From an email I sent to Frey the other day:
Constant warfare between the empires has left the citizenry of the Alpha Quadrant open to exploitation by pirates. The various cartels have ruthlessly staked their claims in their race's home space, and are looking to neutral space and the holdings of the other cartels to expand their economic empires. The cartels routinely ignore the laws of their host empires, often standing toe to toe against the rag-tag police forces sent against them. The empire's navies are simply to depleted to do anything about the pirates; leaving the citizens to the cartel's tender mercies.
The major cartels have aligned into cabals of two or three cartels, with one cartel being dominant over the others. The subordinate cartels pay a portion of their profits for the protection and stewardship of the dominate Cartel in their group. Failure to pay results in support being withdrawn and assets seized.
The Orion cartel has become dominant over the Syndicate and Wylde Fire cartels, the Korgath cartel dominates the Combroro and Prime cartels, and the Beast Raiders and Tiger Heart cartels exist in a strange sort of semi-alliance no one has figured out. Mostly, it's that the Tiger Hearts were the only ones willing or able to put up with the eccentricities of the Beast Raiders, but it's also mutual defense against the other cartels.
We would use the SS2 rules, for the most part, including the disengagement rules.
The map would be 30 to 45 hexes by 25 to 30 hexes.
Bases would be permanent, and so very expensive in the shipyards.
BBs, DNs, and CVs go to RMs only. FMs get BCHs and smaller CVs.
VCs TBD
And from an email I sent earlier today:
We could have several players, at least one per race maybe, play as empire races. Their only purpose would be to oppose the pirate players, they would not try to expand their empire's space. The only problem I see with this is that empire players cannot affect cartel DV on the map (and vice versa).
The dreaming is in progress.
![Laughing :lol:](./images/smilies/icon_lol.gif)