Hidden nationality

I wouldn't call it a mod I'm making. I'm just jerry-rigging some new techs, components, society models, and racial traits into the code.

I need a few ideas on how I can develop the idea further if anyone is willing to help, and I can't play to save empire so the additions I have are far from balanced.

What I have so far is the idea that pirates have a watered down version of most standard facilities, Black markets to generate resources, Techies to generate (limited) research/intel points. with the idea of abandoning planets all together in favour of pirate havens - A large starbase with smaller ones to add more capabilities: Ship training modules, research/intel modules and such. It would be cool to have a big-arse floating city in the middle of a system completly colonized by another civ.

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What is the most humane way to kill a crab? In the fridge or with Michael Bolton music?

we could use the cloaking mechanics to create a facility that "cloaks" a planet, but (fluff-wise) just makes it so other civs overlook the planet in question. That would make the planet invisible until other civs start using advanced scanners/sensors. Being a facility means that in the early stages all an opponent sees is a collection of bases/ships/sats hanging in space (there is a planet there but it's not worth looking at).

To simulate the semi-nomadic nature of pirates we'd also need a new colony module that only works if no friendly colonies exist in that system. These would work around the research/intel thing that was pointed out, and given the limited space on 1 planet per system also serve to limit pirate tech progress without capturing ships.

What do we think about giving pirates (more expensive) boarding parties that can penetrate shields?
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What is the most humane way to kill a crab? In the fridge or with Michael Bolton music?

Thinking of having a full range of pirate technologies, and stuff that specialises their star ships. We could have this as a full suite of technologies/weapons and such ... bit not include (vital) support odd-bods like improving research labs. This would (hopefully) continue the pirate feel and actually force a decision to become more of a standard nation state to get other stuff.

Could have a new range of ships that is only available to pirates that are naturally evasive or cloaked. If we do do that we should only do 2 or 3 hulls and not improve stations ant freighters and the like.

For weapons we could have a line of boarding parties and short-range shield dampening weapons. Could even add a few random events into the code to relate the unreliability of pirate knowhow.

Engines that have chances to overload, work at 150% or drop out for a few turns (or have a pirate "weapon enhancement" to do that for everthing.

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What is the most humane way to kill a crab? In the fridge or with Michael Bolton music?

Thanks for your thoughts and help Ekolis. Got a few ideas going that I'm posting in another topic to make input easier.

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What is the most humane way to kill a crab? In the fridge or with Michael Bolton music?