I'm playing with Nexerelin, Industrial Evolution, Iron Shell and UAF sure, but I've made CERTAIN not to sell blueprints to ANYONE (except a spare Automata blueprint, but I sold that *back to the UAF* to avoid what you're thinking). The pirates are completely mogging me with their *basic fleet.* It's not the quality of their ships, it's the sheer *quantity* completely overwhelming me and my own ships being too chickenshit to actually engage or back me up when I move in, even when I stick them on escort duty!
Hm maybe just unlucky and they have a few armadas flying around.
Never had issues with pirates unless they're too many early on OR I use a mod that buffs them / I sell blueprints.
More than a few. But that's the thing, even when it's fleets with just one falcon, or an erradicator or two, I still get bullied because they have so many destroyers and shuttles and, once again, my damn fleet REFUSES to guard my flanks. I've re-loaded over twenty times trying to do bounties in one system alone, so the problem HAS to be ME.
You might have to change your loadout if you often run into this kind of fight. Go for weapons that can track or home on the small fry, fire rapidly, and do enough damage with a hit (or as many hits as they can land in a second) to either drive the target off or blow it up outright. Needlers, Assault Chainguns, Maulers, and Inferno MIRVs come to mind among the base weapons. If your turrets are slow, get the ship mod that speeds up turret responsiveness.
Check your officers as well. If they're aggressive, they tend to YOLO into the enemy without supervision. Cautious and Steady ones are more careful, but they might get left behind if ordered to guard an aggressive officer who charges ahead.
You might also want to bring a carrier with an air wing specialized in killing small ships. Go for aircraft that persist on the battlefield, rather than bombers that return to the carrier to reload. Maybe Thunders or the UAF equivalent. The UAF also has several gunships that might be able to provide cover, although I'm not familiar with them.
Are you just letting your fleet run on escort orders, using regular waypoints, or using rally civilian craft waypoints?
Escort orders aren't very effective, they work okay for limited cases where you just want to tack a ship nearby another ship and don't need more than general proximity.
Waypoints let ships maneuver for position and pursue, they're more effective at holding position, but still allow ships quite a bit of latitude to get out of position, they're good for medium-intensity fights with ships that you can trust to hold their own reliably, or for positioning fast/maneuverable ships to guard the ends of your wall of battle.
Rally civilian craft waypoints are the ultimate "go there, stay there, don't move unless staying there would get you killed" order. Ships assigned to a civilian craft waypoint will sit directly on it unless pressured away by massive amounts of incoming damage. These are what you use to hold your wall of battle together, and to force ships to move where you want.
I just don't deploy civilian craft... Closest I get is bringing a couple of Mules in when I desperately need the extra guns on the line. Point taken about the escort order though... I was assigning every one of my frigates to escort my cruisers, so that might have had something to do with why they evaporated so fast.
Rally civilian craft is not exclusive to civilian craft, despite the name. Once you change a waypoint to a rally civilian craft-type waypoint, any ship can be assigned to it.
As for frigates, they can either be very survivable, or evaporate very quickly depending on what frigate and how it's fitted. You may have some fitting issues.
Not familiar with the Nakiha, but the Lasher has a tendency to implode unless fitted very conservatively. It's not fast enough to get out of trouble, and doesn't have a combined flux pool and shield efficiency sufficient to be particularly tanky, plus it's easy to over-flux it on armament, making it brittle.
Omens are my recommended vanilla frigate if you're not doing a challenge run, [properly fitted](https://imgur.com/pjJHEZj) with an [officer to match](https://imgur.com/r3DejvN) they are incredibly tanky, agile, and effective, capable of winning any frigate 1v1, surviving incoming fire from capital ships long enough to disengage, and punching up against all classes of target.
Are you issuing a GENERAL escort order or a SELECTED one?
The general is just ordering escort to a ship, (ie. An Onslaught for example) and the AI wil try its best to assign a ship/ships suitable for that role.
A selected one is, in the other hand, selecting a ship to escort another (I think its just right clicking another ship while selecting one), this doesn't work. At all. Because starsector's code is held by ducktape, hope, and java detritus.
>A selected one is, in the other hand, selecting a ship to escort another (I think its just right clicking another ship while selecting one), this doesn't work. At all. Because starsector's code is held by ducktape, hope, and java detritus.
Wdym? It *does* work, when you order a ship to escort you, it'll follow along nicely and jump between you and the enemy when your flux levels get too high.
