I'm very, very excited to have just encountered a wild Star Swarm colony for the first time in several years of playing Aurora. I may shortly be much less excited, since this encounter occurred 4 systems from Sol, but TBD. My obsolete survey ship was immediately boarded and the crew was presumably eaten alive/subsumed into the hive mind.
Update: We are merrily kicking each other's teeth in. I destroyed something like 80k-tons of
FACs with laser fire while they chewed through the shields of three 50k-ton battleships. Then their (main?) fleet of 14x 20k-ton cruisers showed up to the party, who after one salvo convinced me their tech was superior and I was not going to win that fight. Particularly since one of my battleships was
out of commission due to microwave damage destroying both BFCs. Note to self, overhaul with microwave-hardened BFCs and have more of them. Ultimately had to retreat through the unstabilized jump point, but still almost lost one battleship due to
continuing acid damage from hull damage taken from the parasite craft in the first half of the battle. I'm trying very hard not to lose any ships in a place I can't prevent the enemy from harvesting the wreck, as I suspect that's how they get resources to... reproduce?.
Now I'm building minelayers to set up minefields, as well as carriers with fast scouts and missile fighters to take the fight to the enemy at speeds they can't keep up with. We'll see if that helps. Meanwhile they just popped up in a new system on the complete other side of my empire, which is... highly concerning. So far still having fun. Hasn't yet graduated to Dwarf Fortress level "FUN", but it's escalated rapidly over the last few months of game time.