Pirates inhabit areas of space that can't be navigated at full speed and where sudden changes of course would also be dangerous. Pirates put most of their power sources towards latching onto smaller faster ships, and only put a small amount towards propulsion. So it's theoretically possible to outrun them, but not necessarily safe to do so where they're usually found.

Weapons on ships are energy-based, and fire in straight lines faster than ships can get out of the way once they've been fired, but most tech goes towards ground-based combat because people aren't generally going to stop their ship and wait for you to take aim at them.

But mostly I'm all about the people, the communities and the politics.