The "Shepard" is one of my favourite ships; it's cute, got logistic utility and if you slap a salamander on it, it can be quite good support early game in combination with it's drones.
Hence I think it would be fun with a new variant of it, A (P) type, which in pirate fashion either is a regular "Shepard" with just a neat paint job, or upgunning it through some pirate tinkering, maybe the drones are made more deadly?
Or it could get a new ship system, of the top of my mind a really cool system could be a kinetic version of "Termination sequence" from the "Tempest", one of the "Borer drones" overcharges it's laser and rams target enemy ship dealing mediocre energy and kinetic damage (on a decently long cooldown so it won't be to tedious to face). This system feels pretty in line with the pirate faction and expands on the unique feature of the "Shepard".
Or just swap "Manuovering Jets" for "Burn Drive" and give it a bigger gun in typical pirate fashion. The sky is the limit after all.
