Should a city be able to ban/allow pirate ships from docking?
Naval piracy is a dangerous and infamous job, but its promise for riches, only come a success against the odds, could be astronomical, even for the common crewman. As all things on Verra, piracy would be a form of """business,""" though admittedly a corrupt and selfish one. There would be costs to build or procure a ship as well as costs for repairs, necessary supplies, and crew. No band of pirates can survive if their costs outweigh their profits, and so they plunder, but in such a way that minimizes losses.
On the other side of this delicate balance, a city would have ships that travel across the open seas, ferrying goods, people, and armaments to project force upon an enemy to other nodes. There will come a time when a ship or flotilla isn't prepared for a proportionally threatening pirate assault. The result in this case: either they're boarded and their loot is taken away, or the crew is left sucking seawater until they reach the locker at the bottom of the deep blue. In this moment, the pirates win. But this begs an important question: now what?
The obvious answer would be "land at port, sell your loot, fix the ship, and start aweigh we go," but where would they go to dock in the first place? They're pirates! Their activity isn't exactly "legal," and while lucrative, they're pirates. Allying with them can lead to negative influence with other cities. It wouldn't be fair to let them dock just anywhere, and even if that is the case, a city's navy could be launched specifically to keep that from happening. In the game of politics, playing the part is important, and in the case of pirates, being their friend can make your city someone else's enemy.
SO. Would it make sense for a mayor to to have the power to publicly allow or disallow pirate activity in their port city? Essentially, setting this up as a policy would set how ships of a certain port would interact with pirate ships, and ideally vice versa. Non-pirate ships from pirate ports would perhaps have a different colored circle around them to indicate if they're allied (or at least complacent) with a pirate's line of business. It would also mean that pirates would gain the ability to build and repair their ships at these ports, as well as trade any goods they plunder.
Perhaps, instead of simply allowing pirates to exist in a port, this proposed policy would instead make the city become a pirate city, one hub in a network that allows the staging of pirate ships as well as the trading of their loot. Regardless, it would implicitly turn these cities into enemies of the cities whose ships they sink, so there has to be some sort of balance in knowing which ports are their enemy.
Anyways, what do you guys think about this? How should pirate ships interact with the ports of other cities?
