Feedback Requested: Pirates and Crime

[3ishop]

Agree with the issues being raised, just tends to be busy work and annoying systems rather than something to actively engage with and have meaningful choices with.

I did notice no mention of what we like, I love the Pirate ships, especially the galleon and I'd love to get it for my empires lol.

 

[st360]

People dont want to hear this, but a "micromanage your army" tax just for existing isn't fun. Its "cool" to some people the first game around, then it gets pushed into the back of the thought process and minmax automated.

People are imagining some new pirate DLC with grandiose pirate fanfiction scenarios, where you epically steal the Space Mona Lisa and shoot trough aliens like in an action movie. But Stellaris isn't a FPS and any mechanic where you annoy the AI is going to be 50 times worse when the pirate AI nation is using it to annoy you.

Just look at whats happened to espionage in every paradox game ever. First people BEG to get spy mechanics and write forum posts on how cool it would be to outfox a large enemy in epic shadowgames. Then spy mechanics come out, the large enemy spams them on the player, players loose their minds and spying gets nerfed into "you get +5% tech, enemy target doesn't loose anything". And spying becomes just another dead mechanic with maybe 1 inoffensive ability you keep up forever for some minor bonus that's worth it.

Hell, look at current crime in Stellaris, which was once touted as "a fresh and exciting new feature!". Do players make shady deals with powerful crime lords? Do players engage in epic rebellion situations on their planets where they cracked down on the population too hard with enforcers?
No, they go "If crime > 10; build amenity building = yes" like robots.

I really dont want to split my Stellaris fleets from an exciting war to make some economy % go down, I dont want to spawn next to 3 "cool new pirate civic" AIs where I have to accept a -30% resource penalty start. I want to spend my resources in large, meaningful wars and exploration, not every month on spending 50 alloys to get 70 energy credits so i can auto sell the 70 energy credits to buy 60 alloys.

 

[Casko]

Some highlights from my end.

Pirates are just annoyance, not a threat, do nothing, and I've played for years with a mod that removes them entirely for the good of my stations and sanity. and Ai's ability to handle them.

It makes no sense that a Fortress Station, at the key bottleneck, creates piracy by being connected to trade network. And then creates Zero piracy if disconnected manually. - Also why I tend to disconnect 99% of my stations from trade as the way the trade routes work, can just make some random system a piracy stronghold because instead of going from A B C, the trade route decides to go the route of A E G V A C, creating mystery piracy and utterly wonky patrol routes.
Related note: But its insane that core worlds tend to create most piracy, but the borderland which has not seen a single fleet in past 200 years, with zero stations causes no piracy at all. Despite usually, such regions by even the most simple logic, should be hot spots of crime due to negligence and lack of centralized authority.

Crime is always either at Zero, or at 100, with no inbetween. And its extremely easy to just remove with one or two clicks or a single building, unless you are going for some extreme meme games, such as one planet challenge, where the single ecumenopolis / ring world is so full of population that the crime fighting just is a lost cause.

The fact Crime does not affect Piracy is also weird, as Pirates should not come from nowhere, but they should come from unrest, lack of stability, and crime.
Planet Sized Mall should not create piracy just because it is not connected to a station conga line, when the crime on the said mall is at zero.

The Fleet ledger and UI for fleets fighting piracy is bad. Just bad. and its annoying to no end to have a Mainfleet1, mainfleet2, AntiPiracyFleet1, Bubbles, MF3, APF3. I can't wait for the ability to re-arrange my fleets in the future.

 

[Time Emperor]

we need letters of marquee. we need to be able to build a kleptocracy.

