Some of my ideas and questions

[Puke]

I bet mercs would be hard to code, since even if the AI agrees to fight someone for you, they often dont follow through. maybe it would be possible if you prohibit them from making treaties, then they would be more inclined to fight the people they agree to fight.

space monsters have been done by others as an event. eg, you get an event notice that says "a space monster has appeared out of the stars and swallowed your ship" or "a space monster pees on your colony at tau ceti 5, ten billion die!"

but to my knowledge, no, noone has actually made a 'space monster' race. that might actually be really cool if they were like the pirates, they had no worlds but their ships had construction abilities to spawn other ships. i would love to see the shipset for something like that.

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"...the green, sticky spawn of the stars"
(with apologies to H.P.L.)