Over the weekend I got a little way into a game. I was goofing off researching stellar manipulation and other non-military technologies. I was in 1st place about twice the score of #2 and with 50 techs to any other player's 37. The new Ixaris sail into one of my systems (first contact) bLast one of my frigates (largest hull I'd researched at that point) with a light cruiser decked out in large-mounted phased polaron beams. It sails up to one of my planets and wipes out three small weapon platforms and some 60+million people, then wanders off. I build a fleet of frigates with boarding parties, but they get shot to pieces before they can get through the shileds on the cruisers. I lose 3 more worlds as the Ixaris and I both try to colonize the same system. Finally I get lucky and in a different system I find massive shield depleters in a ruin about the same time I get destroyer tech. I emergency build a new boarding ship and park them over the nearest warp points into my turf after I'm driven out of that system we'd been fighting over. It's quiet. I go back into the contested system and it's empty except for an unescorted colony ship which I board and capture then send home for reverse engineering. I colonize a world and emergency build a resupply depot and shipyard.
It continues to be quiet for half a year and so I send a ship through one warp gate to scout. He finds a nebula with only one other gate. So he heads for that one. On the other side he finds the Ixaris homeworld with a slew of sattelites and some support ships. The scot moves one square from the gate (all the range he's got left), and a pair of Light Cruisers appear through it behind him on the Ixaris turn. Apparently we missed each other while passing through the nebula. There's only one other warp gate in this system so he runs for that one. Another Ixaris system, mostly empty, again with only one other warp point. The light cruisers are just behind him so he runs for the next warp point. A planet launches a cruiser while the scout is passing through, it joins the chase. The next system has three warp points, one I just came through, one that leads I don't know where, and one that leads back to the system he and I were fighting over. I'm about to run out of fuel on the scout so I head for home. A second cruiser comes through the unknown warp gate and I've got 4 ships chasing my poor destroyer (three of them are only 2 moves behind him). He makes it through the warp point into my system and runs out of fuel on the "safe" side. I send a fleet of 4 more destroyers to go rescue him and get him to the ressuply point. They end their move 2 squaress from the scout. That turn both cruisers and one light cruiser come through the warp point, kill my helpless scout and turn around and leave.
After that though it went all downhill for the Ixaris as had fleets of destroyers equipped with massive shield depleters and boarding parties parked over the warp gates and I captured about a dozen of his ships piecemeal and in fleets of up to three. I ended up gettng three levels of shield, light cruisers, cruisers, two levels of armor, and five levels of PPB off of him in short order. But that one captain's scouting run was one of the highpoints of my weekend. Died within sight of an allied colony and in spitting distance of a fleet that could have saved him after running through four enemy-held systems. Glorious.
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