What do you dislike about Spore?

[GangstaAlbi]

Originally Posted by Danishdog

Civilisation stage is super fun, but it can be hard to get the last city, without using a bomb.

lol... I always use bombs... but I made a lttle misstake: I was getting many taxes from some nation and I became very rich but then I started to bomb this nation... oups
Now I don't get the taxes anymore and I haven't got enough money for any more bombs xDD

[megatama]

i dislike the fact that you cant use the full cell editor when the npc cells can
just look at punky,jawhead,megamouth,bloato,nosey,paa,junior, and the needle buzzy for examples

[CorpusDei]

The gameplay is a rather shallow... this could sort of be said for every Maxis game I've ever played though and I've had SimCity (on the Amiga) SC2000, SC3000, SC4 and The Sims on PC - I gave SimAnt a miss. Somehow in SimCity it didn't really matter but in Spore, it sort of does (and I'm not sure why).

Cell Stage: I don't actually dislike anything in the cell stage apart from that it's too short... maybe a "fish" stage between cell and land would be nice.

Creature Stage: evolving is nice but it's all a bit formulaic - get allies, evolve, kill stuff and get better allies... to get the "most" out of it you need the right parts so I tend to end up putting parts on that I don't like as much just for the extra sing/charm/charge etc.

Tribal Stage: pretty much the same formula as the creature stage, ally one tribe, get their tech, clobber another tribe, get their tech - rinse and repeat. Clothing creator lacks diversity.

Civ Stage: it's like a poor imitation of a Total War game or Sid Meiers Civilisation - it completely lacks depth. By this point in the game you're getting so abstracted from your lovingly evolved creature that it makes no real difference whether you were previously a peace-loving herbivorous hippy critter or a blood-thirsty nomasaur that killed everything in sight - it's all pretty much the same at the end of the day, genocide - the only difference is the means that acheive that end.

Space Stage: well... it's big. That's good. A virtually infitinte galaxy with oooh, erm, two possibilities. Alliance or extermination. That's not so good. The only exception being the Grox which is just going to be the longest fight of all time. Your creature is basically irrelevant at this stage - it's been reduced to an animation on your planets and has no real bearing on the game anymore - you're just a spaceship. X3 does this better.

I'm letting planets just die to environmental disasters now because I can't be bothered to fly from near the core where I'm attempting to wage a war of extermination on the Grox back out to some far-flung arm of the spiral to save some irrelevant backwater planet. I've chucked both the add-ons that reduce environmental disasters on practically every planet I own which helps and I've got uber-turrets everywhere so I can just ignore pirates now but the AI races are totally useless - "oh noes, we've got a virus, please save us"... you've got spaceships, sort yourselves out - sheesh.

Oh, and for some reason I've not been able to visit my homeworld since very early on in the space stage because whenever I attempt to leave it, it crashes the game.

City editing is pretty much pointless as well - once you've worked out where to put each building to make a happy, productive self-sustaining colony there's never any reason to do anything different. I'm slowly working my way into the core of the galaxy by wiping the Grox out from a planet, dumping a colony and an uber turret and then terraforming the world and placing the last 2 colonies. Each colony is identical with the houses, factories and entertainment buildings in exactly the same place - the only reason I put three down is so that the planet can survive Grox attack since you can max the cities out.

I've gone through evolution of a few species now and every game, bar one, is abandoned (or deleted) at the space stage. There's no point in doing it more than once. I'll probably give up on my one space game once I've hit the galactic core and found out what happens.


I can understand the game lacking depth in the cell and creature stages, I mean what can you do apart from eat, fight and "evolve" in those situations really? However, where the game should have gained depth - from tribal through to civ and space stages - it doesn't, it only really takes a very superficial approach.

As a whole though, somehow, Spore is actually brilliant (although the length of this rant might indicate I think otherwise), limited but brilliant. If ever the saying about "the whole being greater than the sum of it's parts" held true, it's in Spore. And why? The creators allow you to give the game your own unique take on things - the actual gameplay is shallower than a paddling pool - but it actually feels like "your game" when playing it.

The game would never get finished if it was to attempt to do what I'd like to see but... just to wrap up.

Cell stage evolves to "fish" stage with a full 3 dimensional environment to swim around in - evolution continues to "land creature" stage (as it does now).

