What if, for a substantial fee in dust, you could hire a Pirate fleet for one engangement?



And the cost would depend on current PirateRaider technology. You wouldn't get to outfit them, or decide what size fleet they have. Just pay them to attack a target.



Bit of the ole' WhoDunnit

Ah, if pirates weren't such jokes I'd like to play a bit of that game: instigating pirate activity to have a deniable source of aggravation the enemy has to deal with. Right now pirates are so easy to deal with though I'd say it's not a great idea to charge Dust for their services.



I would, however, like an option where you can have one of your defense ministers leak to a pirate gang the defenselessness of a particular enemy world (likely a world they took from you recently). Depending on some variables we could decide later, a pirate group might spawn to attack and seize it, assuming it was undefended.



Recently conquered planets aren't all that useful to the enemy in the first place though: his first goal is to deny its productivity to you. I don't see this being hugely overpowered, just a little tedious unless something cool is done with it. I don't think there's enough time left in the development circle to do anything really neat with piracy though.

The pirates would make good cannonfodder and raiders, give them the ablity to pillage dust from systems and tamper with their productive ablitys, the enemy will come a running.

Heh Pirates certainly are turning into a popular topic...Yarr!



There is another thread here where similar discussion have been taking place.



I like the idea behind a kind of diplomatic interaction with the Pirates and even better, the idea of playing a Pirate Faction in ES!



Mercenaries sourced from these erratic cut throats and rogues would make for interesting strategic and tactical options both in MP and SP.



Besides maybe even paying them off to go annoy someone else would be worth all their weight in