Not quite. If the AI has enough resources and the pirate base is the only route through to the enemy, they will attack it - otherwise, they'll leave it alone (which is a pretty good idea anyway). The AI doesn't view the pirates as a severe threat, and neither should any human player - best to put your resources towards fighting off the enemy, rather than the pirates.

Only a certain particular pirate ship focuses on killing trade ships - the other pirate ships have different attack priorities, I think. Still, focusing on trade ships when there are other ships shooting at you is a pretty stupid idea...

No pilagers in early raids was set due to many complaints that pirates are to strong especially early on. Majority of people wanted pirates that disrupt only.

Well in my experimental mod, when my Pirates colonise new Planets, the AI treat those Planets like a Pirate base ... but instead of attacking these new bases, they simply ignore them. I would agree that the AI maybe leaving one base alone is ok, but when the Pirates are spreading and creating new bases in my mod, it looks a little odd as they are defenceless Planets ripe for the taking. Also why shouldn't the AI attack any and all hostile forces near its territory? Regardless of whether they are Pirates or not? It should maybe Prioritise Human and other Normal AI Players over Pirates, but it shouldn't ignore them completely.

As far as I have seen, all Pirate ships tend to go after Trade Ships and Trade Ships only ...

As for no pillagers in early raids .... why were they considered OP I always found Pirates to be insanely easy to avoid and easy to defend against. I hadn't realised it was intentional, I will just mod my version of Sins to have Pillagers put back in

Thanks for the replies!

Well you can't expect the Devs to change things just to make your mod work better. Pirate bases are almost never worth attacking, and by default the pirates will never acquire new planets. The easier way to set up your mod would be to leave the original pirates intact and just make a mod where the player controls a separate, pirate faction, that way the AI doesn't have any trouble handling it.

Well there is an easy way for your mod fix that problem. Just give the pirates an ability that prevents trade ships from moving (like the Sova's Embargo). That way they will be quickly destroyed and the pirates won't be running all over the gravity well hunting for them.

This was a bigger deal when the AI would almost always team up to bid on the human player. Early on the pillagers can do a lot of damage because usually the player's fleet would still be busy expanding and thus wasn't available to destroy them quickly. Now that AI's base their bounties on diplomatic status the player isn't always swarmed with pirates so its debatable if that is still necessary, but I'd rather they'd only be in late raids only. Its one things to lose all your structures to the pirates early game, another to have to turn your colony cap around to recolonize a world you already cleared thanks to the pirates.

That and that pillagers were removed when the pirates were uber-powerful.

I uderstand what your saying GoaFan 77, but why do AI Players completely ignore Pirates and not treat them like an opposing Player? I.E. attack there base when there are no other immediate threats other than Pirates nearby? In Maps with a lot of Pirate bases this is especially a problem (not talking about my mod) you can have a lot of Pirate Bases in normal maps especially with the map creator, so for AI Players to just ignore them??

I have never tried this but maybe create a map where every planet is a Pirate Base, apart from your Home World and any other AI PLayers Home World, I wonder what would happen? Would AI Players be forced to start clearing out Pirate base after pirate base or will they just ignore each one and send there fleets to attack your home world instead?

 Does anyone know the lines of code which need to be edited to enable AI PLayers to attack Pirates?

That Ability would definately help concerning Trade Ships, but really I think the coding needs to be fixed and they need to prioritise Tatical Structures as the top priority, followed by Fleet, then things like trade ships etc.

Because the pirates are still a very low threat compared to the other players who actually expand and build massive dangerous offensive fleets to attack your planets with.

Why attack the pirate base when you can attack the more dangerous players?

Yes, they would start attacking the pirate bases, but it would take a very long time, since they'd have to build up their fleet first. Back when I was a complete newbie I thought the AI always ignored pirates, and when I saw there was a pirate base at a choke point between me and the AI, I thought I was safe to turtle as long as I felt like it... but then, about 40 minutes into the game, the (viscous) AI suddenly appeared at my front door with a massive fleet, having completely destroyed the pirates.

The AI will only attack pirates when that's the only way through to the enemy, but even then, attacking the pirates isn't necessarily a good idea, strategically.

There's no need to increase the combat priority of pirates among the AI. Ignoring the pirates is often the best option.

Back in diplomacy 1.00 when pirates were very strong and it was often better to let them destroy planet and then retreat after a while when there would be 1000 ships in pirate base gravity well my AI allies were often giving me please help us destroy ....... (pirate base) orders. 

at this time...   Hope for future updates!

The thing I like about Stardock is even after a game is OLD by most people's standards and they even have the next release coming... they STILL support and add to the old game.  There are SO few companies that do that anymore in the gaming world. Stardock, Egosoft, Kerberos Productions...  you can actually count them one handed ON your hand.

I don't think you do. Standard Sins maps do not have a lot of pirate bases and thus there was never a reason for the programmers to code AI for it. Thus the programmers didn't want the AI to consider the pirates like another player. Now the AI will clear out pirate bases if its the only way to your homeworld, but if it has another path, no matter how long, they'll take it.

There is no such line. You cannot program the AI to do things it doesn't do already. You can change its priorities a bit, but no more. That's why I'm telling you to leave the original pirates alone with your mod. You can have all of their ships, buildings etc., and you won't have any AI problems. If you really don't any other pirates around you can get rid of them entirely.

See there are two camps on this issue. One has always wanted the pirates to be commerce raids like their real life counterparts, in which the trade ship focus actually makes sense. The other wants them to basically be bounty hunters, attacking worlds for money and getting paid to just blow stuff up. Currently we sort of have a hybrid of the two, and while not ideal there are many more things I'd rather the Devs fix before pirates. Also the ability is something you can do right now, while the Devs have already confirmed there are no trade ship changes in the patch tomorrow. Thus you might be waiting a while for a "code fix" that might never come.

Hey Yarlen, is it for today ?

In fact, yes.

https://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/410219

@Goafan - The trouble is you can have a lot of Pirate bases in Standard Sins maps

I've played a few of the preset maps and have never seen more than 1 pirate base... and the "random" maps never seem to have more than one either...

There are some maps that have 3 bases on the same star. There are plenty of multi-star that have 1 per star.