Crises are still opportunities, for the most part, and most of them can be solved without a combat fleet.
Spoiler
- The Pirates can be bribed to leave your colonies alone. The best way is with a fusion lamp, that way Kanta's Den with have a new and lucrative demand for volatiles.
- The Pathers require a planet killer, which can be found while exploring, at the Sentinel Site, and the fight bypassed with a Hegemony commission.
- The Perseans 20% deal can be renegotiated with 2 out of 3 arguments: A) 5% income kickback to gens Hanna or whatever, B) defeat the blockade, or C) Raid Kazeron for their pristine nanoforge, or as I call it "OPERATION:DOORKICKER". Or you could sat bomb one of their worlds as an ironic "Get off of my property" gesture.
- The Hegemony will only send AI Inspectors if you use them, but the investigation gets halted/ prevented if you join the Persean league. I haven't tested this, but joining the Perseans before using AI seems like a painless solution. Otherwise you will have to defeat 3 fleets and talk to the high hegemon to get them off of your back.
- The Church is bull$#!%, but is only triggered by having an agrarian world. A deal can be made to have them leave you alone, but you miss out on the luddic majority bonus. I personally say send their invasion fleet to Moloch, as fighting off the attack doubles Luddic Majority. Guess which Crisis I ran into first? I deleted that save before I let those hypocrites take over my colony. Kill them all!
- The Sidrian fuel company doesn't like competition, and will either sat bomb your fuel refinery, or take half of your fuel income. "OPERATION: DOORKICKER 2:ELECTRIC BOOGALOO" will have you cut a bloody swath through the Sindrian navy, but raiding their syncnotron core gets them off of your back. defeating their attack boosts fuel income by 25%
- Tri-Tach also doesn't like competition, and will send mercenaries to disrupt your business. "DOORKICKER 3: THE REVENGE", can be performed on any Tri-Tach colony, with the aim to be as disruptive as possible. A meter fills, the attacks cease, and a conversation with a high+ importance Tri-tach contact can get a sweet accessibility deal between parties.
- The Remnant get pissy if you share a system. Don't do that.
With a few quirks of the game, you can get by with raids and stealth for the most part.
Imho people are too hooked on "Hulk smash brute force gives instant gratification" to actually read and understand the in-game texts and in general to use their grey matter.
Colonies are optional, I consider them more of a secondary objective in the game (and most def not money/ship hull/weapon printing machines until they are well developed) as you can get everything in other ways without having to worry about any crisis, given that you have hands:
- Money from bounties
- Hulls and weapons from black market traders or nanoforge slots if your rep is high enough (also from loot)
- Supplies from planets with heavy industry/starforge (you can check what industries the planet has after you landed)
- Fuel from planets with fuel production (also check for when you land)
- Free storage at abandoned stations
Maybe the game should be more clear about that just because you could scrape together a fleet that can manage to transport the 1000 crew to the planet to form a colony you are still inadequately equipped for what comes next.
There are a few types of complaints about the crisis, none of them have to do with not reading.
The first is the spam they send into your system. It alone is obnoxious enough to make the average player just resort to sat bombing.
The second is the lack of preparedness for the Persean League armada. Yes, you can fight the supply fleets, or the Admiral fleet, but new players are going to struggle with that as the fleets are fairly well armed and guarded by other fleets. You can give the PL money to stop, or lose money to the blockade, but even new players aren't going to do that as it's absurd given the state of sector, and are again going to resort to sat bombing.
The third is for players like me the PL is too large to fight all at once due to the mercy rule, and too small to have two max enemy fights. 10 is the max it should be as the mercy rule typical will allow all of them. Otherwise, you would have to make it 20 fleets or slightly above, with two Admirals and double the supply fleets.
The fourth is time consumption. It takes a while to beat the crisis entirely. Once is fine, but every playthrough and it gets tedious enough to just sat bomb for the resolution.
Fifth is the extreme overreaction by most of the factions, in comparison of the day-to-day dealings between factions. The PL is terrified that the Heg can just walk over and kill them, so they take an 100% defensive posture, but will still sacrifice an absurd number of fleets to target the player. The Diktat does literally nothing until they decide to sat bomb the player. The Path doesn't even try to sabotage as part of their crisis, they just go straight for a sat bomb. The Church literally tries to steal one of the player's worlds, which the player can't even steal back.
Sixth is the best way to beat the crisis is just sat bomb everyone that can be stopped with a Sat bomb. Which is just bizarre in context of the state of the sector. The factions shouldn't be provoking someone on the edge of the sector while they still have their own fights in the core, and definitely should be giving up when faced with the potential of sat bombing.
Seventh, it's unavoidable if you have colonies. There are very few things in this game the player has to engage with. None as extreme as the crisis.
Eighth, there's no way to turn it off as far as I know. It doesn't play nice with mods, and it is just tedious past the first playthrough.