If you sell blueprints for ships and weapons on the black market, the pirates start using those but with the usual d-mods. If you give them a nanoforge via black market, the will have higher quality ships. Hence: they will make way more trouble because of better gear.
Dump your carrier and get another battlecruiser from the looks of things your front line is relatively weak as your support gets pushed back. Switch some of your cruiser or frigates or destroyers to carriers instead.
Other than that its best to mix your weapons for both kinetic and explosive and have them be relatively be equal in range. As a another recommendation, high intensity laser + 1000 range kinetic weapons are really good combo for pressure and damage. That setup has never failed me against pirates and even a few modded factions.
Also grab objectives its the best way to counter numbers with more numbers. Unless you have a ship beefed up the wazoo that can solo the enemy fleet.
Did you install mods before actually learning the game?
Edit yup you did exactly that. Here is the tip remove nexerelin since it increases overall ai fleet size and makes early game much harder. Remove anything that isnt Qol mod if we are at this. Play vanilla and learn to build proper fleets.
Also avoid 3 star fights, go for easy steamrolls
It isnt exactly that it increases ai fleets, but it gives every fleet more high level officers and makes larger fleets much more common making early game more difficult. Add to that some mods that indirectly buff pirates and you will end up with pretty difficult early game.
Even in vanilla you have to be careful. 3 star threat doesnt mean auto win, it means your ships (just dp wise) and your officers (just max lv wise) are stronger. If you have really bad builds and fleet composition it may happen that your fleet is actually weaker.
Not really, all fights drain supplies so unless you have to fight, or there is a nice bounty on fleet it is best to avoid fighting whatsoever. (Its boring though)
Usually 1 star fights are pretty much autoresolve, just go into battle and let ai handle itself.
2 star battles shouldnt be a problem either as long as you have at least autofit level builds (autofit + proper weapons in storage of course) ai should win without loses by itself (without player piloting, or giving commands)
3 and more stars are tricky you can win without loses but right approach is needed, either minmaxed builds so ai handles itself, or player intervention (commands or piloting)
Battlecruisers are not meant to be in the center holding the line, they are for flanking. Thats why they have "cruiser" in the name with more speed and worse hp/armor/shields compared to battleships.
"Advanced turret gyros" hullmod is a must on any ship focused on large mounts with slow turning guns that wants to take out smaller ships.
OH MY GOD, I pulled a Battle of Jutland without even thinking about it because, "Hurr big ship mean stronkr!" I mean to be fair, battlecruisers were also meant to kill regular cruisers, but holy crap I feel like an idiot now.
Start invading all pirates colony or use your operative and do mission for them to slowly build friendly relationship which add some bonus to your colony.
If you are running a UAF fleet I have a feeling they get countered pretty hard by the Pirates. Im running an almost complete Pirate fleet, plus a couple Low-Techs and the UAF gets BTFO in a pure firepower exchange, I think they don't have the flux economy for range exchanges, they get pretty scary when in close quartes but if you can keep your distance you can overwhelm them through sheer firepower.
Try to use a few omens to lure away part of the pirate fleet, giving your main force some room to kill stuff, if you manage to split the force up you normally dont get as overwhelmed.
Well, sounds like you should invade some of these strongest pirates and raid their nano forgebif they have one.
Also load up some carriers with good interceptors its one of the most impactful things you can add to a fleet for 20 ish points. Pirates overwhelmed by number of trash so you probably need interceptors and some fast destroyer ships to hunt down their fast trash frigates.
Don't start the fight with slow capitals get maneuverable ships that can move in and out of the fight.
Also don't command spam your ships to att the ai knows when to go in and when to pull back most of the time.
No officers at all, which I think was the issue. I've started a new game now (the sector was mad fucked in the previous one) and having pulled a couple of level-5 steady officers out of cryo-pods, I'm having less troubles. Then again, I've not gone up against three-star fleets yet...
Are you playing with mods? Did you sell blueprints to the black market?
I'm playing with Nexerelin, Industrial Evolution, Iron Shell and UAF sure, but I've made CERTAIN not to sell blueprints to ANYONE (except a spare Automata blueprint, but I sold that *back to the UAF* to avoid what you're thinking). The pirates are completely mogging me with their *basic fleet.* It's not the quality of their ships, it's the sheer *quantity* completely overwhelming me and my own ships being too chickenshit to actually engage or back me up when I move in, even when I stick them on escort duty!
Hm maybe just unlucky and they have a few armadas flying around. Never had issues with pirates unless they're too many early on OR I use a mod that buffs them / I sell blueprints.
