Pirate Tips!

[NephilimNexus]

Here, let's make this easier for everyone:

Pirate Starting Kit

This is a collection of ship designs & retrofits (using standard artwork) to help aspiring pirates get off to a good start. Just put in your Documents/My Games/Distant Worlds Universe/Settings folder and load it into your game when you first start.

[NephilimNexus]

Dealing with the Boarding Bug: Usually bigger is better, except that the boarding pod bug can completely screw up your boarding ships - especially if the AI is ever allowed to do literally anything, because it loves to blow up targets in the middle of boarding operations & bork your pod count. Now normally bigger is better, meaning that a single size 600 ship is more powerful than two 300 ships. This is because the latter each requires their own separate fuel, engine and command components whilst the former only needs one. Considering just how much space all that takes up the difference becomes very apparent. However, due to the boarding bug, packing a lot of boarding pods onto one ship increases the likelihood of the bug occurring.

The workaround that I've found is to keep all boarding pod ships in a separate fleet that is kept just outside of a target area until needed. Only once your primary fleet is done destroying everything that needs destroying, then move in your boarding ships to attack just the one target and - important - immediately have them all withdraw back outside the system boarder once all their pods are launched.

[Aeson]

Now normally bigger is better, meaning that a single size 600 ship is more powerful than two 300 ships. This is because the latter each requires their own separate fuel, engine and command components whilst the former only needs one. Considering just how much space all that takes up the difference becomes very apparent.

It's a relatively minor quibble, but the ratio of size dedicated to main thrust (and, to a lesser extent, maneuvering) engine components to total ship size is constant for a given speed and engine component. Whether you want two size-300 ships to move at speed X or one size-600 ship to move at the same speed, you'll require Y main thrust components of type Z, and maneuvering thrusters behave similarly. You may have some issues where the size-300 ship would require 2.5 engine components to move at speed A while the size-600 ship requires 5 engine components to move at speed A, leading to either 4 or 6 engine components on the smaller ships and 5 on the larger ships, or some such thing.

Fuel cells may also behave similarly, depending on if you design for range (in which case it's usually essentially the same number of fuel cells for the size-300 ship as for the size-600 ship) or combat time (in which case it depends on what you put on the ships, but the size-600 design will most likely require more fuel for a given amount of combat time than the size-300 ship will, potentially more than the size ratio would suggest, but on the other hand as a more powerful design it may not need to be designed for as much combat time as the smaller vessels).

Hyperdrives, command centers, repair/damage control components, countermeasures, targeting sensors, and (frequently) energy collectors are certainly 'extras' that you pay for if you take two size-300 ships instead of one size-600 ship, and size-600 ships can also often cut back on the total number of defense components, as, say, 8 shield generators on one ship is probably better than 12 spread across two ships. Main thrust and maneuvering engines, however, mostly don't have a scaling issue if you're designing for the same speed and turn rate on both sizes.

[NephilimNexus]

During a particularly large & lengthy game I tested and confirmed that Pirate Bases on worlds that you control outright hurt you income (lost to Corruption) even when the bases are your own! I went through a map where my gross income was less than 50K per year and scrapped all the pirate facilities on worlds that I had taken over through conquest and (holy crap) my income more than doubled when the next financial quarter came in.

So here is the conundrum: Pirate facilities increase your research capacity, which lets you build that ultra-max tech station that pushed you into tech 7 in just a few years. They also provide a bit of "free" last ditch garrison ground force in case of enemy raids or planet invasions getting past your space ports & defense bases. Except that they're not free - they're sucking away 30% of your planet's gross income and tossing it all into the nearest black hole.

To get an idea of just how bad that is look at it like this: You have a planet with 100K gross income and a 25% tax rate, that should give you 25K per year, right? But with a pirate fortress (your own!) that gross income drops to 70K, which at the same tax rate would reduce your net to 17.5K per year. But wait, it gets worse! That corruption is also reducing your planet's happiness, which in turn shows how much "Compliance" the population has with your taxes. Non-compliant people give you nothing. In other words, that base may well be cutting your income in half or more!

Ahh... but without enough bases you lose your giant research bonuses! What to do? Well this is where you're going to have to micromanage things a bit. What you will want to do is keep just enough bases to keep you research potential just a little bit over whatever your ultramax research station is actually producing. After that, scrap them! They're just a drain.

