Re: A pirates life for me...
 

Poll reply
1. C less work in modding AI files
2. B agree most advances should come from capture, I don't recall to many Pirate PhD's

Re: A pirates life for me...
 

How does the Anarchy Group intel project work? Could you use whatever ability, at a lower level, it uses to reduce a planets happiness or is this not a facility ability?

Re: A pirates life for me...
 

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Hmmm.. actually, another question - can you put colony components on ships other than colony ships? I've never tried it but I can't see why you couldn't from the vehicle size file. If so, the idea of making the Pirate Colony Hull more expensive would be sort of useless - you could just slap the colonizer on a Frigate or something.
<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>Yes, you can. I've built heavily armored ships to get a colony started on the far side of a damaging warp.

------------------
Cap'n Q

Re: A pirates life for me...
 

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by capnq:

Quote:

<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>Yes, you can. I've built heavily armored ships to get a colony started on the far side of a damaging warp.

Thanks Cap.. well, that takes care of my idea of making pirate colony hulls expensive and slow to build - they'll just mount em on other hulls.

Re: A pirates life for me...
 

Poll results so far:
---------------------------------
What do the rest of you guys think about Pirates vs AI colony ships?
0 x A) Leave as is
0.5 x B) AI adds SDD
1.5 x C) Colony module is an SDD

----------------------------------
Who would like to see pirates with no research ability, other than from captured ships & planets?

0 x A) Leave it alone
2 x B) Severly restrict research (just like resources)
0 x C) No research for Pirates!
0 x D) No research, and get rid of the resource gathering slave labour camps too!
0 x E) None of the above
---------------------

My comments: Adding SDD ability to the colony component will make it completely impossible for pirates to capture colony ships. If they destroy the colony component, they can get the ship, but its useless to them now.
Pirates would then have to trade for a colony ship, or use troops on a planet.

Restricted research. How much restriction should be used? The planet crunch restricts mid to late game research already. Should the pirate research facility put out say 50% research? Then, the pirates get the same research as other empires with the same intelligence trait, but can't expand their research much. (about 7000 pts/turn for the entire game)
Then the pirates could spend some racial points to combat that inherent -50% to research, or not bother and take a -75% hit by pulling all their points out of intelligence.


[This message has been edited by suicide_junkie (edited 07 April 2001).]

Re: A pirates life for me...
 

SJ,
What do you think about restricting Pirate facilities to the point that the number of colonies did not matter. For example, remove the basic shipyard, research, intel, and any other facility that gives the Pirates a benefit you don't want them to have from the pirate trait, like you did with the resource facilities. Then substitute low production value buildings to give them minimal production.
Then colonies become only useful to Pirates for a limited amount of things, resupply, repair etc and it wouldn't matter how many they got.

Re: A pirates life for me...
 

It would be best if we could reduce the number of racial traits that must be set to a specific value in order to get a pirate race. As for intel, that's already been done. The research is definitely going to change, but how much has yet to be decided.

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>...and it wouldn't matter how many they got.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
The problem is always that doubling the number of colonies doubles their output of whatever item, and you would just be squeezing the starting conditions to unacceptable levels. The pirates have to be able to build their first few ships reasonably quickly, but we don't want them to expand their construction ablilties.

I need a good way to allow the pirates to start with enough basic production facilities, but prevent them from quickly building more on their colonies.

-&gt; One option might be to give the pirates facilities that cost 50k resources, so they take 2.5 years to build each. If we can get the pirates to start with those facilities on their homeworld, it might be workable. Comments?

Re: A pirates life for me...
 

Good idea about making the cost high. I think by balancing what you want them to build easy and hard it can be done.
If you removed the basic shipyard, resource extractors, research, and intel from the pirates and created high cost/lower valued alternatives then their expansion would be naturally slow and of reduced value.
Pirate research facilities should generate ~250 points. Most of their research gains should come from capture so the amount of research they really need is not nearly as great as a standard empire. If pirates could get to ~20,000 research later in the game that would seem to be enough.
With low maintenance and scraping facilities their resource needs are low. They should get a large percentage of resouces from scrapping captured ships.
Intel has been worked on.
this leaves shipyards. Creating a pirate shipyard that builds at say 1000 each would be a reasonable start. No addition shipyard facilities should be availble. Shipboard one definately.
I can't think of any other area that needs to be controlled. They should be able to research all the other areas but it will be a slow process. With the built in penalties in the pirate culture there will be many more reasons to capture ships for scrap value as opposed to building an empire of colonies, which is what Pirating was all about http://www.shrapnelgames.com/ubb/images/icons/icon7.gif

Re: A pirates life for me...
 

SJ, how about that after the intial builds, they would only be allowed to build additional facilities only on the exact type of planets with the exact type of atmosphere that they started game with??
Also I meant to ask you before, Have you decided on a name for your Pirate Race yet?

Just some ideas Mac

Re: A pirates life for me...
 

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>SJ, how about that after the intial builds, they would only be allowed to build additional facilities only on the exact type of planets with the exact type of atmosphere that they started game with??<HR></BLOCKQUOTE> I don't see how that would be done. The only way I know it to set the only colonize own type/atm planets, and that ruins everything.

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Also I meant to ask you before, Have you decided on a name for your Pirate Race yet?<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
My mod is not a pirate race, but a datafile change to allows humans to make their own Pirate races. You choose your own attributes and your own race name, my mod just prevents you from doing too many unpiratey things http://www.shrapnelgames.com/ubb/images/icons/icon7.gif
Personally, I don't care too much about the name of my race, since it dosen't come up much in the game. I usually just take "Pirate Alliance" or try to come up with something mean-sounding.