The topic will be pirates, rebels, malcontents, and other sundry non-conformists.

I'll present my ideas roughly grouped as I pull it from scraps of paper I've jotted various notes on.

1. Birds of a feather may stick together, but that doesn't mean they are all crows.

I honestly haven't played enough or looked close enough at the current pirate faction ship designs to see if they stay toward a given theme as far as race of origin, so part of this may be redundant.  There should be at least a few different looking sets (either by pallet choice or some ship choice to designate different pirate type factions.  In other words elements that tie them together as a ship set (which I will cover later) or that show common origins (ie based off of a non human ship style) so as to show that the various neer-do-wells come from multiple factions or are a faction of their own.

2. A reason to run.

As a broad grouping that may extend beyond traditional race or faction borders each 'pirate group' could be designated by a common theme.  Pirate spawning could be linked to malcontent in a given faction- ie if a faction is unhappy more pirate groups opposed or preying on that faction may appear as a result.  Some simple examples:

'Peacenicks' -fugitives from a military faction, generally non aggressive, but could be selectively aggressive to the related faction

'Rustbuckets'-flawed synthetics escaping from reprocessing or mandatory upgrading, perhaps with a 'gone organic' vibe

'Naturalists'- protect natural phenomena such as resources or space terrain on map, or are aggressive to expansionist/colonization

'Researchers'- scientists unaffilliated with a government/faction and could be found around resources and anomolies

Mercenaries/bounty hunters- could be used as a non affiliated means to attack other factions, counter pirates in your own zoc, or just be an option other than building a fleet and hunting them yourself

Note that some groups may be private citizens or companies akin to minor factions.  A given group could have preferred targets

3. The reason is fun.

Some possible mechanical distinctions a pirate faction could use.  Gain some minor resources from malcontent factions (manufacturing, money, research) that you have an outpost (starbase) in.  They may want some kind of stealth ability to go unnoticed.  They may also want to be able to capture ships vs. blowing them up.  In the same vein taking prisoners from a ship would probably require some kind of boarding action.  Your resistance and or fighting prowess could help you resist along with any internal ship defenses.  Turning the prisoners to slaves increases manufacturing or sell them (population/resource) for a profit.  Converting prisoners to pirates could either increase your military (success of pirate attacks) or cash in.  You could also have a parlay option to ransom the prisoners/ships pre and post combat.  They would also benefit from having an option to disengage or flee from a battle that is going poorly and evading vs tanking hits.  Capturing ships could build your military and research. After boarding action could result in a ship getting a debuff to its stats.  Some of these could also be employed from range, such as jamming to reduce the opponents accuracy (to aid in getting close for boarding actions), tractor beams to reduce movement, and so on.

4. This is a raid.

Another play element after stealth could be to have a raiding module ( with a slaving one requiring some population?) that allows a ship to attack a structure (starbase or planet) with a chance to avoid detection.  For slavers I imagine invasion resist would reduce the # of people that are taken.  A target faction's faction bonuses and soldiering could affect the attractiveness of them as targets, and the payout potential for the abducted.  For their outposts- these could either be traditional starbases, or stealthed buildings on any world (such as the 0 class ones).  These could leach resources when in a faction's zone of control (could give an extra usability to different types of scanner upgrades) similar to how mining starbases work I guess.

5. All together now.

I think some of these elements would diversify the play experience quite a bit.  I already have a few theme ideas but those may have to wait for more ship jewelry.  Being a faction of sorts, you could allow a pirate group to build a type of black market on a world. this could give you some cash, and allow you to purchase survices from them at the cost of bad pr or having some of their baggage or dealings being tied to your image in the galaxy.  They also might not be shy of betraying you in someway either.

6. The law.

The ZoC could have a level of lawlessness based on your sensor technologies.  Where the further out from sensor sources (such as between star systems, starbases and ships) the chance of pirates being undetected (or mistaken as something else via decoy or camo) is greater.  The pirate factions may also have a separate zoc that opperates as territory they collect from to have a kind of turf war going off when areas are contested between pirate groups.

7. A boundless ocean of stars.

Please include any of your own ideas regarding pirates so we can have them in one place for SD to look over.