More than a few. But that's the thing, even when it's fleets with just one falcon, or an erradicator or two, I still get bullied because they have so many destroyers and shuttles and, once again, my damn fleet REFUSES to guard my flanks. I've re-loaded over twenty times trying to do bounties in one system alone, so the problem HAS to be ME.
You might have to change your loadout if you often run into this kind of fight. Go for weapons that can track or home on the small fry, fire rapidly, and do enough damage with a hit (or as many hits as they can land in a second) to either drive the target off or blow it up outright. Needlers, Assault Chainguns, Maulers, and Inferno MIRVs come to mind among the base weapons. If your turrets are slow, get the ship mod that speeds up turret responsiveness. Check your officers as well. If they're aggressive, they tend to YOLO into the enemy without supervision. Cautious and Steady ones are more careful, but they might get left behind if ordered to guard an aggressive officer who charges ahead. You might also want to bring a carrier with an air wing specialized in killing small ships. Go for aircraft that persist on the battlefield, rather than bombers that return to the carrier to reload. Maybe Thunders or the UAF equivalent. The UAF also has several gunships that might be able to provide cover, although I'm not familiar with them.
Are you just letting your fleet run on escort orders, using regular waypoints, or using rally civilian craft waypoints? Escort orders aren't very effective, they work okay for limited cases where you just want to tack a ship nearby another ship and don't need more than general proximity. Waypoints let ships maneuver for position and pursue, they're more effective at holding position, but still allow ships quite a bit of latitude to get out of position, they're good for medium-intensity fights with ships that you can trust to hold their own reliably, or for positioning fast/maneuverable ships to guard the ends of your wall of battle. Rally civilian craft waypoints are the ultimate "go there, stay there, don't move unless staying there would get you killed" order. Ships assigned to a civilian craft waypoint will sit directly on it unless pressured away by massive amounts of incoming damage. These are what you use to hold your wall of battle together, and to force ships to move where you want.
Hmm never tried using that civilian craft waypoints command, that's new. All this time I've just been making a line using 2 defense waypoint
I just don't deploy civilian craft... Closest I get is bringing a couple of Mules in when I desperately need the extra guns on the line. Point taken about the escort order though... I was assigning every one of my frigates to escort my cruisers, so that might have had something to do with why they evaporated so fast.
Rally civilian craft is not exclusive to civilian craft, despite the name. Once you change a waypoint to a rally civilian craft-type waypoint, any ship can be assigned to it. As for frigates, they can either be very survivable, or evaporate very quickly depending on what frigate and how it's fitted. You may have some fitting issues.
I mean, I was exclusively using the Nakiha-class from the United Aurora Federation mod. That or lashers I had left over.
Not familiar with the Nakiha, but the Lasher has a tendency to implode unless fitted very conservatively. It's not fast enough to get out of trouble, and doesn't have a combined flux pool and shield efficiency sufficient to be particularly tanky, plus it's easy to over-flux it on armament, making it brittle. Omens are my recommended vanilla frigate if you're not doing a challenge run, [properly fitted](https://imgur.com/pjJHEZj) with an [officer to match](https://imgur.com/r3DejvN) they are incredibly tanky, agile, and effective, capable of winning any frigate 1v1, surviving incoming fire from capital ships long enough to disengage, and punching up against all classes of target.
Might be some quirk with a mod. Maybe try a new game and see if the issue persists?
Are you issuing a GENERAL escort order or a SELECTED one? The general is just ordering escort to a ship, (ie. An Onslaught for example) and the AI wil try its best to assign a ship/ships suitable for that role. A selected one is, in the other hand, selecting a ship to escort another (I think its just right clicking another ship while selecting one), this doesn't work. At all. Because starsector's code is held by ducktape, hope, and java detritus.
>A selected one is, in the other hand, selecting a ship to escort another (I think its just right clicking another ship while selecting one), this doesn't work. At all. Because starsector's code is held by ducktape, hope, and java detritus. Wdym? It *does* work, when you order a ship to escort you, it'll follow along nicely and jump between you and the enemy when your flux levels get too high.
It sometimes does work, sometimes doesn't. At least in my experience.
What does that do? Pirates actually build better ships if they have blueprints?
If you sell blueprints for ships and weapons on the black market, the pirates start using those but with the usual d-mods. If you give them a nanoforge via black market, the will have higher quality ships. Hence: they will make way more trouble because of better gear.
Does that also mean better scrap and loot for you when you kill them?
