No. Pirates are not "freakin a holes". The people who put bounties on your head are freakin a holes. I'm in the middle of an 8 player FFA with a friend and 6 hard computers. 60ish planets spread over 3 stars. I've been trying something new this time around. My entire fleet is made up of carriers except for 2 colonizer battlecruisers. It's actually going pretty well. Not much can stand up to 30 bomber wings making an attack run. Unless of course the enemy decided to go straight flak frigates, but luckily they aren't smart enough to do that. This way I at least get to kill a few cap ships as everything runs away. I've currently got 3/4 of the planets in my system so I'm pretty much just mopping up at this point. Both enemies that are left have some pretty decent sized fleets, but they never want to stick around and slug it out.
On the planet bombardment topic, yeah it is pretty damn slow. I tend not to build seige frigates just because they take up so many supply points and instead just keep 4 or more caps in a fleet. It still takes some time, but once you research some of the bombing techs, it's not nearly so painful.