Make Pirates more dangerous

Is there not a way to make Pirates more dangerous eg. send in waves drones to disrupt and destroy infrastructure, oil terminals, storage and the only way to stop them is to build defenses and or destroy the ship that is sending them. Drone raids would only start when you encounter a pirate ship. Each discovered pirate ship is capable of sending in the drones until you destroy/sink them

Why would pirates send drones? They could do what pirates do and attack your island, taking everything they need and maybe even murdering everyone.
They could be moving on map and could attack your island (bombarding it), promting you to attack them with your ship and making coastal defense. Maybe even calling for help to others settlements (for resources) and sometimes helping them too. Then some patrol ships could be used.
This of course would require more RPG style with enemies keeping damage after battles (slowly repairing them).
But that would add time pressure on the game, which would not be good for most players. So this would be more likely good as mod and not part of vanilla.

I think this is a great idea. It would be nice if dangerous pirate ships, landing parties, and similar threats could actually put the player's well-established infrastructure at risk and increase the overall tension of the game.
Of course, it would be even better if the player also had proper defensive structures and units to deal with these threats.
At the same time, I think players should be given a choice. Before starting a new game, there could be a "Peaceful Mode" setting that prevents hostile factions or units from appearing and attacking the player's infrastructure.
That way, players who want a more dangerous and combat-oriented experience could enable these threats, while those who prefer to focus purely on building and logistics could disable them. I think giving players that choice would make for a much better overall game experience.