Pirates hate me for the attacks I haven't made.

[stuart3]

I started a new game as Humans. A faction of Boskaran pirates arrived, refused to take protection money and attacked.

OK, this sort of thing has happened in previous games and we soon came to an agreement involving protection.

This time the pirates won't let up. They continually attack my ships and spaceport, and repeatedly raid my planet.

The problem seems to be that they hate me because my forces automatically try to defend themselves. They are "furious with us" with a relationship of -90. -86 of that is because "we are upset by your attacks against our military ships", even though that is trending upwards at 71.4 per year and I have never initiated an attack against them because I don't have the military force.

The AI needs to be able to differentiate between a genuine attack and self-defence when calculating how much another power should be upset by warfare.