[Pooka]

Originally posted by Hotfoot:
Work up to communications mimic, then screw over all of his alliances. If he is an uber-newb, he's going to be ultra-reliant on trade with his allies. You would seriously hamper his economy, and thus buy yourself some vital breathing room.

The problem here is that he's not reliant on trade, and someone allready botched a comm mimic on him so he'll be wary of that. On the other hand, I'm trying to covert-recon his spaceports and set them up as targets so I can move in and cripple his economy without having to extract him from every single planet in the system.

Also, once you can get into his space, consider sending some plague bomb ships (with as much ECM/stealth&scattering armor/ship&fleet experience as you can muster) in to his colony worlds. Go for the ones least likely to be defended and pick them off one at a time. After that, try to plague his major colonies. Then follow up with your primary invasion force.

This is good stuff, but the entire player group 'cept for 3 of the 8 (myself included) have almost no experience with SEIV personally. I also know the people on the other side of him will rally to his cause if I use plague bombs. (They're hardcore RPers) I've been racing up Intel and ECM as fast as I can, in an attempt to make my frigates more competitive with his dreads. I've also started leaning on fighters and sats and mines since they don't require maintenance costs. I'm close to taxing my available resources (including my current trade income) just keeping a comparable fleet to his going. I'm probably just screwed but I'm hoping to at the very least make the war something worth remembering. Next game I won't be so foolish as to mess with tech I've never used before. I hadn't played with Psychic until this game and expected it to have intelligence bonuses. Boy was I dissapointed.

Thanks for the advice though. I do appreciate it.