Tribal stage needs more depth - how about a totem pole or deity editor, you've evolved your creatures to tribal stage how about evolving their spiritual or moralistic personalities more in tribal stage. It needs to be a bigger arena with options to make meaningful alliances (more than just knocking a tribe out of the game by allying them) and war parties. When you defeat a foe do you cast their bodies into the burning pits of your sacrificial altars or help usher their sprits into the afterlife.

A bit more of a tech-tree wouldn't hurt either. Train tribesmen to be shamens/witch doctors, warriors, musicians or blacksmiths (rather than just plonking the buildings down - of course you would need different outiftter creators for each specialisation) with different balances allowing different branches of the tech tree. You'll need room to place these new buildings that advance your tech in any given direction so you can capture enemy villages to gain their land or work with your allies to advance the tech of both species; a new tech building/item might require 2 building types - you can unlock the new type if you've got one type and lalalalalala the other or once you've conquored an enemy village that gives you more space so you can build both.

Once there's no-one left to fight or ally on your continent, or you've reached a certain tech-level, then it can proceed to the civ stage.

Extend the tech tree into the Civ stage based upon the decisions made in the tribal stage. You've steered your tribe towards a certain mindset and technology so now you're growing on it. Do you build a knowledge based economy reliant on science or an isolationist enclave of religious zealots? Have tech that enables you to better trade, fight, convert (missionaries) or buy-out your opponents.

Instead of the "this is a religious city, it makes religious vehicles" approach you could place buildings that determine what's built in any given city but not everything is available to everyone, it depends on how you've unlocked the tech-tree based on previous decisions. A group of religious zealots are unlikely to suddenly adopt a capitalistic approach to corporate buy-outs just because they've captured an capitalist city. You might be able to steer your religious civilisation towards a more capitalistic approach by selecting elements from the tech tree that lean more that way but it's not something instant.

You don't need to be as in-depth with this as say Sid Meiers Civilisation or any of the Total War games otherwise the people playing the game won't be able to play the game; they'll be in the creators all the time making the buildings/vehicles they've unlocked. However there does need to be a bit more of a role for science, tech, religion, economics and diplomacy to actually help shape your civ's "racial personality" in a meaningful way.

The space stage could be epic - even more so than it already is but it would really, really rely on good AI. Space should be about exploring, trading and interracting with new races (whether creating peaceful alliances, trying to convert them to your faith or just blasting them to atoms). The best thing in the space stage at the moment is the ability to terraform planets, shape the land and colour the skies and seas... but you never get time to do it really since there's always some disaster happening somewhere. Less micromanagement and better AI.

Take the idea of customisable cities but make it planet-wide. Have some kind of uber-tech only available for specialist planets. For example if you're planet is totally geared to factories have it able to build a ship-yard where you can build more ships to add to your fleet. This would have the downside that it won't be a very happy planet and you'll need to be able to set up automatic trade/shuttle runs from a neaby planet (either yours or lalalalalala's) with decent levels of entertainment or religious pilgrimage sites.

Aliens need to interract with you based on the personality you've evolved for your species. A friendly trading race may find others with similar ideals and have productive alliances but they may be seen as rich pickings by other war-like races. This happens to some extent in the game now - but like many points it needs a bit more depth to it.

There's so much that could be done... just most of it probably isn't possible within any kind of realistic time-constraint.

Anyhow - apologies for the epic rant - if I didn't give a toss about the game or thought it was rubbish I wouldn't have bothered... but because it's good I'd like to see it better

[wigw2]

i think that if the player is online then we should be able to see them doing missions and stuff and be able to send private messeges to friends and be able to type in your own communications to planets |

[wigw2]

Originally Posted by CorpusDei

The gameplay is a rather shallow... this could sort of be said for every Maxis game I've ever played though and I've had SimCity (on the Amiga) SC2000, SC3000, SC4 and The Sims on PC - I gave SimAnt a miss. Somehow in SimCity it didn't really matter but in Spore, it sort of does (and I'm not sure why).

Cell Stage: I don't actually dislike anything in the cell stage apart from that it's too short... maybe a "fish" stage between cell and land would be nice.

Creature Stage: evolving is nice but it's all a bit formulaic - get allies, evolve, kill stuff and get better allies... to get the "most" out of it you need the right parts so I tend to end up putting parts on that I don't like as much just for the extra sing/charm/charge etc.

Tribal Stage: pretty much the same formula as the creature stage, ally one tribe, get their tech, clobber another tribe, get their tech - rinse and repeat. Clothing creator lacks diversity.

