Space Pirates |
***WARNING***
doot doot doot doot, doot doot doot doot, doot doot doot doot, SCREEEECH!
***scanning***
[[[[ METARIDLEY ]]]]
[[[[health: 100%]]]]
Leader of the space pirates, he's been resurrected yet again and armed with monofilament-laced talons and a plasma breath weapon.
***data transferred to logbook***
blam blam blam blam blam
crap, out of missiles
SCORCH SLASH SCORCH SLASH SCORCH SLASH SCORCH
***lifesigns critical***
***GAMEOVER***
OK, so "space pirates" makes me think of Metroid... anyway, I had an idea for space pirate empires in SE5, sort of like in SJ's Pirates & Nomads mod for SE4, only I think this will be even more "piratey" - pirates will be forced to abandon their homeworld shortly after the game starts!
So, you create a "pirate" racial trait which grants access to souped-up boarding parties, scrapyard components, mobile shipyards, cloaking, and other special piratey stuff, just like in P&N or Adamant...
Now with this racial trait you also assign a maintenance modifier which reduces maintenance on ships and units to zero. You also put a requirement in the resource extraction techs (or facilities/components) that the pirate race trait not be selected. (I don't think this will prevent them from appearing on pirate homeworlds though, so perhaps another check in the ability amount would at least make them not do anything for pirates!) The trick here is that you DON'T reduce the maintenance costs for facilities or population! (Heck, even increase the population maintenance cost globally, since it's so low anyway!) This means that the pirates have to build some spaceborne shipyards before the maintenance costs on their homeworld facilities and population run their coffers dry, then scrap the facilities and abandon the planet, becoming nomadic.
Now, in SE5, research can't be performed without a colony, so this means the pirates are going to have a REALLY hard time keeping up in tech, unless they analyze a lot of stuff. However, with maintenance-free ships, the longer before first contact (and the longer the other empires have to research), the longer the pirates have to build up massive armadas of cloaked boarding frigates! 
Whereas if first contact comes quickly, the pirates will not be at as much of a tech disadvantage, but they will not have such an advantage in terms of numbers. So it balances out after all, I think...
Re: Space Pirates
Yeah, I realized I forgot about that part after I posted! I guess they could have some sort of scrapyard component which scraps things for >100% of their build cost, so if they can't capture enough ships they could at least gradually "build" resources as needed by repeatedly building and scrapping stuff (just have to not run out completely!)... or the ships could be slightly negative maintenance... Actually I think I had a different idea but I seem to have forgotten it already... though I like the scrapyard one, as long as it's not TOO unbalanced - maybe let them scrap things for 110% of build cost?
edit: oh yeah, now I remember - instead of restricting ALL resource gathering from pirates, you could let them keep remote mining! (I am assuming it doesn't need a spaceport to work... I seem to recall in an earlier patch it did require a spaceport, but I *think* that got changed back to SE4-style no-spaceport-required... if not, I can always give pirates the natural merchants trait free!)
~~~
The power of the ancients is now yours to command. You are truly the Master... of the obvious 
Re: Space Pirates
IMO it would be interesting. nomads or precursors...
to create a race which control only one system with only one huge rich inhabited planet and a powerfull fleet surrounding it. when u defeat this fleet and colonize the planet u will receive some unique tech candies.
two aspects are here. the first is competition between empires to access these unique techs and second are techs itself.
this race must not colonize new planets but it can send a some fleets in free search or, say, hunting action. player can try to ram and get new components.
just like antarans and orion in moo2.
Re: Space Pirates
If you had lots of asteroid fields that could be mined it would work. COuld be an interesting concept.
Groovy Baby Yeah!
Re: Space Pirates
Maybe some sort of blackmarket type concept could work for these pirates. Maybe they could get a percent of all trade between all the empires. or maybe just get an income equal to the average of all the other empires. (I don't know if that could be done.)
SEV, more than a feeling.
Re: Space Pirates
Rilo57, there is a new ability, "Trade Modifier Percent", introduced in v1.55, which increases the maximum trade percentage that an empire can attain via a treaty. I'm not entirely sure how it works, but perhaps pirates could have their "black market" implemented by the pirate trait giving that ability, so when someone trades with the pirates, the pirates make more money than the other empire (assuming it works the way I think it does)... of course, I don't really see much incentive for empires to trade with pirates! Perhaps if the modifier applied to both empires - but I'm not sure how to do that... I guess the pirates could have some sort of black market *component* with that ability that they could build into, say, a base, and sell to other empires for lots of money (while still keeping one on hand for themselves)... but I'm not quite sure how to balance that out! (It also depends on whether the trade modifier stacks or not when it's on several components... I'll have to test that or ask someone who has...)
~~~
The power of the ancients is now yours to command. You are truly the Master... of the obvious
Re: Space Pirates
Assign income values to each ship a pirate has. A Pirate lives by his ship: running cargo, theft, boarding, etc. Their ship is their income.
So, assign so much Minerals, organics and Radioactives to simply be produced by each ship. This represents them out there doing basic Pirate stuff each turn and when they attack or something is when they make a "Big Haul."
This is assuming you can assign income to ships.
If you can't here is an idea for a workaround. A cloaked planet that receives modifiers from constructed ships to represent the ships earning goods. May be? This allows them to have an economy and the planet isn't actually usable as its just there to represent their earnings.
Oh!! Can you reverse Engineer the maintenance cost to return a positive value instead of a negative value?
Re: Space Pirates
Another way to add pirates (without pirates on start of the game) - change owner of oldest ships (older tech in ship - biger chance to become a pirate), powerful ships with not full crew, too long without battles (for aggressiv races), ships with boarding parties.
Then all technologies from race which owned thet ship before will be added to pirate race without analis
All pirate ships should be able to board, repair, retrofit without space yard, boarding parties and other (race ability invisible for player).
It will be a good idia to create random pirate ships ower all galaxy.
But they shouldn't have own systems or planets.
If put meaning of "Ship Maintenance Cost Modifier" les then "-100" then ship will produse resources.
Also it will be good if pirates will have abilities to atack or sabotage system for donation (like mercenaries).
They can sell some sistem maps, technologies, race information, but for very high price.
Sorry for my bad english
Re: Space Pirates
Sounds like a nice twist. One question where would they get the resources to build?
Groovy Baby Yeah!