Galactic Concordium (forget who was playing that empire) controlled the eastern half of the galaxy, the SMR-10 Imperium (Tesco) and Bunbunn (Geo) controlled the west, and the Meklars (me) were squeezed in the middle; the three western empires had an alliance against the Concordium and were freely sharing ships and resources (you have spare minerals? here, I'll give you all my ships, I can't afford the maintenance, then I can build more for you! Hey, when one empire controls half the galaxy you're allowed to do stuff like that!
) So anyway we had amassed a combined armada of about 300-500 battleships and baseships, and I also had 60 more ships tagging along. We opened a warp point into the Tudran system on the border of Concordium space and entered... Well, it turns out the devious Concordium player, bless his heart, had a sun destroyer sitting on the sun with sentry orders just waiting for us! KABOOOM!!! All 500 ships, destroyed... all that remained was a nebula, and my 60 ships that had apparently entered the system just AFTER the explosion. (I tried to take advantage of the situation by probing into Concordium space, but unfortunately their other systems were well-guarded and even 60 battleships and baseships couldn't dent their defenses.) The Concordium later used the Tudran system as a staging ground for their attacks - they had 10 warp points all in one sector and guarded them with about 300 baseships and starbases, so no one could get in, and the rest of the empire had grav-shields up so we couldn't open warp points in!
Probably the dumbest thing I did, though, was after I'd opened a warp from Xiria to Tudran, I closed it again fearing an attack would come through - I later wanted to send a drone launcher to Tudran and launch drones out of nowhere (hoping the Concordium didn't have any penetrating scanners) but by then there were already 10 warps in Tudran... that was about the time Geo, Tesco, and I surrendered... now who was it who was playing the Concordium anyway? Hornet X1 had them originally, but I can't remember who took over...