Just hit another system full of the hostile aliens I mentioned before. Multiple ships this time. Their FAC have a nasty bite. One wing of four took out a missile destroyer escourt with a single volley of missiles, then retreated... Only in range long enough for me to fire a volley of ASM from one of my missile destroyers. Sadly, it never impacted; they moved outside of its maximum range quickly. I called off the attack and retreated... but since one jump ship was destroyed, it lead to a nailbiting cliffhanger- having escourted one group of missile destroyers through the jump point, my one remaining jump ship had to go back and grab the other group. The whole time at 5 second intervals. I was awaiting a second volley of incoming missiles at any time, while the escourt's jump engines recovered to make the remaining jump...
They made it, no further attacks. I waited at the jump point for 60 days just in case they tried to follow. At point blank, while they were blinded, I could have probably done serious damage. They probably realized this, and didn't follow. I'll need to drop a buoy at that jump point so I can have advance warning if they come through again, though it's still several jumps away from my home system.
In the meantime, I've noticed their craft and missiles have incredible speed, but that's about it- they're overloaded on engines and warheads, and don't have room to pack ammo for a sustained assault. Therein lies the key. I'm researching better thermal sensors to give my AMM a chance to intercept, and ECM to force them to close to a range to where they can't escape my ASM counter-assault.
