Feedback Requested: Pirates and Crime

[Foxosaur]

Crime is just that... Thing that could be more but also annoys me the thought of making it more, because the game puts a lot of demand on me to manage it when the game expects so much from a player as it is. When it happens, it doesn't reward me for beating it, just stops punishing me. So that logic could be improved, if nothing else to 'feel different' than it is now.

I also think that the megacorp that utitilise this way of playing needs work as does the UI for holdings itself.


Piracy, on the other hand, I think should exist more than it does and blockades be a feature of an uprising, coup or other strategy. I even think there is room for piracy to be an actual faction that someone can play as. No grand designs needed other than maybe seeking to rival and compete against maurauders.

For how trade works with piracy, I personally think it's ok, I normally never need more than one or two star bases to bring them back to a good level of efficiency. Instead it's the pirate fleets that spawns in the late that annoy me and are simply ignorable and seemingly the AI ignores them in the late game as well.

 

[Vlad123]

Some highlights from my end.

Pirates are just annoyance, not a threat, do nothing, and I've played for years with a mod that removes them entirely for the good of my stations and sanity. and Ai's ability to handle them.

It makes no sense that a Fortress Station, at the key bottleneck, creates piracy by being connected to trade network. And then creates Zero piracy if disconnected manually. - Also why I tend to disconnect 99% of my stations from trade as the way the trade routes work, can just make some random system a piracy stronghold because instead of going from A B C, the trade route decides to go the route of A E G V A C, creating mystery piracy and utterly wonky patrol routes.
Related note: But its insane that core worlds tend to create most piracy, but the borderland which has not seen a single fleet in past 200 years, with zero stations causes no piracy at all. Despite usually, such regions by even the most simple logic, should be hot spots of crime due to negligence and lack of centralized authority.

Crime is always either at Zero, or at 100, with no inbetween. And its extremely easy to just remove with one or two clicks or a single building, unless you are going for some extreme meme games, such as one planet challenge, where the single ecumenopolis / ring world is so full of population that the crime fighting just is a lost cause.

The fact Crime does not affect Piracy is also weird, as Pirates should not come from nowhere, but they should come from unrest, lack of stability, and crime.
Planet Sized Mall should not create piracy just because it is not connected to a station conga line, when the crime on the said mall is at zero.

The Fleet ledger and UI for fleets fighting piracy is bad. Just bad. and its annoying to no end to have a Mainfleet1, mainfleet2, AntiPiracyFleet1, Bubbles, MF3, APF3. I can't wait for the ability to re-arrange my fleets in the future.

EHY! Bubbles is Bubbles! Don't touch bubbles! he is cute!

 

[Karlb]

My most pressing concern with crime is the criminal megacorps impact when they establish branch offices. The crime impact is really really high and the only way to get rid of them is with war.
I would like to see the impact be more scaled, and have some different options to get rid of them

1. Have a planetary decision
2. use the army
3. special project
4. diplomacy (ie pay/threaten them to leave)
5. Rework the enforcer buildings to scale or not take up a slot or something, its useless for the most part when you have no crime.
6. Some kind of villainous characters with events would be fun, think like Soren or the Duras sisters from star trek where they want to blow up a star or just plain old get vengeance on one of your leaders.

The other thing is that they block other mega corps from having a branch office, which is annoying.. honestly you should be allowed to have more than one mega corp branch per planet I think, this would make that mechanic less frustrating to play (maybe increased influence cost per branch office on the planet already or something)

Piracy on the other hand, is kind of annoying but not really impactful or compelling. I think after you guys re-work trade you could put in some piracy mechanics

1. Have a few pirate related narrative events
2. Make privateer and letters of marque a thing
3. Have consequences if you suddenly unemploy a bunch of pirates
4. Expand that event where smugglers set up on pre-FTL worlds
5. Create a black market, where you can buy things (incl pops) at a reduced price with some negative consequence, like rep damage or chance of causing pirates to spawn
6. A Galactic Renegades DLC with a cast of unsavory (salty?) characters would be a great idea for one of the smaller expansions.

