new crew members

a tip someone else shared that has helped me fight pirates is to equip your 4 people with shotguns, deploy them from the shuttle to the airlock and leave them grouped up inside the airlock and wait.
the airlock is not destructible so it will provide some cover for your team and they shoot a spread of shots from their shotguns when the pirates come to refill their oxygen.
depending on how many you want to capture, bring a second shuttle or make sure the 2 ships are close to each other. if you follow them across a few hyperspace jumps, deploy your ship right next to them.
you can see one of my other posts ( http://bugbyte.fi/forums/showthread.php?tid=624 ) but with 1 shuttle and a lot of distance between the 2 ships oxygen can become an issues to bringing back your prisoners alive.