This is a collection of changes to enable piracy to be a thing, and also make a certain spoiler behave in a more logical way.
Enable the jettisoning of cargo while in space for ships with cargo bays. Jettisoning is instantaneous.
Enable the retrieval of jettisoned cargo by ships with shuttle bays. Retrieval occurs based on normal cargo loading speed rules.
When ships containing cargo bays are destroyed, all cargo is jettisoned unless the cargo bay itself was destroyed. This enables profitable cargo raiding/piracy.
Add a ship order to “Demand civilian ship to jettison cargo”, which causes target civilian ship to jettison their cargo or ignore your order. Only succeeds on civilian ships with cargo bays, if issuing ship is within a million km, target ship’s armor has at least one point of damage, you have established comms with their civilization, and the initiating ship is faster.
Add a ship order to “Demand civilian ship to heave to for boarding”, which causes a civilian ship to set speed to zero so you can board, or ignore your order. Only succeeds on NPC civilian ships, if ships are within a million km, target ship’s armor has at least one point of damage, you have established comms with their civilization, and the initiating ship is faster. Lasts for one hour, after which they start moving again (assuming you didn’t actually board them). Likelihood reduced by their civilization’s militancy and increased by how many prisoners from their civilization that you’ve released.
Enable NPCs, including specific spoiler race, to use above orders. Make that behavior preferred for attacking your civilian ships, instead of defaulting to destroying them.
That makes a lot of sense, it would make it more interesting to defend against that kind of attack, and also fun to use against them (Getting your stuff back from their salvagers, for example).
I had a similar thought a few days ago, but with mineral packets. Why not give pirates the ability to intercept minerals shot by mass drivers? The player, too. It would be a more stealthy way of raiding the enemy, especially if you only used small ships. But it also wouldn’t be too annoying or tedious to find a ship stealing your minerals if you looked, since they’d have to be on a direct line from the source to the destination.
I would like this completely separate from the rest of the suggestions (which I’m ambivalent about). This is a much better way to (attempt to) demand surrender than shooting the enemy commercial ships and hoping they surrender before you blow them to bits.
I’d suggest that they remain frozen until the ordering fleet is not in (their) sensor range. That way, you don’t get free ships if they surrender, you still have to board them, but until then you have to dedicate a ship to babysit them until you can deliver boarders to accept their surrender.
I would guess that in the specific condition of the ship waiting to be boarded, you just automatically win the combat and turn all crew into prisoners. Luckily the ship would have enough crew quarters to store the prisoners already.
