Patrizierforum

AFAIK the only way to capture pirate ships in the nest raid is with an auto-fighting convoy. Holks with large catapults or bombards and cogs with small catapults. It appears that ships with small catapults have a tendency to capture mor than those equipped with the large weapons. 24 ships should suffice, 9 holks the rest cogs, all crewed and armed to the max with 10% extra cutlasses and as many good sailing & fighting captains as you can muster. It may be worth stopping an autoroute and runing it manualy to give the convoy an extra captain.
I have not gotten a nest mission in eons during the contests since the pirates never capture anything, a requirement to get the nest raid. If they just pilfer one or two ships than the damage will cost more to repair than what you get from looting the nest. A juicy nest will yield over 1M, a poor one just 1 - 2 k.

In standard Game I do like Bitzpro a big convoy fully equipped with captains in Autofight.

In the contest no raid is offerd. I read that feeding the Pirates with ships will activate the nest missions.
Take a snaika wiht som goods and let it capture by a Pirate.

It's all in the convoy composition. Since I have snaikkas as covoy leaders I can't allow any pirate cog to escape their nests. And since for some strange reason the seas are almost "clean" of white ships, the priates have no other targets than my ships.