I'm sure this has been posted before, but it begs concideration. Pirates are simply too powerful. Ironclad should look into this because its the only thing ruining an otherwise perfect game.

I bought trinity a year after I bought the original game in the stores (lesson learned about waiting untill a publisher releases a shelf pack if you're not interested in micro-transitions.) I love any and every empire building game, sins being no exeption. I don't care for multiplayer... building a huge, thriving society with all the options on, watching all the vessels float by while my fleet pounds anyone who dares cross the borders into oblivion, is amazing gratification for me.

This one map had me facing three other CPU opponents, as I slowly drove them back, using my shiny new starbases for defence and diplomacy to play them against eachother... slowly. The map encompassed more than a 100 planets spread over 8 star systems, each holding a pirate base.

I placed my first star base and chuckled with glee after thirty minutes, as those same pesky pirates from the original ran themselves through against my impresive base. Just like old times it appeared, but with newer toys. And for the first hour, everything was as I remembered it. Pirates are cannon fodder and I couldn't wait to fight my opponent's fleets. I allied with one computer and continued oblivious to the coming storm.

After the first hour, pirates managed to take out my starbase. I scratched my head and continued playing, rebuilding my base and giving it a dedicated defence fleet.

After beating back two of my opponents back towards their home systems, after about three hours of play, I suddenly noticed something awry with my ally: Its empire was falling apart, planets simply missing.

I decided to send my ally reinforcements after the fifth hour of play, to deal with the threat. 20 of its 30 planets had succumbed to a grey menace, slowly sweeping through its empire and devouring all in its way: Pirates.   

So I send a third of my fleet: 2 Main batlleships, one of every other battleship. 7 light frigates, 7 long range. 8 Carriers, 6 repair cruisers, 5 command cruisers and 12 heavy cruisers. (Nearly a third of all my 2000 available supply points)

Not that it mattered. I was aghast by what I found there:

43 Pirate Cutthroats, 45 Pirate Reapers, 114 Pirate Corsairs and 68 Pirate pillagers.  

I personally witnessed how such a pirate fleet moved lazenly from one planet to another, not even paying heed to the starbase on the way there. They simply moved by it, straved it without stopping and blew it up before even passing.

An impressive fleet of 250+ ships? Hardly, because there were 3 of those floating about.

So I decided to make a daring dash for their base. Surely the attacks would stop, if only I would blow up their base. So I pinged my ally and together we attacked.

We were evaporated to a fleet of nearly 800 pirate ships garissoned there.

Not even my entire fleet could have won that. Not the combined fleets of the both of us could have done that. And if all those pirates would have united, they could have driven all players and AI's off the map.  

Malarky you say? I'll post a screenshot of it if people don't believe me, so help me...

Seriously. Pirates shouldn't be able to threaten stellar nations, let alone two of them. If they would, they should have been a acclaimed fraction of their own, not just tools to be used. How do they manage fleets like that, based soley on pitiful asteroids anyway? Yes I know my other two enemies must have  supplied them, but seriously... There's not even that many people in the system we fought on to recruit. And maybe I could have stopped them, if only I wasn't bound by a 2000 supply limit maximum for my ships.

Solution:

- Give each pirate base a supply limit less than half of a fully fledged nation.

 I really don't want to turn them off. If I go empire building, I want to experience everything there is, not turn options off simply because the developers made an oversight.