Pirates have probably been changed more often than anything else, and they've never worked. To the best players, no matter how hard they get they're never a challenge and can be ignored, so they turn them off. To new players, no matter how weak they are newbies aren't prepared and get a humiliating defeat, so they turn the pirates off (or rage quit the game unfortunately). The one time in Diplomacy where they were a threat to pros, average players had to turtle behind starbases with a full fleet, which is suicide in MP, but in competitive multiplayer games the pirates have always been turned off so that wasn't a huge deal. Now with Rebellion, getting pirate raids sent at you might be a good thing because they are good XP fodder for your titan. So its still better off because the player that gets that pirate raid got a lucky advantage over the others.

Point is, no matter what they've tried only a small number of people have ever been happy about the pirates. I think they're better off using programming time to fix features everyone agrees needs more work and won't make as many people mad as people who like it,

Not even just the whole price thing but it can be overwhelming even in late game. Currently on my first Patch #2 game and I have all the researches done, and it's pretty sad when the Pirates can take out a starbase like nothing. I have exhausted WAY too many resources rebuilding them because 25 heavy cruisers take them down on focus fire.

The pirate attack AI seems odd. If pirates attack one of my planes and i defend it with my fleet, pirates will usually disengage from my fleet to hunt down a trade drone in the grav well and after that attacking my fllet again until the next trade drone arrives. In the end they run back and forth in the gravity well switching attack targets between fleet and trade drones and my fleet gets alot of free shots at them making wiping them out rather simple.  

Has anyone else experienced the same? 

I think pirates should attack all players that have bounty on not only highest one and with force proportional to the bounty players have on.

Well the issue is that you can see the bids, so you just keep adding till you are not the target... turns it into a silly mini game of auctioning.

One simple solution is to allow players and AI to bid an amount to pay the pirates not to attack them but dont display the amounts ( rather something like ' intel reveals our enemies conspire with pirate fleets ' to let others know you paid something, and when the raid is ready the player who has paid the least amount gets the pirates attention ( multiple players / ai sharing the same low price = random player/ai selected...or alternatively each of them gets attacked ). The teams would need to balance a need for some stability on the frontlines and credit income, you could toss in more cash if you see a short term weakness while you make a grab for an enemy planent to ensure you dont get a supirse attack by the scurvey dogs.

My opinion on the issue at least.

yes.

While cutthroats do go after trade ships, i have never seen pirate corsairs just alternate between attacking defense platforms without destroying them.  having a starbase up for a low level raid works fine but large raids can get ugly.

These days, having pirates on is the only way to get the AI attack me.  AI players are very opportunistic and I have seen concerted attacks from them while I am dealing with an early pirate raid.  other than that, not so much.

Maybe more options can be introduced. Instead of just an on and off button. You could adjust the kinds of pirate attacks. You could have the option of changing how often they attack and whether they send big armies or small raiding parties. Maybe also include an option where pirates flee if they lose a percentage of their ships.

I think this would be a great solution, maybe the person with the most bounty gets a bonus of a couple ships sent after him, but if one person has 10000 credits on his head and another has 10001, it doesn't make sense for the guy with the extra 1 to be swarmed by bounty hunting pirate and the guy that still has 10000 on his head to be ignored

This is my current view of pirates too. In the games i have played against both AI and a friend of mine (i admit i haven't had much online experience because i like the exceedingly long games) the first pirate wave is pretty much the only threat, and if it ends up being too much we both just abandon the planet for ten minutes or so and let the pirates have their fun while we concentrate on taking other planets to make up for the loss. The biggest impact they have had was when i coordinated an attack on my friend with the first pirate attack of the game to force him to loose a planet.

My only complaint about the pirates as of rebellion beta is that the pirate bases are actually a little weak. I tend to rush new stuff and big ships, so i had a titan out in 45 minutes. after two pirate attacks the titan was at level 4 and i had a couple of hull researches done and that was it and i decided to test the strength of the titan. I sent the titan to attack the pirate base to see how long it would last. That titan took out the entire fleet that was defending the pirate base in one shot. it didn't make it out unscathed by any means, it had around 4000 health when it was over, but i think being able to wipe out the pirates main defenses with one ship, that fast is not right.

Until the pirates are handled like an additional AI player, they will always seem a bit off. Why do they fight to the last ship on a raid? Pirates are all about the plunder and saving their skin, not suicide missions.

Hrm... I'm not sure if this is normal... but in my game, pirate bases seem to be absurdly well defended... see screenshot... that's about 200 ships, plus the usual stack of base defense

Not only that but their average autocannon damage is being reported at between 24 and 34 from their main two types of units. Its enough that when i dump 4 fullly upgraded capital ships + titan + 250 fleet worth of support frigates, they are eliminated in a matter of about a minute. I remember when pirates used to be fodder for capital ships, but this is just crazy.

I am currently playing the advent loyalists for reference.

I personally wish the pirate bases were a little more of a challenge the later stages of the game.

At the start of a game, someone can't go in and take over the pirate base- but it really doesn't take much from that point on to take it over. A few cap ships in a small fleet can easily take it out. There are the gun enplacements but they are easily handled once the defense fleet is taken out.

I wouldn't mind seeing an option that wouldn't allow the pirate fleet to be completely eliminated. As for the current auction of pirate fleet- I don't mind it, but I do think when playing against high level AI (cruel, etc.,) they definitely seem to have an advantage to the bid wars.

Lol... i still wish they didn't do as much damage as my advent capital ships...

The pirate raids, I can handle that.  It's the number of pirates that accumulate over long games.  I've seen thousands at one pirate base.  It slows down the game and causes mini-dumps.  Does no dev hear my cry?

Fix the pirates...please.