[TOTAL CONVERSION] The Piratez Mod - 0.9.j - 9 May - Holiday Edition

[Dioxine]

Upping the damage might be one option. As for runts being able to manufacture them - nah, when you get the relevant tech, you get the 105mm missiles as well, and they're superior in all aspects.

[pilot00]

@pilot00: I'm not sure what you mean by "classed as a military vessel"? I have downed UFOs with those. In fact, currently I have the Bonny with 50mm + Charger laser and a hunter killer with 30mm + 25mm. The hunter killer can down large scouts by itself.

I mean not the freighters or scouts, or jumpers, but Gunships, Ordinators, Cruisers,Shrines, Bombers and the like. The game does make a distinction between them, usually a miltary vessel (Gunships,fighters, Heavy Gunships etc), have way more range and do way more damage. Thats what I meant. THe small stuff you can down with the starting craft but there is no hope of pitting the bonny against a military class ufo. The range alone is enough to blow you to smithereens with a cannon and given my experience I thought Id ask.

Personally I completely dissarmed the bonny and only tracked UFOs. If they landed I raided them for much time since I got the first researchable interceptor. And lost it when I mounted the cannons. Then I build Nightmares & up and mounted Stingrays on them. I got some of my dignity back that way but still you need multiple interceptors to be on the safe side. Now I have dragons with rail cannons and I am producing oblitorators.

Generally speaking I believe that the biggest problem is not the damage output but the range of several weapon systems. There are weapons (like the hammermite) that do a ton of damage but there is no chance for them to be fired due to range limitations, forcing you to use hunter pack tactics.

They might see more use in Extended version, as the Bonny will have 4 weapon slots, and nothing but Spikes to mount on 2 of them for a long time.

You will tackle with the UFOs too I assume yes? Else having interceptors or even the bonny been able to mount 4 Avalnces even with them been one shot will be overkill. Or at least relegate some weapons to special slots?

EDIT: BTW I got a gunboat with the gold mission but when I shot it down I got no gold after I raided it. Are they there as escorts for freighters? Because the hyper wave got no freighter, what gives? Bad luck ot I missed something?

[Arthanor]

I think I got a gunship (is that the "small" one? a two storey, long and narrow thing that you see front first). I still don't have a hyper-wave (somehow guessed it would take forever and decided to go for something else more needed). It did fire much earlier than I did, and put a lot of damage on the bonny, but proper timing of disengage allowed her to do some damage and enable the hunter-killer to finish it off (but also take some damage). Not something I would necessarily recommend, especially for raiders since they don't have much loot, but it was a month where there was very little activity anywhere and I was getting desperate. I was using spikes on one of the craft that time too, which is an occasion where being able to deal damage fast is very relevant.

Range is indeed the main issue in allowing you to tackle many UFOs, but using packs with designated tanks (and even multiple engagements over which different crafts tank damage) makes it feel like you are a primitive pirate trying to measure up to real armed folks and having to gang up on them. It is a LOT more interesting than vanilla interceptions and also forces you to manage damaged ships.

I try to learn patterns of the different ships and missions, like shrines and freighters mostly land so no need to engage, but will also shoot them down if I see they are just flying around. For shipping I can take on with the HK, I like to follow with both my HK and the Bonny, and if the Bonny loses it I know it is speeding up, then I engage the HK and make it crash before it goes away.

Does the time it takes to close the distance depend on something? If it did depend on, say, acceleration, it could allow for fast closing crafts to be equipped with high damage / low range weapons and come in after a tankier craft has attracted the fire. Would be a neat mechanic and allow for a wider range of weapons to be used. In general, it works better if shorter range weapons have higher dps and total damage, so it compensates for the time spent moving in. Then if you're going to be taking fire, might as well take it up close and deal more damage. Changes in reload times with stances are also very important (and not in the spreadsheet I have because they are not really displayed and I don't want to look at the ruleset).

[pilot00]

Range is indeed the main issue in allowing you to tackle many UFOs, but using packs with designated tanks (and even multiple engagements over which different crafts tank damage) makes it feel like you are a primitive pirate trying to measure up to real armed folks and having to gang up on them. It is a LOT more interesting than vanilla interceptions and also forces you to manage damaged ships.

Yeh, designated tanks are mandatory. The big problem is that the researchable early craft that is for that purpose, is slower than a crippled old lady trying to walk on a stick. Also the even funnier thing that a couple of researchable transports do its job way better, since they can tank and take weapons too, while not been as slow.

