[Marty Ward]

Been messing around with the Pirates Last night. I agree that full maintenance is to big of a handicap but zero is to big of an advantage. 10-15% seems right. It makes you choose between either Big ships/ low numbers or small ships/ higher numbers in your fleets. I have been playing the later. So far I can take on 3-4 cruisers but larger fleets than that usually spank me pretty good. I haven't built anything larger than a BC and I only built one due to the cost and time. My self imposed ship size limit is BB.
I have played like I think a pirate should, only colonizing tiny and small planet of the home type, ice. No trade, no treaty, capture, analyize and scrap any ships. Have added a few special items but still need to work out the bugs. It's working great. I think with a tech tree for Pirates it is a great addition to SE4.
Victory is very difficult with the current point scoring system. Points are gained through expansion and colonization, two thing I feel Pirates don't care to much about, give me the cash! I'm not the best player but I ain't the worst, altough in my game I am Last. If they victory points could be changed then Pirates and Nomads could actually win. If you received points for each ship captured or detroyed and this was scaleable, i.e. Pirates get 1000 points for each captured ship while standard races got 10 for example, and you got points for each game turn you survived, same way, then Pirates and Nomads could play true to style and have a real chance of winning any game except winner take all. I don't know if the victory conditions will be changed, the suggestions for hard code changes is quite large and this request would probably be far down the list.


[This message has been edited by Marty Ward (edited 10 March 2001).]