Dont let the returning raiders get back to their base.

I'll have to remember that one for Vasari, though I've not encountered too many problems with pirates alone (I tend to scale up my fleet about the same time they do) and try to get in a pre-emptive strike once I've got a good planet killing fleet going. My major problem though is that if I allow myself to face a pirate fleet I tend to be attacked immediately afterwards, especially in the mid-late game when the pirates are powerful enough to cause real damage to my fleet/defence structures. Two fleets of powerful ships one after the other tends to be pretty damn difficult to face if I don't have a fully upgraded starbase to help out.

EDIT: If you can get a Vasari starbase set up in the pirate gravwell (or any starbase really, but Vasari ones build quicker, which helps a lot) you can drop a new cap ship in there when a pirate raid is due and have it level up without having to move around much. Support cruisers may be necessary once the threat level has gotten high enough, but since the Orkulus has Debris Vortex it likely won't need them until the very late game).

I've played a few games now, and the same thing seems to happen over and over again.

The pirates get so incredibly powerful that I just feed them 20,000 credit missions to send an overwhelming force to wherever the enemy fleet is and they annihilate the entire planet, leaving me to mop up effortlessly.

I must agree with you.

I played a match yesterday and the second pirate wave in the game after half an hour was over consisted of approximately 10 to 12 ships and all i had were one captial and 27 light frigates. I stopped playing this match after a while because almost my entire fleet was destroyed. The pirate wave before went out to an enemy who managed to get 3 captial ships up and runnig, plus a lot of frigates, and he barly surived the atack.

You should realy lower the priates armor to a more realistic amount. How can it be that a stupid pirate force has far superiour battle technology then any military of the three races. It should be the other way around.

In real life, pirates flourish in situations where they can avoid the authorities and prey upon situations that are high reward and low risk.

As such, pirates should attack with a medium amount of strength, but they should be able to attack any system in the game without going through phase lanes. Theres no reason why a pirate might not be lurking in the darkness of space, or why they would stick to conventional modes of travel, or why they would go straight through your Battle-Hardened forward systems. They are not zealots, they are not out to die for a cause, they are there to swoop upon weak prey and feast!

Having to worry about pirates raiding your flanks would definitely spice up the game, add a tactical element, and reduce spam as they travel from system to system on the way to their target.

Pirates are weak now.  They are good for easy experience.  But to please everyone as other have suggested, they can allow pirates to have a different range of difficulty.

I play with pirates in single player.  I'm working on beating 4/5 vicious locked all against me.  I get hit with almost 3000/4000 supply fleets from multiple fronts.  Most cant even take 1 single vicious.  i liked them before the patch.

just an opinion, but the "slider" difficulty level thing would give everyone an option. Players like me that are low to medium can dial the pirates at medium to low strength and play a game and have the pirates "nipping" at my heels, or frustrating my fleets as i try to take out the other major races.

Or for those that can handle the "vicious" levels medium to high or extra high, say they get massive pirate fleets in while they still outfight the other races.

Its obvious of course, but this way everyone wins. 

Heavy players get massive killer pirate fleets, and the rest of us, can survive and enjoy it.

Just my vote, thats all.

-Teal

well pirates are suppose to be thiefs of the galaxy so there for they have stolen armour tech from othe races that is far suporior than that of yours. beside they are suppose to be hard to be there not suppose to die easy

well these pirates have tons of fighting expirance now the story says its been a 100 year war so far now. and they have the loot ablity they can suck income by taking out any of your trade ships that they see it might not be much but its there besides if your having a hard time go straight to starbases and set one up with full wepon upgrades and hit point upgrades then you'll be all set

I cannot even anhilate their base anymore, ugh...and before I could easily wipe it out with the Vasari without losing a single unit. (gotta love their abilities, lol)

The details on what I attempted in the mod-

-I slowed the trade and refinery ships from 300 to 150 to give the pirates more chance to destroy them, though I still consider that they might have too much health.  I also increased the rebuild time from 12s to 300s so that the destruction of a trade ship had some sort of financial impact.

The pirates can then be directed in small groups to attack remote trade planets rather than the front line, the outstanding problem being when they have to pass starbases.  I would have made them immune to damage from jumping out of starbased wells, if I could.

-I couldn't place the pirate base in a plasma storm as I wanted, but as I considered allowing the pirate turrets to have flak burst to be too strong (and there should be a graphic upgrade) I went for jam weapons instead.  If only they could have a phase jump inhibitor!

-The pirate armour modifiers were silly, with pirates only vulnerable to heavies, I made them more reasonable, typically 0.5 rather than 0.3.  I also limited them to 8 upgrades at 0.05, rather than 10 at 0.1, which prevents the ridiculous armour figures and makes the turrets destroyable in a reasonable amount of time, even late in the game.

-The ability research doesn't seem to work, so I couldn't copy it.  I added abilities as follows:  all pirate ships gained unstoppable phase jumps, all but the cruisers became able to cloak.  Scouts got Detect Mines, Timed Charges and Sacrifice- though I couldn't add a comment like 'Made it Ma, top of the world!'.   Mediums I added an antimatter cripple,  Siege Subversion and Flak Flakburst, though this is very heavy on anti so they get only one shot.  Cruisers had to have Domination for the pirate captures!  This can be very tricky because of the potential for Rapture abuse, but I made it so heavy on antimatter that it couldn't be used after a single jump, so that the cruisers can only block gravwells. 

-I reduced the pirate raid sensitivity to planets and upped sensitivity to trade and bounty, so they they appear in greater numbers only when it is warranted.  I also cut the heavier cruisers and siege out of the smaller raids entirely.  However the pirate missions can still be very effective if targetted properly, and not used as a temporary second main battle fleet.

2 consecutive Novalith shots solves the problem