Pirates

Pirates are the primary PvE adversaries in Per Regna. They are not static farms — each pirate presence is a small network of colonies that holds resources, reinforces its own outposts, and respawns with a fresh configuration once cleared.

Every pirate colony is owned by the neutral pirate faction, scales with the Realm it spawns in, and rewards both small commanders (weak outposts) and established fleets (strong outposts and strongholds).

Looking for the elite end-game targets? See Pirate Bosses — rare stronghold variants that can only be taken down by a coordinated alliance (FleetCoordinationSystem(FCS)) strike.

Core structure

Each pirate presence in a system is made up of:

1 Stronghold — the main base. It controls reinforcement logic and ends the pirate presence when destroyed.
Several Outposts — satellite bases with their own fleets. They can be attacked individually and may be cleared without destroying the stronghold.

Every stronghold and outpost is a full colony with its own ships, defenses, and resource stockpile. Outposts vary in difficulty on purpose, so a weak outpost can be farmed by a newer commander while the stronghold remains a serious target.

Realm progression

Pirate scale grows sharply with each Realm. The stronghold and outpost fleets are rolled independently from the ranges below (there is no shared "pool" split between them):

Realm	Stronghold fleet	Outposts	Outpost fleet	Respawn cooldown	Reinforcement interval
1	1,000 – 4,000	3 – 4	15 – 800	2 – 4 h	15 – 20 min
2	10,000 – 40,000	3 – 4	200 – 8,000	3 – 6 h	15 – 20 min
3	100,000 – 400,000	3 – 4	2,000 – 80,000	4 – 8 h	10 – 15 min
4	4,000,000 – 40,000,000	6 – 8	200,000 – 2,000,000	12 – 24 h	10 – 15 min

Feature availability by Realm:

Feature	R1	R2	R3	R4
Reinforcements	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Stronghold → outpost transport	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Factions	—	Yes	Yes	Yes
Diplomacy (bribes & reputation)	—	—	Yes	Yes
Pirate bosses	—	—	Yes	Yes

Spawning & lifecycle

Pirate strongholds spawn in systems near active players, so there's always a target within reach.
A pirate presence stays active until it is cleared. While active, the stronghold reinforces and resupplies its outposts.
Once a stronghold is cleared it enters a respawn cooldown (the per-Realm range above). When the timer elapses, a fresh configuration spawns — new fleet distribution, new outpost strengths, and potentially a different faction (Realm 2+).

Fleet strength

The stronghold fleet is a random value within its Realm's stronghold range. Outpost fleets are generated separately and deliberately spread across difficulty tiers — when there are enough outposts, the game guarantees one each of weak, medium, strong, and elite, then fills any extras weighted toward the lower tiers (and shuffles them so you can't predict which is which).

This means a single system can offer a beginner-friendly outpost and a high-end target side by side.

Reinforcements & transport

A stronghold periodically dispatches one of:

Reinforcement — sends combat ships to top up an outpost. Each reinforcement adds roughly 10–20% of the outpost's base strength, and an outpost is capped at 150% of its base strength (it won't be reinforced past that).
Transport — sends resources from the stronghold to an outpost.

A stronghold only dispatches if it has been scouted or attacked within the last 24 hours — an idle, unnoticed stronghold won't bleed ships into its outposts. A cleared outpost can also respawn its own fleet (about 80–120% of its base strength) after the Realm's outpost respawn window.

Tip: the stronghold detail view surfaces each outpost's next-reinforcement timer and any reinforcement/transport fleets currently in flight, so you can time attacks between waves.

Factions

From Realm 2 onward, each stronghold belongs to a faction that shifts its strengths and rewards:

Faction	Fleet strength	Loot	Convoys	Notable traits
Raider	−10%	+20%	Frequent	Bonus resource drops; hoards metals
Fortress	+30%	−20%	Rare	Much stronger defenses (~+50%); defense-blueprint drops
Tech	Standard	Standard	Medium	EMP emitters on defenses (R3+); expedition-fragment drops

Pirate bosses

In the end-game Realms (3 and 4), a spawning stronghold can rarely roll into a boss-tier target — a Mid-Boss or the much rarer Boss. Bosses dwarf a normal stronghold and can only be engaged through a coordinated alliance (FCS) attack, with their enormous loot scaled and shared across the participating fleets.

See the dedicated Pirate Bosses page for spawn rates, FleetCoordinationSystem(FCS) rallies, boss mechanics, and how the loot is extracted and divided.

Diplomacy

From Realm 3, factions track a reputation with each commander, and you can pay a bribe to buy temporary protection from a faction (lasting 7 days). Bribe costs scale by faction.

Clearing a pirate presence

Outposts can be cleared individually. An outpost won't fully clear while it still holds more than 50,000 resources or sits on more than 50,000 debris — drain it first.
The stronghold is only cleared once all of its outposts are cleared and the remaining resources on the stronghold (and any uncleared outposts) drop to 50,000 or below.
Clearing the stronghold ends the pirate presence: its fleet is removed and its planets are hidden (or kept visible briefly if significant debris remains — see below).

Debris

Every pirate battle leaves a debris field at the battle location, collectible by anyone with Recyclers.
When a pirate colony is cleared with significant debris still present, its planet stays visible for a short 2-hour window so the debris can be salvaged before the planet disappears.
Fully collecting the debris on an outpost can itself trigger that outpost (and, if eligible, the stronghold) to clear.

Planned systems

Some pirate mechanics are designed and partially built but not yet live:

Retaliation — pirate counter-attacks after a commander repeatedly farms the same stronghold. The supporting service exists, but the trigger is not yet wired in, so no retaliation strikes are currently launched.
Escalation — gradual fleet growth and a system-wide production penalty for ignored R3+ pirates. The logic exists but is currently disabled in the live tick.
Convoys between outposts — inter-outpost cargo runs (and their interception gameplay) are coded but disabled pending a future update. Today only stronghold → outpost reinforcement and transport run.

Quick reference

Aspect	Detail
Structure	1 stronghold + 3–4 outposts (6–8 in R4)
Fleet rolls	Stronghold and outposts rolled independently
Outpost tiers	Guaranteed weak / medium / strong / elite spread
Reinforcement	+10–20% of base per wave, capped at 150% of base
Dispatch condition	Stronghold scouted/attacked within last 24 h
Factions (R2+)	Raider / Fortress / Tech
Diplomacy (R3+)	Reputation + 7-day bribes
Bosses (R3/R4)	FCS-only — see Pirate Bosses
Clear thresholds	≤50k resources (and ≤50k debris for outposts)
Debris window	2 hours after clear if debris remains

See also: Pirate Bosses for end-game FCS targets, and Alliances for coordinated (FCS) attacks.

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