That's not exactly what I'm thinking of, but it is one way to do it.

I was thinking of giving the pirates access to stuff like extra hull/damage/armor, based on their aggression level. This would make them individually more dangerous as the pirate level increases. Your mod seems to pull that off pretty well, but it won't allow other things I'm looking for.

I also would use it to give pirate ships some special abilities to work with. Perhaps hull repair for the scout, a cripple for the bigger one, I dunno. But these are abilities I want to have locked out early in the game, as they're supposed to be fairly effective and dangerous in the later stages.

The main reason is I want to control the level of capital ships produced by the pirate fleet.(Still working on getting them caps, though!) By using a rigged tech similar to the advent's mass transcendence, it'd pop the capital ships up to the desired level before they went out raiding.

A tall order, I'm sure. I doubt that it would be possible without some serious digging, or until modding tools come out.

That's actually a pretty good way to do it. That's probably the way I'll make it work. I'm still working on other issues I'm having with pirates, though.