[WhiteHojo]

How bout starting em w/Light cruiser tech, ship capture tech, 2nd gen engines, cargo III tech, some type of shield tech (3 or 4 or 5?) or maybe make em organic w/org tech III (org armor III works pretty well for ship capture - don't have to worry bout droppin shields), recycle tech III, some type of shield defeating wpns and PDIIs??? All this coupled w/very low research rates should keep em from getting ahead too fast.

Maybe design their own ship yard construction tech tree that will only yield planet bound space yards to level I and allowing the space based Version to go to level III (couple this w/a 150% increase in space yard production and they could be competitive in the construction field w/o dominating - would also force em to build ships in orbit which for some reason to me seems more appropriate for pirates, no rational reason)

Increase their Intel production and lower reproduction rate (the combo of lower repro rate and the org tech of gestation vats, etc could be problemsome)

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