 

[UGERTIO]

Well, as an active player, I can say that the game has only a smattering of crime. And no piracy mechanics at all.
I'll start with the latter. Not well formally in the game there are pirates, if you do not suppress pirates on trade routes, there will be pirates who will do dirt, but that would not have them enough 3 cheapest ships in the game on patrol.
And here is a stump from crime, it just means that within a particular planet crime can be a problem, and even interesting eventualities arise, but all this splendour is fixed by a couple of police stations, and even a crime syndicate will be forced to flee the planet.
What's missing is something really important and big. For example, that a corrupt governor would sell the border systems to a neighbouring empire, that within the country there would be a rise of criminal organisations that would become an international problem. That they for example smuggle illegal migrants, or import illegal drugs to undermine empires, or hackers who steal technology for the benefit of other empires, that's the scale that's missing. Because all the conversation with crime is very short: colonise the planet, the first building is a police station, which is enough until the end of the game. And with pirates: build a station, and let 3 corvettes patrol to it. That's all the crime in the game

Translated with DeepL.com (free version)

 

[Wise Strategist]

Pirates in Stellaris are dumb. They come out of hiding, attack a star base of whoever's territory they’re in, set up shop after disabling it, and then expect what, for the galactic power they attacked to NOT send a fleet to destroy them? Whoever is leading them must have some of the biggest balls in the galaxy or be one of most delusional fools in the galaxy.

Pirates, criminal, and trade protection in Stellaris need some rework and Criminal Syndicates can play a big role in causing empire major headaches. Here are some suggestions:

Piracy needs to hurt: Letting it get too high should have at least some impact on an empire’s resources, perhaps something like a 1% percent penalty on resources generated from planets and stations in system for every 50 points of piracy.

> Flush the Basterds out: Pirates and their bases could have to be flushed out by patrolling fleets, and the more piracy in a system the stronger the pirate fleet and more bases the fleets could discovered and have to destroy.

> Mercenaries vs Pirates: For a reasonable monthly fee mercenary enclaves could provide an anti-piracy agreement that gives players a renewal empire-wide bonus to their trade protection, base on the strength of the mercenary’s fleet.

Trade, Trade Protection and Patrols: I know this thread is for discussing piracy and crime, but it can’t be disconnected from trade that is pirates target, and trade and patrol routes have an annoying pathfinding issue when using both gateways and hyper lanes. They will chart elaborate courses requiring 6-10 jumps to get from point A to point B rather than the more direct route that could only require 4 jump. It’s annoying and forces you to send and all trade two a single station leading to an overloaded trade route between that station and your capital, generating shit tons of piracy, and requiring one or more dedicated fleets to keep things under control. This is probably due with how trade value is gathered, with one system’s trade value being collected by across a gateway by a station half way across your empire instead of the trade station set up in its sector. So here’s how I suggest solving this issue:

> Sector Centers of Trade: Have each sector have a designated center of trade where all trade value in that sector is collected regardless of distance. By default this could be the sector capital, but player should have the ability to give that designation to any upgraded Starbase or planet in the sector. These centers of trade will then generate the trade route, that using the same path finding logic as fleets will send all trade value and resources to the empire’s capital.

> Let us Manually set trade and patrol routes: Allow players to be able to manually set up patrol and trade routes. They can still be set automatically, but players should be able to change what paths they’re going along as they see fit. Especially if anything ever goes wrong with game’s path finding logic.

> Trade Protection Buildings and defense platforms: Add a new building for stations or planets that generates large amounts of trade protection. It would also be nice if the fighter hangers for defense platforms could also provide some measure of trade protection.

