Pirates

Have you updated to 1.12? There's an underworld window now that's very useful.

As a side note, I'd like to see the whole Pirates feature enhanced. 

1.  I want to be able to specify what kind of raid pirates perform and to where for a premium price.  For example, if I want the pirates to raid a planet, then for a price I should be able to specify that pirates sent more siege vessels instead of cutthroughts.

2.  I'd like to see pirates be able to capture planets/ astroids like players can and spread their pirate influence.  Also, if they had special vessel capture technologies that would allow them to board and convert player vessels into Pirate vessels

Oh the possibilities...

Omg, pink space lycans?

Underground.

Isn't it every 15 minutes...not every 10?

Only the first raid is 15 minutes. After that it's every 13 + 30-90 seconds. The warning is every 780, and then you get 30-90 before the raid launches.

I usually play with pirates off.  It's an interesting feature, great in principle, but it brings surprisingly little to the game.  Frankly, I find the bidding wars every 15 minutes do more to slow down the pace of the game, and this is a game that's slow enough as it is.

Pirates are too predictable to be dangerous.  You know where they're coming from, who the target is, and you usually can predict where they'll hit, and even a small fleet can usually mince them nicely.  This makes them less of a danger and more of an annoyance.  Short term burden for a long-term experience advantage.  I like the feature in concept, but its implementation is lacking.

Personally, I'd like to see pirates launch smaller raids at unpredictable intervals, and intelligently target undefended targets, running away when reinforcements arrive.  They should prioritize (and re-prioritize) their attacks as bounty is awarded.  The more money on the table, the faster pirate raiding parties spawn.  This would mean it wouldn't just become a frantic bidding war once every 15 minutes.  You could shell out 5k and expect over the next few minutes for dozens of pirate raiders to depart for that player's world.

Isn't pirating improved in 1.12.  They used to attack the same planet over and over again.  Now they seem to randomly pick from any of the closest planets.  They were purely experience givers before that.

they do randomize their attacks now in 1.1.  but they could be stronger and have more ships in their fleet (plus different ship types).  I'd like to see them have the ability to "pirate" the technologies of the faction that they are attacking and then use those techs to build ship types of that faction for future raids.

I really like where these thoughts are going.

I think pirates should act more like pirates, attacking trade ships and the like that pass too near their base; only attacking larger prey like planets when the money outweighs the danger. Also, if you are allowed to designate a target for pirate raids, their should also be a "grudge" system where if you send the pirates to their deaths without providing any backup, they would be less inclined to help you in the future, or even turn on you completely and ally with you enemies

id like to see a pirate attack containing maybe a capital ship class of thier own own. Only after they have a had a few high paying customers though. As at the start this would be to powerful. But something along the lines of a Kol with the spikes hanging off it would be a nice addition.

That's dubious, since there are still dead giveaways as to where the pirates are going.  First of all, you can always send a scout to see where the pirates are going.  You can usually hazard an accurate guess to their target by looking at which direction they head after their first jump.

However, there are some real problems with the new pirate behavior.  They'll often trudge through other players' worlds because they want to reach some obscure target that's completely enclosed by other players.  On medium maps, I've seen pirates take more than 15 minutes to actually reach their intended destination, so there are actually two waves en-route at once.  I've also seen them run into phase jump inhibitors and get slaughtered by static defense en-route to their target (they don't fight back, by the way).  This intelligence (or rather lack thereof) leaves them laughable and of little threat.

i would assume the difficulty for the devs is - to make them more of a threat, they could pose a huge problem at the start of a game for new players.

i would like to see timer of some sort for pirate re-inforcement introduced ,ie no matter how much money is put on them for x minutes they only ever have x amount of strength, that way the starting pirate attack wont roll our puny empires to the ground. After this time limit though, have the pirates gain in strength gradually to the point they can pick on un defended planets (no defending FLEET, but still static defences and a couple of frigates).

possibly introduce a pirate difficulty lvl, like the ai have a pirate ai so they are noobs on easy...mobile xp for experienced users, and then on hard ai they can hurt you if not prepared for them. Smarter tactics and the like.

Hell, maybe even repair bays for the pirates at thier home base so that if they were programmed to return to base it would make them a bloody hard target....also very inviting for xp though

I like the idea of a repair bay at home base.  Pirates shouldn't be suicide attackers, but rather smart hit-and-run attackers, and the repair bay would be a great implementation.  As for "early" piracy, just give it a 15 minute timer when pirates are inactive.  That would keep things fair and give players a time to establish a fleet.