Khaak and the Pirates

[ZaphodBeeblebrox]

<RantModeEnabled>
So the Khaak now have a role in the game. A totally annoying one. My usual start in an X game (since X2) has been to build Solar power plants, then become a mining magnate.
In the original X4 and after the Split Vendetta a viable start / play style. I like to start with S and M mining ships. However this is no longer possible. My usual early game strategy has
been completely removed by the Khaak. Made into something utterly miserable by the changes in mining that accompanied the COH release.

So 10 out of 10 for giving the Khaark a role. Minus several million for ruining the early game for me.

I like that pirate ships have turrets and shields from different factions, adds a little colour to the game, a few more custom paint jobs might help. However there is not a single shipyard in the game that
can build these ships. The pirate AI also seems to be getting some attention. While the AI of my captains remains as dumb as dog doo.

I can see the faction ships will attack a pirate who has been uncovered, however they will stop the engagement if the pirate returns to undercover mode. What? "Err captain the pirate ship is right in front of us, we where firing at him, why have we stopped the attack?", "Well number 1 the pirate is actually just a member of the ANT faction." "Err sir that's just a forged electronic signature..."

I have also noticed that my captains, when accosted by a pirate, will come to a dead halt in space. I expect that this gives the pirates a fighting chance at actually catching up to my ships and destroying them.
Who thought this up? Of course any captain of a ship when faced with a potential pirate attack is going to stop. Err no I don't think so, best to keep the travel drive on a get away as fast as possible.

As my empire has grown so has the frequency of attacks. I have a lot more collateral to damage. I now spend nearly all my time in the game chasing down pirates. This is not the reason I play the game.

I have also noticed that if I am trying to cap a pirate ship then the level of pirate activity ramps up. As a mechanic it gets old very quickly. I once had 12 seperate pirate incidents while capping a single ship.

Finally the pirate behaviours mean that my patrols and ships protecting areas are virtually useless. Even when I spot a pirate early and order my patrols to attack, pirates might immediately flee, or survive for hours,
while being attacked by multiple ships, due to the incompetence of my ship captains. Does anybody in the AI development actually use THINK and STRATEGY.

So again 10 out of 10 for making the pirates more interesting. Minus several million for not giving me the means to properly combat this threat.
</RantModeEnabled>

I don't like giving anything to pirates. That why the default is escape. Maybe there is a better way. I am currently -30 with the FAF and did this deliberately to get them to attack my blockades. Which seemed to work for a while.
Now though Rattlesnakes just seem to turn up anywhere. I have completed the Split plot. But there seems to be a timer and Rattlesnakes arrive and attack.

[Diroc]

Have you tried Police Sector in combination with Declare War with Scale Plate? I'm not sure if scans associated with Police Sector removes their fake ID's If it does, suddenly, your capitals and stations would target them. If your patrols were groups of capital ships, you may have an effective response to the pirates.
Just a thought.

Typing Plunderer and Marauder into search and looking for large ships that result from the search makes the pirates stand out like a sore thumb on the map.

[Imperial Good]

However this is no longer possible. My usual early game strategy has
been completely removed by the Khaak. Made into something utterly miserable by the changes in mining that accompanied the COH release.

You can mine gasses without much concern for the KHK. As for solids, only ice is KHK free. Any KHK ships these miners encounter are either completely random, or targeting another miner nearby.

Only Silicon mines significantly slower, requiring nearby resource probes and high skill crew to mine at a high speed. Gases can have issues with local area depletion, but still mines pretty fast.

I like that pirate ships have turrets and shields from different factions, adds a little colour to the game, a few more custom paint jobs might help. However there is not a single shipyard in the game that
can build these ships. The pirate AI also seems to be getting some attention. While the AI of my captains remains as dumb as dog doo.

Pirate ships are currently spawned in at gates. Outside KHK and some mission ships, they are the only ships to be magically spawned in.

If the rumours of a pirate themed DLC are true, then I would expect this to be an area that is addressed with it.

I have also noticed that my captains, when accosted by a pirate, will come to a dead halt in space. I expect that this gives the pirates a fighting chance at actually catching up to my ships and destroying them.
Who thought this up? Of course any captain of a ship when faced with a potential pirate attack is going to stop. Err no I don't think so, best to keep the travel drive on a get away as fast as possible.

Been reported for a long time. One of the reasons giving the pirates what they want is often easiest.

