Fix is actually to build some combat ships and go kill them.  You know they're in the area, and they only have a movement of two.  Route around or build military.

There is a type of player that sends unprotected settlers out in Civilization and then complains when the barbs kill it.  Most of them turn off barbarians.  You can do the same with the Pirates.  Otherwise you can keep complaining. 

You can turn off pirates.

Interesting thing about pirates, you can turn off the game pirates but not the anomaly pirates. Knowing this, I played a small game today with no game pirates. Since they have toned down the anomaly pirates to where a single armed surveyor will normally beat the pirates if it is healthy, I decided to put the surveyor on auto survey. As the turns rolled by I noticed that there had been no anomaly battles and I figured maybe I had been wrong and there were no pirates of any kind in the game.

I forgot about it until late in the game when there were few anomalies left and I saw my surveyor idling on the edge of the map. I saw an anomaly nearby and it was a ship graveyard. I sent the surveyor in and sure enough a battle ensued. Then I looked at the other anomalies and they were all ship graveyards. Apparently the surveyors skip graveyards if you have opted for no pirates.

I thought that was curious but a good idea I suppose... and a nice bit of programming I might add.

I don't have a problem with pirates per se, I have a problem with pirates encouraging micromanagement.

I can easily manage pirates when I micromanage my fast colony and exploration ships. It's when you try and move them more than a couple of hexes at a time that it becomes a problem.

You don't seem to understand or rather want to understand what the OP is complaining about!!  He is not complaining about the pirates but the unnessecary micromanegement easily fixed by having ships auto stop when a pirate or enemy ship enter into sensor range. There is NO problem avoiding pirates in the game just as long as you move one or two hex at a time. There IS an easy solutin which would add other help in the game REDUCING micromanagment.

Easy solution is to build a 20 range sensor ship in turn One and scout with it. Pirates spawn outside in the FOW so you can get a pirate free zone that way if you wish early in the game. I don't do thus since it feels cheap. 

I echo this. On the one hand, we have pirates by default. We also have by default the ability to turn on auto explore...which right now is a death sentence to most ships.

I have no issue working my ships around pirate areas once pirates are a threat, but having to babysit my ships to ensure they don't get near pirates and die removes the very benefit of autoexplore.

The OP suggestion I think is the simplest one. Just have automation stop when you get within X of a ship. That way I can see "oh I need to micromanage now" and go to work.

Another one here that agrees with the op.

The captain shouldn't have to spend every moment on the bridge. Just because he's ordered the pilot to lay in a course to a given destination, doesn't mean the pilot should be stupid enough to just keep going when he runs into Romulan Warbird. He should full-stop, wake the captain, and sound the red alert! Right now it's like someone left Wesley Crusher at the damn helm.

I play at default and I have lost  colony ships to them and it really ticks me off.    But in a good way.   My idea is yeah it is dangerous, and yeah I don't have time to baby sit every colony ship.   So I try to use judgement to reduce bad things.   I take a slightly longer route when I know it's safer.   And so forth.    I take the risk to hurry colonizing.  And I am living with it, it sort of feels right.   But --- the problem is that the game has a micro way to avoid it completely.   Thee existence of that is a problem, not that pirates can be a pain.

So I agree with the OP to a point.  Having the colony ship captain just be stupid is kind of ridiculous.   I do it because that's what I think it should be like, I will take the hit.    What I would like to see is that colony ships, or other non combat ships, have a small CHANCE to see the pirates, but no guarantee.  Make soloing dangerous, something like but not exactly like Civ.    So pirates have a cloaking rating perhaps.    And ANY ship may blunder into them, but combat ships are less likely and ships with extra sensors nearly always see them.

It is too easy now to deal with pirates because you can see them a mile away and they move like snails.   Now in real life pirates didn't have the best ships, they had what junk they could scare up or capture, and they depended on hitting the defenseless.   When they ran into combat ships (like Blackbeard did in his last battle) it was generally curtains.

Pirates should have a decent chance to jump non combat ships, and a chance to avoid other ships if they are not smack next to them.  But right now the game is making me be stupid or lazy to get the atmosphere I am looking for.

Of course people can escort colony ships.   But then they pay a big price in time.  That's appropriate.

I agree with the OP here.

On paper, they are great, but yes, as already said, they add rapidly a lot of micromanagement to monitor your ships on the map.

Thankfully, and with several other settings, they can be set to "off", and it's what I do, but it also removes some possibilities for the game.

It would be nice if we could trade with them so they can protect our ships instead of destroying them, and all kinds of other contracts, non aggression pact, harass this player for me, destroy this starbase, etc., etc., etc.

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Also, perhaps add settings to define their aggressiveness towards the player.

Setting for the aggressiveness:

Start of the game: friendly

Setting for the duration:

After xx turns (ex: slider): angry

Etc.

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I suppose it all depends on how one colony rushes (if one even does),  My style is to send out a bunch of survey ships with longer scanning range than move (Even before I get Interstelllar Survey, I am sending out mapping ships in all directions - then I just upgrade them later to full blown survey ships when I can). I use these fellas to map outward in an ever increasing circle (sorta, the circle gets messy as I hit anamolies ). The great thing about having survey ships with larger scan than move is I will always be able to see if a pirate is nearby before I can run into him.  Unless I am being careless, of course.

When I send out my colony ships (which outside of the very first one or two, I almost never send out blind) I already have a general idea where pirates are, if there are any.  So I know which ships I have to inch-along and which I don't.  Honestly, the only real time pirates bite me in the ass right now is when I play wormhole roulette.  Having one of my ships that I  can't micromanage anymore get waylaid is admittedly a little irksome.  But, then again, that's why it's wormhole roulette.  Paid yer monies, too yer chances, as the old saying goes.

Why some people don't want a feature which ONLY intent is to REDUCE micromanagement is beyond my comprehension!?!

I really can't understand how one can defend that is is fun to micromanage all your ships when a single easy feature would make thing just simpler and not by any stretch easier game play wise. The only time it will make the game easier is if you actually use the "auto explore" or move colonizers in dangerous areas unattended. Something you should never do. The auto explore function is very dangerous to use as it stands when exploring manually is safe, why is that?