So I have a pirate ship with a navigator on board as well. I targeted two enemy ships, the first goes just fine and then I reroute to attack the other ship after hitting the first ship. The second ship is a long ways away, and when my sub tries to reroute, it actually tries to go around the entire map to reach it. In other words, it prefers to go the long way around the map in a huge circle, rather than just go the shorter route. Is this a time machine glitch? Or is this actually going to happen to my game?

This will happen in the game. This means that the sub you are targeting is traveling at the same speed as your pirate and will reach its destination before your pirate can catch it. Thus your pirate's only option is to travel all the way across the map to intercept it after it has already arrived at its location. In other words, you can't target the sub because the speed factors are the same and it will never catch it.

Same thing happened to me. Although the time machine said I was going to be able to capture their sub (which had a helmsman), and I hand calculated as well, the pirate sub just went the opposite direction. Kind of annoyed...I believe this happens when the time difference is less than 10 minutes, because once my pirate went after their sub, but was 5 minutes too late to catch it, so it just went the opposite way.
I feel like the pirate sub should just go back to its origin outpost if it realizes it can't reach the target sub, instead of leaving the other way.

Happened to me as well with my Pirate/Double Agent combo moving away from the Navigator/Helmsman it was targeting after the latter changed its course a few times - reported it as a bug.

Edit: It is definitely a bug as the map is showing the outpost where my Pirate is headed to (Champino) as belonging to my opponent.



Champino is mine



Champino is Squiid's

Edit2: I think I found the bug. At one point, my opponent should have targeted Champino - the time wheel would show that he is conquering it. After changing course again, that parameter is not reset and the software still continues to believe that my enemy's sub is headed to Champino.

Thus my Pirate sub continues to follow the ghost enemy sub to Champino, instead of rerouting. After my opponent's sub finally reaches its destination, the parameter is reset and my sub heads to my nearest outpost.

Nothing to do with speed or the map being round.

Here's pirate rerouting at its finest. 3 Pirates at once!

EDIT: sorry didn't realize the link was posted as a hyperlink. I loved that game. Trying to outrun a pirate with your pirate navi is quite an amusing but difficult thing to do!

I agree to this being a bug. If it can't catch the sub, fine; it should chase it until it either loses track (fog of war), or hits a base. I could have sworn that's how it previously worked--if a nav sub targeted by a pirate changed course and made it to a base, I would chase it. But I had a pirate decide to go around the world to catch a pirate/nav that was targeting a sub in the fog of war. Every move the nav made up until that point was fine; as soon as it targeted a ship and switched to double-speed, it went screwy. The time machine also had a freak-out; every time I advanced the clock, the time machine would show the pirate/ nav ship as changing course to the nearest base (as if the pirate had lost its target). My pirate would then re-acquire the sub, and reverse course again (except it never actually did; the time machine simply claimed it would). Made planning for the future impossible.

I'm fairly certain all this works as intended.

Picture this:
1. You saw the pirate navi chasing a target in the FOW.
This gives you information that you don't have and shouldn't have. This you can intercept an attack or tell an ally about info they need to win a war. However, since you don't know what the pirate navi is targeting on your time machine it will appear as though it lost its target when it clearly hasn't. (This should be very easy to pick out when this happens). Also, revealing a targeted sub in the FOW does nothing to help you as your pirate is still going to be running all the way across the map to chase down your target (SEE POINT 2, THIS IS A GOOD THING.)

2. If your pirate stopped chasing a pirate-navi who is targeting something outside FOW.
This would be OP. An enemy attacker using pirate-navi could simply target an enemy outpost for 1 tick and retarget 1-tick later causing your pirate to re-route and thus the navigator becomes an I targetable powerhouse. ****It is of the defender's best interest to not have your pirate to return!!*** Rather, it is actually better for a defender to have their pirate chase another across the map. That way, navigators cannot be Untargetable and only through some advanced tricks, will they be able to outrun your pirate (trust me, outrunning a pirate with your pirate navi is HARD). If pirates can't target navigators, then navigators suddenly become insanely OP.

3. You have the ability to cancel a pirate's chase.
A bit OP as well. This makes the pirate act as a semi-navigator as you can just cancel a chase when you feel like it. This means that you can control the fate of your pirate. When a pirate gets targeted by another pirate they can just cancel. This now makes pirates unkillable.

The way the pirate currently works is the ONLY way that the pirate should/can be working without becoming OP. You just need some practice with how to correctly use the pirate and its mechanics without having to loose your pirate half way across the map. (Don't target a navi unless it is very very close then you won't lose your pirate.)

To be clear, my pirate was quite close; 3 hrs from hitting the nav. In this case, there was no possibility of my pirate intercepting his navigator along the 'around the world' route; in fact, his best option was to continue following the navigator, as it would have automatically returned along the same path (the pirate doesn't take into account any reroutes, as we well know). I have no problem following any other sub into the FOW. So the FOW I don't believe was a factor when deciding the pirate route. It was, however, a factor for the time machine freak-out.