Feedback Requested: Pirates and Crime

[Toby-wan_Strife]

I for one tend to like what Paradox did with piracy in the most recent DLC regarding the Black Needle. I’d like to see both piracy and crime become more intertwined; high piracy in certain systems and trade routes leads to high crime on nearby worlds and vice versa. It would be interesting if pirate factions became actually interactive and more of a threat to your empire if not dealt with. Maybe they could also insert themselves onto uninhabited worlds or pre FTL civilizations akin to the Bedlam Raiders in Jedi Survivor.

As for crime, id like to see worlds with high crime organize themselves into sort of shadow empires. Empires that have no territory on a map yet still exist in the shadows. Mob rule would be more common and would represent a single criminal organization solidifying their rule as the true power on a planet. Criminal shadow empires would only be interacted with via special events or any time you want if you’re a criminal syndicate mega corporation. Criminal shadow empires would have their own ethics and beliefs just like any other empire. Maybe a criminal organization made up of enslaved pops would be more egalitarian and seek to emancipate slaves which would anger your authoritarian or xenophobic faction, likewise an authoritarian criminal organization much like the Hutts from Star Wars would enslave aliens and make some unaccounted for in your otherwise egalitarian empire which would greatly anger your egalitarian faction.

I’d like to see crime become more like a situation rather than just a few events and modifiers. A situation where you can have multiple approaches to curbing crime. You could target the root causes of why pops would commit crimes; promising increased living standards and more amenities which would ultimately discourage crime and eventually restore order, or you could go full authoritarian and crack down on crime with brutality by employing more enforcers and soldiers, which would make pops unhappy, could cause some to escape as refugees, and lower relationships with other empires who have knowledge about this brutal suppression.

 

[Great_Triangle]

As implemented, piracy feels far too punishing. I think it might be worthwhile to scrap spawning pirate fleets entirely, and turn trade protection into a bonus to trade value. Pirates could be a form of space fauna that spawns based on crime and deviancy, Paying tribute to pirates can make them neutral, and neutral pirate fleets could be hired from pirate havens.

I also think that crime needs a rethink. A major fantasy missing from the game currently is "lawless worlds", where unusual things can be acquired. (Worlds like Tatooine, Knowhere, and Chiba City from Neuromancer) I think crime shouldn't be a problem, so much as a way of developing your society in different directions. Perhaps low crime increases specialist output at the cost of worker and ruler output, and high crime makes rulers more productive at the cost of specialists. A sector with persistently high crime creates a situation where the worlds in the sector can become lawless. Lawless worlds replace their enforcers from the capital with gangsters that increase crime, but also provide small amounts of rare resources through the black market. Lawless worlds could have unique buildings and specializations which allow them to develop in different directions from ordinary worlds, at the cost of their governors being more prone to negative traits.


If crime and piracy are systems that serve only to punish a player for not playing in a particular way, then most of the playerbase will try to avoid them at all costs. On the other hand, punishing systems can be positively received if handled well. The logistics system in Hearts of Iron 4 primarily serves to punish players, but integrates perfectly with the fiction of the game, and the entire point of the system is to avoid the severe penalties it throws out. I don't think piracy and crime are as central to managing a space empire as logistics is to a WW2 game.

 

[Repùblica Vèneta]

I enjoy playing as Criminal Heritage but have always found it a little strange how the domestic crime system interacts with their own internal politics. I think it would be really flavorful if you could play as a Star Wars Hutt style mafia state with a huge amount internal crime and infighting. Possibly something where the empire actually gains certain economic benefits when they experiences high crime levels, while also experiencing negative drawbacks such as the periodic assassinations of leaders and bursts of civil unrest.

 

[Tannhäuser Cake]

Some thoughts on systems:

• Crime could reduce Stability, similar to how Happiness/Approval raises it. This would have several benefits, including the possibility of swapping several Stability bonuses to Crime-reduction bonuses (which would now essentially be "Stability protection" bonuses). https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...rs-and-soldiers-increasing-stability.1708360/
• The Crime system is the first victim of the excess of Happiness bonuses. The unbalanced Happiness and Stability systems should be addressed no later than the Crime system, unless the latter is decoupled from the two former. https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...-happiness-bonuses-need-to-be-culled.1530589/

Some thoughts on tweaks and potential minor features:

• Crime Lord jobs for pops? https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/threads/crime-lord-job.1607981/
• Crime-clearing events could deport the Criminal pops to the penal colony, if it exists. https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...ry-release-notes.1702012/page-8#post-29869761
• Some penal colony suggestions: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...ry-release-notes.1702012/page-8#post-29870563
• Slave Processing Facility could add 2 Overseer jobs. https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...-facility-should-add-2-overseer-jobs.1608622/
• Commissar ruler job? https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/threads/commissar-ministry-of-truth-and-police-state.1712860/

Also, pirates could use the cloaking/stealth feature.

