Pirates as playable faction?

[dgorsman]

Just for a hoot, I've change the Campaign Options => General tab => Faction to "Pirate" in an ongoing 49.12 campaign.  It seems to have trouble generating contracts, even manually.  The log file had a number of mentions of no enemy available (kicking myself for not grabbing a copy before restarting).  As far as I can tell, the ...\data\universe\factionhints.xml file is used to determine opponents for each faction.  It only has one listing for PIR (mnemonic for pirate faction) as an <exception> element, like this:

Code: [Select]

<neutral faction="CS">
   <exceptions>PIR,TD,GV,MV,BoS,MM,WOB,IND</exceptions>
   <exceptions end="3012-01-01">OC</exceptions>
   <exceptions start="3052-05-01">CJF,CW,CGB,CSJ,CSV,CNC,CDS</exceptions>
   <exceptions start="3068-01-21">WOB</exceptions>
</neutral>
As I read that, ComStar is not neutral to pirates, which makes sense.

In order for "Pirate" to be a playable faction, there would need to be several entries added, at least one <rivals> like this:

Code: [Select]

<rivals>
   <parties>PIR,FS</parties>
   <parties>PIR,CC</parties>
   <parties>PIR,FWL</parties>
   <parties>PIR,LA</parties>
   <parties>PIR,DC</parties>
... (most of the other factions)
</rivals>

... and possible a few <alliance> elements, indicating some of the minor pirate-friendly powers such as Circinus and the Tortuga Dominions which are less likely to be in conflict.

Does that look right?

[BATTLEMASTER]

This looks like the making of a pull request...

[pheonixstorm]

There are other issues with playing pirates as well, at least for the CO rating.

As far as using AtB/Stratcon, I don't think either was designed for the user to select pirates as the playable faction. Rarely will pirates get an actual employer other than themselves.

[dgorsman]

There are other issues with playing pirates as well, at least for the CO rating.

As far as using AtB/Stratcon, I don't think either was designed for the user to select pirates as the playable faction. Rarely will pirates get an actual employer other than themselves.

Which is doable, I think:

• Most of the 'contracts' would be Object Raid or Extraction Raid types
• Employer would mostly be 'Pirate' i.e. themselves or in conjunction with other pirates, with some other employers using them as unregistered mercenaries
• There really should be an option for allied forces as "None"
• Command rights would almost always be independent, although there may be some 'liaison officer' types when multiple groups coordinating
• Battle loss and support percentages would be zero, except where they have a non-pirate employer where it will still be
• Salvage rights would be 100% i.e. take whatever isn't nailed down, which is the goal of most raids, except for non-pirate employers
• Total payment would reflect selling off various non-military salvage booty, so quite small multiploier compared to normal contracts

It would be nice to have it as an option for when a military force gets curb stomped and doesn't have many other options.  In this specific case it's a group of Smoke Jaguars in the Clan Occupation Zone post-Bulldog - they don't have much other option.  So yohoho, it's off raiding those Inner Sphere barbarians we go.   >:D

[pheonixstorm]

Kinda hard to have anything under total payment when the contract should be all zeroes. I know CO goes into detail on how to handle pirates. Not sure if any of the previous mercenary books did.

[dgorsman]

So, after some experimenting there's a few other issues at play.  The factionhints.xml file changes, trying both <allies> and <neutral> elements, only produce some warnings in the log file, which I'm suspecting is due to pirates having no explicit systems/territory which seems to be a good part (or start of?) generating opponents.

Might be a thought to pull the 'playable' flag from the Pirate faction in factions.xml until it is.

[pheonixstorm]

That would not work though as those who do not play using AtB/Stratcon would no longer be able to play as pirates, which is an official playable faction.