Pirates in Stellaris are dumb. They come out of hiding, attack a star base of whoever's territory they’re in, set up shop after disabling it, and then expect what, for the galactic power they attacked to NOT send a fleet to destroy them? Whoever is leading them must have some of the biggest balls in the galaxy or be one of most delusional fools in the galaxy.
Pirates, criminal, and trade protection in Stellaris need some rework and Criminal Syndicates can play a big role in causing empire major headaches. Here are some suggestions:
Piracy needs to hurt: Letting it get too high should have at least some impact on an empire’s resources, perhaps something like a 1% percent penalty on resources generated from planets and stations in system for every 50 points of piracy.
> Flush the Basterds out: Pirates and their bases could have to be flushed out by patrolling fleets, and the more piracy in a system the stronger the pirate fleet and more bases the fleets could discovered and have to destroy.
> Mercenaries vs Pirates: For a reasonable monthly fee mercenary enclaves could provide an anti-piracy agreement that gives players a renewal empire-wide bonus to their trade protection, base on the strength of the mercenary’s fleet.
Trade, Trade Protection and Patrols: I know this thread is for discussing piracy and crime, but it can’t be disconnected from trade that is pirates target, and trade and patrol routes have an annoying pathfinding issue when using both gateways and hyper lanes. They will chart elaborate courses requiring 6-10 jumps to get from point A to point B rather than the more direct route that could only require 4 jump. It’s annoying and forces you to send and all trade two a single station leading to an overloaded trade route between that station and your capital, generating shit tons of piracy, and requiring one or more dedicated fleets to keep things under control. This is probably due with how trade value is gathered, with one system’s trade value being collected by across a gateway by a station half way across your empire instead of the trade station set up in its sector. So here’s how I suggest solving this issue:
> Sector Centers of Trade: Have each sector have a designated center of trade where all trade value in that sector is collected regardless of distance. By default this could be the sector capital, but player should have the ability to give that designation to any upgraded Starbase or planet in the sector. These centers of trade will then generate the trade route, that using the same path finding logic as fleets will send all trade value and resources to the empire’s capital.
> Let us Manually set trade and patrol routes: Allow players to be able to manually set up patrol and trade routes. They can still be set automatically, but players should be able to change what paths they’re going along as they see fit. Especially if anything ever goes wrong with game’s path finding logic.
> Trade Protection Buildings and defense platforms: Add a new building for stations or planets that generates large amounts of trade protection. It would also be nice if the fighter hangers for defense platforms could also provide some measure of trade protection.
Crime and Criminal Syndicates: The current mechanics around crime could use some rework. Here’s some suggestions
> Have crime generate some instability: From what I’ve seen, unless I’ve missed something, crime only seems to effect stability if the planet gets one of the crime focused negative modifiers. I think it would be better if at least a small amount of instability was generated for each point of crime on the planet. Alternatively, you could also have it to where a small amount of crime starts generating whenever planet stability reaches below 50%.
> Have crime impact resource production and pop happiness: This could help make crime a bigger issue, and reduce the temptation of making deals with crime lords. However, if one does make such a deal the can get a large increase in planet stability, and negate some of loss of production, but your pops will still be unhappy with the situation.
> Black market benefits from Crime: Right now, the black market is just a slave market it provides no other benefit. So how about giving other services on top of enhancing the slave market.
- Galactic Crime Rate stat: Could be viewable in the black market/slave market tab. This number is the difference of the total amount of piracy and planet level crime in the galaxy vs. the total amount of trade protection generated by empire’s fleets and crime reduction from filled enforcer jobs and leaders.
- Black Market strength stat: Basically, this measure of the black market’s strength and influence in galactic affairs measured as a percentage. Every time the player or another empire purchases a good or service from the black market this number increases depending on the amount of money spent. It’s minimum default level of strength could be determine by the galactic crime rate. However, at 50% strength, it will start to generate small of crime on all colonized planets, with that amount increasing by 1pt for every percentage point pass fifty percent.
- A more anonymous slave market: Right slaves only appear when empire seeks to sell pops for some extra energy credits. Rather than relay on that alone how about having it to where, depending the level of crime on a planet there is a small chance for pops to start going missing and showing up in the slave market. It could using a system similar to the to the Vivarium used for breeding captured space fauna, but one hidden from the player.
- Espionage and Information Brokage: Have the black market allow Empires to purchase intel on one another. In addition to conducting some espionage operations without the need for envoy acting as a spy master. There could even be a few operations unique to the black market and criminal syndicates (more on this below). How successful and effective the operation is could depend on the strength of the black market, the target level of encryption, and the amount of law enforcement pops operating in the target empire.
- Greater resource purchases in exchange for higher crime: The black could players to purchase resources in amounts higher than the regular galactic market, but every purchase from the market applies or renews of 10-year modifier that increases crime throughout your empire, by 25pts.
> Criminal Syndicates: One of the main goals of a criminal syndicate should be to increase the amount crime in the galaxy, because they benefit from it. Whenever they build a criminal branch office on a world, they slowly take over all criminal operations on the planet.
- Criminal Syndicates true nature should be hidden: The criminal heritage civic should be hidden to everyone but empire holding it and only having high intel on them will reveal the truth. It should be the same for their holdings. The truth could also be revealed a special situation that could trigger when crime gets to a certain level on the planet and there’s a law enforcement building like a precinct house on the planet.
- Underworld control: A unique modifier for criminal syndicates, measuring how much of the planet’s underworld they control. This number increases gradually and at 100% all benefits of crime present on the world go to them.
- Black Market Hub: Criminal Syndicates could start the game with a unique station or megastructure, the Black Market hub. This would give them access to unique espionage operations usable only against empires where they have holdings. In addition, to getting access to a slave processing center explained above.
- Resource smuggling: As suggested above crime should impact a planet’s resource production, causing a small lose for the planet’s owner. However, if a Syndicate has a branch office on the world, the planet owner’s small lose becomes the Syndicates gain as those resources are funneled to them.
- Kidnapping and Slavery: Worlds with Syndicate holdings on them could have an increase chance for pops to go missing. However, unlike the suggestion made above, here that missing pop will go to a special slave processing center (More on this below). There, the player can decide what to do with kidnapped pops: assign them to their own worlds, trade them to empires that practice slavey, sell on the slave market or breed them like one can breed space fauna.
- Black Market Hub: Criminal Syndicates could start the game with a unique station or megastructure, the Black Market hub. This would give them access to unique espionage operations usable only against empires where they have holdings. In addition to getting access to a slave processing center where they can manage kidnapped pops and decided which pops they want to assign to their own planets, sell on the market, or after researching special social tech, breed them like other empires breed space fauna in a grand archives vivarium.
~ Unique Syndicate operations: “Sapient Resources Acquisition”, that randomly kidnaps pops from planets the Syndicate has holdings on. “Law Enforcement Sabotage”, that damage law enforcement buildings. “Leader Assassination”, that speaks for it. “Fund smugglers” to steal a decent number of resources from the target empire.
~ If the home system of the Syndicate is captured by an enemy empire that black market hub can be either seized or destroyed. If seized all slaves in the processing center will be rescued and automatically resigned to worlds controlled by the enemy empire. If destroyed, everything on it will be lost, but can be rebuilt. When the war is over, if the Syndicate’s home system isn’t taken by the enemy, the hub will be disable for a few years. If the system is taken it will be destroyed.
