Ive always found the idea of people pirating in little ships like fighters and bombers didnt make much sense. I mean sure you can demand money, but that is less pirating and more "protection ransom". To me pirating makes me think of bigger ships, outfitted with slightly better guns, taking cargo.
So my question is this, How effective is pirating in a transport? I dont think it would work that well. Seeing as how you are mostly pirating other transports, your basically evenly gunned. So if anyone wants to run or fight, its coin flip on your success rate. That just doesn't sound like good odds to me.
Part 2: Suggestions
So heres my suggestion. I think Transports should become the prefered vessel of pirates. How we do this is by adding a few more transport class turrets. These turrets would have stats higher than transport weapons, but no as good as gunboat guns. Vary them up a little so there is missile turrets and even pulses and such.
Now.. what stops every trader from using these on their ship? Well make these guns take up cargo space. Thats right. Make it so its only really feasible to equip 2-4 of these news guns without completely using up all your cargo. The result is traders wont really use them cause it would take up too much cargo space, and pirates using transports wouldnt just use all of the new guns cause then they would have no room for there pirated goods. And due to there power being less than class 8 turrets, and on only usable in small quantities, were are not basically making mini-gunboats.