Oh, common people!!! Once you have a pirate raid warning, save a game, set a timer and see how long it takes for them to depart. Re-load the game, turn the timer on and outbid the AI in the last moment. This way the AI always deals with the Pirates.

Too purist to save and restart the game? It is between 60 and 75 seconds between a warning and pirate departure.

BOOM! Problem solved.

To agree with others they do need changes.  Here are some suggestions:

1.  Randomize or allow the timer to be set prior to the game.  At the beginning of the game it is to frequent and at the end it is too long.

2.  Give pirates abilities to specialize their attacks.  Similar to missions you can give to other players such as capital ships, civilian structures etc.  It would make it more interesting atleast if the pirates told you they were hunting your capital ship instead of the predictable 'nearest planet' attacks.

3.  Make it so that you can bribe yourself limited immunity from the pirates.  For example, they are coming but if you pay them x credits then they will only kill 50% of their initial bounty.

4.  Leftover pirate ships from raids always accumulate at the pirate base instead of being reused.  Leads to huge numbers and in later games end ups being simply a killing ground to level up your titan over multiple attacks and retreats.  Sometimes I will jump capital ships in and out just to level them up as-well.

5.  Pirate ships and defenses should upgrade over time, inline with the least performing player.  Late game they still have low tec gauss cannons and basic hulls.

6.  Defeating a pirate base basically is a script as it is now.  They should have a varied defense instead of the standard ships/mines/ring of gauss turrets.  Here is the recipe to doing it regardless of the pirates:

        a..  Jump in your fleet and have their engagement range set to 'hold position'

        b. Wait for the pirate ships to come to you and destroy them outside the mines/gauss cannons

        c.  Send in strike craft to destroy the turrets

        d.  Arcovas to clear a path to the planet

        e.  End life on the planet.

7.  Diplomacy with a pirate AI.  Seriously, something all privateer about it.

-Jason

1) There is a degree of randomness already, but I'll see if there's an easy way for me to make it more random?

2) They have this now; as Pirates gain money (from bounty or their base income) they can purchase upgrades for themselves like research. The next Rebellion update adjusts this system some.

3) There are some Diplomatic techs for some races that do this, but it's not a general thing.

4) That...would be evil...

5) See #2...I'll have to see if I can do something for their defenses also.

6) Yeah...I find this annoying as the guy working on them. LOL. I'll see what else I might be able to do.

7) You can with Pirate Missions (via Diplomacy techs).

I'm personally surprised at how well the Advent fought the bidding war when I played my first game.  It was a map that I know all too well and I nearly lost my auctions a couple of times.  I don't mind, it kept things interesting for most of the game.  It increases the amount of time it takes to get my titan is all.  By the way, I'm loving the titans.

I've always thought the "bidding war" mechanic was a bit problematic, it's a twitch mechanic in a game largely about strategy and placement. On top of that, if there happens to be a battle going on at the time then you have to fight the interface to get your pirate ships.

Instead of placing bounty just before each raid, what if factions diverted a percentage of their income to the pirates instead (call it 0-10%)? This rate could be changed by the player at any time and would have the same effect as the clickfest. The big difference here is that you are no longer having pirates attack opponents, you are giving them money to keep them away from you (pirates would naturally go for the player with the weakest contribution of that interval).

This mechanic would then allow you to scale things this way:

1. The more total resources diverted to pirates, the larger the fleet.

2. The higher the rate of resources (sum of each players' %), the shorter the interval between fleets.

Any thoughts? I know the current system has its defenders as well, but this would be some classic game theory and take way fewer mouse clicks.

In the past the Pirate Defense Platforms used to have some sort of anti strike craft ability. It was really powerful and forced you to either move dozens of carriers into the gravity well where the Pirate Base was located, or assault the pirates with a massive fleet. I regret that they removed this anti-strike craft ability (at least I have not seen it being used in rebellion so far). I would like it if it was put back in.

The Distant Stars mod works great with pirates--and they even have capital ships. Ironclad needs to put a scuttle timer on pirates when they return to their base.

That's what I was going to say. I love getting attacked by pirates, especially now with Titans. My only problem is that the AI nuked the AI in less than an hour with a Novalith strike

Pirates are meant to be a FFA mechanic, and they work well in that regard.  In a 1v1 they don't work, as the first couple raids require your entire fleet to fight off basically giving the other player full reign of the map.  In teamgames they are a joke, as they only attack one player out of up to 10.  A few tweaks that could be made with them still IMO:

-In larger games, launch more than one raid.  Maybe something like 1-4 players = 1 raid, 5-8 - 2 raids, 9-10 players 3 raids.  Would make a lot more sense.

-Fix their AI.  Right now if you have trade ships in the sector, the pirates will run around chasing them while the real fleet gets free shots.  Pirates need to prioritize combat ships before attacking trade ships.

-Ditch the ebay system.  Instead of having fixed points where everyone stops and tries to outbid at the last second, have the raids go off at semi-random intervals.  This way you can throw bounty on someone at any time, and the other players can decide if they need to respond to it, or ignore it.  This would make the system a lot less broken in 1v1.

-Give them retreat AI.  They should be cowardly, not charging head-on to a fully upgraded starbase and titan.  If they run into a huge fleet, they should go 'screw this' and run.  This would not apply to missions, as in that case they are basically agreeing to attack a military target.

i like this^

oh, and settable difficulty for pirates like AI players (easy, normal, etc) if possible.  seriously, 15 Corsair heavy cruisers destroying my turrets is a bit insane on the 1s raid (that doesn't include the Cutthroats that go after trade ships).

I cant really be bothered to read all of this, but how can a starbase lose to pirates? Even with the most severe threat, and this takes awhile to get to, a good 5-6 raids? which is around an hour? they have maybe 20heavys and it whittles from there, so how could a 3 hull/ 2-3 wep and other functions with full research lose? 

It can't pirates are way too easy, people should only entice people to use money on bounty, generally you benefit from being a target, unless you're already losing, in which case you only lose faster. 

Though now in rebellion even pirates seem a little more fun, for a tec rebel player that is.. 

In my opinion, keep pirates as they are early game, then perhaps diversify more by giving them capital ships and siege vessels, guardians or repairing vessels.

As stated in many posts, some less advanced players seem to have a problem with them, and it's been mentioned that seasoned players find them too easy, perhaps changing the game due to lack of player development isn't the best solution, if someone is having a hard time doing something, they should think about how to change it. Perhaps making the tutorials more interesting, or perhaps a dev - pro to noobs video, a tip to the weak? I don't like the idea of changing sins purely because people are too lazy to learn how to play without prompts. 

There are dozens of threads on here with guides and strategies, even if some are outdated, some just give you a better idea on what to do.

/rant over