Feedback Requested: Pirates and Crime

[TomorrowsHerald]

I think the old piracy system, in which pirates would spawn in isolated space and attack our systems quite a few patches back was better than the present system. Piracy does feel more relevant early to mid-game than in the late game, though a system that allows them to spawn out of lawless areas could be interesting (for example, space that's been torn apart by wars.) Something that's less of a game of trying to cover all our trade routes and more something that encourages us to leave small sub-fleets or our borders handy in case they turn up. As it stands, the present system is just too much work to accommodate for what it is.

As for crime, that I am really not sure about. As part of a broader system of unrest I do think it does do what it is supposed to do for the most part. What I think is the problem is the Crime Syndcalist origin and how it plays on top of that mechanic. I think the solution is perhaps to change that origin into something that's a mix of more typical mega-corps with special intelligence-related features. I could think of something a bit like Forces of Corruption in Empire at War, in which you create a crime holding (instead of a mega-corp slot) that isn't necessarily bad for the host empire (though it can be.) that gives you powers to decide over that planet.

Perhaps a crime syndicate could have a new play style in which they try to gradually establish hegemony over empires by expanding their crime network. Whereas most empires get to create holdings as a part of a vassal agreement, a crime mega-corp gradually creates vassals by establishing these holdings until it establishes effective control over most of that empire's planets (the more settled a planet, the harder it is to "corrupt," but the more planets do fall to the crime network's influence, the easier it gets.) The present system is just too annoying for other players and too easy to defeat and render the playstyle useless in a few steps.

 

[Acheron]

I agree with the issues of both being currently tedious busywork and would like to add that we are playing as the ruler of a galactic empire, not the chief of patrol of a sector. Yes, space piracy and crime are a staple of space opera settings, but the player shouldn't have to be the one to organize the patrols and such.

 

[Calvax]

I agree with the issues of both being currently tedious busywork and would like to add that we are playing as the ruler of a galactic empire, not the chief of patrol of a sector. Yes, space piracy and crime are a staple of space opera settings, but the player shouldn't have to be the one to organize the patrols and such.

Technically we’re playing the spirit of the nation, not the leader, since we stick around even after regime change. But it is a fair point that Stellaris has some mechanics that don’t scale at all and feel like busywork in the late game.

 

[Draelian]

Regarding piracy, if the barbaric despoilers and the corporations that have privateering could make a fleet and designate it as a pirate fleet, things would improve a lot.

I'm talking about a system like mercenary enclaves that takes away an admiral and a fleet for a certain time to attack a specific object. After the time runs out, what's left of the fleet returns to your empire and gives you the resources, yes. is destroyed, you lose them.

With this we can have a system that allows us to plunder other empires without going to war, with the disadvantage that we temporarily or permanently lose a fleet and the possible penalties with the empire that we try to plunder.

This could intersect with infiltration systems to establish our empire's ability to conceal its involvement and that of the victim to recognize us.

 

[SS Boss]

Criminal organizations, pirates, etc would be great if they are simulated through an "institutions" system.

They'd have their leaders, their jobs, even their districts/buildings. But I think at least the institution system I have in mind is too much for Stellaris. Maybe Stellaris 2...

 

[kidwiz0101]

I've been playing a lot of dune spice wars and I feel like criminal syndicates could really benefit from being able to better coexist with their host empire. When you meet a criminal empire now you almost want to declare total war on them, and when you are a criminal syndicate no one is your friend, and gestalts and other corporations have the ability to negate your play entirely.

What if instead of increasing crime as means of resource collection, now a crime empire would just skim some resources of the top. This is more of a nuisance than having 100 crime and planets which can trigger nasty events. So now it's like yeah I don't like this guy but I'm only losing x amount of resources so it's not worth my time.

The crime empire could then be able to open up on any empire since it's not just trade based anymore. I also think crime empires need their own holding type or branches get reworked entirely where multiple mega corporations can be on a planet but they fight for economic dominance.

Finally, if a host empire does eventually declare war on a crime empire (smugglers) the crime empire should get events or special projects to let hell let loose if they have enough infiltration. More espionage missions through being criminal would make this play very nicely.

 

[Butuzo]

Pirates don't have a chance against space empire, and they shouldn't anyway, so maybe they should be abstracted: no spawned ships, but just a malus to trade going through the system. Piracy also can be connected with cloaking and detection, it just make sense. To add some meaningful interaction, maybe add some spy operation to sponsor piracy in another empire? And I think common pirates-related events should be special projects, maybe requring some fleet force, but not battles. If you ignore this events for long enough... maybe then spawn a fleet.

Crime... I didn't thing this through, but I think it shouldn't be uniform 0%-to-100% value, but more like "50% is the default, can never reach 0% or 100%, but can approach it asymptotically". I also think the same would be nice with happiness and stability, btw.

 

[shiro the bushi]

I think what piracy needs is ways to survive in populated systems, it's so easy to deal with it and the map fills in so quickly that there really isn't anywhere for pirates to hide.

