Other possible applications of admirals in line with the concept and their benefits:
Reworked pirate raids:1. Pirate leader: Bloodfangs the 3rd is assembling a fleet... the guy is represented on the map as an admiral keeping in line with the games base principle
2. The first ship spawn is a capital ship with the above admiral and potent EXP and thus fleet bonuses but with no escorts
3. The capital ship is equipped with high-level tech to offer an incentive for the player to confront and capture it
4. With each turn leading up to the raid, the pirate fleet grows but with only non-capital ships and the lowest tech-tier (basic shields, lasers, rockers, and LOTS of Boarding guys). Although these ships would not present a threat in and of themselves, they are buffed with the admirals ability
5. Result: player is motivated to attack the fleet as soon as possible not just to prevent a stronger attack, but also to make capturing the capital pirate ship easier and reverse engineer its tech. If the player waits too long, the screen of buffed up escort ships will make it extremely difficult to capture the capital ship intact and survive the engagement- player will be motivated instead to take out the capital ship as soon as possible to debuff the small vessels
Considering that I haven't seen these guys for a couple of games now I guess they are deactivated due to balancing reasons: the above might provide a solution for that
This is also feasible from a lore perspective as the overwhelming amount of pirate ships will actually be of low-tech as they should, the exception being the CS of the pirate leader itself (lets say these are rouge admirals hijacking prototypes:))
Reworked Marauder mechanic:1. Gremak would generally get a faction bonus when it comes to admirals. Since their Command Cruiser is available relatively early in the game, they would get access to admirals early as well (hosting admirals would be the perk of a Command Cruiser fitting to their name).
2. Marauder faction uses Gremak ship-set so the above applies to them as well (no changes)
3. Generally this leads to Marauders getting admirals first (expect for other Gremak empires if any are in game)
4. Amount of Capital Ships for each Marauder faction is to be limited to a single vessel and it can only be a Command Cruiser (Thus can even be issued to the faction automatically after a dynamic timer runs out: no AI scripting necessary)
5. Contrary to AI lead empire fleets, Marauder fleets have a high win ratio and extremely high ship survivability ration, thus their admirals are allowed to increase in XP and level up
6. At any time, there is always only a single fleet attacking from a specific Marauder base, thus the admiral sees a lot of action and probability of leveling up is almost ensured
7. Thanks to their admiral, Marauder fleet do not need to boost high level of tech or large ships to be a factor in the mid nor in late game. They can stick to producing cheap small vessels to increase their single blob of raiding fleet lead by a high-level admiral
8. The player only needs to cut the "head" of the Marauder fleet to considerably decrease their combat threat. Once the admiral is lost, they will need time to rebuild and level up again before they can pose a considerable threat
9. Left unchecked, a Marauder fleet lead by a high-level admiral and dozens of small ships can raid even a well fortified system, thus the player is not all that happy when Marauders are raiding enemy territory
10. Optional: Bribing Marauders is only available when an admiral is leading their fleet. When admiral is bribed/or as a separate deal: the fleet can be sent against another system. The player could directly select their target on the galaxy map and thus send a formidable force against a competitors home or critical system without declaring war
11. Optional: Marauder Admirals have a very small chance of forming their own empire after each conquered planet (if not many Gremak factions are present yet on the map). In this case, both the fleet and the newly conquered planet become assets of the new empire and the admirals image will be displayed when dealing with the new empire on the Diplomacy screen -immersion pour
Just imagine the sneaky smug face of the former Marauder admiral - now an emperor of his own domain, and having to deal with him after he has pillaged the quadrant and enslaved so many citizens...
The above would lead to a more logical Marauder mechanic and buildup of the threat level (something that is also partially deactivated currently due to balancing issues).
No longer would Maraduers be running around with a number of advanced battleships (only Command Cruisers), leaving the true military grade hardware to be produced by actual empires, while still packing a considerable punch when left unchecked
The player has logical and fun interaction with the Marauders and has the option to disrupt their threat level buildup for a longer period of time (currently they just happily produce battleships when loosing the fleet: there is no buildup to their threat level).
Instead, the player can choose to target the admiral, and even sacrifice a fleet to achieve the single goal of eliminating the one target that gives the largest boost to their fleet power (just like how you keep those green-skins in check