As in a good way?
'Fraid not.
I would be building a fleet. I'd get a dozen or so ships going only to be overwhelmed by mobs of AI-controlled pirates. Bribing them couldn't keep them away and once they left all I did was scramble to recoup my losses before the next wave appeared. An effort to jump into THEIR system and eliminate them or at least throw them off balance was met by 5 times the numbers I had been contending with.
I got tired of fighting pirates at the expense of the rest of the game.
I tried several strategies to deal with this, i.e. fast expansion to claim more territory and resources but all that did was make me run into other eepires first thus compounding my issues.
I think there must be something the designers had in mind that I never figured out. Perhaps it is to their credit that they designd a game that departs from previous formulas for success but I shrugged it off and went back to playing games that were still challenging but not so esoteric that everything I learned before has been squandered.