I can also confirm that railguns seem to damage components before all armor is gone on my game

If people start complaining about something like this, than there must be nothing serious left to complain about. Is the game this perfect already?

I think pirates are a lot of fun to play, but I really like your ideas 1, 2 and 3.

IMO armor is too weak, it is better to just take extra shields. Railguns are very overpowered in early game.

Either that is a bug, or you are just really lucky to get the 0.1% change that out of 30 pirates, 30 are balanced.
I guess it is a bug.

<t> It is also really annoying that scout ships spread influence like military ships do. Whenever I make truce with other pirate faction, there is some stupid scout ship that decides to refuel at one of their planets and then they break truce because of the competing for same colonies.<br/>
<br ...

It would be perfect if hyperdeny system could be toggled on or off by the player. That would be great if you have to retreat or if you want to prevent a ship from jumping but without destroying it.

Does anybody know what actually changes when I change difficulty? What and how large bonuses does AI get?