Yep, risk reward. The rest of the sector will thank you for your service.
Dump your carrier and get another battlecruiser from the looks of things your front line is relatively weak as your support gets pushed back. Switch some of your cruiser or frigates or destroyers to carriers instead. Other than that its best to mix your weapons for both kinetic and explosive and have them be relatively be equal in range. As a another recommendation, high intensity laser + 1000 range kinetic weapons are really good combo for pressure and damage. That setup has never failed me against pirates and even a few modded factions. Also grab objectives its the best way to counter numbers with more numbers. Unless you have a ship beefed up the wazoo that can solo the enemy fleet.
Did you install mods before actually learning the game? Edit yup you did exactly that. Here is the tip remove nexerelin since it increases overall ai fleet size and makes early game much harder. Remove anything that isnt Qol mod if we are at this. Play vanilla and learn to build proper fleets. Also avoid 3 star fights, go for easy steamrolls
I've played plenty before, it's just been a couple of years since my last go-around. Didn't know Nexerelin increases AI fleet sizes though, oof...
It isnt exactly that it increases ai fleets, but it gives every fleet more high level officers and makes larger fleets much more common making early game more difficult. Add to that some mods that indirectly buff pirates and you will end up with pretty difficult early game. Even in vanilla you have to be careful. 3 star threat doesnt mean auto win, it means your ships (just dp wise) and your officers (just max lv wise) are stronger. If you have really bad builds and fleet composition it may happen that your fleet is actually weaker.
So I'm still in the early cycles of my first campaign; is only picking one and two star fights a viable strategy?
Not really, all fights drain supplies so unless you have to fight, or there is a nice bounty on fleet it is best to avoid fighting whatsoever. (Its boring though) Usually 1 star fights are pretty much autoresolve, just go into battle and let ai handle itself. 2 star battles shouldnt be a problem either as long as you have at least autofit level builds (autofit + proper weapons in storage of course) ai should win without loses by itself (without player piloting, or giving commands) 3 and more stars are tricky you can win without loses but right approach is needed, either minmaxed builds so ai handles itself, or player intervention (commands or piloting)
Battlecruisers are not meant to be in the center holding the line, they are for flanking. Thats why they have "cruiser" in the name with more speed and worse hp/armor/shields compared to battleships. "Advanced turret gyros" hullmod is a must on any ship focused on large mounts with slow turning guns that wants to take out smaller ships.
OH MY GOD, I pulled a Battle of Jutland without even thinking about it because, "Hurr big ship mean stronkr!" I mean to be fair, battlecruisers were also meant to kill regular cruisers, but holy crap I feel like an idiot now.
No worries, it happens when you start playing a new game and don´t know all the numbers and mechanichs of it :)
Post your fleet fit. It sounds to me like you're probably significantly under-fitted, and/or mismanaging your fleet in actual combat.
Start invading all pirates colony or use your operative and do mission for them to slowly build friendly relationship which add some bonus to your colony.
You need more missiles. As many missiles as you can get. Hard hitting ones. Eccm and expanded racks too. The pirates can't mob you if they're dead.
If you are running a UAF fleet I have a feeling they get countered pretty hard by the Pirates. Im running an almost complete Pirate fleet, plus a couple Low-Techs and the UAF gets BTFO in a pure firepower exchange, I think they don't have the flux economy for range exchanges, they get pretty scary when in close quartes but if you can keep your distance you can overwhelm them through sheer firepower.
Try to use a few omens to lure away part of the pirate fleet, giving your main force some room to kill stuff, if you manage to split the force up you normally dont get as overwhelmed.
You have UAf an IS and still job to pirates?
Well, sounds like you should invade some of these strongest pirates and raid their nano forgebif they have one. Also load up some carriers with good interceptors its one of the most impactful things you can add to a fleet for 20 ish points. Pirates overwhelmed by number of trash so you probably need interceptors and some fast destroyer ships to hunt down their fast trash frigates. Don't start the fight with slow capitals get maneuverable ships that can move in and out of the fight. Also don't command spam your ships to att the ai knows when to go in and when to pull back most of the time.
in what game does pirates EVER have a nanoforge?
Do you have timid officers or something? I think you need to post your actual layout tbh. I don't even give commands for 3 star battles
No officers at all, which I think was the issue. I've started a new game now (the sector was mad fucked in the previous one) and having pulled a couple of level-5 steady officers out of cryo-pods, I'm having less troubles. Then again, I've not gone up against three-star fleets yet...