I don't like giving anything to pirates. That why the default is escape. Maybe there is a better way. I am currently -30 with the FAF and did this deliberately to get them to attack my blockades. Which seemed to work for a while.
Now though Rattlesnakes just seem to turn up anywhere. I have completed the Split plot. But there seems to be a timer and Rattlesnakes arrive and attack.

Unlike SCA, FAF has to have their replacement ships built. Usually FRF builds the ships for them. Maybe CUB/CAB can also. The player can also make them ships, but not when so hostile. ZYA cannot make them those ships.

Have you tried Police Sector in combination with Declare War with Scale Plate? I'm not sure if scans associated with Police Sector removes their fake ID's If it does, suddenly, your capitals and stations would target them. If your patrols were groups of capital ships, you may have an effective response to the pirates.
Just a thought.

You can only police sectors you own. So it does not help when operating in NPC owned sectors.

Typing Plunderer and Marauder into search and looking for large ships that result from the search makes the pirates stand out like a sore thumb on the map.

It will also flag up FRF and TEM marauders and plunderers, which as long as you are at sufficiently high reputation they will ignore pirating your stuff like all pirates.

This is why the most effective way to deal with SCA is to befriend them. Not only will they stop pirating you, they will also focus on pirating the NPCs instead generating you more business.

[Good Wizard]

<RantModeEnabled>
So the Khaak now have a role in the game. A totally annoying one. My usual start in an X game (since X2) has been to build Solar power plants, then become a mining magnate.
In the original X4 and after the Split Vendetta a viable start / play style. I like to start with S and M mining ships. However this is no longer possible. My usual early game strategy has
been completely removed by the Khaak. Made into something utterly miserable by the changes in mining that accompanied the COH release.

So 10 out of 10 for giving the Khaark a role. Minus several million for ruining the early game for me.

I am new to the X series, playing a new game from the 'Young Gun' start, 4.0 with all DLCs. I am now around 110 hours into this game.

I saw a lot of Khaaks, but interestingly in the sector where the PHQ is, there are no Khaak attacks on the miners, probably because the mining areas are centered and have a lot of stations inside. But as soon as I sit in my HQ, working on the map and managing things, Xenon and Khaak are spawned around the PHQ, and only there. I find this very annoying, you cannot sit 10 minutes on tour own station in peace - but as soon as I leave, all attacks stop. A bit too obvious, isn't it?

I built a new station in The Reach, this is heavy patrolled by ARG and I never had any problems. But you are right, word is that S and M mining ships are a problem later on. I did it this way: I started with an S miner, then upgrade to two M miners. Both of them mined Silicon in the PHQ sector. Never had a problem with this, and both M miners earn around 130k every 8-10 minutes each. This is a good start - I am sure with more knowledge of the game one can do much better, but I am happy with this. I now have around 40 mio Cr in cash, 3 L miners, several M traders, and so on. I would recommend in the beginning, with S miners and then M miners using the PHQ sector, which has a lot of Silicon, which, up until now is in demand enough.

Avoid Nividium like the plague - this is a fake and a trap. It may have been the thing before 4.0, but not now. The first L miner full brings in around 800k to 1 mio Cr, the second one about half and then it goes down the drain. And (as far as I have found until now) only Napileos Fortune is possible, other places are much too slow. I am forced now to do it and bought a L miner extra for this because of the teleportation research, which becomes more and more expensive, since I had to build a new storage too. But as soon this forced need of Nividuim ends (the last stage of teleportation also needs Nividium), the L miner will do something better, like mining Ore in the Reach or elsewhere.

I like that pirate ships have turrets and shields from different factions, adds a little colour to the game, a few more custom paint jobs might help. However there is not a single shipyard in the game that
can build these ships. The pirate AI also seems to be getting some attention. While the AI of my captains remains as dumb as dog doo.

I can see the faction ships will attack a pirate who has been uncovered, however they will stop the engagement if the pirate returns to undercover mode. What? "Err captain the pirate ship is right in front of us, we where firing at him, why have we stopped the attack?", "Well number 1 the pirate is actually just a member of the ANT faction." "Err sir that's just a forged electronic signature..."

I have also noticed that my captains, when accosted by a pirate, will come to a dead halt in space. I expect that this gives the pirates a fighting chance at actually catching up to my ships and destroying them.
Who thought this up? Of course any captain of a ship when faced with a potential pirate attack is going to stop. Err no I don't think so, best to keep the travel drive on a get away as fast as possible.

