower any sort of pirates. In the event they're attacked by a destroyer, i'll drop about 1/4 the cargo manually and tell it to hug the nearest stations.

So... there are practical counters to piracy. I wouldn't rely on the policing AI to do the job, though.

[Scoob]

Ship Piracy isn't the issue, it's Station Piracy that's a MAJOR problem in my games.

I just had another one occur while I was in-sector. Easy to counter right? Nope! I saw the SCA Minotaur Raider approaching my station, so I personally engaged it. However, despite it being FULLY engaged with me in combat - and it was losing, it was still able to hack my station, ejecting many millions of credits worth of stuff. Really, my stations eject so much stuff - which then despawns in under 30 seconds remember - that it's totally nuts. That single Minotaur Raider could perhaps scoop up 5% of it....but it despawns before it gets any.

Note that this SCA ship did NOT trigger my alerts to spot them and it was not disguised. It passed through a LARGE destroyer group and a Corvette Group and my TWO Police groups had wandered off 100's of KM away, so they were utterly useless.

I'll just get used to saving often and reloading when this occurs as it's a broken mechanic currently. I don't know why I seem to suffer from Pirates so much this game, some games I do, other games I don't. I always set up in the same sectors, yet it varies a lot.

Scoob.

[sh1pman]

Were those Minotaurs called Pillagers or Plunderers? I assumed that it’s the Plunderers who do station hacking, and they can only be L ships (Behemoth, Phoenix and Rattlesnake). I’ve never seen M ship hacking stations, but maybe it’s been changed in 3.30 beta.

[g04tn4d0]

There needs to be some sort of firewall/IPS system available to install on stations to prevent them from getting hacked. To be honest, I had no idea this was even a game mechanic. I already have my hands full with a fun-deleting pirate capital ship that's been moving from sector to sector blowing up most of my traders I've worked so hard to train this early in the game. I think it's time for me to consider shelfing this game for a few years and go back to X3TC.

[Kintanar]

I noticed that pirates hack my station at certain spots only, so i changed some connectors in those spots for defence bridges. When i got the alert of a SCA presence in my sector and they hack my station in those spots then are immediately engaged and turned red, then my fleet set to defend my station take care of the ofender. There are not a way to avoid been hacked but i always have my auto-revange. Even my home defence fleets are loaded with some goods and the behavior set to attack if are harrased by a pirate. The real problem in my opinion is that pirates ships are spawned directly at the gate, instead than builded in a shipyard. That spawn mechanics feels like the game is cheating at me.