I've kind of lost interest in the game, I must admit.
With the 500 or so planets I now have, it is simply impossible to manage the empire without scripts. And I don't feel like playing a game of "who can write the better script".
Plus all of my core planets are suddenly starving for no apparent reason, and despite me having somewhere in the area of 400 trading fleets in the air.
There needs to be less micro-management in this game, and allowing scripting isn't the solution.
What society level are they? I've noticed that many empires seem to have massive starvation problems now. I know I do among planets I recently took over that just have massive society levels. Due to the trade fleet bug, big trading fleets might not be optimal. The amount a fleet keeps when it returns to the home planet seems to be fixed, not dependent on the size of the fleet. The end result is large fleets (like my fleets of 100-500 bulkfreighters) can't afford to fill their holds after returning to the home planet, and need to make some good trades to get to that point. Smaller fleets (I think < 10 or something) don't suffer from this.
Dave is talking about changes that should see Empire sizes not explode to the current levels, but then depending on exactly what the changes are, people might just use scripts to automate that as well.
