Piracy micro management has turned the game into Shelfware for me

[Drachenfels]

Once you build some gateways, the problem goes away, since every Star Fortress within 6 hops of through the gateways projects piracy protection. The L cluster Can also give some similar effects.

This is hands down most stupid mechanic ever. But in general it seems without gates game is unplayable anyway.

Fleet moves too slow? Build a gateway
Piracy cannot be rooted out? Build a gateway

Sweet Jesus.

 

[Erik Kalkoken]

Shift-clicking patrol to add legs to a route doesn't work. It creates a second route alright, but that route starts in the system you are currently in. So if you want a route that goes A-B-C, but the calculated route to C is A-D-C, the first patrol A-B gets set up and then when you add C you get a orders to patrol A-B, A-D-C

When the trade route ticks up enough means you're constantly checking the piracy and trade values along all your routes. It's not like there is a notification about piracy befire pirates spawn.

Sure! Around 2300-2350 you can start to build gateways to negate piracy at a 100 influence a pop. Or to put in another way, 1 protected node every 3 years assuming you don't engage in diplomacy, claims, habitats, megastructures, building strategic gateways, or system acquisition for the 50 years or so that you are building internal gateways whose only point is to reduce micro and which increases lag/stutter as all those trade starbases check all those new gateway accessible regions for trade pickup.

No. Defining the patrol route manually def. works. But you are correct that it will always start in the system where your ships currently are in.

So if you want A-B-C you first have to move your fleet to A, Then you can define A-B plus B-C as you patrol route. I agree it would be better if you could also define the start system and don't have to wait until your fleet gets to A. But nevertheless this allows you to define the correct patrol route.

 

[b5fan]

I almost never build patrol routes. I research starfortress as a top priority and chain my bases to the capital.

Basically you build
Hub... SB...SB...SB...SB..SB..CapitalSB..SB..SB..SB..SB..SB..Hub
That gives you a 12 radius piracy free unlimited trade zone. That should cover most of your empire.
If you need more add another chain.

Also before trade gets too high Baston..Hub..Baston is pretty effective.
Bastions = 6 hangars for 60 protection over 6 range. You can overlap bastions to get 60...120.. 180 protection. until you can do a chain like above.