I can't believe i didn't consider this before

[Unforeseen]

I had always been skeptical about the plot in regards to how a bunch of races whose memories had lost all knowledge of their past would fail to notice all the infrastructure around them on their planets and quickly start to relearn. But tonight I was rewatching the intro video for Universe and I noticed that the Human homeworld was destroyed by a WD and the sole survivor was a lone colony ship. This pretty much explains it. The Shakturi blew up all the colonized planets, and the only survivors were colony ships whom landed on various planets with little knowledge and thus had to restart.

Still doesn't explain why the pirates didn't just settle down on some planet, but..oh well..

[Modest]

Still doesn't explain why the pirates didn't just settle down on some planet, but..oh well..

I would search explenation for that in their "culture". They didn't settled down on planets because they believed that their destiny lies among stars... Seriously - I see litelary no reason from technical and pragmatical point of view for them to not settle down on some nice planet. So if I would be looking for lore-wise nice reason I would go into their culture. Not that I do look for reasons in the first place

[Shark7]

My Opinion?

The lessons of history are heavily dependent on the person 'deciphering' the clues. Far too often 'historians' will try to make the clues fit the story they favor, instead of making the story fit the clues. Now imagine that on a galactic scale, with multiple races with multiple 'stories' associated to the clues and a extremely long time from the event to the rediscovery and what you end up with is such a garbled mess no one really knows the truth.

In other words, true to human nature, welcome to Distant Worlds where every one believes precisely what they want to believe. [;)]

[Retreat1970]

Still doesn't explain why the pirates didn't just settle down on some planet

Apparently they were still afraid of the Xaraktor virus from the first war. Some waited to settle, some never did. The manual states that the planets were hit hard by the virus for generations after the Shakturi were eliminated. It's a good read, quite solid actually.

[Unforeseen]

Another plus is the improbability of races all achieving FTL level civilization at the same time is slightly corrected by the shadows expansion when you run a very expensive research game. Every race's FTL time is extremely dependent on the races research capability, any research stations they build, their scientists and how they are affected by the pirates.

I played about 80 years into a game that I just quit due because I got sick of being stuck in the bottom left corner of an irregular galaxy. In that game among the two regular empires I was technologically more advanced than my neighbors but else where in the galaxy several races had achieved tech much higher than I had and built several wonders. Had I continued to play I was likely to run into an extremely diverse galaxy with major obstacles to try and overcome. I was in the process of trying to fit a long range probe into my budget to get an idea of just how powerful they were. It was going to cost more than my largest warships though.

[CyclopsSlayer]

ORIGINAL: Unforeseen

Another plus is the improbability of races all achieving FTL level civilization at the same time is slightly corrected by the shadows expansion when you run a very expensive research game. Every race's FTL time is extremely dependent on the races research capability, any research stations they build, their scientists and how they are affected by the pirates.

Could be explained by the interference of an exterior influence.
Say for instance the Shakturi desire a worthy foe, so they 'push' things in the direction of creating a worthy challenge.

This mechanism is fairly common, take the classic Lensman series, before they had space flight the Arisians and Boskonians were messing with humanity's development.
The same in the Babylon 5 series, the Vorlons and Shadows had their own deep games running, the other races were largely just pieces on a giant game board.

[ponasozis]

pirates stayed pirates and din t settle because
PIRATES ARE FUN
ARghh booty
pillage village

well it was fun until those empires started showing up and finding all those op 1k firepower capital ships then using them against pirates to blow them to hell