[gforce]

I am in my first game, v1.27, Mephisto's 1.60 mod, low bonus, and high number of AI's, and ran into a similar fleet of 18 Xichung vessels. Luckily for me, I only lost a long range colony ship I had built to try and find something to colonize. The Xichung and Xiati have large fleets with much better tech than I do. The only thing saving me is the large number of nebula, asteroid, and black hole sectors which act as buffers between those heavy hitters.