These sptires are not actually pirates-only. Currently these can be seen run by FTG mercs (and this is bad, btw).
OK. I think Ironclads are ready for a public testing. Here is an archive:
http://www.lordsofthestars.com/other/Sector/ironclads8.0.zipWhat will you get?- economy system as in vanilla with several new commodities and reworked market conditions.
- 4 major factions with at least 3 controlled systems. Each faction has it`s own imports and exports they depend on.
- pirates that have 4 hideouts (you`ll have to find those) and fancy new skins.
- neutral-to-all (except pirates) Free Traders Guild that runs 4 trade hubs 1 per faction and have a military-type market on one of these.
- a number of starting choices that will allow you to start in certain faction`s territory, have specific starting relationships with factions or even start as a pirate.
- 4 smuggler-oriented ships with built-in shielded cargo holds (Smuggler choice starts with these).
- some new penalising hull mods (built-in in most of the pirate skins) that block specific hull-mods. Shielded Cargo Holds as an obtainable via skills hull-mod.
What will not you get?- basically everything not listed above that was present in older Ironclads version. To be specific - no mining, salvagable wrecks, reactivated abandoned stations, conversions and etc.
What are the known issues?- FFS placeholder faction with default flag. They are in the current version just to make relationship system to work.
- mercs using pirate skins - this is a nasty feature of 0.65 that turnes indies into pirates and vice versa. Haven`t yet figured out how to remove this.
- pirates being an owerwhelming force due to abundance of the markets in game (in 0.65 they are coded to spawn per EACH market in certain amounts).
- default sprites for stations that look a bit out of place and don`t match factions` styles.
What should you report?- text errors. There are many new texts (planet names, port texts, ship/commodities/market descriptions and etc.).
- odd looking/misplaced/overlapping planets, rings, stations and etc.
- some odd economy situations (major colonies markets having less than 30% demands met, markets with more than 10000 units of one of the commodities except food, overproduced crew at planets/stations and etc).
- problems with starting choices (texts mismatching what you get, ships/stuff not being provided, options not working, relationship not being updated).
- any crashes or startup issues.