Hello,
All in the title in 4x games I always wanted to play pirates
It's involve an alternative gameplay (and a lot of work probably)
here is some of my idea
Pirates may :
- build sips
- build stellar bases
- loot cargo ship
- take hostage an unarmed ship (an explorer...) and release it for a ransom (not 2 times the same ship...)
- players could pay pirates to protect cargo ship (extorsion)
- spy others players
- accept contracts like mercenaries against a player or a fleet or a ship in particular (such as in Sin of a solar empire)
- controlling a black marcket (such as in Sin of a solar empire) where pirates and players could sell and by stollen (by pirates or normal players) or forbiden (by intergalactic laws) goods/ships/bases/technos...
- the black market could enable players to sell informations obtain by spying (infos on a fleet on a player, on a planet...) > so a more complexe spying
- the black market could allow auctions sales or sales with a fix prices
- normal player pay pirate to sell in a black market
- normal player pay a percentage for each transactions to pirates ?
- corrupt players politicians and then sell (on the back market) or use corrupted votes to influence political resolutions
- cost of corruption could be exponential
- a pirate win the game if corruption rate reach a score (>50% for all players?)
- they could (should) be different clans of pirates compete against themself (1 pirate / 3 players ?)
I don't know if this is enough to be intersting...