Crime and Criminal Syndicates: The current mechanics around crime could use some rework. Here’s some suggestions

> Have crime generate some instability: From what I’ve seen, unless I’ve missed something, crime only seems to effect stability if the planet gets one of the crime focused negative modifiers. I think it would be better if at least a small amount of instability was generated for each point of crime on the planet. Alternatively, you could also have it to where a small amount of crime starts generating whenever planet stability reaches below 50%.

> Have crime impact resource production and pop happiness: This could help make crime a bigger issue, and reduce the temptation of making deals with crime lords. However, if one does make such a deal the can get a large increase in planet stability, and negate some of loss of production, but your pops will still be unhappy with the situation.

> Black market benefits from Crime: Right now, the black market is just a slave market it provides no other benefit. So how about giving other services on top of enhancing the slave market.

- Galactic Crime Rate stat: Could be viewable in the black market/slave market tab. This number is the difference of the total amount of piracy and planet level crime in the galaxy vs. the total amount of trade protection generated by empire’s fleets and crime reduction from filled enforcer jobs and leaders.

- Black Market strength stat: Basically, this measure of the black market’s strength and influence in galactic affairs measured as a percentage. Every time the player or another empire purchases a good or service from the black market this number increases depending on the amount of money spent. It’s minimum default level of strength could be determine by the galactic crime rate. However, at 50% strength, it will start to generate small of crime on all colonized planets, with that amount increasing by 1pt for every percentage point pass fifty percent.

- A more anonymous slave market: Right slaves only appear when empire seeks to sell pops for some extra energy credits. Rather than relay on that alone how about having it to where, depending the level of crime on a planet there is a small chance for pops to start going missing and showing up in the slave market. It could using a system similar to the to the Vivarium used for breeding captured space fauna, but one hidden from the player.

- Espionage and Information Brokage: Have the black market allow Empires to purchase intel on one another. In addition to conducting some espionage operations without the need for envoy acting as a spy master. There could even be a few operations unique to the black market and criminal syndicates (more on this below). How successful and effective the operation is could depend on the strength of the black market, the target level of encryption, and the amount of law enforcement pops operating in the target empire.

- Greater resource purchases in exchange for higher crime: The black could players to purchase resources in amounts higher than the regular galactic market, but every purchase from the market applies or renews of 10-year modifier that increases crime throughout your empire, by 25pts.


> Criminal Syndicates: One of the main goals of a criminal syndicate should be to increase the amount crime in the galaxy, because they benefit from it. Whenever they build a criminal branch office on a world, they slowly take over all criminal operations on the planet.

- Criminal Syndicates true nature should be hidden: The criminal heritage civic should be hidden to everyone but empire holding it and only having high intel on them will reveal the truth. It should be the same for their holdings. The truth could also be revealed a special situation that could trigger when crime gets to a certain level on the planet and there’s a law enforcement building like a precinct house on the planet.

- Underworld control: A unique modifier for criminal syndicates, measuring how much of the planet’s underworld they control. This number increases gradually and at 100% all benefits of crime present on the world go to them.

- Black Market Hub: Criminal Syndicates could start the game with a unique station or megastructure, the Black Market hub. This would give them access to unique espionage operations usable only against empires where they have holdings. In addition, to getting access to a slave processing center explained above.

- Resource smuggling: As suggested above crime should impact a planet’s resource production, causing a small lose for the planet’s owner. However, if a Syndicate has a branch office on the world, the planet owner’s small lose becomes the Syndicates gain as those resources are funneled to them.

- Kidnapping and Slavery: Worlds with Syndicate holdings on them could have an increase chance for pops to go missing. However, unlike the suggestion made above, here that missing pop will go to a special slave processing center (More on this below). There, the player can decide what to do with kidnapped pops: assign them to their own worlds, trade them to empires that practice slavey, sell on the slave market or breed them like one can breed space fauna.