 

[Kvesir]

Idea that builds off the Megacorp DLC: make pirates and crime cartels a type of country that has no planets. You would be able to interact with them in the Contacts menu. They would be created when crime/piracy are too high in a certain area, getting a holding there (for pirates, there could be holdings inside asteroids). These kind of cartels would have a point-based system that determines their power. Their holdings would increase crime/piracy and give the cartel more power, and having more power would unlock building more holdings (at a certain range from their current holdings, which should be pretty low as they are supposed to be localized issues unless they get really big). If they get enough power they could "take over" entire planets/habitats, represented by a negative modifier. After that, they would be able to rebel (starting a war with a spawned fleet proportionate to their power and the strength of the empire they're rebelling against) and become a new tag in the form of a megacorp with the Criminal Heritage civic.

Interacting with these Cartels through the contacts would be similar to interactions with certain enclaves, empires would be able to appease the Cartel and give them power in exchange for positive opinion - and having high enough opinion could allow for some useful interactions.

On the other hand, destroying their holdings should be possible and be an engaging process that isn't just playing whack-a-mole with your fleet like in the current pirate events. Criminal holdings would be separate from normal corporate holdings and they would be hidden from the empire they're in. An empire could know that it has a criminal holding in a certain system, but destroying it should first require finding it. This would be handled through the situations screen and be based off espionage. Having high Codebreaking would allow you to uncover criminal holdings quicker, and high Encryption would make the holdings of a Cartel (or a Criminal Herigate Megacorp) harder to find. This idea could be developed further to make it more engaging.

Imo all of this would not only make crime more dangerous and engaging in your empire, it could also really improve how we can deal with Criminal Heritage megacorps, which as of now are super annoying as their holdings can't be destroyed in any way except by war.

 

[Infiltrat0rN7]

I think pirates should be more tied to living standards and some civics. It makes no sense for society that's achieved utopian abundance to struggle with inner piracy for example, while it would be logical for poorer empires with social inequality to be hit by piracy harder.

 

[DrFranknfurter]

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)

I think it would be interesting if crime didn't just hit the poorest empires and worst players but also mattered to the richest and best players, but in different ways.
Preventing death-spirals for the poorest - smugglers sneaking supplies through a blockade to a devastated world, that sort of thing.

But also thematically the richest empires would be perfect places for criminals to make a lot of money, influence, power and connections.
Stealing a sector's quarterly payroll is more tempting when the sector stockpiles are filled to the brim.
Corrupting a politician on Coruscant will do more than a little bribery on Kashyyyk, and there will be far more customers for anything illicit.

Mechanically, for rich empires I was thinking of the old soft-cap we used to have for food (excess food was converted into bonus population growth, that changed to a 10 year planet decision costing food then into nutritional plentitude edict costing food... but I miss the old way).

So I suggested using criminal jobs as a way to control the conversion. As you approach a resource cap you can allow more and more criminal jobs to form that will consume excess resources in greater amounts, converting them into something you value more (depending on the type of criminal), with a downside that may or may not be worth paying.
You could be paying Bounty hunters, performing basic counter-espionage (slowing infiltration progress against you, with extra operation event options to collect assets and tell stories of their exploits)
You could be paying smugglers, countering devastation penalties (increased devastation recovery, slowing devastation gain rate)
You could be bribing politicians, inflating your diplomatic weight (with ways of gaining favours)

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.

You make some good points, a mechanic designed to help stop a death-spiral shouldn't be able to trigger a second shortage situation (naval/starbase capacity could also trigger an energy deficit situation from suddenly going over capacity and having increased upkeep costs). And care must be taken to avoid the incentive to intentionally run deficits every game, so the costs should be significant.

So indirect penalties that wouldn't immediately make a situation worse include:
pop growth, research speed, governing ethics attraction, empire sprawl, defensive armies, army strength, intel, infiltration, diplomatic weight, influence costs, build speeds, agenda progress, xp gain, terraforming speed, sensor range, repair rate, combat strength, favours, assets, encryption, codebreaking, election support costs etc.

Although any resource, including things like energy and food would work as long as there was a check to make sure the cost incurred would not make a deficit worse (and the check could be as simple as giving the player a choice of 3 options, and the AI could always pick a safe option from the above list that shouldn't be able to directly lead to another deficit situation).

