Well it seems the Khozuni are going to be a threat to the galactic community for even less time than I expected.
Blowing up the lifeboats seems a bit harsh.
Does Starfire have rules for overcrowding from collecting survivors?
Also is there a concept of sensor resolution to detect fighters or are ships expected to have the better sensors by the time fighters are developed?
Being in deep space the pods were very unlikely to be found, but in any case, dead crewpersons tell no tales. The unknowns obviously believe in being better safe than sorry.
As for overcrowding, yes, there are combat negatives if you have too many survivors on your ship and not enough quarters to hold them.
Inherent ship sensors, which were all that the Khozuni had, can detect small craft and fighters at 20 hexes, or five light seconds. Of course, those same sensors can only detect large units, like ships, at a range of 30 tac hexes, or 7.5 light seconds. Low tech, pre long-range scanner races are really blundering around in the dark most of the time.
3rd Ed Starfire has a problem with sensors. Up to HT3, ships can see only barely farther than their weapons can fire, out to 30 tac hexes, like the Khozuni. Once a race reaches HT3, though, they can develop the Xr, or long-range scanners. The Xr has been derisively called the all-seeing eye, as it suddenly, in one massive technological leap, expands a ships ability to see another ship from 7.5 light seconds to a full 72 light MINUTES! And then, after that, there are no further tech advances in detection capability. Third Ed., Revised, added Xrs, but this is a combat system, smaller than the standard Xr, intended to allow a ship to target other ships out to the limits of weapons capability at that tech level. Cloaking comes along at a higher tech level, making the situation complicated again, but there are no further advances in sensor tech, which is weird and not very realistic. Before starting this campaign, I played around with modding the Xr, so that Xr0 could only see out to, say, 30 light seconds, with each later variant adding some range. I'd have to figure out how to add tech systems to SA, though, and the more you play around with SA's databases, the more finicky it gets.
Kurt