ViolentBeetle
commented
6 years ago What's the AI's current ability to identify and fight pirates?
It would be no fun if player is the only one capable of fighting them off, or being raided.
Open Elimdur opened 6 years ago
ViolentBeetle
commented
6 years ago What's the AI's current ability to identify and fight pirates?
It would be no fun if player is the only one capable of fighting them off, or being raided.
Some systems (without habitable planets) are flagged at the beginning of the game to be valid spawning locations.
An MTTH event then once it fires randomly decides where to put the pirates.
If a playerspace is near, that player might get a message about increasing pirate activity and a mission to show fleet presence similar to the vanilla fleet maneuvre event to stop the pirates from appearing there.
If he does not do this in time the event will progress and a small pirate base and fleet are spawned there and start raiding nearby systems.
Using variables to simulate a ressource system for the pirates they could get stronger depending on their raiding success. Additional to this they should get some ressource points regularly so they do not dry up completely if being fought by the player.
There could be multiple ressource counters. One for new fleet spawns, one fore additional weaponplatforms to be placed in their system for defense and one for upgrading their home base to grow into a massive pirate haven.
When their home base gets destroyed, this faction gets deleted and the whole event may restart at one of the valid locations after some time.
If they are dealt with quickly they are no real threat but if they are left alone for too long they can become a menace for nearby systems with increasingly stronger raids.