As to vanilla there was nothing of interest to say in there. Equip the interceptors with plasma beams, have a firestorm and an avenger (or even better two avengers) to tank the big ones and it was over.

I wonder if someone experimented by using the Avalances.

[Dioxine]

You will tackle with the UFOs too I assume yes? Else having interceptors or even the bonny been able to mount 4 Avalnces even with them been one shot will be overkill. Or at least relegate some weapons to special slots?

EDIT: BTW I got a gunboat with the gold mission but when I shot it down I got no gold after I raided it. Are they there as escorts for freighters? Because the hyper wave got no freighter, what gives? Bad luck ot I missed something?

1. Weapons will be divided in 3 classes: Light, Heavy, Missile (with Spikes and 105mm being early Heavies, counter-intuitively maybe; 50mm and 30mm being Light, while Naval Gun, Railgun etc. being Heavy, and full-fledged missiles, like Stingray, being, well, Missiles). Bonaventura will be able to mount 2 Light & 2 Heavy weapons, while HK (and other "balanced" fighters) will take 2 Light & 2 Missiles, with more exotic craft having different loadouts.

2. You shot down an escort ship. The gold is hauled by a Freighter. Just a single one, so it's easy to miss.

I think I got a gunship (is that the "small" one? a two storey, long and narrow thing that you see front first). I still don't have a hyper-wave (somehow guessed it would take forever and decided to go for something else more needed). It did fire much earlier than I did, and put a lot of damage on the bonny, but proper timing of disengage allowed her to do some damage and enable the hunter-killer to finish it off (but also take some damage). Not something I would necessarily recommend, especially for raiders since they don't have much loot, but it was a month where there was very little activity anywhere and I was getting desperate. I was using spikes on one of the craft that time too, which is an occasion where being able to deal damage fast is very relevant.

No, from your description, that was a Raider, mostly harmless compared to a Gunship.

Does the time it takes to close the distance depend on something? If it did depend on, say, acceleration, it could allow for fast closing crafts to be equipped with high damage / low range weapons and come in after a tankier craft has attracted the fire. Would be a neat mechanic and allow for a wider range of weapons to be used. In general, it works better if shorter range weapons have higher dps and total damage, so it compensates for the time spent moving in. Then if you're going to be taking fire, might as well take it up close and deal more damage. Changes in reload times with stances are also very important (and not in the spreadsheet I have because they are not really displayed and I don't want to look at the ruleset).

The closing speed can be affected only indirectly. Sometimes during the developement, the dev team doubled reload times on all weapons (yours and UFOs), and halved the approach speed. All my weapons stayed with old values, based on vanilla XCom, so the balance was severely shifted, naturally.

I am thinking about this. In the days of yore, the balance was shifted towards rapid-firing weapons, missiles were almost superflous, especially considering their cost. Now it is the other way around, missiles rule the day (at least until you get really long-range guns, like Obliterator or Plasma Beam). Maybe upping the reload rates on everything by about 50% would allow to strike some form of balance? This will translate in taking much less damage during approach. I might also try adding Dodge parameter to fighters, to increase their longevity (your ships ARE tiny compared to what the enemies fly, hence they have so little Health - but maybe the small size should also get you some bonuses).

Now about adding all this info - like re-arm time or Dodge if it becomes a thing - I'm not against it, but notice how little space there is to go about in both Crafts & Craft Weapon pedia articles... Especially after I added weapon loadouts to Craft descriptions, and Type & Ammo count to Craft Weapon descriptions... Yes it will be possible to cram more stats in, but at the price of obscuring more of the pictures / shortening the fluff decriptions.

[Arthanor]

No, from your description, that was a Raider, mostly harmless compared to a Gunship.

Ah, hum.. well, that is very possible. It did shoot a lot more than scouts, but I have encountered stuff that could blow my crafts up in barely a few shots too which looked similar, those must be the real gunships.

The closing speed can be affected only indirectly. Sometimes during the developement, the dev team doubled reload times on all weapons (yours and UFOs), and halved the approach speed. All my weapons stayed with old values, based on vanilla XCom, so the balance was severely shifted, naturally.
I am thinking about this. In the days of yore, the balance was shifted towards rapid-firing weapons, missiles were almost superflous, especially considering their cost. Now it is the other way around, missiles rule the day (at least until you get really long-range guns, like Obliterator or Plasma Beam). Maybe upping the reload rates on everything by about 50% would allow to strike some form of balance? This will translate in taking much less damage during approach. I might also try adding Dodge parameter to fighters, to increase their longevity (your ships ARE tiny compared to what the enemies fly, hence they have so little Health - but maybe the small size should also get you some bonuses).