SCP pirates shot down a S trader assigned to the HQ (the pilots are mostly newer pilots with 2 stars). And since the behavior of the MIN I cannot kill these guys. But I can in The Reach, because I have a police license with the ARG. So I moved there, and stopped developing the PHQ. I have no interest in doing some MIN grind for better standing with them. With Telani I have 20. The entire pirate idea is just annoying. There are good elements, but the problem in all Telani sectors is the missing police license. And the artificially impossibility to defend against such attacks.

The games setting drove me out from Telani space, I will not help them or build stations until they sort out how their standing with SCP is. MIN is enemy to SCP, but this does not help, if a ship tries to fight back, I hear complaints. So it is up to the MIN to defend themselves. And there are even TEL ships harassed by pirates.

My experience with the 'Escape' behavior of my traders is good, all in all. I watched one of my best pilots in Paranid M trader escaping as soon as she was accosted, she just landed on the next station. Without stopping. One idea: Did you enable the 'Notify me' option? The option is misleading, it always leads to a question what to do, and if you are not very fast, the trader AI will wait for a bit for your answer, and then use what you selected as default. Remove the notify setting! The trader will not try to reach you, and will react immediately according to her orders. A good pilot (3+ stars) will help, it seems to shorten the reaction time. When I first tried to use this, I expected to receive a message like 'We were threatened by a pirate and try to evade....', not a question menu. So disable the message and look, what happens. A good pilot in civilized areas practically always evades successfully. And if somebody tries this while I am near, the pirate (which is red by this point) dies.

As my empire has grown so has the frequency of attacks. I have a lot more collateral to damage. I now spend nearly all my time in the game chasing down pirates. This is not the reason I play the game.

I have also noticed that if I am trying to cap a pirate ship then the level of pirate activity ramps up. As a mechanic it gets old very quickly. I once had 12 seperate pirate incidents while capping a single ship.

Finally the pirate behaviours mean that my patrols and ships protecting areas are virtually useless. Even when I spot a pirate early and order my patrols to attack, pirates might immediately flee, or survive for hours,
while being attacked by multiple ships, due to the incompetence of my ship captains. Does anybody in the AI development actually use THINK and STRATEGY.

So again 10 out of 10 for making the pirates more interesting. Minus several million for not giving me the means to properly combat this threat.
</RantModeEnabled>

I don't like giving anything to pirates. That why the default is escape. Maybe there is a better way. I am currently -30 with the FAF and did this deliberately to get them to attack my blockades. Which seemed to work for a while.
Now though Rattlesnakes just seem to turn up anywhere. I have completed the Split plot. But there seems to be a timer and Rattlesnakes arrive and attack.

You are obviously a a later stage than I, but my method for now is to use fast and well equipped M traders, which are ordered to escape without notifying me. You still see it in the list of your property with a red icon, but the NPC reacts immediately in my experience. This seems to sort of frustrate them.

The entire pirate thing is a bit overblown at the moment, there are good ideas in the concept, but also flaws - I hope with 4.1 and a possible pirate content this becomes better.

[EGO_Aut]

After getting the HQ, Pirates/Khaak can be a little bit annoying for a few hours. But later they are gone, or build some little defens alternative.

I noticed only a lot of Khaak in sectors where they have a destroyable base.......

[Slashman]

I plan to start a new game when 4.10 drops officially. But I can tell you right now that in my current game I have a mining ship operating in the sector where the SCA hang out (the Teladi sector) and it has never seen harassment from Khaak. I just set it to to mine and left it.

[Baddieus]

I stared fresh with 4.0 release, and went with the Unworthy Entrepreneur start and the idea of playing a Pro-Teladi game. Trading with others is fine for profits, but all stations & ships will be Teladi because I never really used them otherwise.