I think empires should be allowed to be 'neutral' ports as it were with a few being on the map by default, like chors compass or other unique systems. these would allow pirates to gather up and safely amass fleets, pirates should also have some sort of privateering system to help incentivize players to actually engage with them opposed to just sending a stack to wipe the odd fleet that pops out on occasion

 

[Tseudonym]

I think crime-related planetary modifiers should have a greater impact that reflects what the modifier claims to represent. Right now, all of them are just "Make the crime number bigger, and add criminal jobs that, when worked, make the crime number bigger"

 

[Tseudonym]

Perhaps a crime syndicate could have a new play style in which they try to gradually establish hegemony over empires by expanding their crime network. Whereas most empires get to create holdings as a part of a vassal agreement, a crime mega-corp gradually creates vassals by establishing these holdings until it establishes effective control over most of that empire's planets (the more settled a planet, the harder it is to "corrupt," but the more planets do fall to the crime network's influence, the easier it gets.) The present system is just too annoying for other players and too easy to defeat and render the playstyle useless in a few steps.

Get eaten from the inside. They'll never see it coming.

 

[Pellucid]

Piracy should only be a thing on your border systems, not the internals of your empire. It would also be nice if you guys set up a system where inter-empire trade exists and gets raided if there are gaps between your nation and the one you're trading with. It should be tied directly to pirate bases which would give you something to do with fleets between wars.

 

[Dragatus]

I'd be fine with both of these systems just getting removed from the game instead of PDX trying to make them better.

The only issue I see with that is that Criminal Heritage and Oppressive Autocracy civics require crime to be a thing, but I'd rather PDX spends time figuring out how those could work without crime than on making crime good.

 

[PhoenixSoldier101]

They're a nuisance that can detract a small amount of naval capacity with larger amounts for trade empires with a shift in where they can spawn that takes a tedious frequency to check if someone wants to prevent with no mechanic to assist for what could be a minor issue that springs up in the middle of a big campaign crippling an economy.
I'd be nice to see them become more robust in terms of both their threat, if there was a way to simply dedicate a portion of the naval power without having to micromange what was being patrolled and also more options for the empire to incentivise them in opposing empires.

 

[adil3tr]

Crime right now is just miserable when it comes to criminal syndicates. I always have criminal buildings in my planets and cannot get rid of them because the syndicate either is a vassal of a powerful empire or is too far away to attack. It's really frustrating I can't turn it off at game set up the way I can turn off the caravanaseers. Piracy sounds interesting but might need trade to be expanded on. I feel like trade, migration, piracy, and crime should be turned into one system of inter-planetary interaction that act upon and are acted upon the other systems.

 

[Resistance91]

piracy is currently more of an inconvenience than a threat. It would be good if you only had a certain amount of time to deal with it they move on to the next system and the next etc. But there should also be easier ways to tackle piracy. Perhaps bribery to send them to neighbouring factions.

Crime needs to be a bigger issue so enforcers have more use. There should also be more ways to tackle crime. Like executing a pop to make an example if you’re authoritarian.

 

[Miguelinileugim]

You could make it so piracy is no longer about spamming fleets but rather about it impacting trade between your colonies unless you do something non-fleet related to it. The idea is that even a corvette is a massive ship that has basically no use against pirates. Pirates are all about hiding and using tiny strike craft sized ships that are implied to be somewhere but you generally shouldn't be able to see them (just like cargo freighters in trade routers which do not have any visuals but whose existence is also implied). So just turn piracy into a growing red layer that expands unless you assign enough anti-pirate stuff to starbases and which discourages setting up planets vastly separate from your capital as, understandably, they make for a very easy target for pirates unless you got a starbase every few systems.

Needless to say trade should also be produced by gestalt consciousness empires and be called something like "exchange", while its pirates are just deviant drones who get these resources and use them to spread further deviancy. Would also allow gestalt empires to trade exactly like normal civs do which would be an improvement. It should be possible to make their exchange (trade) mechanics slightly different by changing which workers produce "exchange" as there are no living standards nor clerks. Instead it would be a byproduct of economic activity, about 10% of the production of each planet becomes "exchange" which needs to be sent to your capital for "sorting" or something like that. There could also be an "exchange policy" of sorts allowing for coordinated sorting (100% energy credits), centralized sorting (50% energy credits 25% unity) and autonomous sorting (50% energy credits 25% minerals).