Tweaking reload rates would be a nice way to boost the short range weapons. As long as the interception timers are changed to reflect that (so if it takes 50% longer to shoot, you also get 50% more time to shoot at it), it sounds like a good thing to me.

Now about adding all this info - like re-arm time or Dodge if it becomes a thing - I'm not against it, but notice how little space there is to go about in both Crafts & Craft Weapon pedia articles... Especially after I added weapon loadouts to Craft descriptions, and Type & Ammo count to Craft Weapon descriptions... Yes it will be possible to cram more stats in, but at the price of obscuring more of the pictures / shortening the fluff decriptions.

Yeah, I know.. I had the same issue with the XAE craft weapons. The space is tiny! Maybe a new feature that shows the multiple timers in the weapon's stats if they depend on stance? That would be a rather clean way of displaying the info, take advantage of the UI.. I'll post it in suggestions.

[Dioxine]

Yeah, I know.. I had the same issue with the XAE craft weapons. The space is tiny! Maybe a new feature that shows the multiple timers in the weapon's stats if they depend on stance? That would be a rather clean way of displaying the info, take advantage of the UI.. I'll post it in suggestions.

I've seen that done in one mod. With smaller font, it'd be possible to add Agrressive reload time (Cautious is defunct - there is no point whatsoever of making Cautious attacks now when you can disable weapons in battle), Ammo count and Rearm rate to the list of automatically displayed weapon features, freeing up the text space at the bottom. We'll see if Yankes decides to make such an upgrade Just don't count on such a feature to make it to the main build...

[pilot00]

I just saw what you did there with the dark ones

[Arthanor]

Man! I want to fight something special too! I'm stuck with crazy church goers with laser rifles..

Sort of on that note: Most faction seem to have something interesting to get when you fight them.

Traders have lots of loot and good ransom for an easy fight
- The Academy has voodoo and lots to research
- The church is full of lasers, got some voodoo and good ransoms
- Humanists.. not sure, I only saw a few.. but tanks at the very least..
- Mercenaries (or whoever the dudes with TftD armor are) have crazy tech

but raiders have been a bit.. lacking so far. They have starting pirate gear, are not worth much of a ransom, don't seem to know much except about some guns I've never seen (and stone hatchets!) and their ships don't even have nuclear fuel and little plastasteel to loot.

Seeing how they're robust healthy mutants, maybe they should make good slaves? Then the goal when fighting them could be to capture and enslave them, making you a mutant warlord. This would taint the otherwise rather nice vibe of fighting against the corrupt establishment and defending the innocents from pogroms? Plus it seems like the slavery system is a bit undervalued for such an innovative feature. Most of the time, ransoming captives is much more profitable than enslaving them. You can build a whole vault from ransoming a few GOs who would otherwise only net you 1.5 storage space each.

@Dioxine: You saw a mod that did it? Or a different game?

By now, I don't really mind what cool feature makes it or not in the main build. I'm on linux which means that if I want something else than 1.0 I need to compile it myself, so I need the code any ways. Although I can't code in C++, I am developping enough knowledge of git to apply patches that I like before compiling. Right now I have manufacturing profit, Ivan's melee statstring and Warboy's alien containment fix. Even though the last two were put in the main build later than what is compatible with Piratez, I applied them to the April 28th version and it worked like a charm.

If I ever have time to learn some C++, I'll probably work on tweaking the code as well. But for now, being a Pirate is my hobby, not coding!

[Dioxine]

I just saw what you did there with the dark ones

How comes? You didn't see the .rul file yet, unless you speak of that minor change of disabling the bleeding (Demons and Fatal Wounds? Come on). I might even add some hp regen/turn for them...

but raiders have been a bit.. lacking so far. They have starting pirate gear, are not worth much of a ransom, don't seem to know much except about some guns I've never seen (and stone hatchets!) and their ships don't even have nuclear fuel and little plastasteel to loot.