They good news, however, is that this means you can now officially forget all about trying to max out your number of pirate bases and putting them on every world before invading. Once you've got your research bracket in place you can now just skip placing more bases entirely and skip straight to the good old ground invasion and permanent takeover. This really REALLY speeds things up in your favor, as you don't need fleets of boarding pods running back and forth to shovel money at every new little upstart colony that appears on the map. In fact, you could (theoretically) do away with planetary raids entirely at this point and just go for blitzing the enemy's worlds with ground troops as fast as they can plop down colony ships.

[GenBelasarius]

What is your ship design philosophy? I don't really understand it!

I'm not really sure how pirates work, but couldn't you just build one criminal network to become a "normal" empire and after that take over worlds without corrupting them to increase your research potential?

[NephilimNexus]

Yes, you most certainly can and that's a valid strategy. In fact, once you've got your criminal network built and start conquering planets you'll want to not put pirate bases on them first, as they hurt income.

However, pirate bases still serve two purposes: Research limit increase and siphoning funds off planets that you don't actually own. As stated above, with a dozen pirate fortresses scattered around on independent worlds (best places for them, actually) your research cap will climb so high that making a research base with two hundred and fifty labs becomes a viable strategy. No empire can match pirates when it comes to tech development if you play it right.

The funds siphoning is essential in the early game, too, as that is the only way you're going to have any kind of stable income to maintain your fleet with. As a regular pirate, turning a planet into your own will cost you 250,000cr once all buildings are counted. You start the game with less than 20,000cr and a negative net income to begin with, so at first getting pirate bases everywhere is very, very important.

Once you actually own the planets then you'll want to scrap the bases to get your income back. But here's the catch: You don't always want to actually own the planets. Independents are a good example, as they never try to destroy your bases so there is no real reason to try to invade them. Their population (and your income from it) will grow over time, but they'll never "rebel" against your presence there leeching their income away. They also periodically post defense missions, which pay good, which are automatic wins once you've got a space port or defense base built over the world (see "gaming the system," above).

As for ship designs, it's pretty simple: Heavily shielded "banzai" ships with tractor beams & assault pods for raiding,capturing neutral freighters and enemy mining facilities (much cheaper than buying your own - never buy what you can just steal). Combat ships are designed around long range and "stand off" tactics, such as missiles and (later) fighters. There really isn't much more to it than that, really.

With freighters I make them all the same size but give them different roles: "Small" freighters will be built for speed, "Medium" for range and "Large" for cargo capacity. So the smalls keep a small flow of resources constantly flowing in, the larges deliver more stuff but have to stay closer to home (and safety), while the mediums tend to handle the smuggling missions because they've got the fuel capacity to go the farthest.

[NephilimNexus]

So in conclusion (I hope), my new map winning pirate grand strategy for pirates is actually pretty simple:

1) Empire Worlds (small population): Park a defense platform over the planet and build pirate bases to leech enough income to pay for having that base there.
2) Empire Worlds (large population): Orbital bombardment until all defense units are dead, then promptly invade. Never need more than eight good infantry, honestly.
3) Independent Worlds (small population): Build a mine or, for key locations, a small spaceport (with harvesters) above the planet. Milk it for the defense & smuggling contracts for easy credits. Also, build pirate bases.
4) Independent Worlds (large population): Can go either way with pirate bases or invasion & conquest. Depends on location & predicted income loss due to distance from capitol (corruption). If close to home, invade. If too far away, leave with bases.
5) Research: One gigantic research base over our homeworld (first planet to get criminal network) and that's it. 250+ of each lab type. Easy.
6) Build & Burn Economics: Build pirate bases on planets in early game to get enough income to make the Criminal Network transition to pseudo-empire play. After that, remove all pirate facilities from conquered planets, including the Criminal Network itself. Don't worry, you won't lose control of the planet. All you will lose is the 50% income loss due to corruption that it causes.
7) Minimal Fleet: You should never need more than 20 military ships at any given time to dominate the game.

This should stand as is until (if) developers ever fix the issue of your own pirate bases hurting the economies of planets that you own. If that ever happens, then go ahead and leave them, but as it stands right now once you've invaded & conquered a planet you'll want to scrap all of your own pirate facilities as they only hurt your income - and pirate income is nerfed bad enough as it is.

[NephilimNexus]

Updated the "Pirate Starting Kit" file for better tweaking and a few minor bad parts fixed.

