This is a very well written rational by xrogaan.
Let me put a few comments and ideas below,
wall of text warning.
Generally speaking I feel like pirates fill a gameplay role much more than a fiction/lore role. But I still find the fiction/lore discussion interesting, especially if it leads to improved mechanics and gameplay.
Pirates are not a faction, but rather an assembly of misfits and/or outlaws.They inherently exists wherever and whenever civilization occurs. As such, any system with a colony will inevitably generate a local populace of outlaws. That being said, piracy only matters in the void and not in the ports and local pirate gangs could be allowed to dock so long their status aren't well known.After all, where would they sell their ill gotten gains?
I agree piracy can be considered as a by-product of civilisation. But, I disagree with the notion that pirates would be disallowed to settle/operate close to or within civilisation.
IRL:
- Pirates on fast sea ship with some military equipment would board civilian ship on known routes and steal cargo. Those pirates have access to their own rogue ports, and some “official” ports.
- Mafia-type organisations would, hmmm, let’s just say, be involved all sorts of parasitic activities at the edge of or within civilisations.
- State backed groups would pressure / threaten / damage in various ways other states, governments and economic activities.
- Corporate (and other orgs) backed groups are also a thing, with goals such as weakening / destroying competition … or “convincing” to become “friend”.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Privateer
Currently in the game:
- Pather fleets do play the role of pirates/spacemafia preying on civilians.
- Pather cells do play the role of pirates/rebels/terrorists/bully threatening colony/planet/market population, governments and infrastructures from within. In my mind: whether backed by a foreign power or just being some independent local mafia.
- Big “factions” send expeditions to weaken competition.
- Various lurking fleets jump on player fleet if it is weak.
This is actual piracy.
Pather stations outside of the core, on the other hand, do not make sense to me. They feel gamey and a quite naive “these are the bad guys from the outside threatening us the good guys on the inside” and even worse “these are the crazy technological averse religious guys having established bases far outside threatening the righteous modern technological societies”. Ahem.
Pirate raids are a borderline thing. The idea of raids is OK. The idea that pirates would perform raid across core star systems is not really OK if they are truly independent, but acceptable with some of the IRL tint mentioned above. Launching raids from the fringe? Totally unbelievable in my opinion.
Pirate stations outside of the core also feels like “these are the bad guys from the outside threatening us the good guys on the inside”.
It doesn’t make sense mainly because:
What needs to said before anything is this: if pirates can successfully create an outpost days away from any civilized world, why would they bother traveling to harass so called civilized worlds? It is simply not practical, and such groups should really not be referred to as pirates. More on that later.
Right.
Then I don’t understand why you would suggest this:
Thus being unaffiliated would be the official stance of those previously lost worlds. However, being so far away, scarcity of resources would drive people into expeditions to "acquire" those needed resources from the core worlds,usually in an illegal way. Those groups would be officially denounced by the lost worlds, and unofficially welcomed.
Maybe it's just me, I feel like there is a contradiction. This is civilisation on the fringe with limited resources, yet full autonomy including ability to do space travel. So these are independents, or a sub-group of those independents you say. Why would they harass others? Looks like they already have everything they need … if they don’t, then they simply can’t harass others abroad.
Though I find the “
Those groups would be officially denounced by the lost worlds, and unofficially welcomed” part relevant.
Then,
More over, any independent faction within the core worlds would have quickly been absorbed by a major power. There is no reason to leave resources to unaligned forces.
In my opinion this is a highly naive imperialistic point of view.
Independent areas can be useful to major powers:
- To do things they can’t do at home. In game: buy/sell some rare/precious/illegal-at-home commodities. Could partly or completely replace the whole “black market within a legitimate market” concept.
- To provide a(n hopefully) neutral ground for some diplomacy activities. In game: special personal contacts?
- To trick competition into making deals with false independents while controlling the terms of the deals. In game: higher prices in markets? damaged ships in markets? bugged equipment so player fleet could then be tracked by an NPC bounty hunter / privateer fleet?
Also if the core sector civilisation is itself a decaying remnant of the Domain, then major powers shall not necessarily have the strength to bully every independents. Admittedly I’m not really into the lore thing so I may be missing something.
The summary of my partially confused thinking on "pirates" and "independents" is:
- Piracy as an in-game concept and force should not originate from dedicated fringe pirate/pather stations.
- Piracy could well originate from major powers and even independents, with actual pirates being backed by those orgs. Call them pirates or privateers, they raid/bombard/harass on behalf of major powers.
- Having non affiliated pirates is still useful, but at a lower scale. Like some fleets lurking near jump points and those opportunist travelling fleets that change back and forth from neutral to hostile.
- Having a few outside of core permanent independent colonies (I understand this would be procgen based) could make sense and provide gameplay opportunities, whether there is local piracy or not on these worlds.
- NPC colony stations could be seized by pirates, this would lead to a bounty from the “rightful owner” to defeat those pirates. Hmm maybe player colony stations could also be seized by pirates (as in taken by a group backed by competition)? This mechanic could then replace the silly popup fringe pirate/pather bases.
- There should not be any reputation between player and pirates, or between player and independents. Maybe pirates and independents should not be “factions” anymore.