Piracy. I know this has been suggested for years, but as far as I remember the reasons against it were more lore based than anything else, so I've tried to think of a mechanic that would fit logically into the game.
Great idea. . . for
after we get a robust civilian economy & commercial shipping. And preferably after, or along with, a way to use CIWS in offensive mode, or otherwise simulated an 'armed merchantman' concept.
Gameplay reasons: Having occasional attacks by low threat enemies in rear areas would give the player a reason to build patrol ships. These would have a different design philosophy than the battle fleet - with range and endurance being more important than raw combat efficiency - and to me anyway, that sounds fun. Obviously you'd want an option to turn the system off in the same way as spoiler enemies for people who don't agree.
Literally the only thing stopping you from building patrol ships and deploying them in your rear areas is
you. If it sounds fun, do it. If it sounds not-fun due to current mechanics and/or software limitations, advocate for changing
those.
Lore: Pirate ships should come from ships "scrapped" by civilian shipping companies. The idea being that a few of these make their way onto the black market, get modified (increase their speed enough to make them useful, and add a few weapons). They then slip through the jump gate network to somewhere to raid civilian shipping lanes, until the player hunts them down.
No, the lore should be whatever I decide it should be to fit my fiction. The same way I can rename Ion engines to "triple-expansion steam" engines if I so desire.
Not the least because I don't have a jump gate network.
Mechanic: A percentage of scrapped civilian ships generate a pirate. Probably the system only starts after some set number ships have been scrapped (so its not a super early game thing). When one is generated, a system that a) has a planet with a pop over 25 million and b) is connected to the home world via the jump gate network, gets a pirate generated.
What if I want my pirates to be renegade ground troops with boarding shuttles? Historically (and in modern times), the vast majority of pirates have been (are) shore-based in small craft who swarm over passing ships.
Sure, most people probably want an intense, somewhat-close-to-even ship-to-ship fight with a full-up starship, but an hour after Steve releases the 'Pirate Patch' there will be people on these boards posting "Just use a large cruiser with X sensor and Y missile launchers of Z size and A range to exterminate these pests from outside the range they even know you're there."
- - - - -
I apologize; I seem to have drifted off topic. There are many,
many ways to do the mechanics (What about ships that can turn on their commercial transponder and prevent you from firing at them? What if they only way to deal with a pirate vessel is to board and capture it?) and that discussion should be left until
after we decide what the purpose of adding pirates is, and what we want them to do, and -- for lack of a better term -- where 'the fun' of piracy is.
Each pirate in a system has a random chance of spawning any time there is a civilian ship in the system. It appears at some distance from the target ship, and moves to intercept. Once it intercepts it attacks, destroys the ship, salvages it, then flees outsystem. Once it has been undetected on any player sensor for some length of time, it despawns. If the player manages to destroy the ship, the pirate is removed from the game.
I would hate that. I hate the idea of a ship literally disappearing from the game 'until next time' -- it stinks of the worst kind of video game logic. Once a ships exists, it should continue to exist and Aurora should know where it is at all times.
Not the least because if I want to hunt pirates by finding their base, they darn well need to have a location to be found. Pirate ships should not get a pass on fuel or maintenance or ordnance. They should be stealling these things from their victims and running short if I do a good job of risk management.
The pirate should have enough weaponry to kill a civilian in a reasonable amount if time, and be fast enough to make an interception doable. But you'd want to be able to meet the threat with a small warship with range speced engines - the challenge is meant to be having a ship there at all.
The pirate should function by exactly the same rules as every other ship in the game. If the humans / Alzairians / robots / Gorrthik of the pirate boat can figure out how to make something a functional starship weapon, my empire's highly-paid and pampered scientists can figure out the same thing with sufficient funding.
