re: piracy
i think a few things are needed. currently if you play pirates (well, without adjusting your standing with the console, anyway) you will have to shoot pirates that inevitably attack you, which shuts down your access to any nearby ports in a way that's essentially impossible to avoid. so, fix that somehow, either by making a pirate start or by making it easier to blend in and approach the dock somehow.
2. pirate ships are really garbage, even on the sole military market they have. i'd make the hidden pirate base (or barad B,A) a military market which allows the player easier access to at least mid quality ships. that way they'd have at least someway to acquire the ships they desperately need to outnumber everything (considering they're going to have piles of (D) frigates because you can't buy anything else at the start of the game)
3. terrain (and being in terrain) should effect sensors more. you need to be able to hide in asteroid belts and stuff, so that you don't always get jumped by the hegemony fast pickets (which are nigh impossible to fight at the beginning) or the mercenary patrols (likewise)
4. mercantile convoys seem relatively scarce, and that's the only thing you can really take on. attacking them is very dangerous for you, because they will have escorts and because they can easily be reinforced by things you can't see. i'd make smaller ones more common, and clutter more terrain around jump points and obvious trade-routes so that they are easier to ambush.
5. reward is too low. even if you do manage to come out on top, and say you have a few frigates for the extra cargo space, the reward is very low. even heavy machinery, what i considered a huge profit windfall in .65 (easy to carry lots of it, high price per unit, drops relatively often) seems much reduced in terms of what you can expect credits-wise, though i'm not exactly sure why. if you have to buy supplies (and you will, because finding things you can reliably kill is not easy) you will lose the tug of war between profits and costs before long. sustainability, if there are no bounties on the table, is almost nonexistent.
i also tried smuggling to make up the cost but paradoxically it's actually harder now that the AI (and you) are not omniscient. where before, all you had to do to get into an any-stability port was just to have -50(?) or higher standing and get a little lucky on the random custom inspection, now you have to sneak through patrols that often completely surround the planet and run sensor pings all the time. keeping in mind that for a smuggler (especially starting out) your chances of killing any one of these numerous patrols is absolute zero, smuggling to any place with high stability (and thus, prices you can actually make a profit at) are very, very low.