To be fair this can be seen from two different angle, both highly accurate.
1) Pirates at the start are highly aggressive, swarming and harassing players without a moments break. They prevent you from getting a decent foothold into anything decent around you.
However...
2) Once you kill your first pirate, it\'s all down hill from there, the pirates quickly becomes little more than a minor annoyance. They becomes ever easier to kill and their attack patterns and tactics or lack of make them virtually pointless.
What I\'d like to see is a variety of pirates ships, ranging from small raiders (fighters) to large captial ships (large carriers) launching raiders to assault you. I would position these at banding around systems, so the further out you go the more likely it is that you encounter larger singular captials.
I think a few sectors grace should be made around the shops, I think sectors with shops in them at the start should be pirate free. I mean why raid a starter ship when a shop has far more loot. Furthermore, shouldn\'t the shops be armed so they can assist / defend themselves from pirates, this might give players extra assistance at the start. You could randomly encounter a pirate spawn and pull them into the defence area of the shop, the shop would then rip the starting pirate spawn a new one giving the player vital time to get going.
I do agree some serious balancing needs to be done on the pirates, but not nerfing, they need to be changed to be relevent to the gamer at all levels be it starting or high level.