- Black Market Hub: Criminal Syndicates could start the game with a unique station or megastructure, the Black Market hub. This would give them access to unique espionage operations usable only against empires where they have holdings. In addition to getting access to a slave processing center where they can manage kidnapped pops and decided which pops they want to assign to their own planets, sell on the market, or after researching special social tech, breed them like other empires breed space fauna in a grand archives vivarium.

~ Unique Syndicate operations: “Sapient Resources Acquisition”, that randomly kidnaps pops from planets the Syndicate has holdings on. “Law Enforcement Sabotage”, that damage law enforcement buildings. “Leader Assassination”, that speaks for it. “Fund smugglers” to steal a decent number of resources from the target empire.

~ If the home system of the Syndicate is captured by an enemy empire that black market hub can be either seized or destroyed. If seized all slaves in the processing center will be rescued and automatically resigned to worlds controlled by the enemy empire. If destroyed, everything on it will be lost, but can be rebuilt. When the war is over, if the Syndicate’s home system isn’t taken by the enemy, the hub will be disable for a few years. If the system is taken it will be destroyed.

 

[Zloy_Stellaris]

Piracy and crime should be more abstract. They should be a deterrent similar to an administrative limit and at the same time not irritate the player. Complete suppression of crime and piracy should not be economically beneficial since you will spend more resources on this and the player must balance.
1. The population should not have the "criminal" job title at all.
2. Crime only affects the stability of a given planet, but the penalties for crime should not be too high (100% crime = -20% to the stability penalty)
3. Add a "Crime" scale to the journal that will give out negative events.
4. When the Crime bar is filled to a certain amount, pirate space bases appear in space. Space bases are invisible to the player. A pirate station can be found through patrols or events. The pirate stations themselves are not aggressive and become hostile after being discovered.
5. Each pirate space base gives a penalty to the player's empire for resource extraction from stations. The more systems the player has, the less the penalty from pirate space bases.
6. When the crime scale is completely filled, a pirate fleet of 20% of the player's fleet capacity appears. The pirate fleet begins to appropriate all the systems of the player in whose empire it appeared.
7. The Crime scale is also affected by war: loss of a planet when capturing a planet, lost systems.
8. Enemy empires should have a huge impact on crime. With the help of espionage, you can hang temporary harmful modifiers on the planets of foreign empires, which will increase crime.

 

[Critical Ethics]

My most pressing concern with crime is the criminal megacorps impact when they establish branch offices. The crime impact is really really high and the only way to get rid of them is with war.

Ha, at least 75% of my feedback form by word count was very very very specific complaints about CMs

 

[ItThatAltersSanity]

Form filled. The Crime section is really about pop resettlement. It's trivial to get rid of crime by suffering tedious micromanagement to get the right pops to positions of power while moving all the wrong pops elsewhere that's ready to absorb some powerless complainers.

 

[GrapeApe68]

Pirates seem impossible for me to get ride of properly do to lack of knowledge but crime should be more complex like different crime lords that ack like leaders but can’t be picked and are randomly picked base off the issue with the planet, if you keep them around you could make deals that benefit you with more illegal activities and will help you hide under the radar from any laws you broke well in the galactic community but will result in higher crime and an equal amount negatives debuffs to your empire

 

[Critical Ethics]

Going to repost (and slightly reword) some stuff that I posted in a very old thread:

The crime system (outside of criminal syndicates) is way better than people really give it credit for. It's a good death spiral mechanic for when things are already going wrong; low happiness from war, overpopulation, or just mismanagement -> crime and rebellions happen -> you throw enough resources at it to pull through and/or you sacrifice some planets, or else your empire collapses and you lose.

The options for dealing with high crime are ways that are satisfying for dealing with a short-term crisis. Planetary decisions to boost happiness and stability, reduce crime, or more exotic stuff like making deals with crime lords, temporarily building more police stations, dropping the right governor in etc are quick and easy and are more about scrounging the resources together than actual thought and effort. This is great when you're already low on resources from whatever caused the crisis in the first place or when it's basically just a fine for not paying attention to one of your planets earlier, but they are not great when it's just some other empire pressing the "more crime" button at you every decade. They're too much mental effort given the minimal gameplay return and how frequently you have to re-up them - which is also the issue with the expropriation war solution.

