The issue with Pirate Cruisers wasn't the cost

Its hard to justify gutting a huge source of new player ISK (gas huffing) to reduce the cost of ships that, at the end of the day, just needed a balance pass to make worthwhile again. If we look at the Orthrus and Gila, there is no question that these ships are the best in class at what they do. Even if T3Cs can do some of the same things, these two hulls are extremely specialized and the dual-racial skill bonuses give them a lot of extra power.

Then we can look at the rest: Vigilant, Phantasm, Cynabal, and Ashimmu. These ships are used occasionally, but they are not best in class in any regard. These ships are out classed by T3Cs in almost every way, though some like the Vigilant see some use in camps as utility ships but are rarely used outside of that.

And lastly, I wanted to talk about the Stratios separately, because it gets shafted the hardest because when you look at the T3C subsystems, everything they do is balanced around what other cruisers in its tier can do, except covert ops, apparently, which it gets the frigate class bonus rather than the cruiser bonus for some reason. If covert T3Cs got cloaky recon hull bonuses instead of covert ops hull bonuses, the Stratios would now be unique in its role as a specialized cruiser covert ops hull, and T3Cs can be flexible cruisers, now having the same class bonuses as cloaky cruisers: the recon ship.

tl;dr: revert pirate cruiser indy changes, buff all pirate cruisers except the Gila and Orthrus, fix T3C covert bonuses.