Piracy was mostly state sanctioned low-key economic warfare (Blackbeard got his start as a 'privateer'). The piracy that exists today, out of 'countries' like Somalia (no real government there, thus the quotes) exists because no law(-enforcement), rich pickings (shipping straits) are near, poverty is excruciating, and there is lots of weapons-adjacent (i did not want to use '-trained') people that are desperate.

Especially in space travel humans use the metric system ;). So each jump feels instantaneous, but the speed is a rough 4C? So travel to our closest star would take on average just over a year (4,367 LY away from us)? Very important: how expensive are space craft and how easy is it to get hold of one? How many are there? How easy is it to get the near limitless fuel?

Years long voyages occurred routinely in the age of Blackbeard, but not for your closest destination. 4C is too slow. A planetary system might manage.

without intercepting in jump state, being able to kick ships out of it - there are only two main venues for piracy - next to departure points aka in system high sec space which is not so much realistic and considering external treat aka aliens in existence that sec space should be good enough - so not an option, chances are much worse than for regular crime. Another venue is moles, hacking - so ship you need jumps were you need it - meaning delivery to your home/base no resistance as such, no combat, no typical piracy activity - you just drove a car away type stuff and it emerged in poland.

Unless interstellar cargo transport is cheaper than oceanic shipping today, the idea of transporting "mostly pure element stock for molecular printers" or any kind of bulk cargo is implausible. Elements are everywhere and refining them to any level of purity necessary in bulk is possible even today, let alone in the far future with "molecular printers" able to build refining plants on site. There is nearly nothing worth shipping between star systems at that level of technology.

@GrumpyYoungMan Until your printers can't change atomic structures, and you have nice metallic rich planets around, but without hydrogen and/or oxygen to live. A two-way trade flow is therefore highly advisable as costs to extract the same quantity of materials on one planet and the others are vastly different. Also note that most sci-fi worlds and stories assume that moving around with your ship is generally not considered that expensive, unless you have them be hard-science sci-fi, which is visibly not the case here.

@Tortliena Hydrogen is the most abundant element in the galaxy and oxygen is third. Even in a soft sci-fi universe, bulk materials shipping is economically implausible.

@GrumpyYoungMan Check back my comment, it's not about those elements alone :).

@Mary Near zero voyage time for the ship and crew, they only experience the time needed to get to the jump limit they have no direct experience of the transit. I'm not sure if that makes a difference because I'm not 100% clear on your objection.

@GrumpyYoungMan When the only serious manufacturing facilities are all in one place (and they are) then you have to ship in materials that remain scarce even with asteroid mining, like Neodymium, Niobium, Beryllium, Rhenium, and Indium, from elsewhere.

@SomethingSImple That needs to be an answer, and not in the comments even if you don't write it up properly.

@Trioxidane I'm a member of a society that, because of a number of historical oddments uses both the metric and imperial systems with equal ease, especially my particular generation, I try to stick to one or the other but not always a thing I'm good at, the facility in question is actually rated for 75km.

Perhaps answers in this questions will be of help? worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/210504/…

The combined Neodymium, Niobium, Beryllium, Rhenium, and Indium usage for Earth for ten years would fit comfortably in a single oceanic cargo ship, again demonstrating that interstellar cargo shipment will be very rare.

The other absolute requirement for large scale piracy is the absence of decent communications. It's no good robbing a ship if they can radio for help from the coast guard. It wont stop that robbery, but will so severely impede the pirate's escape and selling of stolen goods that it becomes unprofitable.

@Ash Still going to be four years for all he knows and loves.

@Mary Which is why crews don't have those attachments.

@GrumpyYoungMan And when did we start building hundreds of starships that are tens of miles long?

@PcMan Unless the pirates are spreading news of their own crimes they're going to be ahead of the news.

@Ash If you want to look up the annual usages for each of those metals, total them up, and compare it to the carrying capacity of a large freighter (which I did, by the way) and tell me why that's wrong, you're welcome to.

@GrumpyYoungMan You're not wrong about our current usage rates but they're irrelevant. You're touting the current usage rate of a couple of billion first class consumers, with extremely limited access to the elements in question, and saying that it equates to the usage rate of hundreds of billions of consumers who take easy availability for granted, that doesn't map.