Seeing how they're robust healthy mutants, maybe they should make good slaves? Then the goal when fighting them could be to capture and enslave them, making you a mutant warlord. This would taint the otherwise rather nice vibe of fighting against the corrupt establishment and defending the innocents from pogroms? Plus it seems like the slavery system is a bit undervalued for such an innovative feature. Most of the time, ransoming captives is much more profitable than enslaving them. You can build a whole vault from ransoming a few GOs who would otherwise only net you 1.5 storage space each.

Why, the main purpose of any enemy is to ruin your day, period I agree they're a bit boring, though, and more will be added at some point...

But seriously, there are a few problems with your following statement:
1. They might be strong and healthy, but they have an attitude, kinda levelling this one out. Sure it wouldn't matter if you worked them to death, but this is obviously not the case here - the slavery model the gals indulge in seems closer to the Greek/Egyptian (yes I do love ancient Egypt) one, than the Roman one...
2. JUST a mutant warlord? What a lack of ambition, dude Star Gods would love if you became just another mutant warlord. Which is ultimately just another cog in their system. You need to play this one to the ending EDIT: man this really calls for an alternate ending... If that was only possible...
3. Well... there is just this much I can do with the game limitation. The main boon (and the underlying reason) of slavery is extra loot you get from enslaving captives. Storage space is just a little extra (and sometimes, you really lack building space for that 10th Vault...). Rob & Execute alternative seemed too Dwarf Fortress, AND too wasteful. If you have any ideas on making slavery more fun, go ahead - so far I haven't come up with anything better, but I'm always open to good ideas.
4. Why taint what little good vibe there is? You're still building an empire on a mountain of corpses, any positive aspect is welcome Also with so much boobs in this mod (boobs = optimism), making this TOO grimdarkish would make the message... well... somehow deviated, uncool, unhealthy.

@Dioxine: You saw a mod that did it? Or a different game?

Yeah it was in a mod, don't remember whose, though - Hellrazor's? Not sure. C++ isn't that hard if you have any programming experience. Loops, variables and conditionals make all languages equal. All it takes is a lot of commitment and online manuals. However, even though you'd be able to compile an improved executable for yourself, the problem is the standard - everyone who DL's this mod should get the same features. Although if you make a piece of a code, the chances of it being included in any mainstream build do indeed increase a lot

[pilot00]

How comes? You didn't see the .rul file yet, unless you speak of that minor change of disabling the bleeding (Demons and Fatal Wounds? Come on). I might even add some hp regen/turn for them...

No. I just encountered them for the first time. I am not speaking about the extended modifications.
I grabbed a few and I got the researches...I mean blood for the blood god. Even from Doom.... 
I already have two outfited terminator gals, now it seems I have to oufit some Khorne Berserkers as well.

The only thing that should be done immediately regarding this, is to make them have different ranks, cause it gets confusing in the research tabs.

Man! I want to fight something special too! I'm stuck with crazy church goers with laser rifles..

Dissasemble them, they are God send trust me. You will need many.

I have the feeling that my entire campaign turned upside down: First I had an Academy base on the first two months. Then the mercs came in Huge numbers and build 2-3 bases. After blood sweat tears and spitting teeth,I got teched up, I got my first raiders...I had power armor and railguns and I got raiders....Then Humanists.....And now that I have psi gals this....Eh well....It was relaxing at least and I was getting pissed off not getting any probes. Now I want a Pyramid of pain mission.

3. Well... there is just this much I can do with the game limitation. The main boon (and the underlying reason) of slavery is extra loot you get from enslaving captives. Storage space is just a little extra (and sometimes, you really lack building space for that 10th Vault...). Rob & Execute alternative seemed too Dwarf Fortress, AND too wasteful. If you have any ideas on making slavery more fun, go ahead - so far I haven't come up with anything better, but I'm always open to good ideas.

Well one avenue could be coding a small % (like 5%?) that you could make them see the light and turn over to you? That might be usefull to get some Runts or Brainers or even soldiers. But ofc not everyone should be liable to it. I was thinking something like: Academy Medics -> Brainer, Female Raiders (Buzzards and Scouts) -> Soldier, and one the faction Engineers as Runts, well there are no female engineers in them so.... OR even something like: The voodo, school requires an enslaved  Esper/Cardinal/Provost except the money to be build, supposedly you enslaved the bastard/bitch and now teaches your bitches voodo.

But on the other hand, it might get too much. Still 5% is low enough and having those are prerequisites my get the difficulty more upwards for no reason at all....Dunno really.

