It's hard for me to get involved in a math-out for a few reasons (aside from the general time consumption). I only started working on skills recently, and I'm living in a world that's unfamiliar to you. So, this probably isn't the answer you want. :P
There are some major skill changes coming up that are currently aimed for around 1.4 (which will bring a forced respec + a free respec token). Everyone's getting new skills to replace duplicates, some skills are getting moved or replaced, some skills are changing, we're getting new skill capabilities, etc. The core functionality isn't really changing. We're working on some of the unused skill chains to make those better, and trying to give players more options overall. Those changes are going to upset the landscape a bit, but they'll put us in a better position for creating a more balanced environment once the dust has settled. The easiest way to balance things would be to ensure that everyone takes the same skills, but that's no fun. That's one reason this change is coming - we want all your ship skills to be important. Skill feedback will be especially valuable once those changes hit testbed/live.
When it comes to balance, the difficult part is the huge number of intangibles and related factors. We don't compare two skills directly for balance. We can run math on anything and everything, but to try to quantify every single aspect and variable would become an insurmountable amount of work. We go by skill chains, skill sets and overall utility offered by a career. Then we factor that with ships that are available, outfitting strategy, national flexibility, players taking different skill sets, tactics, etc. Then we have to see if players actually use things the way we expect, or if they find something unforeseen. Considering how many factors are involved, I think we're pretty well balanced in those areas for a new MMO. Usually a healthy debate with disagreement on both sides is a good sign. There's certainly room for improvement, and there are things we're working on addressing.
As for what I think about Pirates? Well, you can only jam so much stuff into one career, as I've explained in the
In Concept Buccaneer Discussion. Pirates are supposed to be good solo players, but they also have to deal with group issues. Then there's the whole speed issue. And port battles and ship access. I'm opposed to bloating out the Pirate to make them do anything, because that just leads to tank-mages.
Since late beta, we've said that we believe a lot of the pirate problems come from general playstyle and organization, especially now that high-grade SOLs are not readily available. We've been waiting for pirates to organize and show us what the career is capable of doing. They have a great skillset - it was originally intended to be a mix of some unique cool skills and a grabbag of strong abilities from other careers. On a skill advantage, I do not believe that pirates are lacking, especially now that they have Wolf Pack. I felt they had a limited situational weakness for large-scale PvP before that, which is why we added Wolf Pack as an interim boost until the upcoming skill revamp. It was risky pre-skill revamp, but it's a step we were wililng to take. Pirates are already very strong solo, so we didn't want to give them something that would create a larger gap in that region.
Whenever capabilities are divided among multiple character options, there are going to be careers that have advantages in different areas. When comparing pirates, it's difficult because of the 1vs3 issue.