New to the game, Playing a one Star game, my AI adversary is locked away behind the pirates base. I cannot get to him, while the pirate base exists. After 3 rounds of combat and an insane amount of mats, I finally smashed their fleet. But unless I am doing something wrong my battleships. 43Planetary Bombardment points. Wont attack their base. I just get the error noise. 

I read someplace on Reddit that you can no longer target their bases, but I have a hard time believing that's correct,  as situations like this are bound to come up and there just is no way to make progress till they are wiped out. 

Any Guidance would be much appreciated. BB.