Are you using the core ship designs or making your own? The core ships are best avoided at all costs.

If you are designing your own ships, you might be better off concentrating on a single type of weapons or defences (preferably weapons that your opponent doesn't have defences against, and defenses that counter the weapons that they are using). Mixing weapons and defenses not only takes three times as long to research, but is also simply not as effective.

You also need to consider that good weapons tech is not the only important thing. It's just as important to have good logistics (more ships per fleet), miniturisation (more weapons on each ship) and larger hull techs (more space on the ships and more HP).

If not, I don't know what is going on. I'm assuming you aren't doing anything daft like sending in ships one by one instead of forming them into fleets or something?

Look at what your opponent is using on theit ships and try to use a countering srtup on your ships. If they have lasers try to fit shields, if you dont have shield tech then fit armour or point defence, you still get some defence benefit but not as much as if you had used the corresponding defence to the weapon.

Shields counter lasers
Armour counters mass drivers (projectiles)
Point Defence (ECM) counters missiles

Try to use a weapon type that your enemy isnt using defences for, they use armour? Fit missiles or lasers and hit them where it hurts.

Form fleets, your logistic ability allows you to form larger more powerful fleets. Larger hulls are more powerful but use more logistics points.

Play around with your balance of weapons/defences. I tend to skimp on defences on smaller ships in order to keep costs down and leave room for firepower. Don't go overboard on defence as you might find you lack the punch to beat the enemies defences.

In my opinion a balanced fleet composition is the way to go. I mix up te hull sizes and try to tank up my larger ships so that they can hopefully absorb the fire of the smaller enemy craft and ride out the enemy big guns long enough for my fleet to grind them down. You're going to lose ships in this game, but just make sure the enemy lose more.

Oh and dont forget to have at least one armed ship in orbit of every planet to ward off sneak invasions, the troop ships cant land until the garrison is cleared out, it sucks to lose some world behind the lines because a troop ship managed to sneak through!

If all else fails, sue for peace.

Good luck to ye!

Load up on one type of weaponry. I have had the same thing happen to me. Trust me, you can still make better ships than they do. DO not spread 3 types of weapons. Notice the pirate defenses are probably like 300 or more in each category. To hurt them, your fleet must do more than that in a category. There damage is your attack minus their defense in a category (missile, ray, or massdriver). If they have a missile defense of say 286 and you do 300 missile attack, they receive 14 damage. Make a fleet with3 or 4 big monsters and then some little guys who are expendable. Often, the little guys will get blown up while your big ships keep pounding them. At that stage in the game, it is impossible to beat a pirate fleet without losing a single ship.

A funny thing to do is build the Galactic Privateer and watch the pirates try in vain to kill your freighters. Every turn they try to attack and can't.

I wonder what version you are playing, laxi2610.
In 1.0 the pirates were something fierce, but they were dumbed down in later versions.

Have you updated the game?