How do you consider a single starbase countering raids a problem but think that repair bays and turrets should be enough?

And a few orders of magnitude more expensive.

In my opinion, Pirates already have a advantages (more powerful ship es. in early game, at their base have fought against 200-ish ships and had to retreat).

I would not turn the pirate option off but there needs to be a little tweaking...

As I said, they're WAY too tanky. Pirates should be opportunistic glass cannons. If you can field more ships that are better than anything else in the universe, why are you bothering with the pillage. Grab the planet and expand like wildfire!

The thing is though, wouldn't it make sense for pirates to eventually develop tanky ships as they get more money? They aren't spending it on planet upgrades, and I'd rather have a fleet of tanks than a fleet of glass cannons, if I was a pirate.

Personally ive never had an issue with pirates.

Sure they can sometimes come with huge numbers but if they do I tend to just focus on colonising everything else around the target planet and just rebuild it all once they leave. Sure its not ideal but then they are there for that reason, to hinder and generally cause problems.

I do however agree that they are a bit bland in the sense that its an 'ebay' like auction at the end of the timer for everyone. I also agree with the comment about not using the panel for anything other than that.

In fact if ill be honest I NEVER use the panel. When it gets to the ebay bid war I just spam the button at the top to ensure its not me.

This for me states that pirates need to be fleshed out a little more. They are serving their purpose nicely at the moment but more function would nice. A reason to actually go onto that panel and take note of whats going on. Perhaps there could be more pirate 'factions'? For example currently we have just TEC pirates (or at least TEC ships). Why not use some of the other racial variants? Especially now the faction wars have broken out amongst the factions it makes it more feasable for other smaller factions to splinter out of it.

Also I think a good idea regarding the pirate attacks would be to scale the type of attack with how much money someone has pumped into them. For example if I have given 200 credits then I should expect an attack of say 5-10 ships. But if I have pumped 1000 credits then that number would increase and potentially have more powerful ships among it.

Of course to combat strong oponents taking advantage on this there should be a money cap to which how much 1 single player can invest into the raids. This basically means that dominant players can still try and send a pirate attack like before but if smaller, weaker players banded together they could achieve a winning bid. Of course there would still be the argument that the strong player can only invest say 5000 credits while the other 3 each invest 5000 to make 15000 and if that scaled the power then there would be one serious force to reckon with. Perhaps if that was an issue then an overall limit to what all players overall can put in.

Perhaps other options could be requesting specific types of ships the pirates use. Or perhaps you could even ask them to help defend a planet. Perhaps you could even give them a wad of cash in return for a couple of their ships. Of course being pirates they would want over normal asking price for those ships but it could still be a handy tool if you have a large enemy coming for you and not enough time to build ships...

Just 2 cents!

The only concern with that though is the pirates becoming too powerful...

I guess in that sense that is the sole reason as to why they are there though... Its a contraversial decision if its ever made and I can see people going crazy over it. That being said it does make more sense.

It would be nice if they were at least able to get something dangerous for example something on the lines of a novalith platform. I only suggest this as ive never figured it worth my while to actually take their base out. I just starbase the systems connecting to it and ignore them. If they had a novalith (a baby one!) though it would make me want to at least acknowledge they are there and are a threat.

Wait, you want to give Pirates a... Novalith?
What the hell? 

Why not make pirates attack not a single player, but split the fleet proportional to the credits bid against all the players?

Here's my pirates scaling and bounty effect idea with some minor fleshing out:

Average Fleet Supply under 150 = Pirates inactive. They activate when the average gets above 150 Supply, and the first raid counter starts.
Average Fleet Supply 150 - 300 =  Threat level 1. Pirates have a total fleet equal to 150 supply + 1 for every 100 credits of total bounty. Everyone with a bounty on their head gets a share of the pirate fleet, and this share is equal to their share of the total bounty. Each fleet is sent to a RANDOM planet chosen from among the three worlds closest to the pirate base owned by the target. Pirate ships at this level are only Cuttthroats and Rogues in a 2 to 1 ratio.
Average Fleet Supply 300 - 600 = Threat level 2. Pirates have a total fleet equal to 300 supply + 1.5 for every 100 credits of total bounty. Possible pirate ships now include Pillagers (1 for every 8 Cutthroats). Pillagers steal Metal the same way Cutthroats steal Credits.
Average Fleet Supply 600 - 1000 = Threat level 2. Pirates have a total fleet equal to 700 supply + 2 for every 100 credits of total bounty. Possible pirate ships now include Reapers (1 for every 4 Cutthroats).  Pillagers steal Crystal the same way Cutthroats steal Credits. 
Average Fleet Supply 1000 - 1500 = Threat level 3. Pirates have a total fleet equal to 1200 supply + 3 for every 100 credits of total bounty. Possible pirate ships now include Corsairs (1 for every 10 Cutthroats).
Average Fleet Supply 1500 - 2000 = Threat level 4. Pirates have a total fleet equal to 1800 supply + 4 for every 100 credits of total bounty. The fleet sent for to the player with the largest bounty has a single Starship (a random TEC capital ship with a randomly assigned name such as Barbarossa, Blackbeard, Rackham, Avery, Morgan etc.). Starships do not count against the fleet supply limit.
Average Fleet Supply over 2000 = Extreme threat level. 5 additional supply per 100 credits, each pirate fleet has a Starship. Starships do not count against the fleet supply limit. 

Starships have no shields or special abilities, but are identical in stats to level ~5 capital ships.
Pirate ship HP is equal to the basic HP of the ship it is supposed to be, their armor is equal to the base -1, but their turn and maximum speed are 15% greater. Their damage stays exactly as it is right now.
Pirate ships enjoy weapon and armor improvements equal to the average of all the players in the galaxy.

Not really, compare a Corsair to a Kodiak pirates are unable to actually produce shield technology, im almost sure that adding to much armor to a ship will disallow it from actually having shield technology. Due to pirates inability to actually produce shields they had to solve this issue by strapping on a bunch of armor. Also dont count titans as im sure their shield generators are gigantic.

I don't get the lack of shields by the pirates.  They've been raiding the TEC for God knows how long, and they've been raiding the Vasari and Advent since they've shown up in Trader space, and yet they've been unable to capture any examples of shield generator technology they can reproduce?