UK_John: I've read the same comments on the RTS battles from other people. It's a pity those battles have been made so hard by allowing the AI to produce on such a massive scale, as they would make for a nice change inbetween all the flying.
Good thing that you warn me about the black holes... I've never used them much but so far I've only been up against 1-3 regular opponents which is pretty much a walk in the park as soon as you have a decent ship.
Quite honestly I'm avoiding most text missions as they are often long, difficult and/or trial-and-error. I prefer to spend that time trading or doing Fedex missions that often pay half the amount of the text missions anyway, in a much shorter timeframe and with far less risk. Like you said, especially the risk that your relations with a race can drop like a brick after failing a mission, poses too much risk to be worth it.
I can't complain about any races not liking me due to not killing pirates. While it's true that as a human pilot, my relations with Maloqs and Faeyans were less than stellar in the beginning, they've warmed to me after some Fedex missions (e.g. a successful Fedex from a Gaalian planet to a Maloq planet will improve your relations with the Maloq planet as well) and killing Dominators.
I did hit a tough spot once when picking up some loot right in front of a pirate (leading to 2 pirates ganging up on me and eventually killing me).
Other than that, I didn't engage in any pirate battles so far, though with my current ship I should give it a try to see how a more aggressive playstyle turns out to be.
Indeed, a brilliant and addictive game, providing much more variation and freedom than your typical space trader.
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