I have stations in Memory of Profit, and Eighteen Billion to get going and I have to agree that regular miners don't cut it in those sectors, only XL - Crane miners with 'use judgement' for attack response can get anything done. I have watched a Crane continue mining from 1/2 to full cargo with 8+ Khaak attacking that just can't get through it's shields, so I only mine ore & silicon with the XL- Crane ships. Also of note, they only seem to want to mine in these sectors, despite the probes I have in all 3 Grand Exchange's reporting more ore & silicon available than those in 18B & M-O-Profit. Now the interesting part, I went on the Khaak offensive in 18B and destroyed their outpost, but that only brought calm for about 2 hours, then they were back. Over the course of a full day's playtime I destroyed 5 outlying Khaak stations in 18B only to have 6th show up near where the 1st one was. So the miners prefer 18B even with the lower ore resource and the Khaak are not removable permanently through outpost destruction. My response has been to put a pair of Peregrine's (with Pulses in all turrets) in each sector, looking in from time to time so that I can issue Attack targets in Range & Collect Drops wherever the Khaak are. This has resulted in hundreds of ship upgrade parts stored in my PHQ and 4 ships w/3 star combat pilots & full morale & well skilled engineers. But it took many, many, many hours to figure this out and make a positive out of the negative.

On the pirate front, I now use Osprey's for sector traders and they are not harassed one bit. For large trading items I use XL - Heron's who are rarely harassed and usually get away without a scratch when they are. For small trading items (Nostrop Oil & Med Supplies) I use Guillemot Sentinels as they have a large enough cargo to fill most stations in 2 trips. But even with a Phoenix on station defense, pirates can still sneak up and scatter my station cargo into space, which is just something I've learned to live with for the time being until I can make friends with the SCA.

More simply said ... the standard sized miners are only good for Ice & Gases, and the standard freighters have no place in my operations at this time.

=Baddieus=

[ZaphodBeeblebrox]

OK about the Khaak, I was at the very start of my play-through. Where a resource probe is still an expensive item, and I don't have access to skilled pilots.
When your back at this level, without access to EMP and having to buy blueprints, any loss of a ship is a big thing.

So I start a simple ore refinery. I mean simple. I have a single S class ship to mine
the ore and get the station started.

I must have been unlucky, the mining ship got destroyed while I was off exploring.

I saved and bought an M class ship. Same thing happens. So on it went. I would make if enough money to get a new M ship, the old one was destroyed...
I was stuck in this loop for a while.

[Roeleveld]

From what I understand, if you destroy the big hives in near-sectors, it should take longer for them to come back.

I haven't done this yet as I don't have a recent game far enough to suffer from Khaak. In 4.0 I had no issues in the Terran/Pioneer sectors with the Khaak. But due to the issues with mining, I haven't played much recently.

[Kritikal]

Have you tried Police Sector in combination with Declare War with Scale Plate? I'm not sure if scans associated with Police Sector removes their fake ID's If it does, suddenly, your capitals and stations would target them. If your patrols were groups of capital ships, you may have an effective response to the pirates.
Just a thought.

Typing Plunderer and Marauder into search and looking for large ships that result from the search makes the pirates stand out like a sore thumb on the map.

Don't forget "Riot Squad" for the S ships.

[grapedog]

Have you tried Police Sector in combination with Declare War with Scale Plate? I'm not sure if scans associated with Police Sector removes their fake ID's If it does, suddenly, your capitals and stations would target them. If your patrols were groups of capital ships, you may have an effective response to the pirates.
Just a thought.

Typing Plunderer and Marauder into search and looking for large ships that result from the search makes the pirates stand out like a sore thumb on the map.

Don't forget "Riot Squad" for the S ships.

From everything i have seen, and this is mostly anecdotal, riot squads seem to only appear once you leave the normal map borders. I cant really recall seeing riot squad on the normal map and flying around doing business daily. Might be slim pickings for a map search.

For the kha'ak, what about moving resource probes? Or activating and deactivating them as needed? Say you have a station in unholy retribution, and have decent silicon yeilds in PM4 and PM2... kha'ak are attacking your ships in PM2... deactivate that resouece probe, and activate the one in PM4... maybe the miners will move.

Kha'ak outposts can also be found and destroyed by NPC fleets too... but it is definitely better to go and hunt for them. 9 of the last 10 outposts ive desteoyed have been located in the sector where the attacks are happening.

In new games, i get 1 M combat ship, and set it to protect position inside the field. I jump to it as needed to attack kha'ak myself, or ill set my M ship to attack, and ill jump to my miner and fly close around asteroids to see if i can get the travel drive launched and fly the ship out.

I just wish i knew half the time... most ships i lose i find out about after the fact through my logbook...

