Treasure hunters origin questions

[In-Bread Dog]

I want to do a run of the treasure hunters origin, and have some questions before I start.
Current plan is to do a fanatic militarist, xenophobic empire with barbaric despoilers and galactic curators civic, take synthetic evolution and go with democratic surrogacy (buffs to war). being xenophobic, will I be able to get captain ness as a commander? I don't know if xenophobes will allow that.
Secondly, what would be the best way to use ship stealing, either from captain ness or from the boarding harpoons.
Lastly, how much fleet power do each of the pirate fleets have and how to counter them?

[Speed Malus]

That's just... the... British Museum

[Namethatworks]

I can confirm the best way to steal ships is to have an entire fleet with boarding cables when you get them.

You'll get enough ships if you make it your main fleet that you'll barely need to craft any.

With said fleet with Ness you may have to start scrapping fleets or use the excess for easy merc's. You can steal many things that you'd think you wouldn't.

Just retrofit them with you weapon plans.

[Kufesska]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YsJoIdmeLKw&ab_channel=MontuPlays

[RCMidas]

The pirate fleets seem to scale in power based on your technology and naval capacity - the first ones I encountered on my run had under 1K strength, the last ones were nearly 80K because I'd left the system alone for about 100 years whilst I dealt with the rest of the galaxy.