Having pirate allies at the moment for the TEC Rebels is a very awesome concept.

However, both I and others have noticed that the pirates generated from Pirate Mercenaries ability are pretty random. "Oh Hey I have 150 supply, let me start on a capi- . . . whoa. It's now 9 supply . . ." And then a whole bunch of pirates spawn. Free units are awesome, but this ability could use some fine tuning.

Note: I have no idea how, when, where, or why the pirate allies spawn. I may be missing some key point, rendering some of these suggestions moot.

Current situation:

You research Pirate Mercenaries. You get (what seems to be) a random amount of pirates at a random location without any input or notifications.

Here are some suggestions:

1. Get the same amount of pirates that we are getting now (assuming we have the supply) every time the pirate ticker reaches its limit and a pirate invasion of another player occurs. I believe this is every 10 minutes, and there is the invasion ticker visible, so this can allow us to guess when we are getting pirates. As for where? I suggest the closest planet you own to the pirate base. This gives us about 10 minutes to deal with the pirate reinforcements and to plan around it. This is probably the simplest of my suggestions.

PROBLEM: The biggest problem with this suggestion is if you play with pirates off, there is no ticker. Also this may require planning ahead for when you buy a large amount of supply for say, a Titan, and 10 minutes may not be enough. So let's try . . .

(Note: all the following suggestions require the use of a newly designed interface in either the Diplomacy/Bounty/Black Market screens or from buildings)

2. Give the pirate mission/bounty screen some sort of "Pirate Reinforcements" screen with a countdown, a suggested force size, and a location. So "A [moderate] amount of Pirate reinforcements will arrive Enceladus in 4:00."

PROBLEM: This is a little more descriptive, but you still are limited to the time that they spawn and may not be able to react accordingly.

3. Have option 2 without the ticker, but with the ability to accept or deny the pirates. So it will be almost like missions. Like "Six Pirate  Cutthroats wish to join you at Altea, would you like to accept?"

PROBLEM: You can miss this if you don't check your hypothetical Diplomacy/Bounty screen. You have to decide whether these are one shot deals or if they stack up to a certain limit to accept them later, sort of like handshake pacts.

4. Have a Pirate Black Market. Allow you to buy bulk pirates at a discount rate. This gets rid of the random aspect of the mercenaries, but we need to decide where this interface will be or which building they will spawn from.

5. Have the TEC Rebel equivalent of the Returning Armada. I am only posting this because RA is a precedent of sorts to this ability. Not sure which building would have the ability.

To be 100% honest, I do love getting free pirates, as it is really cool. So some of these suggestions I like way better than others. I just hope that there is a minor way to adjust it in a way that it stays unique to the TEC Rebels and in a way that isn't broken or unbalanced.

These are just a few suggestions that I have thought of. Feel free to add, critique, or make fun of them. I probably didn't think all of this through.