Nah, no pirate options IMHO. If you want to pirate, join as a faction and pirate from there by capturing planets. Same difference. As far as speeds are concerned, the higher the better. An SD doing 300 would be nice, but ships like the Eclipse and Executor should also be able to do 300. It's pretty stupid that a ship so powerful goes at half the hyperspeed, when it dosn't. In balancing, isn't Warlords already pretty well balanced between Imps and Rebels?