TLDR:
I want bounty hunters, smugglers, drug lords, corrupt politicians, cultists, shady enforcers and so on.
I want to be happy to see some criminal jobs/features/holdings around, even on my best worlds and not always try to crush them on sight
1. Crime giving resources with a non-economic cost to help prevent deficit death-spirals for badly-run empires,
2. Criminal jobs spending resources for a non-economic benefit as an optional resource-sink for well run-empires,
The two together would give mechanical reasons to want to create some fun thematically appropriate criminal jobs at all stages of the game

 

[Hiksday]

I would remove trade route , pirates and crime in their current form.

-Trade routes : what's even the point of these ? Just make it that if it's connected to your capital you gain the trade value and that's it .

-Pirates : They are just a minor annoyance that add nothing to the game (except micromanagement and we don't need more of that one).It's just an energy tax that grow if you don't deal with the incredible gameplay of clicking a button to make your ship patrol between two starbase

-Crime : Crime is boring unless there's a crime syndicate in your game, then it's not just boring but really annoying .It's a tax (enforcer job) that punish you extra hard if you forgot to build a precinct house because you can't instantly fix your mistake, once you get the modifier your crime instantly skyrocket and now you have to build two precinct house that you have to prioritize for years to have 0% crime until it eventualy get rid of the modifier , then you have to remove the extra precinct house and balance your enforcer job. Crime syndicate make the whole process a lot worse by generating crime everywhere and forcing you to build precinct house in huge number , eating precious building slot and resources. Fun times.

As for potential replacement : I don't know.
While i have some idea i'm not convinced the AI will know how to deal with it , after all it's not even able to clean it's space of weak pirates station or avoid their planet being full of criminal.

 

[Miguelinileugim]

It would be nice if crime never reached 0% unless you got 100% happiness. Having it decrease by a percentage based on the ratio of crime suppression relative to crime ensuring that on most empires there will always be a little crime and a few criminals. This would help separate utopian societies at 100% happiness vs other regimes that no matter how much enforcement they got they will likely have at least single digit percent crime (possibly enough for a criminal or two on large planets) and two digits in most cases if they have say slaves and only a reasonable amount of enforcers (rather than an excessive amount that isn't really worth it).

Piracy could work in a similar way as to ensure that it is a factor so long as there's trade, with pirates only popping up if there's enough piracy in a given place of course. Additionally having the piracy rate depend on the crime rate of the nearest system could make it so large utopian empires have no piracy even if their trade routes are unprotected while empires with lots of crime also have lots of piracy. Kinda making the whole police state aesthetic apply to systems nearby not just planets themselves.

Also what's the point of a police state if crime is always 0%? The fun of it should be having like a 10:1 crime/piracy suppression relative to crime/piracy, however comically inefficient that might be, so you can have very low crime/piracy but there's still a little and by god you will get them straight to the space gallows.

 

[xqv]

Piracy - It's annoying. Pirates should spawn in some empty systems, build mercanery-like starbase/enclave and bother neighbouring empires, with marauder-like options for some interactions for "baddies". Buying slaves, raids on rivals, fancy sneaky tech or maybe just some stolen frome somebody else resources? Of course for the good guys there should be some alternatives like pacts of non-aggression or just burning criminal scum with large enough battlefleet.

There is no sense in seting up pirate base in heart of vast interstellar empire with greatest armadas galaxy ever seen, who just steamrolled over Fallen Empire and can jump right into new pirate home. Happens far too often in my playtroughs.

Crime - It's would be less annoying if not for Criminal Syndicates. They set up their operations and if they're far enough from your borders there is little to do with them. Yes, you can manage your crime using enforcer jobs. But they will be back very soon. Preferable solutions? Option to pay criminal empires to pack their operations from your planet and be criminal somewhere else. Another option for less-nice empires: just send in army or blow their infrastructure from orbit, purge, displace or enslave their criminal personel and call it a day.

 

[Sanvone]

Add Galactic Black Market. Allow undercutting Galactic Market and influencing it.

