200 stars, sparse, rare habitables, hard difficulty, oval shape
The extreme distances make for an interesting and slower game. Warp lane (range) extenders are fundamental on each and every ship, not just scouts and colonizers.
Tinker mobile outpost are fantastic for early exploration, a couple of them can leapfrog each other and reach way further and faster than otherwise possible with standard unmovable outposts. Of course they are in the company of one or two scouts, no sense in sending them blindly into harpy or pirate infested unknown systems.
Later on the outposts can be converted into cheap early carriers and damage sponges, also they act as crew reservoirs to replenish crew lost during ship captures.
Initially the reachable colonizable planets were very few, and the closest good one I had to ignore for a while as it was infested with Viscids (had to wait until the capability was available to pre-move transports loaded with population along with the colonizer, to fill up all population slots immediately).
Slow exploration and expansion. Got the Algorian planet, spread the furry friends to all the Ice climate zones, good thing they feed themselves and don't need farms. When some refugee Humans also got integrated, however, Farms became necessary, though few of them, as luckily I found a supergrain planet in reach.
Only later did I realize that I should have Harmonized all biologicals immediately, when their populations were still low and not spread out everywhere. When I finally decided to experiment with Harmonization, later on, the unhappiness penalty for harmonizing about a hundred million beings was crippling (that is, the unhappiness on the not-yet-harmonized populations, where I didn't have the possibility to Harmonize immediately). Thank you again for the undo button.
Started in the E side of the star cluster. Neighbours are Gremak to the N, Haduir to the SE, Orthin SW, Teros W. Further NW (beyond the Gremak) are the Yoral, the Humans even further NW, and the Phidi somewhere far W (haven't contacted them yet).
The Gremak attack me early on, as my military is non-existant at the beginning (just a few missile destroyer to clear minor harpy and pirates infestations).
The long range war is interesting, all about strategic maneuvering and range. Actual engagements are rare (we each bomb a frontier world or two), mostly it's destroying range-extending outposts in barren systems (or, in my case, moving away the mobile outposts in that single turn when the approaching Gremak fleet is visible). Despite their numerical and firepower superiority, the Gremak couldn't really inflict proper damage to me, since as soon as they left one of their outposts behind, a destroyer sneaked in to blast it and deny them the range to reach further into my empire. Research was also immediately focused on strategic speed and range upgrades (should have put them in sooner, in hindsight).
The AI in general seems good at spreading outposts around to extend their range, somewhat less good in defending them in such a war.
Meanwhile, the Haduir also attacked me, on the opposite side of my empire. The Haduir war was similar to the Gremak one, though requiring much more careful maneuvering and invested resources. Their fleet was a humongous mass of carriers, luckily I could see them coming several turns earlier and thus had the time to react accordingly.
The Haduir AI seems oblivious to the game-breaking advantage they could have if they could use properly the relic stargate at their capital (which I did in a previous game).
Again mostly maneuvering and outpost sniping, frontier colony bombing, while playing hide and seek with their carrier blob.
Tens of turns pass, fighting/maneuvering on two fronts while expanding in uncontested territories, building up tech and fleets.
Both wars ended and restarted a few times, meanwhile the Yoral fought alternately with their neighbours (Humans and Gremak), the Orthin duked it out with the Haduir, probably the other AIs also tangled, though, with the distances involved, I often lost contact.
The Gremak war effectively ended when the Yoral attacked them and gobbled up about half their empire, I managed to obtain a couple habitable systems in the peace treaty. Now I could concentrate fully on the Haduir. A massive fleet was finally assembled, half of it made up of point-defense only light cruisers, a screen of damage soaking carrier-asteroids, and a core of torpedo-armed missile and heavy cruisers.
Now it was only a matter of time and maneuvering to force a favourable fleet battle.
I couldn't believe my luck when the Haduir split their fleet, and I managed to destroy about a third of their ships over a juicy star system with 2 habitables, one with supergrain and the other with artifacts. Unfortunately I had nowhere near the necessary troopships in the vicinity, so both planets were glassed. As soon as I moved out, the Haduir resettled them anyway, and later on my troopships occupied them unopposed.
Soon after, the biggest fleet battle of this game finally happened. Haduir Fleet Carrier fighter and bomber spam is scary. It took more than a minute in the early turns for the AI to move all the squadrons around.
My strategy paid off: despite losing almost all the PD-Light Cruisers and several carrier-asteroids, all the Haduir squadrons were blasted from the sky and the torpedoes finally began reaching their targets. At this point the AI should have just retreated all the carriers (all other direct-damage dealing ships I had destroyed earlier as priority targets), instead of having them move around and attempt to use their few PD weapons against a Tinker missile swarm. As it went, I even managed to capture a decent number of ships. After scrapping them (couldn't yet integrate or reverse engineer), the massive amount of metal gained was what fueled my sudden population explosion (manufacture population on the most tinker-populous worlds).
The AI was so shocked by this defeat that in the peace treaty they gifted me 3 whole inhabited (and well developed!) systems along the border, and coupled with the destroyed and yet to be rebuilt outposts in the uninhabited contested systems (which I quickly seized with the surviving carrier-asteroids), it meant the Haduir had lost almost half of their territory (and virtually their entire fleet).
This was the point when the game snowballed. Now I had Teros, Haduir, and interestingly also a sizeable Orthin population to spread around (I guess a few planets were conquered after all in the Orthin-Haduir war), by this time I had or was about to research Star Bases and later on Fleet Bases, which were built on all planets with only Science Stations on. And after getting the Cloning tech, organic pop growth exploded. Remaining harpy strongholds were cleared, the Tarib inferno planet was also acquired via a Space Habitat module above it (should've thought about that earlier, though it does feel a bit like an exploit), thus unlocking a couple large mineral-rich inferno planets that, once built up with mines, fueled massive fleet buildups and upgrades (and the FleetBase-Science spam).
At this point I went and conquered the 3 marauder factions in reach as well, my fleet moving along the E edge of the star cluster from S (Haduir) towards N, gradually being reinforced and upgraded, until, with lucky timing, the Yoral (which by this point I had allied with) attacked the Gremak for the last time, and I seized the opportunity to conquer their capital and remove them from the game (secondary objective was to capture as many ships as possible, to both reverse engineer and to refit).
And when the Yoral offered to be annexed, Tinker dominance was all but guaranteed.
Relations are good with Teros and Orthin, surprisingly decent with the Haduir despite the war, neutral with the Humans. The Phidi I still haven't contacted, mostly because I avoided Open Ports agreements (except the Yoral alliance), to avoid having the AIs colonize planets in my territory.
Judging from the graphs, the Haduir have rebuilt their fleet to their prewar numbers (though I'm far superior now), and the rest are about equals militarily. My population and productivity are both a good half above the 2nd places.
As it stands now, there's enough stuff onscreen now to noticeably slow down the interface (granted, my laptop is 6 years old or so, so not that surprising), and I'm pondering whether to continue or start a new game. A massive all-conquering, multi-fleet Great War would certainly be interesting, though terribly slow in real time.
Next game would be still Tinkers, this time harmonizing from the very beginning, probably keep the sparse stars, though fewer (100? 150?). Unsure yet whether to increase difficulty to the last one or not.
What are the actual modifiers and what is affected by the difficulty, by the way?