[Jeremy]

Avoid Nividium like the plague - this is a fake and a trap. It may have been the thing before 4.0, but not now. The first L miner full brings in around 800k to 1 mio Cr, the second one about half and then it goes down the drain. And (as far as I have found until now) only Napileos Fortune is possible, other places are much too slow. I am forced now to do it and bought a L miner extra for this because of the teleportation research, which becomes more and more expensive, since I had to build a new storage too. But as soon this forced need of Nividuim ends (the last stage of teleportation also needs Nividium), the L miner will do something better, like mining Ore in the Reach or elsewhere.

I think you misunderstand the purpose of Nividium. You shouldn't be mining it with L miners, by the time you can afford those you should be mining for your factories. Nividium is the startup cash option and it still works as good as it always did.

It works like this: make 1 million quick from missions or caviar/crystals, buy 2 Drills (full mining lasers, no weapons, cheap engines and thrusters, price around 450-500K a piece) and put them loose in Second Contact II with sector automine orders for only Nividium. This is a guaranteed 3 million per hour, consistently, and with zero harassment from pirates or Khaak. You can sell the stuff to both the nearby ARG and TEL trading stations. This still works as good as it always did. If you want to build a trading empire, this is by far the best investment you can do with your first 1 million as far as I've been able to find. Just a single cargo hold full of the stuff will pay back the cost of the Drill, the rest is pure profit.

Put a 3rd Drill in The Void for an extra 1.5M/hr. The one I put there at the start is still going about 200 hours into the game, not because I need it, but because I just forgot about it. And it's still making 1.5M/hr. Note that this doesn't scale up much further because the NPCs will only buy a limited amount of the stuff, so using 30 drills doesn't get you 45M/hr, but to get 4.5M/hr for a 1.5M investment, that's pretty golden when you're at the start of the game.

Of course this only works if you stay friendly with ANT/ARG/TEL/MIN, but at this point in the game it's probably not wise to start picking fights with those factions anyway. Not only does this get me a steady income to start building my HQ, it also guarantees I am past 10 rank with both TEL and ARG by the time I need to start buying blueprints.

Once you have your first factory up and running, you can forget about Nividium and focus on production/ship building, but for a startup 'my first million' investment, there really isn't a much better option as far as I can tell. There is no ramp-up time, it's just boom, cash incoming from the moment you set loose those drills.

[Good Wizard]

<...>

I think you misunderstand the purpose of Nividium. You shouldn't be mining it with L miners, by the time you can afford those you should be mining for your factories. Nividium is the startup cash option and it still works as good as it always did.

It works like this: make 1 million quick from missions or caviar/crystals, buy 2 Drills (full mining lasers, no weapons, cheap engines and thrusters, price around 450-500K a piece) and put them loose in Second Contact II with sector automine orders for only Nividium. This is a guaranteed 3 million per hour, consistently, and with zero harassment from pirates or Khaak. You can sell the stuff to both the nearby ARG and TEL trading stations. This still works as good as it always did. If you want to build a trading empire, this is by far the best investment you can do with your first 1 million as far as I've been able to find. Just a single cargo hold full of the stuff will pay back the cost of the Drill, the rest is pure profit.

Put a 3rd Drill in The Void for an extra 1.5M/hr. The one I put there at the start is still going about 200 hours into the game, not because I need it, but because I just forgot about it. And it's still making 1.5M/hr. Note that this doesn't scale up much further because the NPCs will only buy a limited amount of the stuff, so using 30 drills doesn't get you 45M/hr, but to get 4.5M/hr for a 1.5M investment, that's pretty golden when you're at the start of the game.

Of course this only works if you stay friendly with ANT/ARG/TEL/MIN, but at this point in the game it's probably not wise to start picking fights with those factions anyway. Not only does this get me a steady income to start building my HQ, it also guarantees I am past 10 rank with both TEL and ARG by the time I need to start buying blueprints.

Once you have your first factory up and running, you can forget about Nividium and focus on production/ship building, but for a startup 'my first million' investment, there really isn't a much better option as far as I can tell. There is no ramp-up time, it's just boom, cash incoming from the moment you set loose those drills.

I did not misunderstand, I think. There are so many tutorials around, which praise Nividium mining as the saviour - I just wanted to gainsay this.

I bought a L-miner (Magnetar) and sent it to Napileos to mine Nividum. It became full after a time. Then I manually ordered it to fly to PHQ and give me the 2000 Nividium (plus 15 for the previous step, if I remember correctly) I needed for teleport research, and sold the rest. This brought a good profit. I used a L-miner because I did not want to guard the miner all the time, and there often are Khaak in Napileos. After this, I let it do this a second time, it became full again, but slower, and the profit of selling it also went down.

