My idea is to simply make pirates effective, not dangerous or lame. In this way  a pirate base can be left alone to making raids that are just annoying.

Pirate Rogues and Cutthroats  just charge suicidally to star base just like ai, while my raid will concentrate on prime targets (Star base, Other Structures, Strike Crafts and Planet itself) only from a suitable distance.

My proposed raid will only consist of Armored Pirate Flaks, Pirate Krosov and Pirate Orgovs having armor ranging from light to heavy depending upon the threat level.

The bottom line is that ai does not know to handle Star base very well. Why not give it an instrument in the form of pirates to aid as a distraction or who knows an effective way to bring down those giant star bases. 

The pirate  raids would be harder but that would solve the dumb ai problem very much. Star base create an imbalance between ai and human player. So the pirates may act as a balancing factor. By the way, two groups of few missile frigates and Light Frigates will make short work of Orgovs and Krosovs. It just means that you cannot leave cruical star bases alone.

The main part of the game (in single-player) is with the overall AI itself (which always suicides itself on starbases), of which pirates are only an occasional part.

If only there were a way to mod the AIs. But the devs have shot this down for some reason... such a shame. I'd love to be able to mod them and to challenge myself to build one which could beat most human players without income/research advantages.