Civ Stage: it's like a poor imitation of a Total War game or Sid Meiers Civilisation - it completely lacks depth. By this point in the game you're getting so abstracted from your lovingly evolved creature that it makes no real difference whether you were previously a peace-loving herbivorous hippy critter or a blood-thirsty nomasaur that killed everything in sight - it's all pretty much the same at the end of the day, genocide - the only difference is the means that acheive that end.

Space Stage: well... it's big. That's good. A virtually infitinte galaxy with oooh, erm, two possibilities. Alliance or extermination. That's not so good. The only exception being the Grox which is just going to be the longest fight of all time. Your creature is basically irrelevant at this stage - it's been reduced to an animation on your planets and has no real bearing on the game anymore - you're just a spaceship. X3 does this better.

I'm letting planets just die to environmental disasters now because I can't be bothered to fly from near the core where I'm attempting to wage a war of extermination on the Grox back out to some far-flung arm of the spiral to save some irrelevant backwater planet. I've chucked both the add-ons that reduce environmental disasters on practically every planet I own which helps and I've got uber-turrets everywhere so I can just ignore pirates now but the AI races are totally useless - "oh noes, we've got a virus, please save us"... you've got spaceships, sort yourselves out - sheesh.

Oh, and for some reason I've not been able to visit my homeworld since very early on in the space stage because whenever I attempt to leave it, it crashes the game.

City editing is pretty much pointless as well - once you've worked out where to put each building to make a happy, productive self-sustaining colony there's never any reason to do anything different. I'm slowly working my way into the core of the galaxy by wiping the Grox out from a planet, dumping a colony and an uber turret and then terraforming the world and placing the last 2 colonies. Each colony is identical with the houses, factories and entertainment buildings in exactly the same place - the only reason I put three down is so that the planet can survive Grox attack since you can max the cities out.

I've gone through evolution of a few species now and every game, bar one, is abandoned (or deleted) at the space stage. There's no point in doing it more than once. I'll probably give up on my one space game once I've hit the galactic core and found out what happens.


I can understand the game lacking depth in the cell and creature stages, I mean what can you do apart from eat, fight and "evolve" in those situations really? However, where the game should have gained depth - from tribal through to civ and space stages - it doesn't, it only really takes a very superficial approach.

As a whole though, somehow, Spore is actually brilliant (although the length of this rant might indicate I think otherwise), limited but brilliant. If ever the saying about "the whole being greater than the sum of it's parts" held true, it's in Spore. And why? The creators allow you to give the game your own unique take on things - the actual gameplay is shallower than a paddling pool - but it actually feels like "your game" when playing it.

The game would never get finished if it was to attempt to do what I'd like to see but... just to wrap up.

Cell stage evolves to "fish" stage with a full 3 dimensional environment to swim around in - evolution continues to "land creature" stage (as it does now).

Tribal stage needs more depth - how about a totem pole or deity editor, you've evolved your creatures to tribal stage how about evolving their spiritual or moralistic personalities more in tribal stage. It needs to be a bigger arena with options to make meaningful alliances (more than just knocking a tribe out of the game by allying them) and war parties. When you defeat a foe do you cast their bodies into the burning pits of your sacrificial altars or help usher their sprits into the afterlife.

A bit more of a tech-tree wouldn't hurt either. Train tribesmen to be shamens/witch doctors, warriors, musicians or blacksmiths (rather than just plonking the buildings down - of course you would need different outiftter creators for each specialisation) with different balances allowing different branches of the tech tree. You'll need room to place these new buildings that advance your tech in any given direction so you can capture enemy villages to gain their land or work with your allies to advance the tech of both species; a new tech building/item might require 2 building types - you can unlock the new type if you've got one type and lalalalalala the other or once you've conquored an enemy village that gives you more space so you can build both.

Once there's no-one left to fight or ally on your continent, or you've reached a certain tech-level, then it can proceed to the civ stage.

Extend the tech tree into the Civ stage based upon the decisions made in the tribal stage. You've steered your tribe towards a certain mindset and technology so now you're growing on it. Do you build a knowledge based economy reliant on science or an isolationist enclave of religious zealots? Have tech that enables you to better trade, fight, convert (missionaries) or buy-out your opponents.

