I'll be interested to see if the Dark Spire are at least sane now 
Question: Does anyone happen to know the formula for how many vengeance generators gets seeded per difficulty level? I noticed on 1 / 10 that it seeded 2 generators and at 4 / 10 there seems to be quite alot more. 5 on 20 planets in my area, and I have found a 6th one and I havent even scouted out half the galaxy yet.
It's just intensity*2, so 8 in your galaxy (seeding is random, so statistical clustering can happen). At least, it's been that way for several versions, and I'm assuming you're on the current beta or nearly so.
Ah ok, having 5 in my corner of the galaxy threw me off. The RNG is just messing with me for having 10 / 10 dyson and resistance I suppose.
Cue a wave of 536 Cloaked Ships (MK 2) and 2 Starships, expecting them to be eyebots. Yup eyebots just as expected, my Leech Starships and 40 merc parasites were quite appreciative of the AIs donation to my cause, 48 new mk 1 and 47 mk 2 eyebots for me.
A little bit after the wave a few Dark Spire wandered onto my homeworld, which no longer has any turrets to defend it except a line of gravity turrets. It was here that I noticed that the Dark Spire did not have any speed reduction from the grav turrets. It was a nice trick on their part, but it didn't save them from my reclaimed fleet on defence or my resistance.
I have now located the dyson sphere, its located 2 hops away from Duke's Vison on Family Whi along with another Cursed Golem. And a Raid Engine. The planet Grand Exchange has 2 trader black hole machines, so I will have to destroy them but at least my aip wont increase from it.
Neinzul Modular Fortress is online on Shareholder's Fortune, I'm glad to have the extra firepower since I will be starting the next phase of shard recovery. I have completly destroyed the warp gates on my side of the whipping boys, that has taken my AIP up to 188.
A wave of 2,792 Laser Gattlings and 2 Starships to Shareholder's Fortune puts a delay on the recovery. I manage to fend them off, at the cost of half of my turrets, along with the ensuing swarm of Dark Spire ships. My economy is none to pleased with this, but it will get over it.
Recovery of the Alien Refugees proceeds as planned, just need my economy to rebound so I can build the outpost, the Zenith Traders also passed through Shareholder's Fortune, so I picked up a Black Hole Generator, an Armor Inhibitor, an Armor Booster, an Orbital Mass Driver, and a Radar Jammer Mk 2. Those will contribute nicely once they get around to being built.
Unlock the Missile Frigate Mk 2 and build a cap of them. Still got 3,500 Knowledge left over for emergancies.
The AI sends a wave of 3,128 Infiltrators to Duke's Vision, I guess my defences there will be tested. For good measure I unlock and build decloakers since the AI now uses 2 types of cloaked ships.
I manage to steal a full cap of Mk 1 and 83 Mk 2 Infiltrators, at the cost of my 4 Leech Starships. I should have looked at the attack multipliers, that would have saved them from destruction.
And only now do I realize that Infiltrators are not cloaked, well the decloakers will help with the eyebots.
I manage to triger a Raid Engine on a Mk 4 world, which proceeds to cause much pain to Duke's Vision, although I manage to defeat the raid wave. The wave of over 1k bombers that hit right after I didn't handle as well (or really at all). Lose the command center but manage to clean up the wave afterwards.
In the meantime, I manage to get a scout onto the dyson world, so it will start cleaning out the area for me. A side effect of losing Duke's Vision is that the special forces has started moving forces back into my section. A small trickle but every ship is one more annoyance.
The special forces have parked themselves on Tkr's Deprivation, which is where I need to go to collect my first city shard. 1300 ships vs my rag tag fleet of 552, I am going to have to get creative to come of of that fight without significant losses.
Looks like the dyson sphere has finished cleansing the area, the gattling have made their way onto my world. Time to pull the scout so I can actually send ships to free it.
Right, so I totally forgot about the Raid Engine, so I just got hit by a 1000 ship wave of Mk 4 ships. Duke's Vision is lost again so another rebuilding phase is in progress.
I'm not sure about this, but I think I have been slowly feeding the Dark Spire with my Neinzul Enclave Starships constant production of Laser Drones. I have moved them to a border world to intercept any attacking Dark Spire ships just in case.
Duke's Vision is finally up and running again, I have also unlocked MRLS Mk 2. I finally get around to the third nebula and I get the Zenith Shattered Pillar 3-for-all. During the late stages of this nebula I noticed my zenith allies would occasionally have 2 ships peel off and exit through the wormhole. I noticed this once before when I was kiting the Malfunctioning Dysons in the Grey Spire nebula, but wasen't able to document it at that time. It was always the Monolith, which has 24 ships currently on planet.
I unlock the Zenith Shadow Destroyer, the Zenith Modular Fortress, and the Flak Module from this nebula. On a side note, running circles around the Dark Spires Starbase is fun.
I've established the location of the first AI Homeworld, its located in Senator's Badlands. I havent actually scouted the Homeworld itself yet, but I found the core world of Family Rhy, and since Bala Gi's Joy and Ceo's Sprite are both Mk 3 worlds, that tells me the homeworld is on Senator's Badlands.
I've recovered my first city shard, but the cost was high. Duke's Vision was wiped out (again), Shareholder's Fortune lost all of its turrets but my fleet managed to halt their attack. I had 2 Spire Corvettes, 7 Mk 2 bombers and 2 Mk 1 bombers, 2 Mk 2 Frigates, and 4 Riot Starships left once the battle had settled. The amount of dark spire that were created during this battle also moved in and took down Antigone Memorial, Teladi Gain, Rhonkar's Fire (taken recently), and LooManckStrat's Legacy (also taken recently). Those dark spire really due bring the hurt to the game, even if their not as god like as they used to be. There is 1400 threat that has retreated into the winds that I will have to track down. I havent even finished removing the attacking Dark Spire ships from my homeworld when a 2k CPA is announced. Thats gonna hurt considering my economy is tanked.
To add injury to injury, the AI decides to launch an wave of almost 4k Laser Gattlings.
... They wont stop spawning. The shear numbers of Dark Spire that exo released has overwhelmed the AIs forces on every world that contains a generator, this has the side effect of making it very difficult to rebuild my defences on the whipping boys since the Dark Spire keep destroying stuff.