Then I did, what I had planned: I moved my L-miner elsewhere and it continued to mine other stuff (Silicon, I think), and this was it. And this I meant with my comment: Just use it for your own needs, and afterwards forget Napileos, Nividium and all this. Napileos is full with SCP station spam, I ignore it, except the abandoned ship there is nothing of interest there - at least AFAIK.

[SamuraiProgrammer]

Concerning Nividium...

In 3.x, I used to have 6 autominers harvesting nividium. They were M class (not L). They provided steady income.

In 4.0, I am using 2 M class autominers harvesting nividium. I am setting it up differently, though. They are in Nopelios' Fortune II. That sector appears to me to be the sweet spot between adequate supply and safety (JMO). I set them on automine but I have to manually tell them to sell their goods when they get full because there is not a nividium buying station within range. I started with one and added a second after peppering NPII with resource probes. I am well into my second day of 'in game time' and they are still producing a steady income. I have 13 production stations and still appreciate the bump in income they provide. So far that has been a minimum of 450,000 per load. I still occasionally am able to sell a load at over 500,000 (probably when I am slow to notice they are full).

IMO, the key to 'working' nividium is not going overboard with it. It is intended as a 'bootstrap' for standing up your economy a little quicker. Game balance adjustments have made them (and crystals) less of a panacea and more like 'just another game choice'.

[Jeremy]

I'm not sure why you guys use NF for Nividium mining, it's not exactly a safe space for M miners without escort, nor is it particularly rich in Nividium (although it has more than SC II and The Void, due to the size of the sector the 'density' is probably a lot worse). The bottleneck for mining Nividium is not how much of the stuff you can mine, but how much of the stuff the NPC trading stations are willing to buy. Safe (relatively speaking) sectors like Second Contact II and The Void have more than enough of it to cap that amount. IMO it's much better to station your miners in safer sectors that are closer to the trading stations that buy it. This saves you the headache of having to babysit your M ships and cuts on travel time.

[Withidread]

Khaak definitely need some attention. I'm spending so much time sending squadrons to chase them down I don't have time for anything else. It gets rather tedious.

[adeine]

In my experience pirates are pretty much a non issue. If you set ships to escape M and S ships will easily travel mode away from any threats (as the pirates lose time scanning and turning hostile) and L ships cannot feasibly be damaged by your typical pirate ambush.

FAF is a bigger issue because unlike SCA their reputation is unlocked, so once you get them into the hostile zone they will actively seek out your property (not just ships with juicy cargo) and attack straight up. My advice is to ignore them as much as possible to keep reputation from sliding. As long as they're neutral-ish you very rarely lose a thing to a Rattlesnake and that is about it.

As for Kha'ak, as others have said they're drawn by mineral mining activity. By themselves they're not a huge issue, as long as you have a small patrol either assigned directly to miners or sectors where they're present to mop up. M ships with decent shields typically live long enough OOS for the escort to clean up (a single well equipped M combat ship can easily take out a cluster). What makes them a credible threat to your miners is that unlike pirates, you don't get any notification that your assets are under attack until it's too late and the flee logic does not work for miners (even if they manage to turn on travel mode they'll flee for a microsecond, then go back to mining the exact same spot, until they die). Assigned escorts on miners also don't seem to care that their commander is under attack most of the time (whether on defend, intercept, or whathaveyou) so the only viable solution seems to be to manually check up on problematic sectors and tell the escort to clean up if there's trouble.

When you get to mid-game, you can also search for the Kha'ak installations in and around especially bad sectors (usually at the far ends of the sector) and destroy them with any decent L ship. Although Kha'ak stations do reappear I think it's sort of random where they'll pop up again, so you usually have some reprieve.

[spankahontis]

<RantModeEnabled>
So the Khaak now have a role in the game. A totally annoying one. My usual start in an X game (since X2) has been to build Solar power plants, then become a mining magnate.
In the original X4 and after the Split Vendetta a viable start / play style. I like to start with S and M mining ships. However this is no longer possible. My usual early game strategy has
been completely removed by the Khaak. Made into something utterly miserable by the changes in mining that accompanied the COH release.

So 10 out of 10 for giving the Khaark a role. Minus several million for ruining the early game for me.

