True. But a better ship is something that can do that and take a beating as well.

Many people have said so. Sarcasm does not necessarily persuade me.

The pirate problem is not very serious, and also easily resolved.

1) especially with Vasari (when they will come) pirates give you money through salvaging their derelicts.TEC rebels do not even have the problem of fighting them.

2) you can pay them too (difficult or not to win the bid).

3) They are very vulnerable to corvettes early on.

4) Later you just kill their base for Titan experience (I am assuming this is singleplayer).

The only thing is when they become upgraded in late game, in multiple star maps, yet a few hits by a novalith or an all-out attack carried out anticipately in colonizable starsystems can resolve the issue before you have to deal with their upgraded raids.

In the rare circumstances when you cannot muster a force, just scuttle everything in the gravwell for some money, and early on they just go away. Later, you'll have to recolonize because they have siege.

Well, no, if you read the initial post it is. I am aware of your branch of the discussion, although I really don't think that it is possible to balance the pirates to remain effective in combat in every kind of game (long, short, big, small) otherwise. So they should probably remain as they are, although their ships are stronger than those of regular factions in late game.

The mechanic is basically the problem people have been complaining about for years and most likely will for years to come. Good players are able to fend off any raid without too much trouble in the first place, so that isn't really the problem. The problem is that the system turns into a last minute clikfest, as mentioned in the OP. Possible solution would be to distribute pirate raid forces equally over all players with bounty on their heads (the overall force of the raid would have to be drastically increased when using this system though and this still wouldn't effect the TEC Rebels).

If anyone has a proper solution for a more fair Pirate raid system, I would be very interested in reading it.