Instead of the "this is a religious city, it makes religious vehicles" approach you could place buildings that determine what's built in any given city but not everything is available to everyone, it depends on how you've unlocked the tech-tree based on previous decisions. A group of religious zealots are unlikely to suddenly adopt a capitalistic approach to corporate buy-outs just because they've captured an capitalist city. You might be able to steer your religious civilisation towards a more capitalistic approach by selecting elements from the tech tree that lean more that way but it's not something instant.

You don't need to be as in-depth with this as say Sid Meiers Civilisation or any of the Total War games otherwise the people playing the game won't be able to play the game; they'll be in the creators all the time making the buildings/vehicles they've unlocked. However there does need to be a bit more of a role for science, tech, religion, economics and diplomacy to actually help shape your civ's "racial personality" in a meaningful way.

The space stage could be epic - even more so than it already is but it would really, really rely on good AI. Space should be about exploring, trading and interracting with new races (whether creating peaceful alliances, trying to convert them to your faith or just blasting them to atoms). The best thing in the space stage at the moment is the ability to terraform planets, shape the land and colour the skies and seas... but you never get time to do it really since there's always some disaster happening somewhere. Less micromanagement and better AI.

Take the idea of customisable cities but make it planet-wide. Have some kind of uber-tech only available for specialist planets. For example if you're planet is totally geared to factories have it able to build a ship-yard where you can build more ships to add to your fleet. This would have the downside that it won't be a very happy planet and you'll need to be able to set up automatic trade/shuttle runs from a neaby planet (either yours or lalalalalala's) with decent levels of entertainment or religious pilgrimage sites.

Aliens need to interract with you based on the personality you've evolved for your species. A friendly trading race may find others with similar ideals and have productive alliances but they may be seen as rich pickings by other war-like races. This happens to some extent in the game now - but like many points it needs a bit more depth to it.

There's so much that could be done... just most of it probably isn't possible within any kind of realistic time-constraint.

Anyhow - apologies for the epic rant - if I didn't give a toss about the game or thought it was rubbish I wouldn't have bothered... but because it's good I'd like to see it better

wow thats a long quote but anyways.....
i compleatly agree with you i mean if spore was as good as your talking about how it could be most people would never ever get off it and i thought it was really cool now when i read this it sounds really dim but i still want to beat the game, delete that planet,start off from cell again, and go all the way to beat the game again and if this idea of yours was made into the game i would buy it right away i would pre order to make sure i got it the day it was released and i would probaly not sleep for 2 weeks thinking about what i will encouter next in whatever stage now how could i top off this exelent idea with an edit of my own()i think the fish stagewould be awsome-the cell stage should have a little more depth but thats no too important-creature stage should have more challenges coz it basicly is eat,ally,kill,evolve, and thats quite dim but still fun-tribe stage should allow more cuztimizeation(me need to learn to spell)-there should be a stage between tribe and civ like mideavil stage,it should be like civ but just no planes and only basic boats and only like horse drawn carts-civ should allow the abbility to expand citys and make to world bigger and more citys to conquer because its the most activestage where you have to keep an eye on everything but with the small world its just too easy to stop citys from being attacked and their shouldn't be notices to when your being attacked because if you were minding your citys then you wouldn't need it to tell you to place turrents on the city and bring cars to the waterfront to defend against the boats,you would have them all there already-space stage is absalutly fine exept you cant chat to friends and you cant see them doing things and they cant see you

[mikeyismyname]

ok, don't get me wrong i love spore, its one of my favourite games of all time...

but some aspects do my nut in, one thing is that even though i sign in to spore.com in the game i still run into my own creations in space stage all the time! like two of my allies use my 1st class of ship i made and i can't change it and almost all the civ level planets i've found use my buildings!

but i guess i'll have to put up with it, still love spore tho....

[baddie21]

i like spore but id like it a lot more if there were not so many problems with it.
Ever since i got the patch the only parts of the game which seem to work properly are the creature creator and the space stage, which is annoying because before i only had about, 3 problems and now i have about 10.
Even so, i still play it almost every day

[bradkal]

i cant put it on the spore sight i got my user and it crashes every so often! every day!

[omegaone]

my mate cracked the game and dowloaded it for free, i paid £35 for spore, and he gets to do more on the game than me. I dislike that.

[MurlynLAN]

Originally Posted by omegaone

my mate cracked the game and dowloaded it for free, i paid £35 for spore, and he gets to do more on the game than me. I dislike that.

You mean he just leached it off a torrent site... I don't think he cracked it himself.

