edit:... cant delete post.

I think the real question here is how to fend off EARLY pirate attacks.  Obviously later pirate attacks barely warrant even batting an eye. On 1:1 against Normal AI all I have to do is win every bounty bidding war and that's game.  He flounders under the pirate attacks alone.

At Hard, it seems to make sense to win the first bidding war, but then go ahead and lose after that.  You're throwing away money, but so is he.  If it's your 1500 to his 1250...it's worth 250 to have the first wave attack him instead of you.  It's just, by the second wave, that leaves you at 0 vs. his 1250 from last time.  Do you plunk down another 1250 just to be even, or do you get 4 LRF's and just eat the second wave yourself?  I'd rather just eat it.  Even if you lose the LRF's, now that's his bounty going down, and pretty soon you're back at 0 vs. 0 again  (an oversimplification, admittedly.  But that's the idea).

My problem right now are those pillagers who like to do an end-around around your defense and bombard your planet.  I mean what do you do...hold back LRF's for defense?   Build turrets in the rear?  Both of those cost something.  Hangars help, but not for the 2nd-4th waves.  Best solution I've come up with so far is to start construction on turrets in the rear but stop at 5% construction.  That seems to fool the AI pretty good.   It still ties up 500-750 credits, but you can cancel construction and get your money back, rather than have to scuttle.

you could just keep your fleet nearby when you see its getting close to the first attack. Its nice to just spread out and conquer as much as possible but in war you gotta weigh your options. You cant make a decision based on what you want. You need to anticipate whats headed your way, and whats the likely chance of something backfiring for you or your opponent.

The last time I played with pirates in the game, I simply upped the bounty on whichever player's star I wanted to capture (having determined a short direct route from the pirates base to them). Eventually I had the whole system bar one star without ever having fought a single battle against another player.

I then attacked the pirate homeworld with the entire tech tree researched and the maximum fleet possible after first having diverted them to the opposite side of their star with a feint in order to build a starbase.

The battle lasted under two minutes. It was hard to tell but I think I managed to destroy a handful of their ships before my fleet of hundreds was completely wiped out.

the funny thing about pirates (nice necro btw), is that if they win a battle, the survivers head back and reinforce the pirate base.  In a long game, where the ai doesnt bother resisting the pirates, it means that you will end up with ALOT of pirates at the pirate base.

 What version are you using?  when you made this thread in 2009....., you certainly could not have been using diplomacy, where the pirates are EVEN TOUGHER. 

hell, before diplomacy, pirates were free exp. 

so basicly... I am very impressed with your low member number and your noobishness.

edit: oh, hey, look at little avatarless me on the first page answering your question 2 bloody years ago.

Actually I have all 3 versions of the game now.

The"last  time I  played with pirates" was Dip.

I actually started out with Gal Civ on OS/2 way way back. Given the troubles I had with Impulse, I basically abandonded SOSE for a long long time.

it really depends on what vertion of the game you are playing on what strategy to use with early pirate attacks

if you have entrenchment you are ussually ok with a repair platform and a capital ship. just have the capital ship run out and desrtoy the bombers, then book it back to the repair platform and just watch as the captial ship eats pirate attack then spits it back at them. also using bounty is the best way to solve your problem

if you're using diplomacy, don't even try to weather the first wave, pirates in Diplomacy are on some serious steriods. they will eat you alive and poop you out in secounds. even if you have to spend all your money on keeping them away for the first wave, do it because the enemy will have to be dealing with uber pirates as they rampage through his empire while you develope and build. if you do it this way you will be ahead of the enemy and he has to recover from the first attack.

when the secound wave comes if you can afford it spend it on the same enemy because he will probably be getting things back into place and it will keep him on his heels and will give you more time to biuld up. but don't worry too much at this point because hopefully at this point you will have built up enoughtotake the secound wave.