Thanks GoaFan77 for getting back.
I'm new to the series and maybe it's just the nature of the game, but, like in the game Star Ruler you start out with uninhabited planets to colonize and you are pretty much in a race to colonize as many planets as possible to build up your forces against other empires. What I find in Sins is that the planets are already colonize by other empires.
Is it possible to set up a similar map in Sins? I have the Trinity Edition. Thanks.
Ah I get it. Those planets are not colonized. Those are militia who just guard the colonized planets to prevent you from expanding too quickly. Thus like the little space monsters in MoO-II, except they are at almost every planet. They will never attack you or build up their forces etc. Just build your colony capitalship and say 5 light frigates and you'll easily take care of them.
Note you may want to disable the AI player for your first game on a small random map so you don't have to worry about it while learning the game. You can still get some combat experience from the pirates, and as long as you've colonized one other planet in 15 minutes you won't lose as they only attack one at a time. Just make sure your game is up to date, the pirates were really hard in the first version of trinity. 
