Hanger defence is the answer 2 or 3 hangers stocked with fighters/bombers in a ratio of 2:1 works for me

hehe pirates on Distant Stars Mod are ruthless, and they will get worse

on a side note you can also turn them off in the setting menu before start up to help you get used to the game

Repair bays are your best friend against pirate raids (especially if used in groups of 2 or more). These will prolong the lifetime of nearby ships and structures.

Aside from capital ships, early raids consist mostly of Cutthroats and Rogues which are countered by LRFs. Later in the game you'll want bombers or support ships when Corsairs (the pirate HC) start appearing.

you should have plenty of time between starting the game and the first raid on your planets to build up some kindof fleet response and by the second one to have a fully operation defense hangerbays/repairbays/mines/turrets eventually building a starbase along your fringe worlds if you decide you want to...I usually dont do that unless Im under heavy pressure from my enemy and have a hard time keeping them out of my GW's

by far the most effective way to slaughter a pirate raid on ur planets is to FORTIFY ur border planets and 'LURE' them to a certain location in ur gravity well. just put ur trade port n refinery behind a solid formation of turrrets n they'll go suicide

I was lead to believe that was common knowledge?

Of the five types of ships Pirates will throw at you, the Cutthroats and Rogues will chase trade ships blindly, Corsairs will go after your tactical structures, Reapers will chase your strikecraft (or follow the Corsairs if they don't find any), and the Pillagers blindly rush to bomb your planet like any other siege frig.

Rogues are essentially light frigates, Corsairs are HCs, Reapers are flak, and Pillagers are siege. Cutthroats seem to get ripped to pieces by fighters, so I presume they have the same armor type as LRF.

Cutthroats do antimedium damage which is the same as LRFs, ironically their primary target is trade ships which are light armored

Flaks are tough but there damage is spread in a circle around them not straight foraward like most frigs. Any balanced fleet will tear pirates and a fleet of flak apart. i think the best stratedgy is to place a trade port( their main target) in the middle of turrets(10) the pirates will throw themselves at it. some turrest or hangers to protect against siege frigates and repair bays to repair these structures.

these can stall pirates so you can bring in a fleet, or if you are willing to watch the attack and rebuild lost turrets and structures that are lost you can beat them without even being there

though i reccommend using it as a stall to get your caps there.

A starbase will also work

actually I'm not talking about attacking anyone with the flaks. The topic was to keep the pirates controlled. The flaks work very well to draw fire and let you build your defensive structures since the construction frig is a low priority target (for some reason). Also the flaks will eventually wear the pirates down. The flaks are used to buy yourself some time since that is what the poster seemed to need, a little room to breath and throw the pirates back for good.

Edit: Also you will probably integrate the flaks into your fleet anyways to keep them covered from strike craft. Whether you build them early to defend your planet or later when you find the chance to expand more you will need to build them. And I say the sooner the better.

Just remember when you bid, your building up the Pirates Defense Fleet, While a good sized fleet will knock a large Pirate Fleet out, if your not sure of your fleets size, you might want to reconsider how much you bid, as it will be collected on at some point. But at the same time, cant stop your enemies from bidding, once had 50k creds on my head.

Im just saying how outrageous it is sometimes the way people spend creds on bounty. that 50k came from one single AI enemy. Thats enough creds to build up a few planets or a replacement fleet for their loses.

What I mean is, by the time your empire is capable of spending 50k or even 10k on a bounty because you expect it to create a lull in the fighting between you and your enemy, then your dissillusioned, if you have that much money to throw around, so does your enemy which means he probably has a large fleet and a very heavily fortified frontline. So the Pirates will do nothing to him other then notice "oh the pirates are at it again". That money is better spent on defenses and a better balanced fleet,

when i got 50k put on my head it was very late game. It was a multi star map and myself and the AI had started out on the same star, I turtled out while the AI branched out to the 4 other stars. ((there were two other AI's but they were battling it out between themselves leaving me to my own enemy)) By the time I started actively engaging the AI in my star it already owned atlest two systems aside from the one I was in. But I commendered the star and for the most part cut off the AI from itself. Not that it was overly doing anything other then keeping Large Fleets from jumping in. But it was still able to create Fleets within my Star and gave me a run for my money. The reason the AI threw 50k on me was because in its programming it thought that by sending pirate fleet after pirate fleet it would slow me down. It was severly wrong, I didnt even have to waste my time to check on my planets as the only planets the pirates were able to attack were heavily fortified and the pirates didnt have the numbers to threaten me. The reality is that 50k could have been used to create atleast a buffer fleet, not something to stop me but to slow me down while the AI came up with a new strategy to route my two fleets and turn the fight for my Star around in its favor. Instead it wasted that money and allowed me to banish it from my Star and eventually expand out to the remaining stars where the AI immediately surrendered once I was close to conquering 2/3rds of its entire solar empire.

To get rid of pirates, just destroy their base, or keep the bounty on other players higher than it is on yours (the Advent Persuasive Offers tech helps with that). I like to mess with AIs in my custom maps by having their stars where the only GWs besides their homeworld are pirate bases (and I don't have to worry about them increasing the bounty on me, because for some reason AIs don't put bounties on anyone they haven't met