I've got a really nice game going on currently, already have like over 100 systems discovered and some really nice connections, which makes it less tree-y and more interconnected.
I went with a light carrier doctrine this time and built a couple of light but slow carriers (I think around 20.000t in total) with 6.000t hangar capacity and a couple of CIWS, some gauss-cannons and one big active sensor, which has like 280m km range. To fill the ships, I went with 50% 1.000t FACs, 8.000km speed and filled with gauss cannons and 50% 500t fighters, with gauss cannons as well and miniature sensor. I call it the bee swarm, as one of those ships/fighters doesn't cause much pain, but the whole swarm shreds everything to pieces in less than 30 seconds.
They are accompanied by light battleships (around 15.000t) equipped with missiles that can shoot as far out as 140m km and give me some long range capabilities, when I don't want to give up the additional missile defense that all the gauss cannons of the FACs/fighters provide. They are as slow as the carriers, I think barely scratching 2.000 km/s. They also have some AMM launchers-
I recently added a couple of pure missile slinger frigates(?), which are essentially light armored missile launchers without any sensors, the same long range fire control and limited magazines. They only have around 5.000t, but are massively faster than my carriers and battleships. With 5 launchers and 30 loaded missiles, I wanted to improve my "first punch" capability and increase the size of the first couple of missile volleys. But as they are rather cheap to make, I have decided to create 2 variants of them, one with the large 280m km range sensor and the other one filled with gauss-cannons as flak-cover. This way, I can use them as rapid response force or sector defense, while my main fleet is busy somewhere else.
Plus, the update time of my main fleet has come, so they will have to take over defense duties for a while until my carriers and battleships are back on the field.
Although I am thinking of just keeping the fleet carriers as they are and just park them somewhere as back up and design new, awesome, BIG carriers instead. We will see.
In other news, I have conquered 2 NPRs in this game so far. One with basically the same production capabilities and population size as Earth but almost no minerals left on their planet, the other one with maybe 25% of the capabilities and population but a still very healthy amount of minerals on their planet and much more in the system. Both have been integrated in my empire already and have proven to be really valuable outposts and production centers. Unfortunately there is a really smegty nebula between Earth and the conquered planet with all the production capabilites, so I will have to make it self-sufficient for the near future. The other one will probably become a supplier of minerals for earth, with construction of automines being kept up (as there is already a worker shortage on that planet).
In Sol, everything that can reasonably be terraformed has been terraformed already and our terraformer fleet has moved outside of Sol. They are currently finishing up the 7th planet outside of Sol within 4 jumps.
A main colony has been set up within a system that has 3 planets with all minerals present in varying degrees, but most importantly duranium, corundium and neutronium each with at least 0.9 and deposits in the millions. Only downside: Boronide is only available with 0.1
For this, another colony 4 jumps out of Sol has been established and the atmosphere has become breathable a couple of years ago. Boronide is available with 0.9 and tens of millions in deposits, plus all other minerals are available with 0.1. This will make a great outpost in the future, as we will not need to supply this colony with minerals to conduct repairs and overhauls.
On the fuel side, while we were worried about 20 years ago that fuel might run out, dozens of fuel harvesters have solved that problem nicely and we have hundreds of millions of fuel in reserves in every major colony / conquered world, plus nice deposits in some outposts.
Overall it's looking good, although a bit quiet for my taste. I wonder when we will meet the next NPR... (I have NPR discovery set to 90% by now, I really want to go to war again
)