Another is that someone who tends to restart when things go bad (or never have things go bad) will never see crime where it shines. I didn't really appreciate how well crime worked until I had a game that hit that sweet spot of really, really screwing up but still being able to recover. If you've never had this experience then your entire experience of crime is slapping a few buttons after capturing a new planet... or having to engage with a Criminal Megacorp pressing the 'more crime' button every 10.000001 years.

So yeah there's a bunch of tweaks I'd make to crime (better integration with piracy for one) but it works fine mostly as-is. The issue is Criminal Megacorps taking a sometimes meal and jamming it down your throat half the game.

 

[Foxosaur]

The options for dealing with high crime are ways that are satisfying for dealing with a short-term crisis. Planetary decisions to boost happiness and stability, reduce crime, or more exotic stuff like making deals with crime lords, temporarily building more police stations, dropping the right governor in etc are quick and easy and are more about scrounging the resources together than actual thought and effort. This is great when you're already low on resources from whatever caused the crisis in the first place or when it's basically just a fine for not paying attention to one of your planets earlier, but they are not great when it's just some other empire pressing the "more crime" button at you every decade. They're too much mental effort given the minimal gameplay return and how frequently you have to re-up them - which is also the issue with the expropriation war solution.

This is a great summary really. The other thing is, expropriation wars are only feasible as borders allow it(or not, if you're a Pacifist). In my Huge galaxy games, this is where there is a mismatch between the RTS demands of the game, e.g. My energy production being heavily impacted in a short of time versus the time to persuade an AI to open a border to me, maybe even multiple AIs is likely. That leaves a player with a couple of planetary decisions and likely a couple of police buildings.

Pacifists should be able to use an alternative to expropriation but generally I think the speed of the holdings being built or requirements to build each one increase as the galaxy gets bigger. It just gives both the receiver and aggressor the room to plan ahead a bit. Maybe anyway. I don't want to make these megacorps, toothless.

 

[Vlad123]

Pirates in Stellaris are dumb. They come out of hiding, attack a star base of whoever's territory they’re in, set up shop after disabling it, and then expect what, for the galactic power they attacked to NOT send a fleet to destroy them? Whoever is leading them must have some of the biggest balls in the galaxy or be one of most delusional fools in the galaxy.

In short this happen in stellaris:

 

[Vladislav]

I like the ideas presented for 1) having crime and piracy be tied together or the same system instead of separate mechanics with separate means of addressing them and 2) having crime be something you have to accept to some degree as your empire expands.

In fiction, we have the trope of the lawless frontier worlds that are nominally under state control but de facto ruled by crime lords. Crime could be at a baseline of 25 or 50 (on a 0 to 100 scale) with the baseline representing "the predictable level of crime for a settlement of that size). You can fight crime toward 0 to get bonuses but at diminishing returns based on distance from your government core. Distant planets and certain civics increase crime, which has a tradeoff of imposing some increasing penalties but spending less to impose state control over the regions.

Consider this: "The planet XYZ is a lawless, inhospitable world rich in exotic materials. The cartel lords who control the system are erratic business partners but ensure the trade flows to the imperial core. Their pirate fleets have proven to be effective mercenaries in defense of our borders."

High crime represents the crime lords (both terrestrial and spacebound) taking their cut and replacing state actors for protection and infrastructure. As long as it doesn't get too high, you can expect a balance of power. Very high crime, especially over a long period of time, could result in the crime lords becoming de facto independent (releasing themselves as vassals) or, if the balance of power is sufficiently one-sided, declaring formal independence.

Criminal organizations could even be stateless factions that cross borders. E.g. in Mass Effect, the Shadow Broker network or various multispecies mercenary and criminal bands, the Hutt cartels, etc. They could have influence in systems across state borders. They could have their own leader pools that could become rulers if they gain levels of independence.

