nweismuller posted:

Space monsters date at least back to Master of Orion 2; pirates had an implementation in MoO2 that was just 'station ships in this system to stop losing freighters and getting your trade income tanked' as one of the possible random events in that game (another was getting a chunk of your treasury spontaneously stolen by pirates). I forget if any piracy implementation existed as one of the random events in Master of Orion 1. Either way, the monsters in this game are simply continuing the legacy of MoO2, and I imagine the pirates are an attempt to make the original pirate random events look more interesting with actual ships and bases.