i think there a few good fixes to the problem.
1 - Pirate strength is proportional to bounty. So what happens is that every player bids an amount as a sort of 'contribution' to the pirate supply.
After time limit - pirate attacks the player who paid the pirate least with a strength and fleet size that is proportional to the total amount of contributions from other players.
(And they would whisper things like "Where are you hiding the rest of the money!?" or "So... you look down us pirates do you?")
1a - Pirate strengths would of course increase with the passage of time but to a limit that makes them less powerful than Kodiaks or strong cruisers. Empires would pay pirates, but definitely not supply them with powerful tech.
1s - S is for summary. This way, players can choose whether they want the pirates to be strong or not, because if no one pays, then the pirate attacks all or one person randomly with a 'midget fleet' and the guy shrugs it off with a starbase.
(The following is inspired from the many "O the bad guys have captured the Big Guns so they are now the Big Bad Guys!" scenarios)
2 - Pirates have captured a deathstar, (Thats their base, at least its better than a glowing asteriod right?). And they collect money from players who DONT want to get shot at with the deathstar. Of course all this deathstar does is shoot at planets and make the units in that grav well take damage.
2a - Well perhaps the person who pays the most gets to bribe the pirates into attacking a target of choice. Or one could do "Underhand deals" that no other player would know of. BUT there is a 40% chance that the pirate would "let slip" such info to the target, causing the target to know and try to outbid the pirate into attacking the original targeter.
E.g of 2 and 2a.
Player 1 = Tom
Player 2 = Jimmy
Pirates = Pirate.
E.g of 2:
Tom outbids all players to hire Pirates to use deathstar to blast one of Jimmy's systems. Jimmy's system gets blasted (but not his homeworld of course)
E.g of 2a:
i ) Tom Offers Pirate a mission (under the table) to blast Jimmy.
ii ) Theres a 40% chance that Pirate would tell Jimmy that Tom offered Pirate to blast Jimmy with a bid of 10k, but Jimmy CAN outbid Tom in like 60 seconds. (GONE IN 60seconds pun INTENDED!)
iii ) If Jimmy choose to outbid Tom (There'd be a screen with a "Outbid by 500?" screen shown, and its 500, no more no less).
iv ) Tom is now targetted by Pirate, but theres a 54% chance that Pirate would tell Tom that Jimmy outbidded him, and can now choose to increase his Original offer by 600). [THIS IS FINAL]
v ) Pirate then nukes Jimmy. BUT there is probably like a 1-2% chance that Pirate takes both players money and nukes them both lol. That'd be friggin fun, then both players would set aside their differences temporarily (Think fast!: Offer Ceasefire) and attack the pirate base.
vi ) If pirate base is attacked, and the deathstar's hp is reduced, then the pirates have a 65% chance to whisper "GARRRRGGHHHH There will be more after us!) [Since pirates are but vagrants, and there is ALWAYS a Pariah class]. But they have a 35% chance to whisper "You will go down... not later, but NOW WITH ME!" , he then overloads the deathstar and all player ships have 4 minutes to get the hell out of the gravity well or take 8k damage. (4mins is lesser if Ship Speed is increased). This Overload also prevents both Jimmy and Tom to turn their ships on each other after killing the pirates.
vii) After a period of time, pirates return to system as vagrants and start rebuilding forces. (There is of course an option called "Pirates can rebuild deathstar?" in Game Options, set to FALSE)
What do you guys think?
