The planet was at 0 stability for the better part of 2 years in my game and has not decivallized so that currently does not work. I also don't think its unreasonable that thousands of people (presumably including some pirate warlords) with no food or supplies would fork over enough money to make one dude arbitrarily rich.
Well yes and no. A size 3 planet has literalry only thousands of colonists(10^3). Most of them probably work on a farm or in the mines. Life is tough in the sector. I don't think everyone can afford even the cheapest spaceship. Certainly not something like the Wolf frigate you have the option of starting with. Imagine a world where everyone could afford a damn high-tech military-tier frigate.
Also they're pirates. Pirates use almost exclusively outdated and damaged ships they got from boarding trade convoys. They can't even afford new ships. They're poor af. But that's besides the point.
While I do think it's not unreasonable that an entire planet could make one guy rich I just question how much money we're talking about. 400-500k monthly is almost a brand new Astral class capital ship. Hell it's not so far from a Paragon. Every month. Paid by a few thousand poor colonists. Even if we're talking slavery I don't think that's possible. In 12 months they could build an armada capable of toppling Hegemony. I think for a 10^3 pop colony about 100k monthly would be the most they could realistically afford. And it would make this strat far less lucrative
We can argue all day about lore/realism. You could argue that a world
controlled by pirates would have the most powerful pirates like drug kingpins and mafia leaders. They would be contributing most of the money not the peasants. Also, making an astral requires an astral blueprint. If you sell one of those on the black market, then you will get to watch the pirates topple hegemony with fleets full of astrals just like you predicted. You can construct lore to create whatever gameplay you want, the better question is what gameplay is good.
100k per month with no risk or effort is not really any less unbalanced than 400k per month. It just means the player has to spend longer grinding to get enough money for the stuff they want. The problem is that it's too easy to get free money with no consequences. Making the reward less will just require more grinding. There needs to be actual challenges and consequences associated with raiding.