[NephilimNexus]

Take what you can, give nothing back: So you built a mining station in someone else's territory because pirates ignore borders and screw those guys, right? But now you need a quick cash infusion and you don't want to sell anything of real value to the enemy, like technology, but you're all out of secret locations to hock. What to do? Well you may have noticed that you have the option to sell them those stations that you built in "disputed territory" ... and for quite a bit of cash, no less. Tempting, but do you really want to part with one of your precious mining stations so easily? Wouldn't it be better if you could get the cash and keep the mining station, too? And you already know where I'm going this, don't you?

Ok for those who didn't jump ahead I'll spell it out for you. First move your fleet of Harpoon ships into orbit around the station. Then go to the diplomacy screen and sell it the enemy empire for quick cash. Then immediately go right back to your Harpoon fleet and capture that station right back from them. There, all you lost was some shields and you made a few hundred thousand credits for pretty much no effort.

Best part is that the AI is too stupid to ever figure it out. You can keep repeating this scam pretty much forever if you want to, or until they run out of money.

[bbenham]

LOVe that pirate starting kit. Thanks!

[NephilimNexus]

Glad you like it. I find it saves a lot of time.

[MatBailie]

Is there list of currently known issues/exploits/bugs regarding pirates?

I thought there was, but can't find anything.

[NephilimNexus]

Another correction: Those of you who downloaded the "Pirate Starting Kit" probably noticed that it includes a small, size 900 weapons tech research station design in the list. If you check the specs you'll also notice that it's not purely weapons research - it's actually balanced out across all three branches, as far as lab count goes.

This is because using the "queue next mission" trick will actually let you build a research base on planets that you don't even own. What's even stranger is that, in this one case only, those bases actually stack. Meaning duplicate bases will actually continue to increase your research output, instead of just giving you the "highest of the herd" as with every other other situation.

There is, of course, still one catch: You are still capped at your faction research limit, which as a pirate mostly means how many pirate facilities that you have placed on various planets.

So that's good news: You don't actually have to wait until you get your Criminal Network built to start doing tech research after all. Once you've got a planet picked out that you want to be your homeworld someday (I seriously suggest having an adjacent starport for defense purposes) then you can go ahead and start doing research right away. Just make sure that you actually have a few pirate bases planted first, however, otherwise the faction cap will still keep you locked in the dark ages.

Timing is important!: There has been an ongoing, still unfixed bug wherein if you launch raiders onto a planet where the AI is currently trying to remove your pirate base via ground troops, your raiders will end up helping the wrong side and actually join the attackers trying to blow up your precious base. What's worse, I swear the AI knows this and exploits it. Many times I've had the AI launch it's attacks against my bases right as my raider ships arrived on sight with orders to raid the planet, causing me to end up destroying my own base. For this reason it is a good idea to not send your ships with raid orders over any length of distance. Instead just tell them to go to the planet and wait in orbit for further orders. When they arrive double-check to make sure the AI hasn't started an attack yet, cross your fingers and only then launch your pods.

Bug or design?: While it is certainly possible to acquire the base tech level of unique, race-specific techs be reverse engineering (read: retiring) captured ships of that race, to date I have never gotten a single tech point past that towards the higher levels of those techs via that method. Meaning that if I capture ships armed with Shaktur Firestorms I can learn the 1st level of that unique tech from disassembling said ships, the next two levels past that remain unlearnable - and yes, the race itself had already learned that entire branch of the tree. Spies, however, still had a chance to learn these higher levels but their chances seem to drop geometrically with every level. Meaning if the first tier of, say, Holographic AI could be done at 90% success with a spy, the next level dropped to 45% with the same spy. Obviously this makes acquiring these super-techs via spies a bit expensive due to high casualties rates amongst your intelligence branch.

Just thought I'd mention that before anyone else ends up wasting their time trying to capture dozens upon dozens of ships to try to increase their tech knowledge for the race-specifics. After the first block it just stops working.

You'll pay for that!: Sometimes, despite your best defenses, the AI will send a fleet massive enough to take out one of your starports or defense bases. Fine, while they're doing that send your fleet over to their homeworld and blow it off the map. That'll teach 'em. Even if you do not have the troops to conquer the planet or the money to build bases there, it is always worth your time to nuke the crap out of any Empire world you find, if only to hamper their growth.

