How do I give pirates new blueprints and other questions...

[hakkarin]

So I heard I could give pirates new blueprints to use, even my own ships! That sounds interesting to me since the basic pirate ships don't look very dangerous to me. But I have a few questions.

1. Are the basic fighter ships I have encountered so far the only default ships the pirates have?

2. How do I give them access to my own blueprints?

3. If I give them access to some massive design I made, does that mean that at any time some random ship of doom could come out of nowhere and mess up all my shit without warning?

4. How exactly does pirate AI work? I thought I was safe in my faction HQ homebase for ages but suddenly 4-5 pirates showed up (who by the way, could somehow shoot through my station blocks and kill me! Wtf???) and killed me a few times. I think one of them is still there. Do pirates should leave if you they can't kill you after a while?

 

[jayman38]

1. Yes, the pirates by default only have access to the Isanths.
2. You can set your blueprint permissions to give access to "Enemies". That will give access to the enemy AI factions, which includes the pirate faction.
3. Yes. Be cautious of what you give them. Multiple ships can be spawned, and I don't think the game does any kind of "weighting" factor, so you could end up facing a pirate fleet of powerful battleships, backed up with an Isanth or two.
4. If you are within range (I'm not sure how far, maybe 24 km?) of a pirate station, they will continue to send waves of pirate ships until one side or the other is destroyed. (It might be time for you to scout around and destroy any pirate stations in range. Watch out for heavy firepower from their station!)
4b. I think pirate AI has the same programming as the Terminator: They will not stop, until you are dead! (Or they are destroyed)

 

[CyberTao]

Yes. Be cautious of what you give them. Multiple ships can be spawned, and I don't think the game does any kind of "weighting" factor, so you could end up facing a pirate fleet of powerful battleships, backed up with an Isanth or two.

From what I gathered, the game does weight the value of ships. Higher value ships are rarer, as they spawn more in higher wave strengths as opposed to low wave strengths, so it depends on the wave strength the game decides to spawn.

Spoiler: Source

Starts at about 2:50

Side note; wave strength is define as the number you use for level the in /Initiate_wave command.

• initiate_wave
  • DESCRIPTION: Initiates an enemy wave
  • PARAMETERS: Level(Integer), Seconds delay(Integer)
  • EXAMPLE: /initiate_wave 5 20

 

[hakkarin]

From what I gathered, the game does weight the value of ships. Higher value ships are rarer, as they spawn more in higher wave strengths as opposed to low wave strengths, so it depends on the wave strength the game decides to spawn.

Spoiler: Source

Starts at about 2:50

Side note; wave strength is define as the number you use for level the in /Initiate_wave command.

• initiate_wave
  • DESCRIPTION: Initiates an enemy wave
  • PARAMETERS: Level(Integer), Seconds delay(Integer)
  • EXAMPLE: /initiate_wave 5 20

So I should be ok with giving them powerful ships? I sounds kinda boring to just not give them anything but lackluster ships. Can pirates take advantage of things like homing missiles and advanced weapons?

 

[CyberTao]

So I should be ok with giving them powerful ships? I sounds kinda boring to just not give them anything but lackluster ships. Can pirates take advantage of things like homing missiles and advanced weapons?

Pirates can do anything involving weapons more or less, they can't activate unbound effects or Jam though. They just shoot whatever is linked to the core.
The only problem with giving them strong ships is they might be too rare xD

 

[hakkarin]

Pirates can do anything involving weapons more or less, they can't activate unbound effects or Jam though. They just shoot whatever is linked to the core.
The only problem with giving them strong ships is they might be too rare xD

Strong ships being rare with pirates sounds logical enough to me. I heard somewhere that powerful ships spawn more often the further away you are from your homebase. Is this true?

 

[CyberTao]

Strong ships being rare with pirates sounds logical enough to me. I heard somewhere that powerful ships spawn more often the further away you are from your homebase. Is this true?

No idea! Pirate spawning mechanics are a mystery really, would just have to go and see for yourself.

 

[Xavori]

My testing and working with pirates:

1. You need to use the admin tab of the catalog to get the 'enemies' permission to stick.

2. You can only have 8 different blueprints available for pirates. Setting more than 8 just means some blueprints get ignored.

3. Weight absolutely affects the chances of pirates spawning. I currently run with a 150 mass, 200 mass, 400 mass, and 800 mass ships for my pirates with extra variants of the smaller ships (3,3,1,1). This means the vast majority of patrols and the early waves of defenders at pirate bases are the smaller, newbie-friendly, ships. The bigger ships only show up if the pirate base gets into later waves, and the biggest ship is actually fairly rare.

4. You can get extra ships to spawn by messing with docking via admin when building the blueprints. Working turrets will also spawn with the pirate ships.

 

[Crimson-Artist]

Strong ships being rare with pirates sounds logical enough to me. I heard somewhere that powerful ships spawn more often the further away you are from your homebase. Is this true?

pirates getting harder the further out from your original spawn point is a planned feature. currently pirates will spawn with the same difficulty everywhere in the universe.

also the game difficulty will affect the pirates accuracy, I.E how deadly they are. on easy they will barely hit you while on hard they are super accurate and on Mean they will hardly miss.

 

[Wolflaynce]

4. How exactly does pirate AI work? I thought I was safe in my faction HQ homebase for ages but suddenly 4-5 pirates showed up (who by the way, could somehow shoot through my station blocks and kill me! Wtf???) and killed me a few times. I think one of them is still there. Do pirates should leave if you they can't kill you after a while?

Sorry to bring up a dead horse here. But I noticed no one answered the most important part of the question. He was in the base and was killed. I had that happen to me today. I bought a derelict base, put the faction module and made it my home base. Should have made it invulnerable right? Nope.

I was inside the base, making a ship, not docked (new or old method) and was inside the core of the ship. Then I see the spawn screen prompt. Log said I was killed! BTW - the shields were at 1.4 million, and the pirates were barely scratching it.

I can only think that the ship I was working on should be docked to the station so that it will get the 100% immunity. Fair point. But...there was 1.4 MILLION shields still working. The pirates were barely damaging it, and they still kill me?

I checked for base damage, nope. So what happen goes against everything that I know of how the shields/hull is suppose to work. And I saw the shield hits too, so I thought I was being protected.

There's too many factors on what's going on that I can think about right now. I was just wondering if this is common or just a feature...er bug .

I would be willing to help supply log files to troubleshoot and fix if this is a weird one-off bug or it is constant and no one is saying anything about it.

 

[Effane]

AOE effects 'bleed' through objects as the explosion has no real collision detection. So if you are on the opposite side of a wall that gets hit with a missile and you are vulnerable (Only being in a build block counts as being 'inside' a station, just like Cores on a ship). Same effect happens with ships that have hangers full of stuff. The good news is the newest updates helped a lot with this issue since the shields provide coverage at >50% for docked entities. Bad news is being aligned to a ship/station as a squishy still doesn't count in that envelope of shield.

 

[Wolflaynce]

That makes sense. I remember when they attacked the base when I looked at the walls, I saw the animation of the explosions through the walls. So I must have been too close to a wall so the blow-through ganked me!

That changes the dynamics when I want to build a station instead of buying a condo, I mean a derelict station... stay away from the walls or make buffer zones. Lots of buffer zones! *sigh*

Thank you very much Effane! I appreciate the answer, or that I got an answer at all. I was just about to chalk it up to something weird that only happens to me. :D Hopefully it will help with other players when they find this thread.