A Pirating We Shall Go!

The pirates are pretty easy to destroy at their base, all you really need to do is outnumber and bring a few capital ships. As to the pirates "allying" with you, No that doesn't happen but I think you should be able to buy the pirates help for a bit!

The Money Guided Kamikaze Screw-Ups, i see them as a nuisance at worst, and free experience for capital ships at best, i often don't even bother taking out the pirate base. Back when i was new to this game i lost asteroid planets orbital structures to pirates, but since defenses had destroyed their siege frigates, they just left, and thats the worst they've managed to do to me. On some cases they have been able to destroy some AI's colonies, but they have no change against moderately defended planet, or a small fleet. I'd really like to see a low level Pirate Kol on the bigger raids.

 I recently saw a massive pirate fleet take on my fully upgraged Transcencia (Advent Starbase in Entrenchment beta), calling it slaughter would be a serious understatement.

Mid to late game, pirates are useless because they are very weak compared to any of the other races' later techs.  It would be nice it pirates had the ability to acquire capital ships and do things like fight to the death rather than run.  Also, I'd be curious as to what their target priorities are.  The BIGGEST weakness is that pirates have to go through many planets to get to the target sometimes and in doing that they may well arrive with little to no ships having been taken out en route . . . even by your allies who kill pirates even if said pirates are killing (or going to kill) your allies' enemies.

I was just playing a game, managed to pwn the Pirate Base with 16 capital ships, very easily, barely scratched any of my ships.

I actually just won my first game ever a few minutes..Maybe an hour ago. I hop from game to game, so I lose track of time. Anyway, I tried to take out all the Pirates one last time before finishing off my enemy, that didn't work at all. Then again, I only had..2..3..4..2 or 4 Capital Ships, something around that number, and mainly the basic forces. Ex. Light Frigates, Hoshiko Robotic Crusiers, Pencheron Light Carriers, the J something V Frigates, and that sort of thing.

Loved taking out the Pirate Base colony with my two capital ships, that I had at that time, and the Novalith Cannon.

I find pirates are really only useful early game and in FFAs.  Early on, having to deal with pirates can slow your expansion and force you to spend some resources on a few extras frigates or turrets.  In a FFA, sending a large pirate raid after someone can buy you time to attack someone else.  Beyond that, they are easily repelled and free XP for your cap ships as everyone says.  Instead of just getting more ships at higher threat levels, they need to get BETTER ships.  Their own cap ship and heavy cruisers really need to make an appearance.  They need to start bringing along the new long range anti-building ships so they don't get slaughtered by the new and improved defences as well.

Something that would make pirates more challenging...

A) shields + shield mitigation

B)Carriers + strike craft

C) 1 Cap ship at elevated, 2 at high, and 3 at Severe

D) hundreds of forces at their homeworld with hangar defenses an inhibitor and mines .(Sorta like 7ds)(As to make it obvious that if you want them gone you're going to need to have a lot of spare forces to defend yourself)

For this to be balanced, it would have to take longer for them to increase their attack severity, and the raids would have to be longer apart, but with the addition of mines and star bases it should be more than manageable, and players could coordinate attacks with  pirate raids to make them useful. I suppose with all of that more people would be inclined to acctually push the bounty onto someone else if they weren't turtling.

I think by wanting to give pirates more and more abilities you are forgetting that they are, in essence, pirates.  They have no ship building capability, no research capability, and provide nothing in the form of trade or resources. 

They are parasites, and must be expunged from the the system at the earliest possible point after they have out-lived their usefulness.  While it would be interesting to give them the capability to capture cap ships, they would have to stop shooting at them long enough to board them, and no cap ship commander is going to stop shooting!

I almost never pirates away by upping the bounty on the enemy. Build up some goo defenses on target planets. Put two or three repair bays +  two or three hanger defense + 5 light frigs and some LRMs and you can hold off and defeat almost any pirate raid. Usually I add in my low level caps there for them to gain exp. Pirates = Free Exp. I think over the last few games I played, I only upped the bounty on the enemy once or twice.

Caveat: This is all against AI. Human players will use the pirates for entirely different purposes (distraction, etc).

yes.  they are pirates.  pirates who can become richer than any race.  therefore, they can buy what they cannot build or research.

we should have an option to covertly aid pirates with materials too.

When you capture their world, it has "plundered booty", a permanent +3.5 credits/sec I'm sure they have some funds, and if they were actually powerful, the bids to pass the bounty on alone could fund new forces. Not to mention they harass trade ports and trade ships for a living. And before someone says crystal and metal is an issue, who the hell do you think owns the black market?