- The root cause behind incorrect pirate fleet power calculation for vanilla events has been identified and fixed for good this time.

A couple bugfixes related to vanilla issues this time:

- Fixed an error in fleet creation logic for certain vanilla pirate-spawning events. Previously, it would spawn increasing numbers of fleets (scaling with years passed) and merge them into one instead of spawning just a single fleet. This often resulted in unfairly strong pirate fleets.

- Apparently, mining stations sometimes do not have an owner empire assigned to them. Several mod condition checks are adjusted to prevent errors in such cases.

- The pirate countries are no longer restricted from spawning inside empires with high naval coverage as the previous hotfix addressed the issue of their frequency.
- The empires raided by pirates now gain birth_of_piracy and pirate_encountered internal flags (same as when they spawn offshoot pirate) for compatibility with vanilla events.

- Hotfix: Fixed incorrect pirate spawn chance modifiers from naval coverage

- The formula for calculating pirate power-up intervals is improved further.

- The pirate bribe option is no longer available if the empire does not have enough energy to afford it.

- Pirates can no longer spawn in or raid systems with hostile deep space citadels.

- The monthly chance to spawn a new pirate country inside parent empire borders (if no outside systems are available) is increased. However, such spawns can now be prevented by having high naval coverage (>70%).

- Pirate strength tiers are now unlocked dynamically depending on the "End-game Start Year" galaxy setting instead of at fixed intervals. The first 6 pirate tiers will be evenly spread between 2215 and the value of said setting. For example, moving the endgame year to 2450 (250 years, 50 more than default value) increases the time between pirate tiers by 25%.

- The pirate countries can now spawn in the endgame.

- Two new pirate strength tiers are added to be unlocked during endgame.

- The resources stolen during pirate raids and required for bribes are rescaled again. They are now capped at -800 energy and -2000 trade from theft, and at -2000 energy for bribes.