[AP] Pirate raids!

kolimbo · Post by **kolimbo** » Fri, 26. Oct 12, 23:45

How the heck do you people deal with pirate raids on your shipping lanes?

I'm sitting at warlord combat rank and I"m losing about a freighter EVERY HOUR. I have a bunch of akureis on SEWN patrol, but they always seem to either arrive to late or spend all their time trying to get back to HQ.

I'm just looking at my universe map now and there are no fewer than 3 separate raids going on and my freighters are taking a beating!

I've taken to replacing my freighter fleet with spring blossoms and even THEY are getting nailed every couple of hour or so(and I can't really replace them nearly as fast as the freighters, the HQ is busy building other things atm).

At this point I've got one last trump card left in my hand: I have a complex producing laser towers nonstop for the past couple of days and I've accumulated about 400 laser towers that I'm ready to deploy on the most heavily attacked sectors. However, I get the feeling that 400 extra ships will slow down my game significantly so I'm leaving it as a last resort.

What do you guys do to keep the pirate raid down?

StarSword · Post by **StarSword** » Fri, 26. Oct 12, 23:56

Easiest way to keep pirate attacks down is to sell them enough drugs to keep them permanently higher than a kite.

Build spaceweed and space fuel factories in safe space and use tough, fast ships like Baldrics, TMs or M6s to sell the goods to pirate bases. It also helps to run missions for the pirates. Stick to ones that don't involve combat, of course, since that'll just piss off the racial militaries and cause a whole 'nother problem.

kolimbo · Post by **kolimbo** » Sat, 27. Oct 12, 00:05

I'm sorry, I do not negotiate (or suck up to) terrorists!

How do I make it killy killy?

(edit: but yeah, my next game is prob going to be a weed baron. I can't handle another round of stamping out pirates day-in day-out).

StarSword · Post by **StarSword** » Sat, 27. Oct 12, 01:10

Like everything else, they respawn. There's no way to kill them all, not without mods.

And even if you do befriend them, the best you can do is keep the raids to a minimum: in the immortal words of Captain Barbossa, "The pirate code is less what you'd call actual rules and more like guidelines." There's always that last one that gets a wild hair up its butt and decides to use a factory as target practice. Not much you can do about those except have a warship explain why that's a bad idea.

DrBullwinkle · Post by **DrBullwinkle** » Sat, 27. Oct 12, 02:16

kolimbo wrote:How the heck do you people deal with pirate raids on your shipping lanes?

Which trade commands are you using for your freighters? Sector/Universe Trader? CAG/CLS? Manual Trade runs?

In the vanilla game, there is no reliable way to defend all of your traders all of the time. Even armed escorts run into problems when one member of the convoy runs low on jump energy.

The best that you can do in vanilla is to make sure that your traders have plenty of drones (20-30) and are set to emergency jump at 80% shields if they are running a command that supports it (such as ST/UT).

Also, it may help to make sure that your traders do not have weapons or Fight Command Software. That way their only option is to immediately jump when attacked.

However, even with all of the above, the vanilla scripts have "vulnerabilities" that you cannot avoid. The most common weakness is that the trader will run low on jump energy and will take a direct route to its next station -- often by going straight through an enemy sector.

Therefore, in the vanilla game, you must expect losses. Capture or buy new freighters to replace the traders that die, and have a few constantly in training.

If you do not mind using scripts, then MK3 Optimization solves all of the known issues with the vanilla Sector/Universe Trader commands. Among other things, optimized Mk3's will reliably avoid enemy sectors, reliably refuel before trying to travel, and reliably jump when targeted by enemies. Also, they trade more effectively and do not get "stuck" for no apparent reason (as vanilla Mk3's sometimes do).

kolimbo · Post by **kolimbo** » Sat, 27. Oct 12, 05:32

Harumph. Just as I thought.

I guess I will simply flood the trade lanes with laser towers then.

I _will_ make this galaxy hell for pirates.

burger1 · Post by **burger1** » Sat, 27. Oct 12, 07:22

OOS fighter drones in a tm (so they can redock) will be the cheapest and a quick way to destroy m3-m5 ships. If you are using SEWN you should be getting warning sounds when enemy ships are in the sector. Maybe watch where the spawn points are and have a ship protect that area or whatever the proper command is. X3AP seems much safer than x3tc I hardly ever loose a freighter. Do you have jump drives on them ?

lordfalcon666 · Post by **lordfalcon666** » Sat, 27. Oct 12, 10:57

What do you guys do to keep the pirate raid down?

- Mainly i try to use the traders from the bonus package for selling my own station ressources/wares. They are using jumpdrives and restock themselve with e-cells so they are mostly "fire and forget". I think in 9 game-day's [no sinza and standing around] i got ONE of them attacked by pirates, and it was a pleasure to jump in and get rid of the problem. The cause for the attack was, that i forgot to put the sector on the "non trading" list.

- Freighters used without that software are limited by jumplengh, so they never come across pirate or xenon space.

In long therm, i befriend them passively. I don't take Kill Yaki/Pirate missions and they get small amounts of my booze but i really don't do that actively. Their "hacking" and the addiditonal supply of marines comes in handy.

If you really want to get rid of them from your trade routes actively, blast their stations until they spawn in sectors you can live with

But that could take a while...

DrBullwinkle · Post by **DrBullwinkle** » Sat, 27. Oct 12, 16:07

kolimbo wrote:Harumph. Just as I thought.

I guess I will simply flood the trade lanes with laser towers then.

You have mentioned elsewhere that you are playing a modified game, kolimbo, so you owe it to yourself to use Mk3 Optimization. It fixes a number of fairly severe problems with the vanilla trade scripts. Your freighters may still be attacked, but they will survive most attacks (and will go to a shipyard for repairs if necessary).

kolimbo · Post by **kolimbo** » Mon, 29. Oct 12, 06:15

Done deal.

The optimization works pretty well for my freighters, unfortunately it paralyzes my M6 traders.

I'm still trying to find a way around this, but at least they are not getting shot from the sky anymore!

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[AP] Pirate raids!

[AP] Pirate raids!

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