Meh. I spent one game doing more fighting against in-game pirates and escaped criminals than I did against the people I was trying to conquer.

But, still, I like these ideas.

Hmmm, i've only ever had a single "pirate" event, and that was a moral chioce. Odd

Any how, I wasn't sugesting upping the numbers of independant pirats, I was mostly sugesting the ability to prey on enemy vesels yourself.

still not what I'm talking about, I'm sugesting giving the player the option of raiding enemy vessels. Prhaps adding a "privatere" modual that causes a monetary gain when an enemy vesel is destroyed by a ship with that modual. Perhaps make ships with that modual not show what race they belong to untill a certain espionage levels against the owner have been atained.

I think the module idea is probably the most effective track, think of it as the specialty gear for boarding and storage space for looted items/crew.

Like you said, it would probably be best to simply keep the module as providing a bonus after you destroy an enemy ship in a traditional manner. Perhaps a privateer module that could only be placed on medium or smaller ships (traditionally, "pirate" ships have been smaller then those they attack, t also makes sense when you see my later points).

The module could...
1) Make the ship's loyalties unknown to enemies unless they have a certain amount of espionage against you. Just use a generic ship model for all AI pirate vessels so the human player can't tell just my matching ship color and hull design. Do the same thing for all pirate ships if multi player is ever instituted (though the player would still always see his own ship design, or the true enemy design with the proper espionage)

2) Provide a small percentage of the destroyed ship's total value to the owning side.

3) Be a relatively small module (moderately priced). That combined with the limit on ship size (you just wouldn't be able to keep the loyalties of a capital ship secret) would lend it self to creating small Pirate fleets, it would also make a player decide between earning a higher loot % or having ships that can actually overcome competent enemy ships. Picture a fleet with 4 small ships with 1 privateer module each, and two medium ships with 4 privateer modules each. If each module gives 1% (obviously the best amount would have to be figured out to help game balance) of the destroyed enemy ships value that fleet would earn 10% of the enemy ship's value (perhaps give a bonus for destroying freighters like raising the value to 1.5%-2% each) the amount earned would be subtracted from the enemy treasury (to motivate players to stop enemy piracy, if the money simply appeared out of nowhere, they wouldn't care ).

4) Perhaps to keep it the module from getting put on main line battle ships, keep ships equipped with it unable to actually destroy the enemy ship if they with to make use of their looting ability. Simply subtract the % value stolen from the current health of the "destroyed ship" (though they would still need to fight a traditional battle, it's just that damage inflicted during the fight isn't actually applied to the enemy vessels). Could make the option to "destroy" or "loot" one of the toggle options along with defend and auto attack. That would keep players for simply using them to make money off their main warships during open war, but it would allow the same fleet to prey off of the same trade rout multiple times (and keep the number of freighter from disappearing altogether). Leave the attacked ship "stunned" for a turn or two to represent getting the ship back in running order (and to make the module useful, it would be a little odd to have a pirate fleet show up but leave their victims capable of giving chase to them).

Hmmm, it won't let me edit my post. I just want to add that the value of the ship should be determined by how many of it's hit points remain. That way a damaged ship is not a valuable to raid as a non damaged ship of the same type. It would promote finding multiple targets instead of just raiding the same ship over and over again.

Example:
My previous fleet (10 privatere modules) raids a ship worth 1000 bc thathas 50 of 50 hit points and win the fight, they would earn 10% of the ship's value (100bc), and the ship health would be reduced to 45 of 50 hit points. If the same fleet attacks the same ship they would only earn 90bc since the ship is only considered worth 90% of it's true value.

Perhaps it could be a longer tech tree, with each level researched provding a higher % yield per raid (just have it aply to all ships with the module, or make it give access to newer modules with smaller size and or higher % yields). Maybe allow the final level reasearched to allow you to actualy capture an enemy vessel. If your pirate fleet is worth more logisticaly than the ship your trying to capture you can aply the % you would steal to it's health noamrly, but capture the ship and forgo earning the %. You would imediatly have to pay the cost of upgrading the ship to have a privatere module if you want to add it to the pirate fleet (obviously you may need to remove a few original upgrades to make room on it) and if there isn't enough room to add it to the curent fleet it would be it's own lone pirate ship (also keep in mind that it's health would now be greatly damaged, since you would have researched all the other levels of the tech tree so you would be dealing substantialy more actual damage to the ship's health), or keep it as it is and fly your flag on it (but the enemy would know you did it at that point since one of their ships is now blatantly in your service. It would be more usefull durring open war. But that's how privateres worked in escelated times of conflict).

It might seem a little overpowered, but if your going to spend the time researching the tech tree along with the ship technologies to have ships good enough to make use of the module, you've earned the ability to severly damage an enemy ship and press it into your own service.

you could have a large 'Size Mod' to make it hard to hide huge ships.
sorry coudn't edit.

Lets see if i can post