That's why it needs to be added as part of a trade and economy update. Privateers or pirates shouldn't be fighting the main fleet. That's not their role. They are used to hurt an economy, by attacking trade ships and stations, and make the enemy split their fleet. In other games that did this well, you didn't pay to send pirates at an enemy who was sitting at peace with nothing better to do than hunt pirates, you sent pirates to destroy their stations when they were at war with a 3rd power which made the war last longer and soften them up or weaken their power.
I get what you mean, but there are several problems with that:
- If I want to hurt an empire that is already at war with someone else, it's still better to declare a war, even if it's just to detroy their economy. It's even more efficient to change an empire into a tributary than paying privateers and hope they do something bad to another empire.
- If there's this kind of economy system, then we would also need patrols, because wandering privateers just seem annoying, and not really a threat. It would mean that the chasing game would be extended to peace time. It would also mean that you need to micromanage or automatize some fleets just for that task.
- It would either not really hurt this empire's economy, and condemn it to lose. I privateers are too strong, nobody would want to declare wars. If they are too weak, people will only struggle to remember that they have to rebuild the stations their lost. If they are perfectly balanced (which I really doubt) they would still be too strong, because they would just act as mercenaries.
And the best proof it wouldn't work is that currently, nobody who knows the game actually send little fleet to destroy the enemy's mining stations, because it's either useless (for big empires) or too risky (in the early game).
I think many people overestimate the value of stations. Either they are crucial for your empire and without them it's game over (in early game), or they don't really mean much. They become to widely spread anyway for a fleet of privateers to cause much harm. And there's still no reason to split your fleet if it's too dangerous: you would destroy your enemy's fleet first. It would require a perfect timing to profit from split fleets, like: the enemy is at war, they destroy their enemies, then you send your privateers. Your enemy split his fleet, then you declare a war against them and jump on their split fleet. That's cool, but still too rare to justify a whole new feature.
Therefore, this kind of privateers shouldn't me modeled as pirate fleets, but only affect trade routes (probably as modifiers). But even then it would make more sense to allow players to make hostile takeovers or to send rogue AIs to destroy other empires' economies than to use privateers - where would they come from? Why wouldn't it be possible to identify who they are, and who paid them? How could they have expansive ships? The pirates we currently have in Stellaris don't make sense either. They're just standing there in their ships, doing nothing until someone attack them.
I think it would just be better to remove them, and set up a mechanics that allows us to pay other empires to declare wars, plus the possibility to declare trade wars (wars without the possibility to invade worlds, but only blockade or embargo them, like the Trade Federation in Star Wars), and maybe even looting entire planets (which would make raider/pirate empires viable).
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Same thing for privateers à la Civilization: in Stellaris, they would destroy stations and stuff. It would just be annoying and have no real consequence, or in the early game, completely destroy this empire.
Just imagine that you are the target of such privateers:
- You're not at war, they raid your stations and flee - you'll just rebuild them. Almost no consequence.
- You're not at war, they raid your stations, they're weaker than your fleet and you have the time to chase them. You'll just rebuild the stations you lost. Almost no consequence.
- You're not at war, and they are more powerful than your fleet. The first empire to declare a war against you will win. Game over.
- You're at war, and you can't handle the privateers, and you have a little empire. You lose the war because of the privateers. Game over.
- You're at war, and you can't handle the privateers, and you have a big empire. At worst, you'll lose the war, but it's not because of the privateers. At best, you'll just need to rebuild your stations. Almost no consequence.
- You're at war, and you can handle the privateers. It will make your war a bit longer. Almost no consequence.
In short: if your economy is ruined to the point that your fleet suffer from penalties, it's gameover. And the privateers aren't able to do that, which is the most likely, they're useless. You can't use privateers to hurt an empire that's already more powerful than yours, and using them against empires that are weaker than yours is a waste of ressources. Privateers in Civ work because they're naval units (while cities are on land) and they cost you production and allow you to steal some gold (and also force the other empire to spend a few turns to rebuild the lost units/improvements). In Stellaris, building time and costs are meaningless and you'll lose what - 300 minerals at most? And 20 min/creds per month at most? So what's the point exactly, grinding a few minerals from their economy, hoping it will have a relevent impact on their economy?
I think that if something should be inspired by Civ in Stellaris, it's the corporations from Civ4. It would make trade more dynamic and would allow more interesting non-military operations. It could lead some empires to become more isolationists, while others would have their economy controlled by galactic corps. It would be really nice if the actors of Stellaris weren't only governments and pops (what would happen if your next president is controlled by a corporation based in another empire, for example?), and it would make factions even more important.