Stealing the Shaktur Firestorm tech really makes this work well, as you don't sacrifice space-to-space combat ability to make way for bomb bays. Instead you now have one weapon that can destroy both the spaceport and the planet below. Remember, it's not always about conquest. Sometimes just exterminating someone from orbit and recolonizing later is the most efficient option. This is especially true of any Empire than manages to steal your territory map via spies, as they will mobilize to attack your homeworld and starports the second that they figure out where it is. In such as a case you need to beat them to the punch and prioritize everything into bombing them back into the stoneage and then finishing them off, pronto.

[NephilimNexus]

Inspiring Leader: Anytime I get a character with that trait I send them to my homeworld, or nearest secure spaceport if I haven't got that far yet. Then I make sure to station all my intelligence agents with them. This will cause my spies to level up their skills even when doing nothing. Bunking such a character on a research base with scientists likewise results in rapid level gain, which is awesome.

The case for the harder part: Generally speaking, when planning a target for your Criminal Network, it's far easier to get it plopped onto an Independent world than any Empire world. However, there is greater profit in grabbing an Empire world as your new homeworld... provided that you can pull it off. Unlike regular conquest which simply kills Characters, when you take over a planet via Criminal Network you inherit any Characters that were on that world. By this means you can acquire a few extra intelligence agents, generals (while Pirates can naturally generate Generals, it's rare), scientists (always a plus!), diplomats (useless to you, as you can't actually use them) and - most importantly - Planetary Governors, which are a character type that Pirates cannot gain any other way. Pirates do not naturally spawn Planetary Governors of their own, ever. This is the only way to get them, and they are very valuable to have.

Correction of the Above: Turns out there is still a very slim chance to get colony governors the old fashioned way - by landing a lot of colony ships and hoping the dice roll in your favor. However, my luck with this so far has been about one colony governor gained per roughly thirty planets colonized. So while possible, it's certainly isn't probable. So don't count on it happening. Stick with the above method if you want a sure thing.

Jackpot Planets: Add this to the case for letting Empires grow a little before wiping them out. While any one faction can only create three Regional Capitols per game, there is no such restriction on how many such gifted planets that you can actually own. Meaning that even after you've maxed out your limit (and you will, because Corruption quickly becomes your worst enemy once you start taking planets over for real) you can still freely capture Empire planets that they built Regional Capitols on and you get to keep them!. Which means that you can, in theory, get an extra three Regional Capitols per enemy race in the game... given enough time. You still have to wait for them to grow enough to even want to place them, and sadly you can't tell them where to place them. But hey, free RC and having a Corruption of 0% on any planet is a good thing, right?

[Kastor6767]

I double MatBailie question. How much of bugs mentioned in this thread have been fixed already? Can you still research all seven levels by magic of one big research facility and spamming of pirate bases? Is it still feasible to place extractors on a construction ship?

[NephilimNexus]

A few bugs have been fixed, but not many. I've tried to keep it up-to-date. When in doubt, go with what was written last, as I've been adding new things as I've discovered them.

More specific to your question, yes: The One Research Base to Rule Them All method is still the best method. Extractors on construction ships is still a Highly Advised strategy, especially in the early game when you're constantly running out of supplies.

One thing that has changed in recent patches is the economics, and not for the better: Every civilian ship and base has it's upkeep taken straight from your main (and only) credit wallet. So it is now important to not build very many bases, freighters or mining ships early on. Likewise, stealing every civilian freighter in sight is no longer advisable either, as their expenses skyrocket very quickly (AI designed ships are inefficient both in terms of utility and cost effectiveness).

Spamming pirate bases is still a good idea for any Independent worlds that you find, but for any Empire controlled worlds you really just want to move in as fast as possible, bomb away all the defenders and invade with about 4-8 infantry afterward (that's all it will take to hold them down for a little bit once their troops are all bombed to dust. Once their morale penalty from being conquered eases up you can safely withdraw your troops and move on to the next target).

[NephilimNexus]

Destined for Greatness: For those who've been following this thread, and the AARs of giant systems systematically conquered entirely by pirates, I must confess that how you set up the game makes all the difference. The ideal conditions for ultimate pirate victory are as follows:

1) Road Warrior - The normal, default gameplay settings starts pirates at a slightly modified tech level of one and everyone else at prewarp. Don't change that. Starting off an enemy Empire at a higher tech level puts you in a seriously bad starting position. There is a reason the devs took the Mechanoids out of the pirate gameplay path, after all. So leave it alone and double check to make sure that you haven't accidentally made any of your rivals high tech or random. This may require adding opponents manually.

