Probably nothing exciting to anyone, but it was a fun moment for me & really heightened both my appreciation for the game & that I was given it as a present by my wife (who wonders some nights where her husband has gotten to... only to find him glued to his keyboard & mouse.) Anywho, Terrans, immense map, tight clusters, rare habitable (I've discovered that you can crash your Empire in short notice if there's a glut of habitable planets & you try to colonize them all before the AI does.) Stuck in my own decent sized cluster in one corner of the world. Three other good races, two evil, one neutral. Doing okay, have my cluster populated & doing the research & trade thing. Traded the weapon amplifier from the Dregin & felt pretty good about it. Next turn, they declare war on me, followed by the Yor & Arceans. Uh oh! Not good. I have a decent military but it's patchy. Worse, the agressors are located clear across the map from me (only two Yor scouts somehow made into my space before becoming space debris). Even more annoyingly, all the good races lept to my aid & declared war again against the aggressors, only to get hammered & start to complain to me about it. As much as I appreciated the thought, I wish they'd have waited a little bit so I could get something deployed. One of my scouts finds a C20 in the middle of the map - uncolonized! Unbelievably good luck! Off goes a fast colony ship, with a larger, slower one under escort. A couple destroyers were rerouted to rendevous at the soon-to-be-fledgling colony: after all, it's a lot closer to the baddies than anything else I own. Colony up & running great. Then I go brain-dead & send the destroyers off somewhere else & leave the colony unprotected. Needless to say, the Dregin wasted NO time getting there & bombing the planet. Sigh. Fine, I've a fleet of heavy transports (4k each) waiting to waylay someone - now is as good of a time as any... Except the planets now out of my range - forgot that my fast colony ship was also modded to have some decent life-support. Doh! Wait at the border with my fleet for the constructors to arrive. Get a station up & mob my old colony. Quickly overwhelmed the planet (5 transport fleet, 4k each, yep, didn't need to even bomb it with fireworks.) This time defenders would stay. Saw a massive Dregin fleet closing in. Clicked on it. Not a fleet - a stack of 8 fleets, 5 ships apiece. I think I wet myself then. I desperately tried to get all my warships into orbit, but they wouldn't go! Why, oh, why not! Because there were four tranports in orbit! (Didn't realize they'd contribute their troops but not get used.) Fine, off they go back to Earth to reload. Meanwhile, the populace back home are finding the war tedious; we're not losing but all three of our opponents have a good 400 point military lead on us. "Sue for peace! they cry. At least with one of them!" I've got bigger issues to deal with right now... Rush build planetary defenses & get everyone tucked into orbit except for one cruiser, The Devastator. I kinda liked The Devastator, they were a good crew on a good ship, but such is the price of war. Dregin see my sloooow transports limping toward Earth & lunge for them. Ulp! Off goes The Devastator in a mad dash attempt to slow the enemy down just one turn (they're slow but not as slow as the Dregin.) The Dregin jump The Devastator; I have the Combat Viewer on, but didn't want to see my cruiser go smash so I fast-forwarded to the end and was quite surprised to see The Devastator had survived. Not just survived but nary but a scratch! Huh! The Dregin throws fleet after fleet at The Devastator only to get horribly chewed up. I eventually pull her back after she wiped out the whole nasty lot of them & was down 50% hp. My eye spots more "massive" Dregin fleets. If I had paid a *bit* more attention, looked at the details of those ships, I'd have not panicked. All heavy fighters. Maybe they'd hurt my destroyers but certainly not my cruisers. I launch a couple of the cowering cruisers to mop up & that's where I'm at now, real life having intruded with that whole eat, sleep, work routine. Bah! More Dregin to smash! And if you've actually read all this & made it this far, thank you!