Pirates don't seem to be doing much (now with pictures!)

I have noticed the same. They need to make them more fearsome in the early game.

More fearsome?  I haven't seen one, so any level of fearsome would be an improvement, lol.  Or I guess set them to 'none' in the settings because their shipyards are taking up space.  

And I always thought pirates should be towards mid-game when the econ starts to roll because that's when they would come out of the woodwork.

I'm guessing their is a bug - it would be nice if Stardock would look into this.  Here are some illustrations:

1) I have pirates set to rare - I have waaaaaay to many pirate shipyards in this game:

2) I entered god mod and looked at the shipyard, and yes!  They are building something!

3) But when I hover over the shipyard under "currently building" there is some strange red icon, not the ship it is building

And here's what happens as I progressed a couple turns:

1) The ship has 1 turn left to build:

2) Hit end turn and it starts building it's next ship:

3) But what happened to the ship it just built?

So there are two bugs - 1) the settings for 'rare' are off, there should not have been as many pirate shipyards as I have on my map. And 2) The pirates are building ships but they seem to disappear!

Pirate shipyards created from destroying major civs definitely DO manufacture ships. Perhaps there is a difference between those and natural born pirate bases.

And what has happened to the "graveyard" anomalies? I have yet to see even one of these, with or without pirates or precursor ships defending them.

I saw a defended anomaly but the frequency is down from what I remember them.

Those strange red icons on the shipyards indicate that you need to spy on them to see what they are building.  You can spy on other factions, but I don't know how you can spy on pirates.

And the Precursor anomalies are back with 2.1.4, but I still haven't seen any ship graveyards.

That green icon above the pirate shipyards indicates there is a ship, or more, stationed there.  That is what is happening to the ships.  You can't see them because you don't haven't spied on them enough.  As Publius mentioned, I don't know how to spy on them, so the only way to know is to attack them and see how many show up in the battle prediction window.

I was in 'god' mode.  If you look at the pictures you will see I was looking at their production from within their own shipyard.

Same comment as before, look at the pictures, I was in god mode, there was nothing in those shipyards.  Even when you are NOT in god mode, if you have a ship within sensor range, you should see what is stationed in that shipyard.  Also, if there are actual ships somewhere, why aren't they out raiding?  I have not seen a single pirate ship.  Have you?  Please address the OP, have you seen pirate ships? (And I mean the ones that spawn at the beginning of the game.)

I have seen pirate ships.  There are always 1 or 2 pirate snipers all by themselves somewhere in the galaxy when a game is started.  They are hard to see when they are all alone, but I have always found them when I use the console and fow or fowtrans.  They don't do anything when I encounter them in the game, and I have no idea why they are even there.

The pirate shipyards seem to spawn when there is a message from one of the races to beware of the pirates.  They don't always spawn in the games I play, and I wonder if there is a bug somewhere that sometimes prevents the spawning.  When they do actually spawn, I have seen ships made by the shipyards.  They are weak and don't do much, but they do exist.  I have lost scouts, unarmed survey ships and asteroid mines to them.  I'll see if I have a save of a game with pirates.  I'll then get a screenshot and post it here.

I've been playing on Small maps to get the hang of the new systems,  and I also see early pirates that just... sit.

OK, that's great.  But I recall in the previous iteration of the game the pirates would come out and snipe my colony ships if they passed too close, also anytime you have a ship within sensor distance of a planet or shipyard, you can see what is stationed in that shipyard.  There is nothing in these shipyards, yet the pirates are building ships.  Where are they going?  I've had a recon ship in sensor range of that shipyard I posted above for 20+ turns, there are no pirate ships in my game.  So yeah, as you say, possible bug which is why I started this thread.  Hopefully it will get addressed, but I realize there is a long laundry list of things needing fixing, so I won't be holding my breath.

I found I already had a screenshot of a lonely pirate sniper when I happened to get close enough to see it with my H12-Super Mercenary ship.

Here is a screenshot from the save that had pirates in it.

This one had more than 40 pirate shipyards appear in it.  The shipyards were slow to build ships, and the pirate ships stayed fairly close to the shipyards.  The ships I had that were destroyed had ended their turn very close or next to a pirate ship.  The asteroid mine was close to where a pirate base had spawned.  The pirate ships don't cause much trouble, otherwise.

This one had more than 40 pirate shipyards appear in it.  The shipyards were slow to build ships, and the pirate ships stayed fairly close to the shipyards.  The ships I had that were destroyed had ended their turn very close or next to a pirate ship.  The asteroid mine was close to where a pirate base had spawned.  The pirate ships don't cause much trouble, otherwise.

Which version are you on?  I'm on beta 2.14 (I guess I should have stated that in the OP) so maybe it's just a fluke in my game or this version.

That game was with the 2.131 Opt-In.  I played some other games with that Opt-In that didn't have pirates appear.  I don't understand why there is a difference.

My last game on 2.14 had lots of pirates and they were very annoying. Because nuking a base is so much more difficult now, they tend to pile up in bigger fleets.

I am also getting pirate shipyards but I am not getting any pirate or precursor defended anomalies.

I just found a precursor defended anomaly, so they are indeed there.

I have a handful of those in my game. At first nearly half of the anomalies I found were precursor ones, so first I though that was another error

But then I didn't find any new ones. I have the feeling that the game puts all precursor anomalies on the map at game start, but no or nearly no "normal" anomalies, but that the latter spawn according to the frequency set in galaxy settings. But I didn't check that feeling by using console commands.

FYI, Frogboy has been working on Crusade over this weekend and has made some changes to make pirates more aggressive.  Should be in patch 2.3 in the next week or two.

Come to think about it, I`ve been warned twice in two campaigns of pirates and I`ve not seen any. To be honest I was too relieved to not have them messing things up to worry about it being a bug.

The pirates in Crusade appear when you get this notice.

If a race warns you about pirates, it is just a generic conversation.  It doesn't mean there really are pirates.

Anybody who doesn't want to wait and who feels brave may want to check out the mod I just posted here.