Well, the obvious answer is to just turn the pirates off in the map options menu. In fact virtually all multiplayer games are played this way and I only ever turn them on for novelty.

The second thing is that batteships are actually a really poor choice of capitalship, especially for the Advent. Detonate Antimatter is the only real great ability it has, and it's higher combat stats are not substantial enough to really be worth picking. Progenitors or Halycons would be a lot better choice than Radiances in almost all situations.

The second thing worth mentioning is that you didn't use any support ships. Guardians with Progenitor support can increase the staying power of any advent fleet substantially. You'll also want a good amount of carriers (either a lot of capitals or some frigates, if not both) for bombers, as they are the best thing for taking out the Corsairs (also heavy cruisers) that do the most damage to your fleet.

A third thing worth mentioning is that you should rarely use the full 16 capital ships you can produce. Unless you can get them to the upper high levels, frigates give more firepower for the fleet supply required. If I were you, I would have built 6 Progenitors, 10 Halycon carriers (all of the caps at least level 6, and assuming you wanted to use the max 16 caps), 30 Destras, 20 Drone Hosts, 10 Guardians, and any other fleet supply you can spare as either more destras, drone hosts, or Illuminators. I still don't know if that will beat the pirates late game, but it should do a better job than your fleet.

Just tried another game with pirates. 1v1 (a hard enemy). Me advent, he TEC. After an hour or two of play I lost...defeated by? The Pirates. Meaning I needed everything to keep them at bay and the damage they did was SO big after every raid that my TEC opponent could conquer all the planets in the system, building up easy peasy, while all I was doing basically came down to keeping the swarming pirates at bay. I did everything some1 can do to have a maximum powergain (ships, defenses, tech to make the ships stronger, economy to support the increasing fleetnumbers). Maybe I lost because of my refusal to pay for piratebounties so I got all the pirateraids, but it shows something:

If I pay the pirates to keep attacking 1 player, that player will lose. I dont even have to go after that player anymore because the pirates will defeat him all by themselves. Or at least do the majority of your job for you. Less fun for you in 1v1.

Not paying Pirates doesn't help you. Be prepared to pay them lots. As I learned by now, pay them tens of thousands to prevent them from coming after you at least in the opening phase of the game, or you will lose the game (perhaps not if they come just once). And accept that you ll never be able to conquer them without at least 2 allies (or maybe the weapon and sgield pacts are so strong that you only need 1 ally) and no AI ally I fear will be good enough.

So you as player should aggressively use them to defeat 1 opponent, while you yourself can focus on other opponents or just lay low. And if playing single player accept that you cannot conquer their base. OR: exclude them from the game.

I have some interesting ideas about how to tweak/change them but that would make such a long post so I 'll not write it down . Just use them yourself or exclude them.

  Thanks man! You know thats what Pirates should be: They HIT you where you (or your fortresses) aint. They are sneaky, FAST, elusive and hit your economy, merchant fleets. They steal from you and evade you, but arent able to detroy cap ships, fortresses, or even planets...

On the other hand it should not be EASY to fight them so thats a dilemma. For that, I like the idea of paying them for a mission and as a result they are stronger. But that should be for that raid alone, and never as strong as a real professional armada with several caps, from an economic superpower. Just imagine what YOU as (i.e.) Advent player could buy for say 5,000 to 10,000 credits...First of all you must convert much credits into metal and crystal. Then you can possibly build 1 (low level) Capship with some supports...Ofc, If I spend 100,000 credits into them pirates its a bit different but here I think is the linchpin (for the devs):

Piratestrength (at least the raids) should be computed just as before in entrenchment (maybe a bit stronger, but not much, else they start to dominate the game). Piratebases imho should be somewhat stronger than before but not as insane as they are now. FULLY developed armada's should still be able to take them out. BUT...when a player pays the pirates for a mission, this attackmission (and this attack alone) is as strong as the equivalent fleet the paying player could have bought for this money. Taken into account crystal and metal conversion with current prices and, if you like, the tech-levels of the paying player.

What I mean is, suppose you give the pirates 10,000 credits. Thats a pretty large contribution early or even in mid game, not? What can they build for it? A bit of a light frigate costs 1000 credits if you must buy metal and crystal for it (at current marketprices) too. Heavy cruisers will cost 1400 credits this way and support cruisres 1550 credits. Let's not mention Capital ships. They would cost 6,000 credits... So this will grant them pirates 7 to 8 ships (as strong as you could have made them) on average. Btw I used some advent ships to calculate this and took a marketprice of 475cr/metal or 475cr/crystal.

Now that is a bit too weak I think so let's assume the pirates can manipulate the black market a 'little' bit better than an empire could...Then 10,000 credits will give them, say, 10 ships at max (just brainstorming now). At least 2 less ships if there is a 'capship-strong' ship in this pirate fleet. And those 8 to 10 ships are no stronger than a decent fleet composition of the player that payed the pirates for that mission (which is actually quite strong per ship). Add in the pirateships usually send out on raids and there you have the piratefleet!! Roughly 9 'normal Empire-strong' ships per 10,000 credits spent plus the normally included (weak) raiders.

Now, if you want a real superpirate raid on your opponent, its gonna cost you...50,000 to 100,000 credits! And all the other pirateraids for bounty are just as they were in entrenchment and if we dont want pirates for XP-foddder, well, XP can be removed from pirates, or Pirate-XP can be capped to level 4 at max, or just made less and less effective for higher level Capships.

Now would those ships attack a fortress? I'd say they would be faster (because they are pirates) and try to evade (even slip through) fortresses and attack an economic target they can possibly take. No planet busting abilities. Tho attacks on planets that steal credits are ok I'd say, but such an attack wont destroy population or planet health.

Gosh I gotta quit typing its a long post again

Want to say 1 last thing: I love this game!! Thats why this pirate-issue wont leave me ^.^

"Keep up the good work, and we ll stay on friendly terms " /salute!