im not convinced.
the concept sounds cool but every game feels the same. first its pirates, then its the path. the design poorly communicates what the player needs to do. resolution isnt always possible. and when it snowballs its WAY over the top. this single feature dominates the game and not in a good way.
Resolution is always possible. Maybe not if you mod your game but that's not the dev's fault.
The game straight up tells you how you can get the other side to stop being a pain. You can pay tribute to the local pirate boss, same for the path. PL and heg are both resolved in the same way, joining the league. Diktat is stealing their core. For tri-tach, you can raid them to death. For church you just talk to their leader and tell them to stop. And all of these (except tri-tach) are not including the major crisis solution which is combat.
a veteran of the game explaining a new player how to enjoy it is the antithesis of good game design tbh. If an individual like this, which there are many of, say the crisis system in its current form is too dominating, they are probably right. We are the ones with a bias. And we should probably try to understand their perspective more than enforcing our own.
I don't think that's an elitist thing, I'm far from a veteran and I didn't have any issues with the crisis system. So far anyway.
Most of the problems mentioned by OP seem to be largely self-inflicted.
You don't need colonies to "fund exploration", especially if you're running Nex and/or some exploration-focused mods. I'd argue that early colonies are more of a drain on resources and later on there's not much to spend that surplus on except more colony stuff. If you're focused on exploring you can just find most of the things you'd have to spend money on if you stayed home.
The various fleets roaming your system are usually only an issue if you do stay home. Otherwise pirates might put a bit of a dent on your profit margins but it doesn't stop you from progressing. As for the actual crisis attacks, they can certainly be a problem the first time you run into them but on subsequent playthroughs you know what to expect and can prepare. Or you simply delay colonies until your fleet can handle whatever is thrown at you.
That said, I agree that crisis fleets not being tied to the actual strength of each faction can feel pretty silly. I also wouldn't be opposed to an option to simply turn the whole mechanic off for players that want their colonies to stay perfectly safe and pristine at all times while they're out in the far reaches of space.