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If I take my army away from my planets in order to conquer the enemy I leave my planets open to pirate attack. How can I best protect my planets without having to pay a continual expensive bounty? Is there a minimum amount of ships that can be built to defeat these guys?
thank you,
use more planetary defenses. it usually works for me: hangers, stationaries, and maybe some lfs
Depends if you're playing regular sins of a solar empire or entrenchment. In standard SoaSE, a turret and a hanger with several repair bays are usually used to hold the pirates off until part of your fleet gets their. In entrenchment, upgraded fortifications and for sure starbases can easily destroy raids without you needing to bring some of their fleet back. Also, a lot of people put a capital ship and some repair bays on the planet that is most likely to be attacked, and let the capital ship defeat the entire raid for the experience. This is nice as it gets the capital ship in question to level 6 very quickly and allows the rest of your fleet to defend your empire from your other enemies.
Early pirate raids can be defeated with one cap ship and a repair bay or two. When the raids get larger, hangars, some turrets, and repair bays will do it.
Pirates are a great source of EXP for cap ships, let your opponent spend their money on bounty while it makes your caps stronger.
It gives you both an economic and military advantage.
Hope that helps and good luck 
Normally you can predict where the pirates are going to strike. It'll be at the planet that's the closest to the pirate base. Sometimes it can be hard to tell which planet this is, which can get a little frustrating, but Anderson pretty much got it. Put a cap ship there with a repair bay or two and some turrets. You don't need to leave too much behind, because pirate units compared to other tec/advent/vasari units are about 1/2 the toughness.
The biggest thing to worry about is the seige frigates, if you can take them out, the planet is pretty much safe. You may lose some buildings, but you'll never lose the planet.
Also, pirates will chase Colony frigates and trade ships first and foremost. Why? I don't know, but if they're in the grav well, the pirates will waste their time chasing them.
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