 

[Isharon]

Whyyy is there still piracy in my empire when theres no crime

 

[DarkHelmet110985]

Crime as a function of Population unrest is perfectly fine so long as things remain kosher or perfect. It’s when things hit the fan(CG shortage, lack of Housing and/or Amenities or Orbital Bombardment) is when Crime ought to spike because there is Civil Unrest. Even then, it’s very easy to reduce to zero, hence if you want to make Crime an actual factor on any given Colony then you’re going to have to significantly reduce the effectiveness of Enforcers or increasing the effects of Crime for Pop Happiness below 100%. One way to increase the likelihood of Crime is to increase Amenities usage of the Populace. Perhaps make Amenity usage be a function of the number of Pops on the Colony as opposed to 1 per Pop. More pops means higher Amenity usage rate and this is independent of Habitability that amplifies everything by at most a factor of 2. I know this means more Entertainers but considering we have Entertainer districts on Ecu’s, maybe this would justify them?

As for Piracy, Civilian Ships should be involved with this. Colonies, excluding the Capital, that generate Trade Value will need X amount of Trade Ships on a Trade Route. These Civilian Ships will have an Alloy and Energy upkeep like any other ship but are completely defenseless save for Shields, Armor and Utility Modules. To deter Pirates, Starbases can yield a protective field of influence but Static defense can only go so far. For routes with a heavy amount of Trade, a Military presence will be required. Having Civilian ships conduct Trade means looting says ships can be quite lucrative and economically damaging to the affected faction(s) since this includes Empire-Empire Trading.

 

[one4crisis]

The problem is; how do you make that fun and not a chore? And how do you make it fun within the context of a game that already has an insanely high amount of notification spam? I put this in the war form as well but any considered changes can’t be made in isolation. Because if they are, even if they’re fun systems, they add to the ever growing number of pop ups per minute. I’m not sure I want to have multiple chains of pirate quest pop ups on top of planetary events, elections, galactic storms, archeology sites, astral planes, leader level ups, leaders dying, yet another request for a migration pact from a species across the galaxy etc.

Which isn’t to say I don’t like the general idea of linking crime to piracy. I just think more thought needs to be put into how Stellaris mechanics have grown to demand so much attention already.

It means you need more ships to damage them, and the fleet capacity are too small. Maybe use Group Army and Group Army Group like HOI4 and a higher fleet capacity will better. Let some small fleet(Regional Defense Forces, For example, the garrison of HOI4 will not be displayed but can regulate the deployment of troops in the region). It will only be displayed when pirates are strong enough to destroy regional garrisons.

 

[mathuser]

What if pirates played like a nomad empire with secret asteroid bases around the galaxy, this is the foundation. What if after multiple pirate nomads are established they meet together to form their version of the galactic community, a cool idea for example would be if an empire is about to build a sentry array (that would reveal all their secret pirate bases) all the pirates come together to declare that empire a crisis to their continued existence and throw everything they have against them (kind of like the sentry array is a aetherophasic engine).

Something like reverse Caravaneers, perhaps?

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.

Maybe there could be variant mercenary enclaves like specialized privateers, royal/imperial guards, military orders, etc. in addition to the regular mercenary company that could have interactions with piracy or crime. More variety could make increasing the enclave capacity more relevant, too.

I also think that crime needs a rethink. A major fantasy missing from the game currently is "lawless worlds", where unusual things can be acquired. (Worlds like Tatooine, Knowhere, and Chiba City from Neuromancer) I think crime shouldn't be a problem, so much as a way of developing your society in different directions. Perhaps low crime increases specialist output at the cost of worker and ruler output, and high crime makes rulers more productive at the cost of specialists. A sector with persistently high crime creates a situation where the worlds in the sector can become lawless. Lawless worlds replace their enforcers from the capital with gangsters that increase crime, but also provide small amounts of rare resources through the black market. Lawless worlds could have unique buildings and specializations which allow them to develop in different directions from ordinary worlds, at the cost of their governors being more prone to negative traits.

