Hi everyone! I have quite a situation on my hands that I cannot seem to find a solution to so I'm posting here, hoping that some of you could help me out.
I've been playing a nice Intelligent-level game as the Terrans for some time now with 5 other civilizations on the large map. Last night, as I was building up my fleets in preparation for war with the Drengin Empire who have also been building a sizable fleet (possibly in preparation for a war with me as well). The entire galaxy was more or less at peace, with many trade routes all over the map, and the one remaining minor race actually started sending trade ships of their own to various planets. I didn't want to fight the Drengin, but my relations with them soured immensely when I wiped out the Snathi (I think I spelled this wrong), which was very close to their home planet.
All was going well - for everyone - when all of a sudden the Pirates just came out of nowhere (a megaevent), with crazy-powerful ships a few parsecs from not just my planets but everyone else's! Their ships were 12 offense (missile) and 12 defense (mass driver), but most of them were in fleets that essentially made attacking them with my fleets suicidal. This game hasn't been going long, so the most powerful ships I had were SMALL hulled and had 2 offense (laser) and 2 defense (2 mass driver, due to the Drengin's love for mass driver weapons) although I could've made them more powerful if I sacrificed defense. Note that among all the civilizations, the Drengin and Tor probably had the most powerful ships (I've seen 4 offense (mass driver) on the Drengin side and this is what they've been making).
Well, the rest has been history so far: the Pirates wiped out all of my fleets, planetary defenses, space stations, and trade ships. The same story can be heard throughout the galaxy as the Drengin and company moved their attack and defenseless ships towards their planets in defense -- all their ships got wiped out too.
With Pirate ship fleets sitting in everyone's space relatively close to our respective planets, it's almost impossible to build ships without the Pirates seeing it, flying to that planet, and destroying it.
I figured that if I rushed to get larger ships then maybe I'd be able to kill the Pirate ships one by one. I got Medium Hulls and quickly built a ship that could defend against their missiles and at the same time kill off the Pirates. The Medium Ship, although it put up a fight, was destroyed. I've halted ship construction on all my planets until I can figure out what to do...
Is there anything that I can do in order to wipe out these Pirate ships??? There are about 15 of them throughout my space and I cannot yet kill them. (These don't count the ones that are in the rest of the galaxy not under my control...) Please help if you can.
Note that these Pirates haven't attacked any mined asteroids, which surprised me... and they didn't attack any space stations that minor races constructed, nor have they attacked any ships built by minor races for that matter... which means that when this is all over I'll be declaring war on them so I can take back all those space resources they're swiping up from everyone.

(On a side note, the galaxy was hit with a wave of xenophobia (another megaevent - and this is the SECOND TIME this happened), so I really hope nobody tries to embargo anyone from tourism revenue.)
Much Thanks,
~SilentMage