Allow some smuggling. Violating border control so the Pirates/Crime Empires have to keep some logistic going for other empire to suffer their presence instead of shadow affecting them across galaxy with other side having no means to reach them.

 

[Farwanderer]

I think piracy and crime are currently implemented as very similar systems, but should go in very different directions. Right now, they're both essentially numbers that you want to keep low and if you don't bad things happen. It's fine for piracy to stay that way (although I did put some suggestions for improving the handling of it on the form), because space infrastructure doesn't really have anything else like that. On planets, however, we already have housing, amenities, and stability saturating that niche. Crime needs to become something different, something that has actual trade-offs and decisions to make. There should be things you can do that give a bonus in exchange for more crime, and there should be reasons to occasionally have a high crime planet.

 

[Ikael]

The current state of affairs:

Piracy: Dear lord, it sucks so, so very bad. The fact that it is also tied with the opaque and counter-intuitive trade collection system makes it even worse. Its current incarnation has no redeeming values whatsoever. Back to the drawing board, please.

Crime: It is a small flavorful resource tax with the form of enforcer jobs. which tax your most precious resource (pops). Its best implementation lies in the oppressive autocracy Civic, where crime models a starkly different economy & society VS those of regular empires. Criminal megacorps, however, need an in-depth rework. The combination of being simultaneously too weak and too odious at the same time is lethal.

Proposed solutions:

Piracy: There are several options to make it work. a) Rework the trading system and tie it to it b) tie piracy to crime and give pirate fleets a much bigger punch (thus turning piracy into some kind of "crime final boss form") or c) Generate "pirate enclaves" in lawless (empty) regions of the map, allowing empires to hire them to attack their enemies without revealing their true backers (letters of marquee! proxy wars!)

Crime: The solution would be quite straightforward. Just make unhappiness far harder to maximize while increasing crime generation by unhappy pops, thus amplifying both crime quantity and the differences between egalitarian VS authoritarian societies (if that makes authoritarians too weak, a stability bonus might be in order. It would be nice seeing high stability / high crime societies)

Criminal megacorps: There should be some benefits and upsides to their holdings, so you don't get the urge to kill them on sight. Perhaps they could offer conditional benefits: profitable at first, detrimental later. Or perhaps, a type of holding that only offers you benefits... as long as you are its vassal. It would be a quite unique, fitting form of blackmail, an "offer you cannot refuse".

 

[Zaacplot300]

Crime and piracy do nothing for me conceptually and are boring mechanically. If both were removed from the game in the next update I wouldn't bat an eye, they just don't matter to me beyond the annoyance they give when I have to prevent them from ever being a problem.

Also the AI can't really handle either one so its just another thing making the AI a bunch of non-competitive potatoes, but that probably more speaks to the AI needing its Nerve Stapled trait removed than anything else

 

[Ramidel]

I repeat my refrain: It's no fun to play space pirates right now, because I still can't raid a power I've got a branch office in, and that means I have to choose between raiding and running the underworld.

Criminal Heritage needs to allow you to go to war with people you have BOs in, at the risk of expropriation.

 

[Acheron]

Idea that builds off the Megacorp DLC: make pirates and crime cartels a type of country that has no planets. You would be able to interact with them in the Contacts menu.

Ohhh, that sounds like an very good concept.

 

[Somebody248]

Piracy and crime are bad because they don't have enough depth, don't really tell any interesting stories, there's no reason to want to keep them around, etc.

They're good because you can easily eliminate what small effects they do have (because they're bad), but that would become a negative if piracy and/or crime were ever improved.

 

[Psykhes]

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).

+1 for pirates being some sore of anti-caravaneers.
Also opens up the possibility of a new origin which has specialized interactions with them.


In general it would be nice if you could actually benefit from crime. I.e. making deals with crime lords, which in turn gets you some resources. Maybe for the cost of happiness and/or stability?
It also would be nice if crime and piracy would interact. I.e. an empire with high crime would produce more pirates. Pirates should need crime heavy worlds to exist. After all, they need to sell their stolen resources somewhere?
If you had deals with crime lords said pirates would not target your own systems, but only systems of other nearby empires, effectively leeching resources from them to you.