So, you never have to micromanage fleets to stamp out pirates, crime and piracy are represented by one system, and players could lean into high or low crime playstyles with tradeoffs to represent a spectrum from "Space Singapore" to "lawless realm held together by mutual pursuit of wealth."

 

[Ebrelian]

In fiction, we have the trope of the lawless frontier worlds that are nominally under state control but de facto ruled by crime lords. Crime could be at a baseline of 25 or 50 (on a 0 to 100 scale) with the baseline representing "the predictable level of crime for a settlement of that size). You can fight crime toward 0 to get bonuses but at diminishing returns based on distance from your government core. Distant planets and certain civics increase crime, which has a tradeoff of imposing some increasing penalties but spending less to impose state control over the regions.

This made me think there should be a soft limit (like star base) on the number of sector (which require their own rework, but not thread topic)

Having limited number of sector make it so that large empire cannot cover their whole empire in sectors, and the planets and systems outside would be made actual empire frontier with more crime, pirates and / or autonomy (internal politic rework required, so a simple output % reduction for now).

Sending governor would reduce crime and negative, but since it's not in a sector you probably won't have enough leader and a sector above limit would require less leader, but could be costly while potentially still have uncovered expanse in-between sectors.

These frontier area, even better if there is two empire frontier area neighboring, would be the pirate, smuggler, crime lords and nomad playground which would allow alternative playstyle location. Better idea were made in this thread, but pirate playable empire could have hidden bases and create holdings without requiring to actively hold planets.

Criminal syndicate, also more in depth proposal in thread, would be the one to try and infiltrate rich worlds in sectors for the advance resources, though they could ally and support pirate, or fight pirates for the base resources.

 

[Wayofwisdom]

Piracy and Crime? Didn't know these were features in Stellaris.

You obviously haven’t had to fly a fleet halfway across the galaxy to deal with a pirate infestation.

 

[Miguelinileugim]

I feel like unity should interact in some way with crime and viceversa. High crime/deviancy could cause unity production in the planet to decrease, while low crime/deviancy could provide a slight boost (especially if changes are made so low crime/deviancy requires strategy beyond adding more enforcers).

Also empire size should MASSIVELY impact crime rate, as an extra incentive for playing tall. A small empire with like 3 planets should be able to have an easy time policing while one spanning half the galaxy should require so many enforcers that unless it is utopian or a police state it is bound to lose a significant chunk from criminals and the occasional crime event.

None of this will work if enforcers aren't in some way nerfed so that crime cannot be brought to 0% too easily, such as by having a crime suppression vs crime mechanic whereas 50 crime and 50 suppression means 1/1+1 = 50% crime. While 10 crime and 40 suppression means 1/4+1 = 20% crime. Basically making it so that crime only becomes a problem if it gets too high rather than it becoming a problem the second it hits 10% and being almost always 0% unless the player is incompetent. Plus this would make utopian empires at 100% happiness feel different from any other empire which might find 20% crime to be a fair tradeoff as to not spam enforcers or stack happiness bonuses! (I'm of the opinion that 50% crime should be viable under some niche build, such as enslaving everyone to the point it's cheaper to let crime rise up that high than to have a quarter of each planet being just enforcers).

Also authoritarian should increase crime suppression while egalitarian should reduce crime, making authoritarian/egalitarian empires feel more capable of handling crime vs those who have other priorities and helping with roleplay. If crime becomes a meaningful mechanic I'd love for some bonuses to it to be added to the harmony (less crime) and domination (more crime suppression) tradition trees. Also crime/piracy related situations please, I don't want every planet with >10% crime to cause me catastrophic events/situations but I'd like that if crime ever gets to 100% anywhere I get a notification that things are getting out of hand and after a year or so I get a situation where the mafia tries to take over or something.

