its "gold-painted", not "gold-plated". The pirates are so scuffed they cant even afford to plate their ship enterior gold, even when its abundant.
Some kind of insects with tribal-level tech. Like ants but scaled up. You dont even need to go think about it - just plop them down on hellhole and you have several species which can pottentionaly survive on New Katachan. Ofc those same ants would be very glad to be relocated to planet where they are the apex-predator, instead of mid-game creatura. Hm... Like mantises from FTL.
Various suggestions, feel free to cherry pick if you want any:
Maybe it is unfisnished lucrehulk , stolen from shipyard? Like missing parts of the ship, droid personal while some of it is just carcases? Or one that just fell on the planet and survived? Well, barely?
We are NOT bringing Skaven to starwars.
Now when you said it... Imagine rat empire in some far-away place where they achieved high-tech and overcome their destructive nature to become a high-end society which THRIVES on their idillic planet... with other planets in system full-on hardcore warpstone hellholes (imagine tiberium-words) which are mined by robots. Ofc the rats are snorting warp-dust almost dayly and devolve in bloodthirsty psychos if they dont get a fix....
During the bacta war the rogue rogue squadron (the double rogue is important since the new republic couldn't be seen breaking the fragile peace so the rogue squadron had gone rogue, get it?) members managed to slave like 200 light freighters with launchers to one targeting computer to coordinate a barrage on the bridge of the lusankya (an Executor class ssd) and then it was forgotten (at least that's the only instance i remember of it happening)
Giant climate adapted spiders with webs, faster than they should be, and cunning without being sentient. Think LotR Shelob. Bonus points if they have bladed legs.
would also help with his manpower problem for crewing ships for his fleet
Somewhere in an entirely different galaxy where there is only war, a skeletal emperor on a golden throne might not appreciate xenos pirates using the name of gold in vain, especially since the Lucrehulk is only painted gold instead of being solid gold.
You know, when (not if) Governor Las Mola manages to completely dismantle the Crowns and their operations, wouldn't it be such cruel and amusing irony if the Zann Consortium, almost certain to have issues with their expansion operations being disrupted, would blame that excessively ambitious Sector Admiral Wasti? Wasti would technically get what he wanted, but then we all know that the chances of Wasti actually winning against Tyber Zann, and the resources he commands, is just as likely as a Hutt donating to charities.
Honestly the monologue shows he's an idiot and that's probably why the consortium chose to expand to this sector (with the moff mostly absent and the admiral lacking intelligence to such a tragic degree) so the MC will probably become hostile to Zann and like Thrawn get on his "kill this man in revenge" list after dismantling his operations, why do i say the Admiral is an idiot? 'Cause for all his monologuing about dumping the responsibility on the moff while imagining the glory of a decisive engagement to propell his career ... he seems to forget he's the admiral of the sector fleet and is the idiot responsible for sector security, meaning the both of them are going to lose their heads due to his greed and lack of proper awareness of his own responsibilties once someone high enough gets informed of the clusterfuck going on