[Dioxine]

Well one avenue could be coding a small % (like 5%?) that you could make them see the light and turn over to you? That might be usefull to get some Runts or Brainers or even soldiers. But ofc not everyone should be liable to it. I was thinking something like: Academy Medics -> Brainer, Female Raiders (Buzzards and Scouts) -> Soldier, and one the faction Engineers as Runts, well there are no female engineers in them so.... OR even something like: The voodo, school requires an enslaved  Esper/Cardinal/Provost except the money to be build, supposedly you enslaved the bastard/bitch and now teaches your bitches voodo.

But on the other hand, it might get too much. Still 5% is low enough and having those are prerequisites my get the difficulty more upwards for no reason at all....Dunno really.

Great idea, sadly impossible to implement without a very invasive code surgery that I won't even dare to ask One possibily would be say processing 20 slaves into a single loyal combatant - but it would have to be a HWP-type unit, and those are sort of borken since the mid-April HWP code fixes (weapon handobs for Fixed weapons aren't displayed since then).
Another idea was for EVERY slave to be a HWP-type unit, with absolutely minimal Bravery (and in most cases, Psi Str as well), so having many slaves would be really a mixed blessing in the case of a base defense...

And also a new idea appeared today - for every enemy vessel to have some craft ammo as a random loot; that way you could replenish your Spike missiles and other crappy weapons (and even better ones, if you take down a better ship) without resorting to the black market too much.

EDIT: I simply had to share. Blaster Launchers - unsafe on any setting. And the only setting they have at Academy is Extended Suicide setting. That had to be the multikill of the year - I bet even Hellrazor would be hard pressed to one-top it.
Setting normal, "ironman with saves (because testing)", random base defence, AI Turn 1.

EDIT2: It wasn't a suicide... the shooter was an Academy Provost. And she survived the blast. And people tell me their bosses are bad...

[pilot00]

Great idea, sadly impossible to implement without a very invasive code surgery that I won't even dare to ask One possibily would be say processing 20 slaves into a single loyal combatant - but it would have to be a HWP-type unit, and those are sort of borken since the mid-April HWP code fixes (weapon handobs for Fixed weapons aren't displayed since then).
Another idea was for EVERY slave to be a HWP-type unit, with absolutely minimal Bravery (and in most cases, Psi Str as well), so having many slaves would be really a mixed blessing in the case of a base defense...

Perhaps you can combine this with an "Arena" building to do the processing that will have the added effect of giving some bonuses to the gals akin to a training building: Assign the gals, assign the slaves. They duke it out at the end of the month, the Gals get some random minor stat boosts. And either all the slaves are dead, or you get a soldier/HWP? But I believe this will be MORE difficult to implement. Ideas I have galore, skill to implement them? Tottal 0.

And also a new idea appeared today - for every enemy vessel to have some craft ammo as a random loot; that way you could replenish your Spike missiles and other crappy weapons (and even better ones, if you take down a better ship) without resorting to the black market too much.

But they dont have / use this kind of weapons do they? Or the extended allows you to change their weapons type? Personally I would slightly increase the probability of Freighter spawns, decrease the score damage they do if they succeed at their mission, and load the craft munitions on them as extra cargo.
But that might be a bit too complex...

BTW has anyone had any trouble with Trader Cruisers? After I shot them down I seem to get crashes every time I start the mission and its only when on Traders for some reason, other factions work ok.

EDIT: I simply had to share. Blaster Launchers - unsafe on any setting. And the only setting they have at Academy is Extended Suicide setting. That had to be the multikill of the year - I bet even Hellrazor would be hard pressed to one-top it.
Setting normal, "ironman with saves (because testing)", random base defence, AI Turn 1.

Can confirm. They 90% of the time suicide, though I ate a rocket in the face twice.

I am starting to believe the hideout shroud is too OP, since so far I had no raids.Then again everything with the word: Crackdown gets blasted to hell but still....

[Arthanor]

@pilot: I did research some, and maybe even the disassembly.. but didn't push further. Too much to research!!

@Dioxine: I agree with most of your statements. I think the ambition to be a mutant warlord is what you get at the beginning when you are just a wannabe pirate (I'm still at that stage). Once you become the warlord, of course you want more! But I'm not there yet

Every enemy is supposed to be a pain, of course, but there should be a reward as well. Otherwise what's the point? You don't go get your gals killed for nothing. It's either loot/money/ransom, tech or points (ex.: pogrom). But the raiders don't really give any. They don't even have nuclear fuel?!