I'd of much preferred it if the Kha'ak scavenged for resources of ships they've just destroyed, took those resources to the Kha'ak Installation to increase it's size and make them become an even greater threat. They could be like the Xenon where every resource they take is consumed into building materials to increase the size and numbers of their Installations and increase their Fighter numbers.
That's how the Kha'ak should of been laid out.. Rather than spawn somewhere randomly and grow without help, without an economy of their own.

I like that pirate ships have turrets and shields from different factions, adds a little colour to the game, a few more custom paint jobs might help. However there is not a single shipyard in the game that
can build these ships. The pirate AI also seems to be getting some attention. While the AI of my captains remains as dumb as dog doo.

I can see the faction ships will attack a pirate who has been uncovered, however they will stop the engagement if the pirate returns to undercover mode. What? "Err captain the pirate ship is right in front of us, we where firing at him, why have we stopped the attack?", "Well number 1 the pirate is actually just a member of the ANT faction." "Err sir that's just a forged electronic signature..."

With the new DLC being about Pirates? I'm hoping they are going to massively overhaul the way the Pirate Factions think in the game, that they have better AI and greater alternatives and greater personal freedom to be self-sufficient from the mainstream factions. Being able to steal Terran Tech without ever needing to engage with them on a diplomatic level.

As my empire has grown so has the frequency of attacks. I have a lot more collateral to damage. I now spend nearly all my time in the game chasing down pirates. This is not the reason I play the game.

Buy fighters to escort your miners, that's their whole point. Space is meant to be unfriendly and miners getting iced? Effects the economy, makes the prices fluctuate.
Surely a good thing?

I have also noticed that if I am trying to cap a pirate ship then the level of pirate activity ramps up. As a mechanic it gets old very quickly. I once had 12 seperate pirate incidents while capping a single ship.

Must be a hard balancing act.
In one Hand you want Pirates to be menacing if the Factions don't get their act together to combat piracy,.
But you also want Factions to take Piracy seriously and send fleets to hunt them down.

Maybe each main faction has special counter-Piracy fleets who have special top of the range scanners that can detect/intercept Pirates in the area.
Not too many as to spoil the Piracy Game. But I'd like to see Pirates attack as separate Factions that can rise/fall and come back under another name.. Even have a bounty system, the more they kill? The higher their bounty is.
Or have some Bounty Hunters Guild that offers you money and other rewards for killing Pirates with a huge score of kills?

I don't like giving anything to pirates. That why the default is escape. Maybe there is a better way. I am currently -30 with the FAF and did this deliberately to get them to attack my blockades. Which seemed to work for a while.
Now though Rattlesnakes just seem to turn up anywhere. I have completed the Split plot. But there seems to be a timer and Rattlesnakes arrive and attack.

They're the only ships I fear as they tend to be the biggest killers of my larger supply ships. Fast and with allot of frontal firepower.

[ZeroDv8]

I came back to X(4) from a long time since I think X3 release which basicaly broke the series for me but I am trailing off.

The pirates and Khaak really add to the flavor if you ask me. But yeah there was a time at early game where it got out off hand.
If you can, run Split Buffalo´s for Trades (TER shield, PAR Drive, ARG Flak turrets) and be done with it. For mining I use Hokaidos,
basically same fitting. Occasionally the Rattlesnake destroyers are a hassle of course. They really freaked me out the first time
but now I have a few captured for my own (can be a real pain) and security in my system went up a notch.

best regardsss and profitsss

[ZaphodBeeblebrox]

After many frequent saves and reloads.

My trade ships will fly out of their way, to sit in a remote sector, and idle "looking for trades," why they flew to their destination makes no sense.
After idling for a time, along comes a pirate, who attacks and destroys them, without asking the trader to drop his cargo.

I have rerun this multiple times. I can interfere in this process in a number of ways. I can kill the pirate. Trade ship arrives, idles for a short time and then leaves.
Redirect the trader to land at a station, pirate arrives idles at the location and then goes on his way.

Behaviour looks odd, as the trade ship appears to be doing a normal trade run, flying from one gate to another, but stops along the way. If an M ship completes a trade and
needs to find another why on earth is it flying to remote sectors?

In variations of this. A pirate will power across a sector to attack a ship just after it enters the sector. I have replayed this, having docked the trader before it went through the gate.
The pirate powered across the sector, hung around and then finally moved off.

The pirate AI definitely looks to be improving. My ship captains appear to remain the same or worse.