User blog comment:GodzillaMaster/ME3 Multiplayer Ideas/@comment-4721065-20120702103400/@comment-3228423-20120703130423

Well for starters, Covenant are listed at a Tech Tier 2, while ME would at best be listed as a 2.5 if not a 3 on a Forerunner Achievement scale. FTL at over 900 lightyears per day. Their corvettes are as big as dreadnoughts while the heavier ships could get much bigger, all weaponry are energy based which ignores shielding. Their shielding takes on average 3 MAC rounds to destroy, which doing the math (600 tons at 30 km/s) is at least twice the power of a dreadnought.

For the PIrates, they should be about equal to the Covenant (if not higher) due to the use of energy weapons, teleportation, and apparently intergalactic travel. And being led by a dragon that refuses to stay dead should certainly help a bunch.

Basically, the reasons that they're superior is that they're not bound by the limitations of Element 0