Yeah I'm having that issue too. It's just one of those weird forum days. It will be fixed before too long I hope.

Until then the most recent threads on the general sins forum still works, and the search feature should still be operable.

This only happened in the last few hours.  Elemental is another (upcoming) game from the same publisher, and SoaSE  is just a subset of the Stardock forums, which serve all their games.

Anyways, if you need any strategy help, ask away.

Thanks guys. Didnt need any help with anything specific, just wanted to have a read of what changes have been made and get an idea of waht I should be building, havent played since vanilla, These big old starbases are quite something!

Was mucking about in single player last night, left the pirates on, don't think I'll be doing that again. At the start they're alright, but by the late stage of a large map they're rough! You also seem to need to keep bidding against all the other 7 AI's together unless I'm mistaken? They don't seem to bid against each other, only you, so you have to chuck credits into every bidding round, a bit irritating. At least by late game the fleet you get for your money is ungodly, and the AI doesnt seem to be able to handle the raids so efficiently.

Think I'll leave them off.

The dominant units are the flak, LRF, bomber, and heavy cruiser.  That said, every unit has its role.  The dominant capital ships are the carriers. 

Most people tend to leave pirates off.  In practice, the feature is more of a distraction than an interest, and more annoying than difficult.