Pirates/Deviants could actually spawn ships and have bases, but not right away. A pirate base is just like a real life gang hideout, that's for the police to sort out. Only if the pirates/deviants become so incredibly rich that they can spawn their own pirate base and corvettes they will show up on map, however they will just flee as even at this size it is for the police to handle rather than your ships and they should regenerate quick enough and destroying them will have no impact. They're mainly there to bother your science and construction ships and make you feel like you've left a bunch of space being "unruly" and now you can't send ships there. So basically there's several "stages" for pirates:
1. Small pirates: Nothing but red on the map if you have the piracy layer on, they're implied to have strike craft sized ships but you cannot see them. They reduce trade income somewhat. If they accumulate enough resources (based on resources lost) they become medium pirates.
2. Medium pirates: Pirate bases that are near defenseless and corvettes that will run away unless you somehow have an even smaller force. Their bases reduce trade income to 0 (rather than only partially) but they respawn so quickly and an event might pop up the first time you destroy one of them to hint that you're meant to leave that to the space police via starbase upgrades, trade policy or etc. which will weaken them over time until they go back to being small pirates. If they accumulate enough resources they become large pirates.
3. Large pirates: Full on pirate starbases that will replace your own if you had one in there (they will attack it first before becoming large pirates). In addition they have bigger ships like destroyers (in theory they could have up to battleships). They reduce trade income to 0 on controlled systems (with starbase or pirate bases) and on top of that they will come defend their starbases AND pirate bases. Leaving the player potentially at the mercy of pirates as pirate fleets freely move around their worlds, sometimes just to pacify player starbases and defend pirate bases, sometimes to straight up steal player starbases (at random, might be an event with a chance to trigger). Having a pirate starbase in a system which holds a planet you control (they won't invade your planet just yet) will trigger a situation where the pirates will try to take over your planet. If you destroy the starbase the situation trickles down fast but it isn't impossible they'll rebuild it in time, if they invade the planet (requires the situation being already pretty high) the situation trickles up fast but you could retake it fast enough before losing, certain expensive measures can keep the situation at bay but ideally you want to "do nothing" (costs nothing) while sending your fleet there to take down these pirates that you've left WAY out of control. Or massively increase police budget to slowly make the situation go down if your fleet is busy or you're desperate.
4. Huge pirates: They invaded your planet and the situation ran out, they now formed a pirate/deviant empire. They get an appropriate civic to represent this, random ethics and civics like any other empire and all that jazz. Please steal my ideas thanks.

 

[HFY]

Piracy & Crime should both be removed and replaced with something more fun (and better integrated with each other).

Crime should have upsides like providing a black market where your pops go to get their own amenities (with blackjack! and hookers!)

Crime might also mitigate blockades -- "We can't catch 'em and we built the defense network, you sure as Shroud ain't gonna."


Piracy might offer some kind of Espionage advantages, like if you leave a system on the border to the pirates, you can pay them for intel on the empire on the other side, and maybe even buy yourself an Asset. They might also offer a thin defense against invaders since they can't really tell one military ship from another -- not much better than nothing, but at least it could get some stealth ships to de-cloak, or alert you to an inbound raiding fleet.

 

[Cheshire42]

Personally, it's hard to really denote how to change crime and piracy without an overall DLC-styled change. The current system is adequate, however, I find it difficult to figure out how to prevent space pirates from appearing. I send patrols and stations to help raise the protection rating, however they still appear with little previous note.

The current crime/deviancy system is fine. It does its job, requiring the player to hire guards to prevent crime from spiraling out of control. I feel there could be more done with them, in terms of events or spycraft.

Crime-related events would be fun. Having leaders making backroom deals or figuring how to deal with a mafia don would be neat, in small amounts. Limiting those events to a per-game status would be needed.

Currently, the only aggressive crime empires are criminal megacorps, which sadly don't require much effort to take care of. I'd love to see evil geniuses or crimelords as pawns for spycraft, as well as little crime-related capers.

I came up with my own concept a while back on a Stellaris: Villians DLC, Where larger-than-life characters would appear in the game to pester the player. The end result would be the player being able to defeat and take over the villain in question, but one of the minor systems I noted was a crimelord leader page, where a minor crimelord could appear and cause trouble for the player. In order to get rid of them, you'd have to complete a couple of minor quests. Failing to fight against them would cause a few minor problems for the player, but completing it would net you a reward, like a minor leader or something similar.

 

[ScottyWired]

Couldn't really write much since crime and piracy are currently nothingburgers. They appear, impose a tax, and then the player stomps them out.

Similar to the war resolution survey. I couldn't really write much about war resolution because war resolution just isn't a thing. War exhaustion sits at 100% for several years and then one side pushes the status quo button.

 

[Laaaaan]

Piracy ingame is silly. If you don't build a line of starbases or avoid collecting trade altogether, you get a pirate fleet spawned from nothing. But they're also never strong enough to not be swatted in an instant. An acceptable strategy is to repeatedly let them spawn, then nab the energy/minerals loot you get from killing the asteroid base. Hardly a nuisance, possibly net positive. Silly.

(Planetary) Crime on the other hand is really badly handled. God forbid you look away from a planet for *one* second and it has 30 crime. Instantly 3 pops become criminals and you just can't do anything about it except enable a few enforcers and wait centuries for them to go away. God forbid you allow that to happen and then get like -20 stability for the time you wait. Kinda why i exclusively play egalitarian, just max out happiness and you never have to think about crime or employing enforcers ever again. Annoying.

Then again both of these mechanics could be deleted entirely and the game would be no different, at least for me.

Another gripe i have that is technically related to planet crime, is unemployment. Only two living standards for pops disable the "high unemployment" event, social welfare and utopian abundance, and you only need like 3 pops for it to occur. Why have it at all? Pops don't lose their upkeep if they're unemployed, even on basic subsistence.