[Antharius]

What I dislike about Spore:

People who downloaded a pirated copy of Spore and complain on the forums that the patches don't work.

[Reimeks]

There should be an option to turn on an autosave feature, since the game keeps crashing

[GrimmVI]

The fact that you can't talk to your buddies in-game
PLEASE INCLUDE A CHAT SYSTEM BETWEEN BUDDIES IN THE NEXT PATCH!!

[lemonvenom]

What I Dislike about Spore...

The specifications of the game are to high for my computer, I thought this looked like the best game ever and I really wanted to buy it. But then I found out my computer isn't good enough, I'm really disappointed. =(

[weeman1963]

Gr8 until you reach latter stages of Space stage whn it the pragram starts to crash , amost continuously even after installing both realeased patches

[titan76]

The game is too linear. I was expecting a game where you could do almost anything you like develop it the way you want it. Instead you have to follow some rules to go to the next phase.
I would like a more random and free development. Keep a counter that gives your creature or civ some points so the next phase may start but do not force player to sing or kill to evolve..

Game is poor.. its the same recipe in different levels. Kill, eat, evolve.
Dont like the phase concept would like a more slowly approach rather jumping from phase to phase. Would be really interesting watching my species how they evolve by creating their first hut and then village and then city. Changes do matter.
Restricting a species into categories like religious, wary, peaceful, economic.. is too limited as said more complexity and freedom is needed.
Many creatures or other downloaded content is lalalala. Sometimes no texture at all or completely stupid shapes. There should be a rating system so when an item is lalalala its excluded after a X number of negative votes.
Evolution of my species appears in the game. Every time you create a creature it should have a tag no matter how many evolutions the tag should remain the same and preventing such mistakes.

Creature Creator : Why its impossible to create a flat body? If I try to create a humanoid one its more like a bubble. The way which you change the shape of the body should be more flexible.

Cell Stage : Its just a mini game where you start shaping up a creature herbivore, carnivore or omnivore but it could be a little more interesting appart eating or hunting. Why the omnivore mouth is impossible to get?

Creature Stage : Jumping from cell stage only at land no water species available. However its the best stage of the game (but where the entire game is based as a concept)

Tribal Stage : From now on the game is going down. Tribal stage is poor make friends or elliminate enemies. Wear some hat or mask hunting and playing music.. its boring and childish..
Would like a tribal stage where you have to work to build your first hut and then more. Other tribes can be at same, better or lower level than you but every of them has different abilities, beliefs, powers, weapons and so on.
There should be more roads to domination appart impressing or killing.

Civilization Stage : One of the worse stages. Its very dissapointing watching cities look like a very old lalalala strategy game with 3-4 predefined buildings. Religious cities? Not a nice idea.
Something closer to reality a city that can produce any type of vehicle depending only on tech and not predefined buildings in predefined positions where positions can make people more sad or happy.
What I can say.. the entire Civ Stage must be redesigned from scrap or at least it should change a lot.
Space Stage : And finally the most awaited one.. At first the galaxy works in 3D yet it is not.. the stars can be right, left, up and down.. but you can't see the vertical perspective unless you turn the galaxy a bit so you realize the star out there is much further than you thought.
The tutorial! Everytime you play space stage you have to follow missions in order to move on.. then you want to expand your empire but there is no space.. galaxy is very crowdy.. with angry aliens or peaceful ones that need help all the time. And you have only ONE ship to keep an entire empire while others have one on every planet. And very frequent disasters prevents you from travelling away from your empire. Galactic core? Yes if you ignore completely all disasters and activate a cheat so you can pass from Groxx.
Groxx are far too many and they should be eliminated at least after you get into Galactic Core. Eco disaster should be eliminated from fully green planets with all flora and animals available. Fully developed planets should have their own fleet and no need of your protection.
One ship only at the beggining. Later you should have fleets, where none of them are something special. Like the ONE ship. Instead you can select any fleet or ship to protect your borders or explore the galaxy.
Trade? Why so stupid? Just create some trade ships on a trade route so money start flowing in.
A home button. Galaxy is huge so when you travel somewhere sometimes its difficult to find your way back home especially if u passed through black holes. So a home button could do the trick and return to home base instead searching your path back home.

[p1nkzz]

Since CorpusDei and titan76 have already said everything i would have ranted on about, i won't , but i feel exactly the same way as you two.