2) Bigger is Better - Generally speaking, the larger the map the better. Why? Because you start off with Gerax hyperdrives whilst the Empires don't even have warp bubbles. That speed and range advantage is your friend, as it isolated rival empires farther apart (fewer trade treaties & alliances early on) and, more importantly, isolates you from other pirates, who are your only real threat/enemy at game start. Any galaxy shape can work but Clusters are ideal, as you can probably focus everything on securing one local group before expanding outward.

3) And Stay Down! - Turn on "Pirate factions do not respawn." Again, rival pirates will be your main enemy for most of the game, and if they just respawn anew when finally defeated then you've just become Sisyphus. It wasn't easy getting that deep cover agent in there and systematically wiping out all their bases, constructors, resupply ships and colonies. Make it actually mean something.

4) Ye Ole Dark Ages - Crank research costs all the way up to Very High. This is the single most important tweak for ensuring a pirate victory. First, it means you'll have a lot more time before Empires start expanding; time which you can use to secure a few valuable income-generating pirate bases on Independent worlds before having to deal with them. Second, as stated many times before, the only real advantage to playing a pirate is the virtually limitless research potential that you'll have once your operation finally gets some traction. Those 30,000RP research stations that I keep talking about? Well, getting to tech 7 in five years doesn't do a lot of good if all the AI Empires are going to do the same by year six, now does it? Cranking those research costs up ensures that once you get that ultramax research base with the 900+ assorted labs finally built that you will stay in the scientific lead for the next century. Plenty of time to clobber the crap out of all your rivals before they've even finished half of the tech tree. It's one of those classic situations of "Yes, it hurts me, but it hurts the other guy a lot more." This also gives you more time between needing to upgrade everything, which is good because you have to pay for even civilian upgrades out of your money pool. Meaning that while Empires make money every time they upgrade their freighters and mining bases, you lose money. So you don't want to have to do it too often.

5) Pavlov's House - If a conquered planet is generating at least 3K of income then go ahead and put a cheap starport on it. Nothing fancy, maybe 4 construction yards and minimal defense, preferably under 2K of upkeep. That should keep enemy scouts away. The important thing is to rely on better, high-tech weapons than sheer numbers, here. I have found that, for less than 5K of upkeep (and most planets of 80%+ quality will pass that many times over), one can easily design a base with 20 Advanced Fighters Bays, 50 Meridian Shields, 4 Repairbots and 12 Area Transit Singularities can stop... well, anything, really. No missiles, no lasers, no ion cannons. Just fighters and ATS. How does this work? Anytime anything gets anywhere near your station the ATS lashes out and freezes them in their tracks. With a dozen of them you can blanket a 360 degree circle, blocking attacks from all directions at once effectively forever. Since your fighters seem to be magically immune to the effects of this neat little device, they will methodically shred all attacking ships one by one until none are left. I have watched starbases built on this principle casually slap away 40+ attacking ships at a time without so much as losing shield integrity.


Resort Base Tips: As a pirate you can really profit Resort Bases far, far easier than Empire can. Why? Because they show up on the map as Neutral/Smuggler. Until/unless they hit you with a spy or Trace Scanners to realize that it's actually yours they will never attack it (just like all of your freighters and mining ships). This means that you can totally skimp out on pretty much all the defenses, and that means lower upkeep costs. Also, as a general tip for resort base design, remember that a single "unit" of tourists is only 20K beings. A single Passenger Transport module can fit well over 100K+ beings. Which means that even your ultimate, mega-busy Disneyworld of resort bases will probably never need more than even 4-5 Passenger Transport modules to house every tourist in the galaxy.

What does all this mean? You can (and should) most certainly design Resort Bases that have an upkeep of under 1K cr. Which in turn means that you can (probably) afford to spam them pretty much everywhere without worrying about going bankrupt. Also remember that the tourist rule applies to Passenger Transports as well. Yes, giant transports that can move 150M people at a time are great for migrants, but a tourist yacht really only needs a single passenger module. And again, as a pirate, you're flagged as neutral/smuggler (though a Jamming Device never hurts) so again you can completely skimp on all the defense crap for these ships. Crank out scores of 200cr upkeep skeleton boats with 1 passenger module each, set your Tourism Priority to High and watch the money roll in.

[NephilimNexus]

Yet Another Neat Exploit: Once you have a finished pirate base on an Independent world, you can have your Troop Transports yoink any neutral infantry that they have on the planet. Once loaded, they will not show up on your ground forces spreadsheet (read: no upkeep cost!) until you land/redeploy/invade with them someplace else. At that point they do join your official list of ground forces, gaining experience and costing money.

