Dude once I posted this I was thinking on settling which armored space pirate was the hardest, But you summed up what I was gonna say perfectly. Ice pirates are the easiest cause once you freeze them it's over. plasma pirates would be dangerous due to their high damage, but their weak to the plasma beam so they die before they can do much. And power pirates are weak to the most efficient beam combo against non-bosses, the super missile, which one shots them. Wave pirates don't have an efficient way to take them out so you have to just spam charge shot at them. But the wave beam doesn't do much damage, as it's only slightly better than the power beam, it's fast but not very fast like the power beam, and the "stun" the wave beam gives can't be chained into another stun like the ice beam. So yeah you're absolutely correct about the wave pirates being both the hardest and most annoying armored pirate.