And speaking of enclaves, Criminal Enclaves of different types could be part of the Stellaris version of "lawless worlds," possibly infiltrating or working with empires to expand their grasp while giving unique modifiers. So criminal traders, salvagers, etc. would be encounterable and make an offer that you cannot refuse, and local criminal versions of mercenary enclaves would spawn from high crime or piracy with their own black markets while siphoning some of the local economy.


This could all be stretching the enclave system a bit far, but having enclaves that are a little more diverse would be nice.

 

[Koopatin]

Piracy and Crime - make it go away. just away. I do not care if you find a better way to implement it or just make it go the way of the dodo. It is just mildly annoying and sometimes very annoying.

 

[Riukus]

A toggle to disable crime syndicate spawn, please?

 

[DrFranknfurter]

Crime isn't fun to use or deal with, criminal holdings look cool, but crime in general it is a win-more/death-spiral mechanic currently.
An empire doing well has 0% crime, 0 piracy and no negatives while an empire suffering (usually the AI or a new player) can go into death-spirals with high unemployment, overcrowding, negative events and situations, low stability, revolts and pirate fleets cutting their trade income.

Perhaps instead Crime could be a rubber-banding mechanic where crime helps slow death-spirals, and taxes income for players doing well. If you are low on a resource you can get some job-free income at a cost, if you are high in a resource you can get some extra jobs that are less efficient than normal jobs, but can still be useful.

Food example:
Bio-Reprocessing Plants (Holding) produce food, -growth (at <10% Food Stockpiles)
Bio-Reprocessing Plants switch to produce alloys/rare resources from food via Catalytic jobs (at >80% Food Stockpiles)

Amenities
Underground Clubs produce amenities, -CG (<5 Amenities)
Underground Clubs produce switch to produce unity/growth/TV from amenities via special entertainer jobs (when above max Amenities)

Generic Resources
Smuggler's Port buy resources to fight a deficit (when resource production is negative)
Smuggler's Port produce Smugglers/Merchants to sell resources when resource production is positive and prices/stockpiles are high

Espionage:
Criminal jobs could grant additional options in operation events (skip a phase, siphon some resources, avoid paying costs)
Assets could unlock special beneficial criminal jobs for you or enhance their output (positive and negative)

Enforcers/Politicians/Telepaths
When stability is low they reduce stability penalties from low happiness
When stability is high some can become corrupted to increase criminal jobs and produce stability penalties (via decision) so you can have a crime-infested world with lots of enforcers like judge dread roaming around

Piracy
Currently I only notice piracy when AI empires trade routes path through my space or my trade routes avoiding passing through starbases and go the long-way around for no good reason. I hate: collecting trade value, sorting out trade collection after wars and having anti-piracy fleets.

I think the old system where Piracy is an early game mechanic to remind you to build ships was good, and mid game it could punish snaking to chokepoints and leaving huge unclaimed regions inside your borders.
Having a way to create new marauder bases could also be interesting (like spawning mercenary enclaves, but done in neutral space adjacent to rivals instead)

 

[Seelensturm]

Long ago I installed a mod that removes piracy for good and never looked back. That is my take on the piracy mechanic.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2763235017

 

[user1221]

How about pirates settling in empty systems or receiving territory from empires friendly to them, turning into new Marauders?

Or perhaps empires that handle crime well could transform pirates into more expensive Mercenary Enclaves. These Mercenary Enclaves would slightly reduce crime, but they would be more costly.


Alternatively, depending on policies, empires could increase crime slightly in exchange for pirates becoming privateers operating in hostile empires.

In galaxies with Criminal Heritage or Barbaric Despoilers, pirates could become even stronger, turning into a galactic nuisance like Fanatic Purifiers or a Crisis.


What about rewards? If pirates damage the empire's economy, players might get frustrated and dislike the pirate system.

Would it be appropriate for the game to reward players with resources proportional to the amount of time a pirate den existed once the den is destroyed? Maybe even include pops?

 

[user1221]

What if crime becomes the opposite of the empire's government?

By combining Stability and Empire Size, interstellar civilizations would have administrative efficiency. The lower the administrative efficiency, the higher the crime rate, and the empire would lose productivity.


When administrative efficiency reaches around 70%, the empire would receive no penalties. What I want to emphasize is not the 70%, but that crime should always exist in the empire. That way, there will always be interactions with crime!

If fantasy is realized, a crime-free empire could gain bonus productivity, but as administrative efficiency decreases, the empire would lose productivity.