Still, the point being that if you are having trouble making the Criminal Network transition and you've got a lot of bases on Independent worlds with large enough populations to start spawning infantry (this usually takes a while; at least 5 years in game normally) then you can just conscript all of those neutrals onto a transport or two and then invade something. Bam, now you've got a planet to call home.

Updated Pirate Starting Kit: Unpack and put in C:\My Documents\My Games\Distant Worlds Universe\Settings. Mainly I changed a few tiny design flaws, removing some unneeded parts from a few ships. Most drastic is that the resort base now costs less than 500cr of upkeep because all the defenses were stripped off. Eventually I noticed that pirates get smuggler neutrality on resorts, so the odds of them ever being attacked are nearly nil. Same for most other things - stripping them down to the bare essentials to save on costs. After all, money is the main issue for all starting pirates. Why waste money?

This should give new pirate players a needed edge, especially since the base designs... well, suck. Be sure to turn "Auto Upgrade" to OFF on everything except freighters and mining ships.

Some notes on what is included:

"Planet Lockdown" is for subjugating Empire worlds. Build it over their homeworld right at the start and you can move ships elsewhere & ignore them entirely until you're ready to conquer them properly. Every time they try to build any orbital structure or construction ship then this Defense Base will instantly vaporize them. They're going nowhere.

"Ultramax Research Center" sounds cooler than it really is. Point being that you can actually build the dang thing before establishing a homeworld, giving you 300 points of each research type per base. That is obviously far better than the pitiful 30RP you get from your starting space port. Once you get a homeworld you're going to want to move research to there and redesign this thing to be as big as you can afford (as planets have no size limit for bases).

"Mini-Dock" is for when you capture enemy Construction Ships that don't have hyperdrives and thus need to refit them in the same system they were built in. Also good for when preparing a big attack on an Empire - build this in the next system over to speed repairs of your damaged ships. Cheap, quick to build, and utterly disposable once the job is finished.

"Speed/Range/Bulk Freighter" are all size 300 - you can't build bigger, after all. However, each has a purpose (hint: it's in the name) which lets you decide how you want to build your infrastructure. Mining ships do not have luxury extractors, which is good - they'll actually do something useful now.

"Striker" is a generic attack ship, good for fighting enemy ships. "Kashin" is a long-range missile ship set to standoff meant for destroying enemy orbitals (especially star ports). "Harpoon" is your raiding/capture ship. "Hornet" is horribly inefficient way to get a single fighter hanger into the the field, but as with all ships it can be easily upgraded once you've got the tech-size for more.

"Military Engineer" is proof that you can make a construction ship without using the construction ship title. This is good if your one construction ship gets killed and you don't want to quit the game & start over. Since this is technically a warship you can build as many as you want.

"Builder" is your construction ship. It is now armed. No more will you have to abort a mission just because there was a space slug in the area. Screw that. Let your fighters swat the bugs while you build in peace. It also has a single gas & ore extractor, for when you inevitably are 1 unit short of steel and don't want to fly all the way back home to get it.

"Small Space Port" is not a replacement/upgrade for your starting port. Rather it is meant to be placed above Independent planets, and/or your new starting HQ port once you get yourself a proper homeworld.

"Space Base 900" is mostly just a proof of concept. I've never found any real use for deep space ports when playing as a pirate (at least, never anything more than a Mini-Port does). Or rather, I've never been able to financially justify it.

[Serenitis]

ORIGINAL: NephilimNexus


"Military Engineer" is proof that you can make a construction ship without using the construction ship title. This is good if your one construction ship gets killed and you don't want to quit the game & start over. Since this is technically a warship you can build as many as you want.

Just a note about doing this.
Construction ships which are not based on a construction hull have some pretty serious limitations, the biggest of which being they cannot build things that move. And by 'move' I mean orbital motion.

Well... Technically they can build things, but there's a bug/feature which prevents it from being useful.
Any structure built by a 'military' constructor at an orbiting body will when completed become detached from said body and sit motionless in space at the exact location it was completed, forever useless.
So you can't build anything at planets/asteroids with them. And repairing also counts as building, so if you repair a damaged station with one of these ships the station will become detached and useless.

