Just had a crazy Idea that would make Envoy ships even more interesting: 

What if they could PARLEY with the pirates if either they could intercept them before they attacked one of your systems or confronted them when they have just entered one of your systems.  The concept I'm thinking of is that you'd have to pay them a larger amount than the bounty on your head (Double maybe?) and they then can be redirected to another empire. 

Now I don't know if this will contradict the idea the developers have for the pirates in this reguard (They do attack envoy ships even when you're just passing through thier base).  Now I understand the problem with this is that everyone would just keep on redirecting, so to counter-act this the ability to bribe them could only be used once per attack force.  When this happens there would be  a notice to the other players that it occured.  This would be an unlockable late tier ability, so it wouldn't effect early or mid-game play, but would be something interesting to mix things up.  Thoughts...?