ORIGINAL: Spidey
Could the difference of pirate raid challenge be related to any of the difficulty settings? That might explain why we're not quite seeing the same picture.
Settings possibly, I play on max strength, nearby. Differences are more likely due to how well folks defend there empire. I get the odd few that get away with raids but as my system defense and tech for those system defenses improves the raid successes drop off to next to none. All I have is four Destroyers per system, the odd spaceport here and there and my WEH research starbases (only four of those at the homeworld).
Darkspire