Let me tell you of my first years as a pirate:
It was a dark and stormy turn...
First think I built was a spacestation with a Space Yard.
First thing I researched with my 100k points was The military science required for Ship Capture.
After four turns, I had a pair of escorts retrofitted with ship capture and some wimpy little gun.
Immediately, I sent them out and captured two enemy ships (escort & frigate)
Analysing both, I got Frigates & AP Is.
Now, I changed my homeplanet & orbital factory over to frigate production (1/2 year)
Repeated captures with my escorts got me frigates that I could convert to capture ships.
Then it snowballed, as the drushocka showed up with LCs, basic Shields, some other guys with APBs and no shields, and I captured all those techs.
Thank-you come again
Basically, I got ship con. From the drushocka, APBs from these silver aliens, Shields from the drushocka, and Engines from the yellow guys with the Shard cannons. I've also got missile tech from these blue aliens, but I don't use it.
Combining all these stolen tech areas gives me the highest number of tech levels in the game so far