Great idea, sadly impossible to implement without a very invasive code surgery that I won't even dare to ask

Didn't Yankes just add the possibility of buildings to require items? I could swear I saw that.. Needing broken trader engineers to build fancy workshops or an "enslaved voddo witch" for the voodoo stuff could be cool and represent that they are needed to supervise building and running the facilities since the gals don't really know what they are doing.

One possibily would be say processing 20 slaves into a single loyal combatant - but it would have to be a HWP-type unit, and those are sort of borken since the mid-April HWP code fixes (weapon handobs for Fixed weapons aren't displayed since then).
Another idea was for EVERY slave to be a HWP-type unit, with absolutely minimal Bravery (and in most cases, Psi Str as well), so having many slaves would be really a mixed blessing in the case of a base defense...

The "gladiator" slave conversion is interesting. Take 20 slaves, have them fight to death and end up with a HWP warrior. Or even an actual dedicated ammo runt/servitor with great carrying capacity but not much else. Do you lose weapons equiped by HWPs at the end of the mission or recover then? If you don't lose the items, it could be possible to have a "HWP-soldier" with no weapons, that you have to equip just like everyone else.

The "soldier slave swarm" idea could be flavourful, but if they become too much of a liability they might just get sold too.

And also a new idea appeared today - for every enemy vessel to have some craft ammo as a random loot; that way you could replenish your Spike missiles and other crappy weapons (and even better ones, if you take down a better ship) without resorting to the black market too much.

Recovering ammo (or even craft weapons? or craft weapon components) would be a great thing to add. The more looting the happier a pirate I will be

Re: Blaster Launcher: That's NUTS. Good thing the hideout is built with strong walls and doors..!

[Dioxine]

Every enemy is supposed to be a pain, of course, but there should be a reward as well. Otherwise what's the point? You don't go get your gals killed for nothing. It's either loot/money/ransom, tech or points (ex.: pogrom). But the raiders don't really give any. They don't even have nuclear fuel?!

Whoa whoa, dude, hold your horses there. There are some crucial tech you need Raiders for. The fact fighting their Raider ships doesn't shower you with endless loot? Yeah well, you don't have to fight them. While I agree they aren't meaty enough yet, you're asking the impossible. Not every ship has Nuclear Fuel, else you'll be swimming in it. You still do. Not every mission will pay off; it cannot else the game would run out of rewards to give really soon, and Piratez are meant to be a long campaign. Risk to reward assesment is your choice.

Didn't Yankes just add the possibility of buildings to require items? I could swear I saw that.. Needing broken trader engineers to build fancy workshops or an "enslaved voddo witch" for the voodoo stuff could be cool and represent that they are needed to supervise building and running the facilities since the gals don't really know what they are doing.

Well yeah maybe, but once you starting to get slaves, you get them by the dozen. Also this would, indeed, make an impression that the pirate gals are dumb bitches who need help with everything. No. They are not. This would go against one of the axioms of the design here.

The "gladiator" slave conversion is interesting. Take 20 slaves, have them fight to death and end up with a HWP warrior. Or even an actual dedicated ammo runt/servitor with great carrying capacity but not much else. Do you lose weapons equiped by HWPs at the end of the mission or recover then? If you don't lose the items, it could be possible to have a "HWP-soldier" with no weapons, that you have to equip just like everyone else.

Umm... gladiatorial pit would only produce a random survivor who is anything but loyal, and more likely than not a poor soldier, with no skill at team play and no courage  I was rather thinking, you know, about giving them the choice of freedom or brotherhood - to go back to work & worry, or joining the crew for guns & glory

Sadly you lose these weapons... And really I prefer the "black box" HWP for the design reasons - so the focus is on the gals, and you customize the squad by getting certain types of Aux units, instead of arming them up. Well. Dogs work differently, a bit, but dogs be dogs And I didn't mean this as an absolute, either.

The "soldier slave swarm" idea could be flavourful, but if they become too much of a liability they might just get sold too.

A wild idea that is. Sort of an anti-spamming measure. I probably won't use this.

Recovering ammo (or even craft weapons? or craft weapon components) would be a great thing to add. The more looting the happier a pirate I will be

Well, as Pilot said, the enemy vessels seem to be using... a generic some-sort of a plasma weapon or something. So adding primitive ammo as loot might raise questions. On the other hand, it cannot be like, everyone has plasma all the time. And loot is cool. Might be a thing to make, for example, Raider ships to be less boring...