[Windborne]

How about doing this instead:

create a "Pirate tech tree" and fill it with loads of cool pirate stuff, only each pirate ship item you add generates negative research and if possible negative happiness.

What this would do would be to make a race that became more "Pirate" less able to research things, and force them to fill their bases with improvements that generate happier populations rather then research, mining, etc . . . You might want to add in some special pirate happiness facilities too.

Some techs for ships:

Plunderer: remotely mines enemy worlds destroying recourses like robo-miners do for astroids.

Pirate: Advanced early ship capture technology, much more efficient then what you get later from the regular tree.

Pirate research center: Very small component that lets you analyze ships in space after you catch them, the way pirates get most of their tech.

Pirate retro-fit center: small shipboard component that lets pirates install their more advanced technologies onto ships they capture from primitive races.

Pirate mine warheads: Powerful mine warheads that only target engine, security center, armor, and shields. Basically small automated seekers designed to make enemy ships easier to board.

Large base-cloaking devices: A huge device designed to cloak pirate bases in enemy systems, learned early on it's easy to build, but it's too big to put on anything but stations/starbases, it does however give you excellent hiding ability, maybe later Versions could also do double duty as shield components for the base?

Pirate figher crew: small crews of pirates who specialize in manning fighters and using them to board enemy vessles.


Another advantage of this system is that eventually the pirate race could reform, disband its fleets, and start developing a real empire, not likely but possible. As for colonies, let them colonize, the more they spread out the more dangerous they are, and what happens if they wipe out all their prey? ARGH!!!!

[This message has been edited by Windborne (edited 13 March 2001).]