 

[Acheron]

You obviously haven’t had to fly a fleet halfway across the galaxy to deal with a pirate infestation.

Some of the stronger "special" ships you pick up can handle these. Gives them something reasonable safe to do.

 

[Miguelinileugim]

Empires with a crime-related civic such as crime megacorps should get significant benefits from having high crime in their own empire. Note to add first a crime-related civic to non-megacorps and gestalt empires as well. This bonus could consist on a "tax" from criminals, making them equivalent to clerks roughly (or in the case of gestalt empires, they could provide a planet-wide production bonus) and disabling most or all crime events (perhaps having one or two specific to these crime-themed empires).

If a pirate civic becomes a thing something similar could happen to piracy, where pirates do not attack you and only take a small portion of your earnings instead of as much as they can get away with. While providing you with a fraction of the piracy income from the loot of empires you have open borders with, are in the same federation or you've infiltrated (not sure which should be the criteria). Alternatively this could be an origin where you're a crime lord and/or pirate, albeit I feel it'd make more sense for it to be a civic since crime megacorps are already a thing.

It would be nice to have specialist and ruler class criminals, spawning depending on how much crime there is both in percentage and absolute terms. For example:
- Criminals (worker): Always present if crime is above 0, default criminal job with default stats.
- Hackers (specialist): Present only if crime is above 25, only 1 for every 2 regular criminals, steals more and causes a small decrease in stability (might produce a little research?).
- Crime lord (ruler): Unlocked via event, which triggers when crime is above 50 and you have at least 5 criminals of any type, steals even more and decreases stability significantly but depending on event choice you might be able to get something out of it (e.g decreases the amount criminals steal in exchange of a token consumer goods "bribe" to them, increased decryption as empire-wide modifier if the modifier isn't already present, one-time high level general ie the crime lord themselves, no stability decrease from crime, etc.)

 

[Foxosaur]

This made me think there should be a soft limit (like star base) on the number of sector (which require their own rework, but not thread topic)

Having limited number of sector make it so that large empire cannot cover their whole empire in sectors, and the planets and systems outside would be made actual empire frontier with more crime, pirates and / or autonomy (internal politic rework required, so a simple output % reduction for now).

Sending governor would reduce crime and negative, but since it's not in a sector you probably won't have enough leader and a sector above limit would require less leader, but could be costly while potentially still have uncovered expanse in-between sectors.

These frontier area, even better if there is two empire frontier area neighboring, would be the pirate, smuggler, crime lords and nomad playground which would allow alternative playstyle location. Better idea were made in this thread, but pirate playable empire could have hidden bases and create holdings without requiring to actively hold planets.

Criminal syndicate, also more in depth proposal in thread, would be the one to try and infiltrate rich worlds in sectors for the advance resources, though they could ally and support pirate, or fight pirates for the base resources.

I love this and I think the AI would work with it well, as they already often mark future annexation on perimeter systems.

 

[rubert]

Crime suffers from either being a problem or entirely non-existing feature. I tend to play empires which usually don't have issue with crime so it might as well not exist, but at the same time if the galaxy has Crime Corps I might be unlucky enough for one to increase crime so much that there is nothing I can do to fight it effectively - other than do the Crime Lord deal (disclaimer: it's been several patches since I encountered this situation so not sure if this has changed).

I would like to see crime reworked in some way. One idea I had the crime could be always be present in some form. For example: a heavily populated world (even if not a city world) with a large underclass of people is a fairly common trope in SF. Some might be small time criminals, some doing low-effiency jobs etc. and in most empires there would be always some level of this. The player could have different ways to reduce the size of the underclass population or reduce negatives but it would be very hard to actually get rid of it entirely. This would make enforcers always useful if they reduce the negatives of the said population. The underclass could produce some random resources but not as efficiently what the other specialized jobs do. With large enough underclass or corruption at higher levels a larger criminal underworld could form. Such criminal empire could have links to the space based piracy.