First off, let me get the "I love this game," bit out of the way - I DO love this game, it has absorbed my last week entirely...

However, any game can be improved, and I thought I'd put forth my two cents.

I've read several posts now regarding balancing issues related to ship caps etc. being too small on large maps, etc. I'd like to build on this idea by suggesting that the map balancing is a little problematic with regards to several issues:

1) the aforementioned ship cap - On a huge, or even large map, the current ship limit is just not significant enough to defend and attack against more than two or three oponents. I'd like to see (just like many others) the ship cap scale up as the map size increases.

2) Pirates - I don't have any problem with pirates in terms of concept or even difficulty. However, I'd like to see pirate raids scaled to different map sizes as well. On very small maps, with just a couple planets, a full size pirate fleet can totally devestate a player because he lacks the resources to effectively defend himself. On larger maps, this isn't an issue. Also - I find pirate fleets a little bit boring to combat after a while because, honesty, if pirates can afford the infinite number of ships they put into space, how come they can't afford a single damn capital ship? Even a really wimpy one would be fun to see from time to time, just to spice things up. Also some fighters/bombers - couldn't hurt could it?

3) Lastly, I haven't experimented with this enough to be totally sure, but the Vasari, despite their outstanding artificial phase lane tech, continously seem to be at a disadvantage on larger maps (like REALLY big maps) because they lack the resourcing capabilities of the other two races - even though they are close, this gap seems to widen exponentially on large maps because when dozens and dozens of metal/crystal extractors come into play, the Vasari can't keep up with the others (esp. TEC).

That's it, feel free to submit scathing responses now.