From my previous reply about Pirates I noticed the following behaviour with the Carinoids (minor race).

'My 2nd observation was the Carinoids (minor civ) who were present in the game. The pirates killed everything except for Carinoids vessels/traderoutes/starbases. It just passed them by like they weren't there. I wonder if this is Intended or an unforseen effect?'

Greetingz

Zwelgje

Actually -- I saw my first minor race 2nd planet colonization last night.... I do agree, though, that -- if the minors aren't going to participate in the colonization rush and truly try invading, they shouldn't be spitting out the ships they do.

I also agree it's bloody annoying when the pirates leave the minors starbases alone.

I just had the peacekeepers show up during the colonization phase.
They immediately declared war on 2 minor races and haven't moved or attacked since.
I have never seen the pirates attack minor races. They send out freighters and establish trade routes with no problem.

Another annoyance, pirates destroying all mining bases so that the minor races can move in and take over. I have noticed that for some reason, pirates ignore economy starbases that have only industrial modules... I need to experiment more with that.

I like to have at least one minor in the game that I can make my trading partner, that way I do not lose all my trading routes when I begin the process of wiping out everyone else   

The minors could seriously use an update. They don't have to have all the bells and whistles and personality of the larger races (though the Snathi and Dark Yor in particular could benefit from some personality), but they should still be reasonably competent races that merely did not get started fast enough or have the resources to join in the initial rush with the other races.

If they're made competent enough, then there should be the possibility of them becoming major powers should they manage to gain enough influence. Or, conversely, of crushed major powers becoming minor players.

Just out of curiosity, I know that we can trade with, or buy / sell items from, the minor and major races. I also believe they do this with each other as well. Is it a possibility that they (the minors) are building these ships (transport / colony) in the hopes of being able to use them in a trade or to sell them?

Actually no, beacuse they have no way to sell ships or bases. I wish that they did because I hate having to go to war with them because they have an resource starbase that they cannot use but there is no way that you can get them to give it up peacefully.

Scincerely,
Scintor

I've never been able to buy any resource mine from any AI (major or minor), but I've always assumed that is b/c I don't have (know) what it would take for them to sell.

It was made back in one of the early patches of GC2 so that buying resource bases was nearly (if not completely) impossible, so that players could not simply buy them all off and gain a huge advantage, IIRC.

Most ships can be bought for the right price, however. I can't say as to whether the AI will sell them to other AIs, though.

I recall using the mining-starbase-purchase technique quite a bit in GC1, and it was a cheese the way I used it.

I've really only played the beta of DA rather than stock DL, and I've never had any success buying a mining starbase or planet. Sometimes I can get planets in a peace treaty deal if I've really handed them their respective hinderparts on a platter (once I got the Torian homeworld which shattered their influence), never tried that with mining starbases (if I wanted them, and we were at war, I blew them up).

I wonder if demands for mining starbases have any chance of success. If I've got 1000 times more military than the target, I'd think it at least possible that they'd rather lose the one base than they're entire empire, but it would probably be too exploitable by us maniacal humans.