Now that the release version of 1.3 is out, I decided to forget the game I had going with the opt-in and start a new game. I had the pirates on my usual setting of Common. They were their usual minor nuisance, so I mostly left them alone. After I built up enough ships with good offense and defense, I went on an extermination spree and eliminated all the pirate ships and bases around me. I also noticed that the AI races were also taking out the pirate ships and some of the bases near them. I thought this meant I no longer had to worry about pirates.
I was wrong.
After a Galactic Event caused a burst of anomalies, I was moving my survey ship to get as many as I could. I was moving it through an area I had already explored, so I wasn't worried about running into anything. I was surprised when I found a pirate shipyard (it was identified as a "Deep Space Shipyard") out in the void. I was also surprised by the icon used for a fleet of pirate ships and even more surprised by the stats of the fleet.
Here is a screenshot showing the shipyard and pirate fleet. Notice the Manufacturing Per Turn for the shipyard is 20. It was 5 for the shipyards I destroyed earlier.
When I got a report on the fleet and the ships in it, I discovered this.
They are already have Large ships, and I just finished researching Medium. They aren't building large ships, so I wonder if they appeared when the shipyard did.
This next screenshot shows what I found when I moved my spy ship towards that shipyard. Before I got there, I found 4 other shipyards. Some things are labeled in the screenshot, which I will explain after it.
As I watched the area, I saw the some things happen that indicated to me that the AI is better.
1. The AI fleets labeled 1 and 2 moved down and destroyed the pirate shipyard labeled 6.
2. The pirate fleet labeled 3 moved over and destroyed the starbase labeled 4.
3. The pirate ship labeled 5 moved to the ships labeled 7 to create a fleet that moved towards the starbase labeled 8.
I sent my spy ship elsewhere, so I don't know what else happened in this area.