In travian you "raid" other lands by sending your "hero" the lands don't have to be occupied by other users, so you have to sometimes fight "nature" lions etc...

You could have something similar in this game, but you can build your own mining vessels instead of having just one hero. The vessel would mine until it is full and then return but not go out again unless stipulated. Pirates could attack zones they know mining is going on.

Someone explained to me in EVE you use triangulation to find enemy vessels, obviously it's a real time game so you can easily sit by a warp gate and wait for someone to warp in but perhaps in this game you could buy a "scan", you could scan in grids or something, so you scan a large area and it tells you if vessels are there but then you need to refine the scan to identify exactly where they are, you send out an attack craft, select a mining vessel to attack if there are more than one and then leg it.

If I had craft pretecting my miner they would attack back, maybe if someone leached off of me and sent thier miner to the same place they would gain pretection too... so instead of the pirate choosing to attack he/she just attacks the area and all ships in it...

Just some ideas here, sorry if Im going off on a tangent I had some good ideas about buildings etc after Teamer's post yesterday, wich I had posted as have forgotten now