i do have one question,
since there are no pirates anywhere to be found but only 1 to 50 as you said, and resourses production is so low even on the levels above 30, simple calculation would say that you need months in order to increase 1 level of any mine above certain level...
now, is there possibility that pirates will be back to the rest of us, or this is the end of the game....
not to mention when you att someone, then there is nice trick called robbing losses which goes to up 50% of the possibility you were trying to obtain, therefore even this option is out of the question, since every player is so far away that for your fleet you need milions of gas.
in short, does these changes mean that from now on this game is only for those players above 1 or even 2 m points, and the rest of us can nicely go on holiday and hope that in year or two some things will go back to normal?