Any ideas on pirate base assaults?

Send in a scout to see what they've got, and then send in a fleet large enough to take them down. Simple, really.

Beyond that - make sure you stay towards the edge of the gravity well. The pirates will come to you, and you won't have to take fire from the gauss cannons while you're fighting them. They don't use fighters or anything else sophisticated, so a blob of heavy cruisers works well. Nuke the asteroid (health 6000) to finish them off.

Just a big fleet with cap ships.

It's not hard to kill them.

I always destroy the pirate base if they are in my reinforcement unit's path.

You can be outnumbered 3:1 and win just as long as you bring support cruisers and Capital Ships. Carriers and heavy cruisers help alot too.

If you're late into the game, the vasari orbital cannon does a good job of weakening them but at that point pirates really shouldn't be a problem.

thanks everyone, what I normally do is send in a combination of Cap ships and heavy cruisers, sometimes with some frigates for backup.

I use caps because pirates normally have a lot of ships and killing them is a good way to get expierience. one time, really late in the game, I attacked a pirate base and it had ove 200 ships gaurding it. that was a cool fight  . that ever happen to anyone else?

I had over 300 at one point. It was lagtastic  

i like to go in with the main fleet. wipe out the ships, then move my fleet on leaving 6 to 8 light carriers to take out the cannons. then either a single cap or siege ships to finish off the base. this way i dont have to think about it. just leave the carriers parked outside the grav well and the bombers do all the work.

Novalith.

once, both the pirates and I had about 200 ships each. It was pretty sweet, because I had gone and researched most of the weapon improvements for my ships. You can guess how it went