I simply have to say that the crashing is "making me angry" to stay polite... the most annoying crash is either
-when you're in the building editor and almost finished a fantastic building when suddenly you're fiddling with your final piece and BOOM the game crashes and shuts down.
-or, the fact that you can never visit your home planet again since when you zoom out back to the solar system... BOOM the game crashes and shuts down.

I really hope Maxis will fix those bugs in the next patch.. as they really ruin the fun . Just fix all the game bugs and crashes (there are a lot), then you can start on improving the game.

[Leafsnail]

The fact that everything is becoming covered in yellow squares, the fact my achievements got wiped, the fact that there is no PvP (player vs player) and the way that half of the cell stage parts aren't availible to us.

[HESKIMO]

Originally Posted by Antharius

What I dislike about Spore:

People who downloaded a pirated copy of Spore and complain on the forums that the patches don't work.

yep me too,

but mostly i HATE that my achievements all disappeared and cant earn ones i already had back

[Leafsnail]

"Galactic core? Yes if you ignore completely all disasters and activate a cheat so you can pass from Groxx."
Let's review:
Assuming you have started no wars, then noone will attack you but pirates.
Stealing pirates only steal one spice; not the end of the world.
Raiding pirates won't damage any buildings if there are at least two turrets in the city, not hard.
Ecodisasters aren't actually that bad. The timer is only how long until that creature goes extinct; you normally have about 10 minutes to get there (you just need to place a few more animals/ terraform).
The Grox? Ignore them. Dismiss your allies, turn off your autoblaster, get LOADS of energy and repair megas, and fly. You will be surprised how long each pack lasts. Just be patient and try several ways in.

[Tanque]

What i hate about spore is that my allies keep attacking themselves,at least if i could bribe them to ally the other it would be easier,and why can't a 5 star empire protect himself from biodisasters and stuff?The more stars your allies have it should give a chance of them being able to do the job.

[Leafsnail]

Originally Posted by Tanque

What i hate about spore is that my allies keep attacking themselves,at least if i could bribe them to ally the other it would be easier,and why can't a 5 star empire protect himself from biodisasters and stuff?The more stars your allies have it should give a chance of them being able to do the job.

If your allies attack each other, ignore it. They don't dislike you for not helping.

Incidentally, I used to have two rather peculiar allies. Every now and then, they would both send me a distress signal from two different planets. I couldn't go to help, because that would cause the other empire to break the alliance.

So, (this is the weird bit) every now and again they swapped planets. Literally. At the same time. They would send an attack at the other planet at the same time, finish capturing it at the same time. This meant that every five minutes these two planets would switch hands. It was weird.

[Tanque]

Originally Posted by Leafsnail

If your allies attack each other, ignore it. They don't dislike you for not helping.

Incidentally, I used to have two rather peculiar allies. Every now and then, they would both send me a distress signal from two different planets. I couldn't go to help, because that would cause the other empire to break the alliance.

So, (this is the weird bit) every now and again they swapped planets. Literally. At the same time. They would send an attack at the other planet at the same time, finish capturing it at the same time. This meant that every five minutes these two planets would switch hands. It was weird.

Thats what i do but i just find it stupid,AI races interactions just seem to ignore philosophies,a shaman gives you money to be your ally,but if they see another race they attack them.
All the stages are balanced for socializing or just killing except space.

Creature you get allys,tribal you get allys that give you things,civilization you can befriend and then buy them,for space they give you a weak ship...and in trade for that you have to be an errand boy.
Just annoying.

[Leafsnail]

Originally Posted by Tanque

Thats what i do but i just find it stupid,AI races interactions just seem to ignore philosophies,a shaman gives you money to be your ally,but if they see another race they attack them.
All the stages are balanced for socializing or just killing except space.

Creature you get allys,tribal you get allys that give you things,civilization you can befriend and then buy them,for space they give you a weak ship...and in trade for that you have to be an errand boy.
Just annoying.

They don't care if you don't help them - you can ignore it. It's just if you want your ally to stay strong, help them.

Incidentally, you can still have trade routes in space age, and they make quite a tidy profit if you trade with a purple spice colony (48,000 per spice!!).

[p1nkzz]

Another problem : "Pirates are attacking your planet!" .... and it's ALWAYS ALWAYS my home planet on which i cannot go otherwise the game will crash when i try to leave it by zooming out. The pirate attacks + eco disasters happen far too frequently... we need a bit of freedom here!