After reaching the star, my fleet engaged the aliens, presumably of the Precursor race. A mere three enemy ships: two craft orbiting a nice world, and a third patrolling the inner stars.
Commence hostilities! My craft approach, point defense against incoming missiles works, though the flagship did take some armor damage, leaving a few deep pits, but achieving no penetration. Vollies launched! The precursors are a powerful race-- their ships took many missiles to finally disable, but at the end, success was achieved.
Reaching orbit of the planet, lo! An alien population! No idea on their numbers-- my battle fleet had already departed for repainting and overhaul, and to link up with new ships of the line for the next battle against the precursors. But three troopships were brought, landed, and launched against them. It took around 2 months to dislodge the last of the garrison forces. And what do I get?
2 automines.
1 construction factory
1 research lab
and no population.
so what happened? did the precursors destroy the homeworld of the planet, leaving only these miserable ruins? or did I piss off a race that had expanded to this star system, only to colonize and then anger the precursors? I've noted no other ships in the system of any kind, nor any other evidence of a spacefaring race, other than a couple gated jumppoints.
I suppose I will complete the mapping, then investigate.