[Suicide Junkie]

Do you have a good reason why Pirates should be colonizing? (aside from technical issues like intel)

It may not be obvious, but I really don't think Pirates should be building colony ships. The few colony ships that they can capture (but not retrofit) will be plenty IMO, allowing a minimal expansion, though I would prefer to reduce that even more. I have averaged one new planet every 25 turns (counting my homeworld) and have scrapped/analysed/destroyed twice that.

My military is over 5x larger than my neighbors, considering that 90% of my ships are captured, and i have 50% build rate. I did that with only my homeworld producing resources. Colonies would make the pirates too powerful for human players to use.

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How about increasing the output of the pirate Intel facility, to maybe 2000.

The pirates are only gonna have one world for the first 5 years or so, which will balance that out. (if they don't get colony tech)

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Is it possible to have a racial trait give a fixed rate intel bonus? (ie. X points per turn)