So I did a run trying to befriend pirates.
It worked surprisingly nicely, with more trade involved than in most other runs. However, I noticed a few details which stain part of the experiences with some suggestions to fix it:
-part of the fun is doing things in the shadows without transponder. However, the way it works now prevent helping pirates fleet without unmasking itself. Pirate fleets ask you to activate your transponder to fight alongside them which don't really make senses as they don't require it between themselves. A way to fix it would be:
-1) pirates stop asking that and recognize you by low range IR communication (or whatever way you want)
-2)have some kind of token of recognition/commission that you transmit to pirate fleets.
-fighting between commerce fleets around your colonies. This is not a problem specific to pirate but is still worse in their cases. It's like Fedex and UPS fighting at your front door, so that at the end you don't get any package... So what about a "no-fire zone" around your colony? Doesn't need to be large but that would help a bit and prevent fighting in the staging areas of colonies. They can still fight in space between jump point and market if they want.
-Most missions provided by pirates are "go there without being noticed" and some of them are really a pain (trade fleet hunting and heavily patrolled planets) as in the end you need mostly overwhelming firepower to get through escort/patrol fleet which is kind the opposite. Maybe I didn't work enough on it and they already exist, but more combat-oriented missions would be nice:
1)steal that component, disrupt this industry (I know some of them already exists but the pay doesn't make up for a 300 marines raid on a heavily fortified planet)
2)attack faction Trade fleet (a big one, and not an independent one)
3)something more political/crazy aligned. The main quest highlight quite a few interesting aspect of the pirates (Qaras political agenda, Kenta's Den genetic madness, Kaptayn Starworks information brokers). An idea would be an inspired pirate looking for AI cores or other factions blueprint for example).
But overall I'm still having much more fun than expected with pirates.