On top of this (if it weren't enough) any station which becomes detached from a body will be taken by the game to still be at that body, even if it has been destroyed/scrapped. You (or the AI) will not be able to build anything other than forts there for the rest of the game.
So by building a mining station at a planet using one of these ships you are effectively removing that planet and its resources from the game.

They are not useless though.
'Military' constructors can be used to build things that don't move, like anything in a gas cloud, at a star, or in space.
But most importantly they can be used to repair ships and claim derelicts, which frees up your actual constructor(s) to build infrastructure.

If your original constructor is lost, you can not rely on these ships to replace them. Your only options at that point is soldier on and wait for the 'mercenary ship' event (and hope it gives you a constructor), or restart.
Just be aware is all.

[NephilimNexus]

Now You're Just Showing Off: Alright you made it this far so you know enough to become a successful pirate empire. Now I'm going to show you two tricks to really rub it in, or give yourself some challenge back. Either way, this will require a little work. The first trick is mostly just a role-playing "completionist" thing. As you know, once you actually own a planet your own pirate bases end up working against you, increasing corruption (and lowering your income) by 30% per Fortress right off the top. For this reason it is advised that once you properly conquer a planet that you immediately ditch all any pirate facilities you have on the planet. But, since we're just showing off, now, let's say that you're playing a game where you've vowed to have pirate fortresses on every planet in your empire. The catch is that since you can't put them on planets that you actually own, you have to wait for the AI to settle every world first. Colony ships are useless to you.

Or are they? Let's say you found a world with 100% quality (yes, this happens) near your territory and you don't want to wait five centuries for the moronic AI to get around to colonizing it. But you also want your pirate fortress on it, too. What to do? Easy: Build a colony ship and colonize it like normal. Now raise the taxes to 100% and wait. Within a day the planet will be in minor rebellion and within a month or two they will have completely rebelled and become an Independent world. Now you can raid it and place pirate facilities on it, ta-da!

That trick is also a useful cost-saving measure in general, because as you know developing colonies have a negative income. It usually takes at least 1.5 billion citizens before you start seeing any positive cash flow from a planet. However, Independent worlds experience population growth just like any other, so if a planet is close to you and far from the AI, then it actually makes financial sense to force a colony to rebel Independent and then just ignore it for a few decades until the population is high enough to actually be worth owning, again. Then you just conquer it like normal and start collecting money right away.

The second trick for the big show-off is what I call "Leader Collecting," and it has benefits that border on being total exploits. Now as a Pirate, you've got your Pirate Leader, who gives your entire regime his/her bonuses so long as they're lounging at a Space Port (preferably a well-defended one). In this function they compare to regular empire Leader characters, of which every Empire gets exactly one (at any given time). Now you make sure to place your Criminal Network on an Empire world instead of an Independent world (which is more work, but also has more rewards - see as follows) then when that building hits 100% completion and the planet is taken over, you will snag their Leader and any other characters on that planet. This effectively gives you two characters both filling the Leader roll and yes, both give their bonuses. You can also swipe Intelligence Agents, Scientists, Generals, Colony Governors and even Ambassadors doing this (though Ambassadors are literally useless to you, as you can't do anything with them). Now that's quite a prize, right? Oh but it gets better!

As the overly-upward-mobile pirate with an extra 200,000cr or so to burn on ego tricks, why not repeat this process? Meaning target another Empire's capitol, send in your fleet to blow up everything like normal, bomb them and then raid them to get yourself up to Pirate Fortress level on the planet. So far pretty routine, right? Only now what we're going to do is go to our own Homeworld and demolish our Criminal Network there. Don't worry, you'll still control the planet. Other than changing ownership of a planet, the Criminal Network really does absolutely nothing but raise the corruption and lower income. It's kind of dumb that way. But you know that whole I just mentioned about using the Criminal Network planet-steal thing to grab all of an Empire's major characters? Yeah, you can do that more than once. In fact, you can do that to every Empire in the game. And when they rebuild a new capitol somewhere else, you can steal their planet via Criminal Network a second time. And a third. And a forth. There is no limit to the number of times a Criminal Network can be rebuilt - the only rule being that you can only have one built (or under construction) at a time. Yet there is nothing stopping you from building it, stealing a dozen characters from an Empire, then knocking it down and building another one someplace else.

Do this enough times and you can have, no joke, over a dozen Leaders. A score of Scientists. A horde of Colony Governors. More Generals than you'll know what to do with. All it takes is a little patience and a lot of money.