EDIT: Boss man beat me too it!!!!! Yeah its me causing the problems.

And thank to everyone who has played one of my maps and given me feedback. Just so you know I am reworking AI Horde based on the mass of feedback Ive gotten. It will fix spawning the wrong area and i will be changing phaselanes around to help promote the AI to actually attack instead of camping all in 1 Grav Well this will help with the massive lag that happend when you reach critical mass of ships ingame. It should provide a better challange also by creating more than 1 way to attack.

Also if yall will give me your comments on my other maps. I dont know what to update if I dont know what yall like!

I'm not 100% sold on it, but think it could be good.

Basically, early game, pirates are really powerful and deadly. By late game, you can easily take out pirate bases (while this would be suicide earlier on). But there's little incentive to do so. The amount of income you can make from a pirate base, especially compared to a planet with some trade ports, is totally negligible. And since pirates aren't a huge threat anymore, you wouldn't do so as a pre-emptive measure.

If pirates colonised, it would make them more of a force to be reckoned with. There's a mod called "Epic Mod" that was supposed to make all the independant countries try to colonize. Never tried it (it hasn't been updated). But it sounds like it would add a new dynamic to the game. A kind of small-scale chaos.

Another pirate-related suggestion: how about (in addition to making pirate bases stronger) making it so that if we colonise the pirate base, we get a small squadron of pirate ships flown in every time the pirates would have sent out a strike force? Sort of like becoming the new Pirate Leader.

Think about it.

For human players, at least, there's suddenly huge incentive to colonise the pirates, where there was very little before. In fact, humans would be likely to fight over the pirate bases!

The only issue I can see with that is that if it gave you fully upgraded ships, then it could easily be overpowered if nobody attacked you. If it's possible to limit it until the ships have been all destroyed before more come, that could work. Or it could just give them at upgrade level 0, i.e. whatever the pirates would have had.

Can you make the custom maps part of the mod, so that they don't clutter up the Galaxy Forge screen when we aren't playing DS (i.e. they disappear when the mod isn't enabled)?

I've tried that mod... it's in the process of being updated... but after a last update I played the game was near impossible because some much was going on in the game, with fleets fighting one another and such it RAAAAN VERY FREAKING SLOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

notice the empathese on the slow part... if that mod didn't make the game run so slow I'd still be playing it

This is already setup for the next patch

jsut be sure  to delete those maps out of the galaxy forge file when you update or the problem will continue

Sorry, it wasn't my intention to sound rude

I tried it out again yesterday after I noticed I forgot to put the Galaxy Forge map in its place. The menus still haven't changed a bit, but I do notice that ships now make different sounds, weapon effects are new, there are added levels of research in the trees. Pirates are also new, and planets have also changed. So I guess there must be a map I misplaced or am missing. I placed everything that came with the 0.85 download in the correct location and I placed the Galaxy Forge map.

I do think what is woring right now is very fun. The effects are beautiful, and with a fully upgraded military tech tree, any fleet is pretty much unbeatable. I went through a whole map, against 3 AIs with a KOL, Marza and a Dunov together with 10 Ogrovs, 20 Kodiaks and 30 LRMs. My fleet never had to be so big, the Ogrovs took only a few moments to completely blow up a Starbase, and the pirates were a joke to fight with this fleet. My lvl 9 Kol kicked so much butt together with my Ogrovs and LRMs, that I only lost 1 LRM against the pirates.

Awesome!

yeah the AI can barely keep up now, I find the best challenge to be either Research AI or Aggressive AI both at Unfair. The Economic one is not to bad either. The defensive sucks and can slow down the game with all the Mines it builds.

I withdraw the idea for pirates colonizing. I can understand the CPU issues it would cause. Still like the idea of the pirates being buffed against fighters. Meanwhile, I still find incentive to take out the pirate base. Even though I can bottle them up with surrounding planets, it's cheaper to wipe the base and get a little cash out of it than to rebuild mines when they attack. Heck, if you want to really add incentive, I've seen a bonus on another mod called 'Black Market' where the trade bonus is 200%. Use Building Mandate and get 2 or 3 trade ports going. That's a lot of cash.

Dunno if I would make pirate bases add ships. Even with Dark Armada (or whatever it's called), I prefer to have control of where my fleet points go and what type of units are made.

And funny story: I made allies with a vasari AI and went about my normal business. What I didn't see is that they put mines all over my homeworld. Guess I can't afford to break that treaty now.

That is funny!!!! ROFL!!! Just get a few scouts around your HW then break the treaty, your static defenses should help clear them out quick

Having pirates colonise wouldn't be any worse than 1 extra CPU player, I'd imagine. Having ALL the independants, yeah, that could be slow. I dunno though, I have a fast computer.

There's really little incentive to me to take out the 'rates, because I can drop off a starbase at the planets the Pirates tend to attack, and then just ignore the pirates if they attack me.

When I do take them out, it's kind of a revenge attack...

I prefer to have one less front where something can go wrong, no matter how unlikely. Once in a blue moon, it happens that in games an amazing thing happens. Not likely given the stiff rules, but once in a while.

And yes, I can see what you mean about the pirates being one extra CPU. In fact, I wasn't thinking that they would even go out and grow like an AI, rather that they would take a planet, leave their forces in orbit and maybe/maybe not develop defenses around the planet. It is more difficult when a planet has to be bombarded and enemies have the chance to come in and surprise you.

As far as further incentive goes, I guess that kinda depends on the individual. I've had enemies garner one or two planets in another system before I finish wiping out their home. Even though they can grow, if I have other AIs around, allies or not, I might not find the incentive to wipe them out immediately because I don't want to manage distant empires.

So not sure if the pirates will ever offer much for you.

Well, if pirates would just take one planet and not expand, I think that'd be good.

Well, what I meant is that taking over a regular planet, even a well defended one, is easier than taking out the pirates, up until you have a crapload of upgrades. And a regular planet gives you resources and more cash than the pirates do.

If taking over a pirate base meant you got some decent income, it would be worth it. Free ships? Sure. Bounty gets paid to you somehow? Sure.

But right now, it's nearly like colonising one of the dead asteroids, except WAY more effort.

Okay, I can see your point. But the only way I can really see it being worth it is through things like a 200% bonus to trade income, which would still require Development Mandate and making trade ports. Only other idea I have off the top of my head is to make the pirates much worse so that you have to eliminate them to survive. Of course, that can be a slippery slope, rationally and empirically.

Another key incentive is that pirates cant jump from star to star and through wormholes. So clearing your pirate base in your system can eleminate the need to spend bounty. While your enemies waste theirs. Very helpfull with those Unfair AI's.

True!

Btw, anyone note that improved tunneling for the Vasari is a tier 5 tech but is shown on tier 6? I assume it's for lack of space, but just noticed.

I also noticed that Huge Asteroids typically have more resource asteroids, but normal and dwarf asteroids have the same resources, pop cap, hp and all. Just wondering if that is intentional.

Haven't been watching out for planet abilities making sense, but I think I might sweep that next time I play. Noticed Ryat saw a good one about the Ice.