Likewise, I've had my first contact with a hostile NPR.
They can simply outrun my first generation ASM's, but no real shock there, I can outrun them too. The second generation has no issues running them down, but was designed for 80% chance with a 7650km/sec target in mind, they do 8165, so they perform well enough. Especially when I throw 38 from every FAC I bring.
Speaking of, I've taken losses. They seem to have superior tech to me - their AMM's can do 100kkm/sec, while mine can only do 37.7kkm/s. Their ASM's do 41kkm/sec and 8 damage, while my latest designs, which I've not even researched yet would only achieve 4 damage and 9.63kkm/sec. Though both of us seem woefully unable to stop the other's missiles, and both seem to be fielding approximately equal ranges, so I've pushed out to 150mkm.
They definitely lead me in ECM/ECCM, since I have none as yet, and I could not engage them at 100mkm as designed, only 73mkm, so I suspect ECM 3 is in use, and intel confirms it.
They've smashed a few of my smaller asteroid automine colonies, and wiped out mercury, which at one point was my main offworld mining location. Its not critical to me at this time, so it hurts, but isn't fatal. Only one civilian cargo ship has been taken out as well.
I lost 11 missile FAC, and damage to the other 5, 4 of which needed to do damage control where they took the hit to get their engines back online and limp home. The Gauss FAC were wholly ineffective, designed when the best my FC could do was 16kkm/sec, its all the turrets could do too. So barely 1/3 chance from speed, 1/4 chance from the gauss being 25%, and possible ECM on the missiles they use, they often don't even fire. They did get kills, but rather than max range and run, they had to close to 73mkm, and are not fast, they were designed when the best I could do was 3/4 what the enemy now does.
The destroyers I had managed to get built saved my bacon. Not only can they do 8606km/sec, 500km/sec faster than the enemy, enough to run them down and close range, but I expected a brawl, so I piled on 2 20HS shields for 170hp, and 6 layers of armor. That saved me. I had 9 destroyers, 5 particle lance, 3 gauss, and one passive recon destroyer, which meant I could absorb up to 1500 damage, without taking an armor hit, and I did withdraw any destroyer that was being hammered hard. Couple that with them blowing their ASM load on smashing mercury, some of my mining, and much less combat capable FAC's, and the destroyers only had to worry about the AMM's, which they fielded in fairly sizeable numbers.
They also had what intel says are railguns, with a range nearly 50% greater than ours, having been seen to fire at 353kkm with RoF20, while we have only 240kkm and RoF40. However, they bring 7x4 damage, and we bring 6x12 damage, and they have the railgun damage profile, and we have the particle lance profile, I typically got penetrations while they did not.
I have smashed 70,000 tons of warship, while losing 50,000 of my own, and only one of the destroyers that did most of the work. That said, nearly every ship had damage, and their latest missile strike fleet simply walked home, I was too mauled to chase them while under railgun barrage without risking all my combat ability.
So now begins the crash course - we need the next FC techs, both tracking and range. We need ECCM 3 or better, to offset the penalties they have imposed. We need magneto plasma engines(have Ion), so ensure we can still chase down our foes, and we need more particle beam range, 240kkm is a bit short at the moment.
Plus then we need to get those ships built....
At least I can refit the firecontrols into place much more quickly. Kinda happy I spent the last year or so with every single lab tech manning a lab doing something, to get them all improving, I have so many high quality techs now.
And salvage, I have enemy wrecks to salvage, which if I can get to that quickly enough will assist my research efforts.
So many priorities still....I have probably lost this game, time will tell - it wasn't a mineral rich earth, and I took only 100m people into the game.
