@pilot: That's weird.. As far as I can tell traders work fine for me (although I haven't seen any in a little while, been fighting other people recently). Maybe later in their tech levels they have something that breaks the game? It's still early in mine..
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.
I was merely saying there doesn't seem to be much of a point to fighting them once you stop being impressed by boarding guns. I am not asking to be showered in loot
If you tell me there is a point and I missed it, then I did and will keep looking. It is just that the point is less obvious than for other factions which have good loot and/or good ransoms so I haven't found it. Thinking back, I think they gave me the tech and vibro blades, which are indeed well worth it, and maybe powered tools? Can't remember how I got that.
Piratez is a very complex mod and it is easy to miss lots of stuff on a first play through, or do things pretty wrong (ex.: get 15 brainers before you can support them, then "waste" all the research on interrogations for fluff pieces instead of going for tech, which is exactly what I did. I've corrected a few things and now see guns much more favourably for example).
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.
Fair enough! I suspect there is a lot more use for booty than I have right now (Raiders' for vibro blades, Traders' for metal armor, and Academy's for my new tech toys). Once booty becomes more relevant, slavery will too as a mean to get more of it.
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
Haha, I said gladiatorial but I should have said something similar to 40k space marine type recruitment, where most die but you get the best candidates (hopefully?). But I guess we don't have years of psycho-indoctrination to make them be good soldiers. Too bad it's not possible to "manufacture" soldiers, converting raiders or mutants from pogroms would be cool.
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.
You're right, as cool as other stuff could be, the gals are the coolest!
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...
Maybe raiders shoot laser beams instead of plasma beams? I can't tell, but if they're using black powder guns and flying ships that don't need nuclear fuel, they could be running charger lasers like when we start. Getting some components from them, which could be worth money and/or useful to make laser craft weapons (or laser guided craft weapons!) could be cool.
Also I didn't say raiders were boring, did I? I certainly didn't mean to! They are interesting to fight because knowing that they aren't worth ransoming, you can go all out and not worry about the ransom opportunity cost of killing them. This makes for a much faster paced encounter that still isn't easy because mutants are tough and a boarding gun shot to the face still hurts.
On another topic, I did tackle a gunship and figured out through much save scumming that I can take it down with HK with 25&30mm cannons, Bonny with 50mm and a charger laser (~50% odds), but only at the cost of the Bonny getting destroyed and the HK finishing it off.. Obviously not a good deal. With a few stingray launchers it would be different. I am also making a CRAB now for tanking purposes. I'm not sure what pilot meant by slow.. it is almost as fast as a HK and much faster than the Bonny. I am eager to try a 3v1 with some stingrays!
And I'll end with a question: Is there a legend somewhere where I can find out what the s, S, S+, $ stuff actually translates to for slaves? I expect it goes in that order by quality (and probably value)?
Thanks again! I hope you don't mind my spamming your thread.
