Feel free to message me as well, I'm [_]-Azrak. In general most people will be fine if you're new to the game under the condition that you ask for and listen to advice. Don't spam lightfrigates, stationary defenses (except for rep bays on the frontline) or cap ships. And whenever you aren't sure what you should do or notice that everyone else is doing it completely different: ask for advice! The only thing that pisses me off is newbies who don't talk at all and then ragequit after they lost their capship

I'm totally with you there, Ru.  Fight to the bitter end, have your last stand, then quit when you are truly and utterly beaten.  I almost never leave when any of my allies are still in the game.  Mind you, Sins games can roll on for hours, and sometimes life calls.

Well I just won a game that I thought was just going to be me getting stomped.  Myself and another player were fighting over one gateway planet that would give the other a big opening for attack forces, then we pumped money into pirates while the third just built up in a corner, but by the end I had filled up almost all of my 2000 fleet cap and had novaliths pounding planets and managed to wipe out the pirates and the other two players.

Pirates are controlled by the AI, so a human has no problem with them. The only thing I have to add to Darvin is that it's very easy to not even have to fight the pirates. All a person has to do is figure out which planet of his is closest to the pirate base. On that planet, build a repair bay and say 3-8 turrets and the planet is defended. The pirates attack turrets by default.

Pirates are told to chase colony frigs and trade ships ( the latter is the more effective, requires no effort ) by default. If a person has tradeports up, he doesn't even have to build  defences. The pirates will chase the trade ships indefinitely.

The idea is nice in principle. So far the implementation could use a slight fix.

Pirates can be a good idea to distract or do damage to a player while you are attacking elsewhere.  It is also conditional on what world you predict that they will hit.  If that world is a halfway fortified world(ie starbase or even a repair and a few turrets), then pirates are just wasted money and even worse feeding cap exp to the enemy.  Pirates that hit a world you are currently contesting just get in the way(they tend to shoot at whatever is around including you if you are there).  Don't go all out with pirates but they do occasionally have their uses.

[_]-Greyfox