Some more stuff about my honorable pirates:
If pirates are know to steal the ships and space the crews, then virtually no
merchant ships (company or private) are going to surrender if they know they
will die anyway. Fights like this are what (sane) pirates avoid. If crews know
that if they surrender, the only thing have to lose is their cargo, they will
tend to surrender (provided their other choice is a fight with no mercy). Yes,
honor is silly to some people, but it has been around for quite awhile (even
u-boats in early WWI gave freighter crews a chance to get off the ships before
they torpedoed the ship; freighters started mounting suns and firing on the
subs as soon as they surfaced to give warning, forcing the u-boat commanders to
torpedoe ships without warning; the British (and other countries) then had the
gall to say that Germany was acting dishonorably!). There is also historical
presedence (from the Carribean) for a Brotherhood amongst pirates -- they would
not lie, steal, or cheat each other. In such a case, a pirate crew WOULD care
about the repurcussions of its actions on other pirates, unless it was a rogue
(ie, non-Brotherhood) ship.