theres always a pirate base, you must destroy them. And for pirates, i'd suggest you build some base defence first and get capital ship

Pay the bounty to have the pirates to go elsewhere for the first couple of turns.

Sometimes (especially in MP) it could be wise to let the pirates invade one of your planets. If they bring bombers, just kill the bombers then leave the planet. Scuttle any labs/factories you might have, they'll destroy the extractors, then go away to return to their home base (wich add to their defensive fleet overthere then ).

Another thing that it is good to know, is that pirates mainly focus trade ships first (they are pirates after all). So coupled with hangar defenses, and a repell fleet, you can tear them down while they chase those trade ships. Be sure to take out eventual bombers first, then take out their ships.

Vasari have a tech who reduce the number of pirates incoming to them. Altough it may help, better choose (as vas) the tech who up the bounty collected when destroying ships. You'll earn more money, and it will lower your bounty faster.

yeah I agree with jetheren that is the stratgy I use but in my oppinon keep a smallish (at least one cap ship with supporting ships) with deffesive structures (repair platforms work best in my oppinon) in orbit at the general direction of the spacelane that the pirates use. than cushion your ships with multiple repair platforms that are blanketing eachother

I too am a complete newb at this game. Not at RTS genre, just at SoAsE. Now, you all will probably have a laugh riot on my expenses, but my learning system was like this. I barely could properly follow all the tutorial missions at start. then i read a couple online guides and message boards and decided to start my first game. A weird one. I picked a small random map, and.. well, ZERO opponents, and started the game. Hey, instant victory! Quit or continue playing? Continue playing, of course. So, there i am, the whole tiny solar system for me alone,..and the Jolly Roger team

It was like that that i learned my ropes. When i was beating the game...err, the pirates actually, then i finally added one opponent, of the same race i am, so i could understand what was he doing. All this on AI easy. After i mastered that aspect of the game, i started picking medium maps with more players. Now i am still at the easy difficulty, but am enjoying 2 vs 2 games (my teammate is also an AI). Every new game, i set my ally to be of different race or attitude: turtler, researcher, attacker etc.So i can watch what and what and when is he doing. This system worked for me, maybe will work for someone else that has problems with the early game steep learning curve. Right now, i am actually consistently winning my matches, and i am having fun. Fun is everything, isn't it?

The few times I played against Pirates I learned a trick or two. First I noticed they don’t go after more than one Planet at a time when they attack. They will change to a different Planet on the next attack sometimes. Anyway what I end up doing is I would build my fleet enough so while they are away attacking one of the planets I would attack their Home planet thus stopping their production for new ships. It may sound easy but Pirates can be pretty tuff. Now I only played against Pirates a few times because they are annoying when your trying to colonize a get your tech up so forgive me if I’m not accurate on my info.

Im also new, even though I have played a couple of big maps against normal AI's.

Pirates is never a real problem to me. I build a capital ship and a handfull of the small frigates and they take care of the problem.

For the moment I play tech as they are easier to "understand" as theire buildings is a bit more rezognizeble to a n00b like me.

I always start with, building the capital ship base, and start building the free capital ship straight away. This is my main priority. Then I build a scout or two and a couple of the cheap frigates. The capital ship is the Kol as my starting ship. Then I start to scout for a "easy" star system for the taking.

The fist tech I always explore is the "ice" planet tech, and the "volcano" tech, which allows me to build on all types of planes in the game. It's so annoying not being able to utilize a newly conquered planet.

For the pirates, I also use the bounty thing, and it have proven really helpfull to contain the AI.

I can not find the option to turn off the pirates.  I see the place to choose "options", but not "game options" as EmpPal stated.  Any help would be appreciated.  Thanks.

Download the updates and found it.  Thanks for the help.

To get the newest patches, the Beta for 1.1 you have to have Impulse. Now when you download Impulse click the Blue Stardock Orb in the top left and select "Show Pre-Release Versions" Then go to Updates and update away!

pirates = free exp for your lovely flagship

Necro ftl.

In the beginning, I used to keep upping the reward to push the pirates to the opponents. But I found that in the end, I was just giving the oponents spare experience points. Secondly, since I've upped the bounty on the opponent, chances are, my own bounty has increased as well (since the other fellow will try to bet against me), so in the next round, I have to put up a lot more cash to keep up. Economically, I think it is a no win scenario. Thirdly, the size of the pirate raid ad their "persistence" is related to how much bounty is on your head. If you and your opponent have been upping the bounty, when the pirates do hit, the bounty is probably high, so the pirate raid will be large and persistent. So in the end, I just accept the pirates and only use the bounty when it serves a tactical advantage (ie. distraction)..

Usually, when just starting out, I have a cap ship (the free one), plus say a bunch of frigates (up to say ten). Usually, in the beginning, if you have a small fleet + one cap ship, you can take on most any pirate raid (unless you have been playing up the bounty). When I have a chance, I try to research and add on hangers. This adds "mobile" defenses (at least within the grav well) to a planet. Later on, I like adding Phase Jump Inhibitors to prevent the pirates from leaving so I can mop them up and soak up the exp points. In fact, if I know a particular planet is a likely target for pirates, I put my least experienced cap ships there for "training excercises"