We kept the pirate mission in the campaign. We only discarded one mission from the original Silent Threat storyline, although we redesigned another two so much that they're only slightly recognizable from the originals. The rest of the missions are still present in recognizable form, including this one. It was pretty decent, so we kept it more or less the same, while cleaning up the gameplay.
One thing we tried to do in ST:R is to make sure every mission had a reason for existing. For this mission, the reason was that the GTA and PVN had just won a major but difficult victory over the Shivans in the system, so there was a power vacuum. Control of the sector was extremely tenuous, so the time was ideal for a major pirate strike. A GTI Special Ops squadron was dispatched because of the precariousness of the situation and the sensitivity of the cargo.
