quote:
I failed - found a large rock planet w/no atmo that had 2 tiny moons w/no atmo
That's why pirates shouldn't get colony tech. Instead, you'd have to capture a rock colony ship from somebody else before you could move in.
The pirates shouldn't be relying on planetary production, but thievery instead.
Question: Did you have min settings on environmental resistance?
If you have both min env. res. and min reproduction, you require a perfect planet to get any growth at all
Makes capturing slaves more important too. Finding a large transport with 500M people means you get to boost production on some planet by 20% or so.
-----------------------------
As for getting Mods/races. My Version hasn't got the latest patch, and I don't have time to redo the mod right now. If you want to quickly get into the Pirate mode, just set every racial trait that affects planets to its minimum value, and the rest is optional.
Ie.
Requirements:
- Research
- reproduction
- enviroment resist
- mineral, organic, radioactives
- trade
These should all be at their minimum setting. The rest is whatever you feel would be good.
Some "almost nessesary" things:
- minimum maintenance (+20%) (or you're making it impossible to win)
- Rock/None race (for the pirate ambiance)
I also recommend:
- ship attack/ defence maxed out. (It helps when you can't miss and you can dodge everything
)
- propulsion experts (need speed to get in and board between shots)
- Psychic tech tree (makes capturing easy)