Pirates stole my spaceport, help!

[Aszh]

Hey all, I'm new to the game so apologies if this is a really obvious question... I'm playing my first game (Shadows expansion) and this is the first time I've played long enough to meet another empire.

I was merrily going about by business, I have about 4 colonies now. I zoomed into my home planet, and I noticed all my fleets there were firing at my spaceport for some reason... I moused over it and it was owned by a pirate faction.

How did this happen? How did some pirates swoop past the entire combined might of my fleets guarding my homeworld and steal my largest spaceport out of from under them? How can I prevent it in the future?

Most of all, how can I get it back? I'm afraid my fleets are about to destroy it and I don't want that, those things are expensive.

[Fishers of Men]

This is what pirates do. They swoop in and launch assault pods and board your spaceport to take it from you and then attempt to control the planet.

To prevent this from happening, make sure you have many extra Hab componets and troops to defend their boarding. I know its a pain. but I just need to manually keep my eye on these bases against the pirates that I have poor relations with. They can appear suddenly and without warning to launch an attack.

If your spaceport or any facility is captured, just reboard with your assault pods to take it back, it you don't want your fleets to destroy it first.

Also, welcome to the forums!

[Aszh]

I didn't even know you could put troops on space ports. Thanks for the tip! I think I'll just restart this game and take a stab at managing my own designs... up til now I've been letting the AI do it.

[Flinkebeinchen]

Those ships on Auto-Patrol can be a little slow on reaction time.. a little micro-managing for your fleet when an attack comes in may be handy [;)]

[crusender]

use of heavy shielding may help too has they cant board if shield is more that 20 left (or 100 at last tech)

[paShadoWn]

Swooping is bad...

[pelthunter]

Did you lose the planet too? This could happen if the pirates complete the Criminal Network.

[Plant]

Doesn't one of the patches changed it so that it automatically destroys a captured base if it is attached to another empire's planet?