And also +1 that the current implementation for pirates is crap.
However a new implementation should not be too gimmicky. Cosmic storms is an example how it should be NOT done. The old storms were similar to pirates in the sense that they were not really impactful and only mildly annoying. The new storms are... Lets just say they are the first feature since the release of Stellaris which i disabled.

 

[The Wolf with the Dragon]

Pirates
I've wanted Barbaric Despoilers to work for so long, but it has simply not been viable.

The bonus to capture relics is nice, but it is simply down to the Despoliation casus belli being too weak. There is simply not enough rewards offered to raid a neighbour when you can just take their systems or vassalize them. You have to peace them out to get anything from them, and it's almost as big of a war as you would have if you were trying to take their systems.

The rewards for succeeding the Despoliation casus belli needs to be buffed in my opinion. Alternatively, the ability to go raid like in Crusader Kings III, without a declaration of war, would be awesome!

Crime
My absolute favorite experience with crime was playing the Under One Rule origin, where I chose Oppressive Autocracy (+1 Crime Per Pop) as my civic and gave my leader the Brutal councillor trait (+20 Crime on all planets). This turned crime from a non-issue into a real "trying to keep this empire together á la 40k Imperium"-style problem!

Crime is usually not an issue, ever. The only times it becomes an issue is (1) you have been at war micromanaging your fleets so much that you've neglected your planets' unemployment and now there is crime on them or (2) a criminal syndicate established themselves on your planet. If the latter happens, it is now a problem. Until you sacrifice 1 building slot to build a Precint House on it. Then it is back to not being a problem ever again.

I really don't have much to say about crime other than that it is not a big deal mostly. It can turn into a problem, sure. But that problem doesn't feel like you've earned it. It doesn't feel fair. It just feels like a penalty for not keeping enough attention when there is already a billion things dragging at your attention in this game. Stellaris is a very intense game, since you're constantly doing stuff.

Word of caution:

If you decide to make crime into a deeper system (crime lords can arm resistances to turn planets independent, criminal syndicates get to sabotage things or more dire consequences for having crime), one thing that is absolutely NON-NEGOTIABLE is a menu to mass-apply and control Planetary Decisions!!

It is absolutely ridiculous to have 30, 40 or even 50 planets and having to Distribute Luxury Goods on each and every one them individually, and it only lasts 10 years! That is clicking Tab, N, scrolling and clicking that decision 50 times every 10 years! Distribute Luxury Goods, as well as Anti-Crime Campaigns, are one of the main ways to temporarily deal with crime and I will be damned if we get worse penalties for having crime before we get streamlined ways of dealing with it!

 

[LordMM]

Piracy needs to be an individual mini-faction with its own features. Piracy needs to revolve around fleets, raiding, pillaging, stealing, and doing the things Pirates normally do. This means that there cannot be an improvement to Pirates until the fleet, warfare, and ground warfare system is completely overhauled.

- Pirates will need their own fleets, fleets will need to operate differently than normal fleets, as they should be focused on raids and stealing resources or anything else from empires.
- Pirates will need the ability to realistically build ships on their own, using a believable mechanic just like normal empires do. Which means no magical spawning.
- Pirates will need their own powerful Pirates bases, Pirates bases that can be built elsewhere as well, giving them the ability to expand.
- Pirate bases can be leveled up based on how much they raid/loot. So that Pirates can be impactful during both early to mid or late mid game.
- Pirates will need the ability to ally with other Empires, so that they can expand themselves within their territory. To be used like Privateers. Otherwise, once most of the planets are colonized, Pirates will cease to be a problem.

Without a believable and realistic fleet mechanic, there is no point of adding Pirates. Please do not make them into events or just window screens with sliders and buttons. Pirate fleets need to be present visually on the map making believable changes to the galaxy using their Pirate fleets.