How can pirates do interstellar phase jumps?

You have to give them the interstellar jump tech to research.

The star jumps they will use--it's wormholes they don't so far.

So far that hasn't seemed to work for wormholes--they don't seem to use it even when it's provided via artifact or research tree--though please try as I haven't attempted it since 1.2+.

As it happens, I am just this moment trying an experiment where I think I might be able to trick them into using it.  I'll let you know if it works later this evening when I have time to play it through in a game.

The reason they do not use wormholes is that Pirates do not scout them out. As such, the Pirates do not know where wormholes lead to; thus the game/AI will not be able to make a "path" for their ships using wormholes. Edit: This assumes that they still do not use wormholes; I haven't tested this personally.

How did you come by that information Lavo?  I had tried something last night and wondered why it didn't work--that would certainly explain it.

What could really help is if the developers would allow us to pre-place phase gates on maps and then we could give ownership to the pirates and pick the systems we wanted them connected to.

I used logic. The pirates don't have a scout ship, so they don't have something that would search the wormhole, which means the AI won't consider it in calculating paths as they don't know where it goes. Even if the AI had a scout, who knows whether if it would be used properly, as the Pirates make their fleets for raids.

Even if they had phase gates, which is something you can give pirate bases on pre-made planets (and set the planet base to have no Explore stages), this wouldn't solve the issue of no scouting.

So I am wondering:

1. If you create a pirate base/colonized militia on a planet and designate it as Pirate instead of Random Militia...
2. Place a wormhole and galaxy artifact at their planet..
3. And create a custom ship with autocast "explore" on by default..

Would that work?

Brilliant deduction by the way.  I'd say you are correct--there's not one observed case of pirates using a wormhole.

I thought phase gates might work as the Pirate raid forces apparently phase in in the exact same fashion to their pirate base just before a raid...a.k.a., "Pirates are on the move!"

You shall entered onto the rolls and spared in the great galactic purge.

1. Don't need to do it.
2. Don't need to do it if they have the research.  I'm not convinced they get to use artifacts like the other factions.
3. Modifying their existing ship should be adequate.

Pirates don't have a scout ship in terms of function (read that as ships that go out and scout), however, they do have a scout ship in terms of there being an actual scout ship.  In the game, it's the Rogue that is classified as a pirate scout... There's just a few problems with that.

The first is that in it's role types, it only says:
typeCount 1
frigateRoleType "Raider"
It should say:
typeCount 2
frigateRoleType "Raider"
frigateRoleType "Scout"
(Or maybe just change raider to scout which could fix issues I'll explain in a second)

The second problem is that it's abilities read like this:
ability:0 "AbilitySabotageAntiMatter"
ability:1 ""
ability:2 ""
ability:3 ""
ability:4 ""
It should say:
ability:0 "AbilityExplore"
ability:1 "AbilitySabotageAntiMatter"
ability:2 ""
ability:3 ""
ability:4 ""

The third problem is that the explore ability is not active by default, but as that doesn't prevent other AI's from sending them out, it shouldn't prevent the pirates.

The fourth problem is that the pirate scout is an attacking scout, unlike the other races, so as soon as it finds a gravity well with anyone else in it that it wants to fight, it will.  And more times then not, it loses.

The fifth problem is that the pirates can't replace destroyed scouts.  However, giving a structure at the pirate base the ability to either make scouts buildable, or just bring scouts in as a bonus gift at a timed interval would remedy this situation.

This is likely the best solution; the ability can call create TEC scouts through it's ability, which would require the least amount of coding (as you don't need to edit or make a new ship, the pirates will properly use a TEC ship).

Making a modded structure to produce pirate scouts with a timed ability wouldn't be to hard.

Also, Zombie Rus created an ability to automatically resurrect a ship when it's destroyed.  Would be great for pirate scouts.   Giving them no weapons would also avoid the attacking thing.

Except that the game tends to complain when a ship is expected to have a weapon and you don't give it any.  All ships except trade ships and refinery ships are expected to have at least one weapon.

This. You can however code a unit to never fire unless manually ordered to; simply set defaultAutoAttackOn to FALSE. 

Yep--you can make the ability always on and the auto attack always off.

I'm going to try these suggestions today.  I ran Zombie Rus's "Nephilim Immortality" but it generates a boatload of errors  (though no minidump).  I'll see if it works in the minimod and maybe Rus or Ryat can comment on it.

Essentially, you code a pirate scout ship--I just use the existing TEC scout model and leave the explore and immortality abilities on it.  If you change the Raider it is part of your pirate raid force and that will effect pirate raids--don't want them wandering off.

When the ship dies, a new ship appears within the tiume you set at the same location.  I view it as :another priate survey vessel sent to investigate the loss of their ship".

Works fine in my mod, not sure how you set it up, but playing with spawning on death is tricky.

This is definitally true. And in my experience scouts won't scout period if auto attack is on. The AI just sits on it's home planet not doing anything because it won't move to un-scouted planets.

I used the straight version from your post.  I haven't actually used the ability yet as I am still scrambling brain cells on how to add a pirate cap ship.

I only get a single start up error now but it doesn't crash or minidump the game.  Thanks for responding.