yeah, the computer is fast, though I never have any issues

as far as the pirates are concerned, early on a simple starbase will hold them off

later on you need a much stronger force or well developed system of mines and tactical structures

also study the pirates in how they attack (this will cost you a few games yes but long term worth it) they have a much simpler AI than the regular AIs and as such are easier to predict and defend against

Not true. A well placed, highly upgraded starbase, will kill almost any pirate raid. It has to be based around defense, like weapons and armor, and will cost a hefty sum, but will take care of your problems. I was trying to kill a pirate base, in one game (diplomacy) and the pirates were on high alert, and sent a raid every 10 minutes, including about 30-40 upgraded ships.

Everybody thanks for the replies!

So I found out that it is in fact possible to avoid raids, but you need to check the auction the pirates hold - which is indeed silly, why would the pirates announce any raid? But right now, I managed to avoid a raid or two by sniping the auction myself. Because I was not that sneaky before I missed the auction, but right now I guess I will not do that again...

With pirates off, is it still possible to bribe them to go after anyone? In other words, does turning off the pirates only turn off the periodical raiding, or does it eliminate the pirates completely safe for their rock they call a homebase?

Your not allowed to talk about pirates.

Pirates simply aren't worth turning on at the moment.  For one, there's an annoying bug where AI opponents will not bid on each other in FFA games.  Meaning you will always have to get involved in every raid bidding to avoid being locked by non-stop raids.  The second issue is the pirates will deal massive damage to your fleet without a starbase present no matter what, even on the very first raid, and will probably kill the planet anyways due to throwing 10+ siege ships in later raids.  The worst part though is that if you manage to control the pirates you will win effortlessly as whatever AI you are screwing over with them will get locked perpetually fighting them just like you would.

Regardless of who wins the raids, they are simply too tough thanks to their unnecessary special armour type and the game is more interesting without them.

I don't think it's been mentioned, but (at least in Entrenchment, didn't play Diplo yet) the pirates always attacked the nearest planet the auction "winner" has colonized to them. Therefore, if you scouted and found their base, you could easily predict where they hit. Moreover, the speed at which they traverse the system is also quite regular, meaning that you can not only predict where they hit, but also guess when they arrive. Utilize this and build 2-3 repair bays plus some handful of ships and you're set to defeat them.
Remember about the pillagers though, make sure you have something to deal with them (fighters/scouts).

Correct me if I'm wrong but if pirates are on in a single player FFA then don't they just attack you, the player? I don't think it's even worth getting into bidding as the pirates will be coming for you anyway. It would be better to spend the money on a garrison.

very true Shurdus, many of us have complained about the pirates and their power and have had noobs sit there and tell us that they are not that bad and that they can beat them, sadly they miss the point, we can beat them (heck even have a mod that ups the power of the pirates even more) but the AI can't even come close to beating them, hence the issue with the pirates, sadly if the pirates were nerfed to the point where they can't cause issues for the AI, then they would be useless against a human opponent

I found, that if you bring a non-combatent ship into a system thats being attacked by pirates, the pirates always attack that ship, for example, i had a planet that had a trade port on it that pirates would always attack, and whenever the pirates entered the system, thay made a B-line towards the trade ships, and left my fleet to pick them off like it was some kinda turkey shoot. But this is will work better if you have a lot of trade traffic to that specific planet. Hope it helped

In first 2-3 raids you should be able to colonize planets and when pirates attack they wont attack your HW so just leave them to kill off that outer rim planet they will attack and recolonize as soon as they leave.

After 2-3 initial attacks you should have big enough fleet to not to take heavy looses while defending against them. I personally loved them in 1.00 diplo version where they were really strong and really hard to defend against. In 1.01 they are still ok but they got nerfed to a point when after first 2-3 raids when my economy is up they really doesn't present a threat to me anymore and they are great for leveling experience on your cap ships.

Beside that in 99% of the maps in late game with their 40+ ships all with 2500+ HP and 20+ ARMOUR when they represent a threat again there will be at most 2 planets they will attack so they are very predictable.

PS In one game they had 1000+ ships defending their pirate base all above 2500+ HP and 24+ Armour. It took around 50 kosutra shots to clean that fleet. Ships accumulated with successful pirate missions and pirate raids. Did had 20 of kosutras build to fire at them.

No one mentioned it, but the current "strength" of pirates raids defaults to how bigger the bid is, so technically speaking you put a lot of effort/money on Computer Ai, say 1,000 credits, then threat of the pirates gets "severe" or "guarded", then at the last second, Ai puts 1,250 credits on you so guess what, the "severe" threat bounces back. I personally agree with you guys, I always turn them off to have actual fun. They should balance them seriously.

Before diplomacy, it was really only the first wave that was any threat.  Now the bar's moved up a bit, but as Greg mentions there still comes a point at which they're just feeding you.

I've long held that pirate raiders need to be intelligent, avoiding fortified enemy systems and picking less defended targets to raid.  You could probably get away with having multiple weaker raids active at a given time, and since they'd acquire new targets regularly this would remove the EBay bid system since the pirates would pick new targets much more regularly.