I would guess you aren't developing your planets.

If you simply colonize a planet and leave it as it, it actually loses you money rather than gains you money.

Hover over your credit menu and any planet listed in red will be draining you of credits.  To solve this, click on a planet, go to planet upgrades and select the one on the top left. If you hover over it and read it, the icon explains what it does. An astroid usually only needs one upgrade to take it out of the red. Other planets might need a couple upgrades before it actually starts producing money for you.

What's Bruce Lee's favourite drink?

WATAAAAAH!!!

Why don't people do the tutorials first??? This is one of the first thing I learned about Sins (and it only took about 5 minutes) - You only colonise a new planet if you can support the upgrade for it - its a balance act.

I still see heaps of players who leave planets undeveloped and then they bitch they have no econ to build a fleet to help or that they are being steamrolled by a pro (depending on if they are on my side or not obviously....). Half the time its not that someone is better then you - they just made sure their econ wasn't tanking....

Not a direct go at Walrus - more just a vent about people who are playing online - walk before trying to run!!!

I know about that but I don't think that's what he's experiencing here.

Yeah I'm hoping to use it in one of my factions.

People still play with pirates?

Playing with pirates is actually less strategy. Pro games are always pirates off.

I usually leave pirates on and once I get a couple of capital ships, don't bid for them anymore.

Mmm, tasty ship XP.

Well, if you're good at it, you'll tie up his cap ship when the pirates attack. Then he either has to ditch out on your attack and go get experience from the pirates, or let the pirates eat away at his buildings. And if no one is bidding, you can put a 500 cr bounty. Very cheap to have a second attack on one of his planets.

I'd say the pros turn it off because they find it a nuissance rather than less strategy.

Pirates need a buff. Their fleets should grow proportinoally to the amount of bounty with no cap.

But the question is, is that 500 cr or whatever you spend on pirate bidding worth more there, or in 1 more ship for you to make?

Yah, give the fleet another cap ship for every 5000 creds of bounty...They should get derelict Advent and Vasari ships too, since Pirates are equal-opportunity scallywags...

You know what would make pirates relevant in multiplayer?  The ability to put bounty on specific player planets.  At this point pirate-proofing can be as simple as running a scout all around the grav well or just scuttling your orbitals.  You don't really need anything else unless they brought siege. 

But if you could bounty a given planet, say for twice the amount of normal bounty, then it would suddenly be worthwhile to use pirates as a distraction, harrassment, or coup-de-grace

Not that I've heard of, but there are a lot of great ideas here and in other threads. Hopefully they'll pick up on some of them.