Hi forum. I have just started playing ES2 and I´d like to share my experience so far (15 turns only)

By turn 5 or 6 my only explo ship was attacked by a pirate ship. I got a glorious victory with just 3 life points left. Pretty proud of that ship I was.

By turn 14, while my ship is still half of strength, a lone pirate ship besieges my main system (I was trying to colonize another one. My starting hero was working as governor in my main system) I´ve tried figting, but I don´t need to tell you the outcome.

Now I have a treasury of 52 dust and -14 dust per turn. No way to build a decent fleet to get rid of the besieging pirate. I am doomed. In turn 15.

I´ve read that players complain about the OP pirates at the start of the game. Well, it´s a design choice. But this way devs are forcing players to build fleets and keeping them close to the home system in the early game, and personally I would prefer having some relaxed time at the start to explore around without this overwhelming pirate threat looming in the horizon. 

The rest of the game looks good. I´ll update this same post with other opinions when I have time that i don´t have now, sorry. just wanted to vent my frustration with those pirates crippling my baby empire

With most of the faction, just build a little fleet with one tank/one attacker and you will be able to deal with pirats for a decent time. You need to search for efficiency shielding very early in the game, but it's anyway a good choice if you want to deal with IAs during the early game phase, even if they are pacifists. If you don't, they can really fuck you up. Later in the game, be sure to enlarge this fleet depending on your neigbours and the pirat activity. With Sophon, use Super tax act and Toys for laws boys to finance your fleet. If you rush it (drone net work > Accelerator > Magnet with a extra Nano repairs bot bonus) you will get it turn 16. Thats mean a fleet of 3 little guys turn 16.

You can also put your hero on your explorer, and then add him your first fleet. The sophon's first hero is a counsellor with 20 fleet improvements (mostly mobility and exploration) and 19 system improvements. He is able to turn your fleet in a very polyvalent and mobile army. Also he gives free +10% hp on your fleet (instead of free +1  per  on system). This is not the economic path, but it give an impressive exploration potential and erase the weakness of sophons in early game. If you add your hero to the previous fleet you have 4 little guys able to defend your worlds.

edit : edited prevous stuff.

Been thinking about this similarity with barbarians in civ early game. The problem here is that in civ the barbarians can be an annoyance, but never will be able to conquest your first city. However in ES2 a single pirate ship blocking my main system was enough to end my game. Too much punishment for simply not having spent the first 12 turns building ships (and they must be explorers, as it´s impossible to build military vessels so early in the game, it seems.) It´s sorta pitiful being FORCED to build ships necessarily in the first turns and not having the option to build anything else. It´s like, ok, I won´t play sophons no more, as they give me no choice. 

I say all this because, in my case, the first turns of a 4x game are the most magical in the experience and this pirate thing I feel that ruins it for me in ES2. Of course, i´m not demanding an overall nerf in the whole game, just let me enjoy my first 15 turns without stress, please

I suffered from this also. And albeit the recognizing frustrating element i like it that way. I like real threats.

Imagine what could we do if a space pirate force orbited hearth today and started destroying our satelites....

I think there s much more frustrating stuff midgame when you have dedicated some/many hours.