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[Bungee_man]

If you offer Kanta a degraded nanoforge, she'll (or rather, Cydonia will) essentially respond with "Pssh, anyone can find one of those just lying around. It's all but worthless!". This is underscored by the fact that everyone else who might want one seems to have one, from the Luddics to the eternal underdogs at Nova Maxios.

It is worth noting that Kanta will install a pristine nanoforge at Kapteyn if one is given to her, so that's certainly where she'd put a nanoforge, if she had one. Given that the outer sector is crawling with pirates, you'd think one would have brought her a nanoforge at some point.


Of course, the Doylist explanation is the same reason Umbra does not have a fullerine spool for us to vibe check away from them. If a pirate planet had a desirable item that could be taken to immediately reduce the quality of pirate fleets everywhere, that'd be the first stop on every player's list, even ignoring the fact that the sale value of said item is less than that of the supplies that could be grabbed with a similar number of marines, simply because it's (relatively) unique, and the pirates are an enemy that the player generally wants to inflict permanent damage on.

That said, the Watsonian explanation gets trickier. Kapteyn Starworks being an Achilles' heel seems to be an in-universe truth, such that the player is regularly offered missions to knock it out for a little while as a means of teaching new players the economic and military usefulness of disabling a faction's heavy industry, creating shortages and crippling their fleets. If it's regularly raided, wouldn't they pursue an alternative solution (and wouldn't the people running the raids do something more permanent to it, like the player can, given the benefits of crippling piracy sector-wide)? It's hard to think of a level of raiding that would make keeping a nanoforge on hand non-viable but wouldn't encourage the pirates to spread out their production a little. Likewise, if it's safe enough for a pristine nanoforge to be put there if the pirates get one, why not a degraded one? Is it just that a pristine nanoforge would improve their defenses enough that they're no longer worried about raids?

[Nettle]

If you offer Kanta a degraded nanoforge, she'll (or rather, Cydonia will) essentially respond with "Pssh, anyone can find one of those just lying around. It's all but worthless!". This is underscored by the fact that everyone else who might want one seems to have one, from the Luddics to the eternal underdogs at Nova Maxios.

It's worth noting that Kanta mostly evaluates your gifts based on how much they will spite major powers or factions, and less so from practical perspective, she provides you protection whether you gift her Ibrahim's prized rust bucket or [REDACTED] bleeding edge capital, and her rational will be mostly the same in both cases - "haha nice they will be SEETHING once they find out". It's not like corrupted forges are worthless or anyone can get their hands on one, it just won't provoke other factions/powers as much and thus doesn't entertain Kanta enough.
Also most likely the actual out-of-universe reason is that Alex would want pirates to be fodder levels of power, they are the first enemy you are most likely to face on regular basis in early game phase.

[Supraluminal]

I mean, from a realism standpoint there would be no pirates anywhere near the core worlds. Why would the main factions tolerate large, well-known pirate starbases and colony worlds as neighbors? How would piracy be made profitable in highly-patrolled space? Or really at all - it's so much cheaper and less dangerous to go out and harvest the near-limitless raw materials available if you have economical space travel than it would be to bother with stealing stuff from angry, heavily-armed, star-spanning nations.

The answer is, Starsector runs on cartoon/pulp space-opera logic (if that), and it's cool to have pirates. Likewise, if it's convenient for either theme or gameplay reasons for them not to have a corrupted forge, they won't. Thinking hard about it will only lead to pain and suffering.

[Nick9]

Why would the main factions tolerate large, well-known pirate starbases and colony worlds as neighbors?

To use them against other neighbours. "Oh, there is a planet size 4 with patrols which rob your trade caravans so you always have a deficit?.. How dare you! They are just independent. If you try to invade them, the whole galactic community will invade you!.." or something among the lines is completely possible.

And of course it's a space opera. Imagine fighting with guns in space, when you could just take with you a bag with crushed stone. Considering superspeeds, such obstacle will demolish any shields/armor/hull in an instant.

[Doctorhealsgood]

It is a degraded nanoforge so not exactly something really worth stealing compared to the pristine ones. Pretty common in terms of colony items if i remember well.

[Candesce]

I suspect part of the problem with Kapteyn Starworks not having a degraded nanoforge is because they don't actually have the power (military or state) to keep some mercenary or brigand from taking it from them.

There are pretty common missions to knock over Kapteyn's starport and orbital works, and they're not exactly hard missions; degraded nanoforges might not be that rare, but they're still expensive, and they're apparently quite portable, you know?

[Doctorhealsgood]

Isn't on the story raiding kanta to get zal out by force very very hard?
EDIT: Nevermind i am tired and somehow mixed places up