Also, the taxes the government fails to collect would flow into the Underground Economy. Criminal Heritage reaches into the Underground Economy spread across the galaxy. Perhaps crime could create corrupt power figures who bring the Criminal Heritage closer to their empire. As the Underground Economy grows, the empire loses Diplomatic Weight. Some governments might even choose to forgo Diplomatic Weight to gain the wealth of the Underground Economy.

Being hostile toward such empires could result in less backlash in the Galactic Community.


Administrative efficiency would decrease as the empire grows, but would increase with technological development.

Interstellar civilizations might create vassals or become federations with stars on their flags to control administrative efficiency.

Dictatorial, Imperial, or Hive Mind empires might receive a bonus to administrative efficiency.



* This text was written using a translator. I apologize if the sentences seem odd. I'm not very familiar with English.

 

[lucasmpereira]

The problem is; how do you make that fun and not a chore? And how do you make it fun within the context of a game that already has an insanely high amount of notification spam?

I like the idea of crime being tied to piracy and being actually the cause of piracy.

My vision for this would be kind of what we have in real life. A little gangster can exist on his own, but if his gang starts growing it will reach a point where he will need to have people in high places to let him expand. He will need judges, cops, lawyers, politicians on his side that can turn the blind eye on his gang operations in exchange of some favor.

So maybe in the game, crime could develop up to a certain point on his own, and to expand further and turn into piracy it would need to reach you and start making negotiations on the blind eye.

That way it won't be really a chore, but you maybe don't mind leaving a part of your system full of thieves and pirates in exchange of some cut of the crime profit. Think that this can be explored further by the game designers too.

Also maybe by that it would open you to use the criminal organization in some sort of way, like making them influence certain empire, sabotage, plunder blablabla

Also, let's not forget that crime is not unified and probably you would have a lot of criminal faction in your system. Maybe to handle that there is a dlc for managing multiple criminal factions and the standard way the game handles it is by having one general faction only?

 

[tribnia]

Star systems in Stellaris are just too valuable for empires to abandon. Maybe we need some space junkyards where produces nothing to spawn raiding pirate fleets

 

[Jamaican Castle]

Perhaps instead Crime could be a rubber-banding mechanic where crime helps slow death-spirals, and taxes income for players doing well.

I don't know about the second part (as you mentioned, if your economy is in a good place, generally you have low crime to begin with) but I think there's merit in the idea of crime as an anti-death spiral.

When you run into resource deficits, the situation could spawn crime holdings/buildings that produce that resource at a good rate - helping alleviate the deficit - but have a non-economic drawback. For instance, criminal jobs might impact your fleet cap (your people are signing up to be soldiers for crime lords instead of the state) or your diplomatic weight (nobody takes you seriously because your country has a reputation as a crime-ridden wasteland). These effects wouldn't stop you from stabilizing your economy - they wouldn't hit your happiness, stability, or anything that will just tank production and put you right back in deficit - but the buildings and the effects from them also won't go away just because you put your numbers back in the black for a few months. You'll need to do some real work first to fix your economy so they don't come back, and then remove the residue of crime from your society.

Done properly I think this could be a mechanic that's a flavorful alternative to flat penalties (after all, when people lose faith in the government to handle the economy, they don't just suffer in silence, they turn to other people who can solve the problem) and provides a cushion to avoid death-spiraling, while also being impactful enough that you don't want to deliberately sit in deficit making +5000 alloys/month out of nonexistent minerals.

 

[Wenla]

I allways turn pirates-option off when I start new game. No robbery any more...

 

[TomorrowsHerald]

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

Pretty much, though I am not sure how you would translate to multiplayer. In single-player, you could for example gradually get control to decide certain matters of policy, for example, get enough corruption and you can decide production in that planet and lock out the AI from making decisions over it. The benefits are split between host empire and crime empire according what percentage of their space you control via the vassal tribute mechanic system. That becomes more of a problem with multiplayer. One thing I would like to see but would probably be to complicated to implement is that the Crime origin can be kept a secret, a criminal enterprise can set up front companies via the megacorp slot that read like they are the same thing as normal but in reality serve to entrench their influence on the planet. But that goes more into the sort of changes I would like to see in the intelligence system as a whole and wouldn't work without such changes.

 

[Vlad123]

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.

Player: ok can Handle.
IA: SOMEONE HELP ME! *half map become pirates empire because IA is dumb as...