First Serious Game, 7/7 - In Progress

[CheshireGray]

Hey all; I'm very new to this game. I've had it for quite a while, I just never really messed with it enough to get into it, due to having other games I was interested in at the time, but now I'm completely hooked. This is my first serious game, rather than just messing around to get a feel for the mechanics, and while I've logged over 100 hours on the game on Steam, that's also factoring in time I've spent in the Steam overlay reading the wiki, and forum threads and such, or time spent AFK making food, or playing through a particularly tough part a few times. I allow myself 1 save; I can redo a particularly hard wave over and over again, to learn from my mistakes, but I can't go back 3 hours. If I get myself into a sticky situation, I have to figure my way out of it, or accept defeat. I'm not going to explain much about the current state of affairs, as that's already done in an imgur album linked below. However, I will give a brief summary of events up to this point, list my current unlocks, my thoughts, and I'd love any feedback. I'll also continue to update this as time goes on.

http://imgur.com/a/nIFQu

Myself + 2 Extra Champions vs. 2 Difficulty 7 Random Moderate/Easier type AIs. I don't know how to check what their type is in the current game, sorry. Complex ships with nothing disabled.
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Unlocked Technology:

Neinzul Railpods Mk I-III (Starter ship.)
Spire Maw Mk I (Unlocked via Design Backup Hack.)
Missile Frigate Mk II & III
Bulletproof Fighter Mk V (Unlocked via Fabricator Hack, Fabricator intact.)
Riot Control Starship Mk II & III
Mk IV Starship Capability (From ASC, Hacked and intact.)
Engineer Drone Mk II
Metal Harvester Mk II & III
Economic Orbital Command Station Mk II & III
Military Command Station Mk II
Logistical Command Station Mk II & III
Mobile Space Dock
Harvester Exo-Shield
FF Gen Mk II & III
Hardened FF Gen Mk I & II
Human Modular Fortress
Neinzul, Spire, & Zenith Modular Fortresses, (From nebulae.)
Mini-Fortresses.
Missile Turret Mk II
Flak Turret Mk II & III
Lightning Turret Mk V, (From Advanced Controller. Didn't know you could hack them at the time. )
HBC Mk I-III
Sniper Turret Mk II
Spider Turret Mk I-III
Assorted Champion Unlocks, (They'd be really inconvenient to list, and I don't use most of them.)
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Prologue:

Before the game initially started, I was playing with various map styles and the untangler. I was trying each of them, and ended up with this Spokes map, and managed to get it halfway untangled. I wasn't confident trying Golems - Hard yet, and didn't want to have them be unrepairable, (Also held the same opinion regarding Spirecraft, which is why they're on Hard, even though I'm a beginner.) I set everything else that didn't sound totally unmanageable to On, left most of them standard in intensity, except for the stuff I was completely unsure of, like the Roaming Enclaves, or that sounded excessively annoying, like Astro Trains, and dove in. I picked Neinzul Railpods because their description sounded cool, and I'm a defensively-minded player, and I figured having a constantly rebuilding set of railguns would be a potent defensive addition. As it turned out, I was right, and they're so inexpensive I can just send thousands and thousands on suicide missions through wormholes to soften up targets. I can send them in en masse in Stand Down, select a target, and then activate them to instakill a particularly irritating enemy, or move MSDs with Engineers up and wipe out an enemy on their own planet. They're also so cheap and quick to build I can construct Railpod fortifications anywhere there's a dock, instantly, and with enough Fortresses, Engineers, MSDs, or a Regenerator Golem, they can exceed their advertised 2-shot lifespan. I feel like this was a strong choice; but I digress. I started off on Tunejerdem, because it seemed like the most logically sound way to go about things; it was the closest thing I had to getting my back against a wall, since Plukindo wasn't available as a spawn. In reality, it would have been better to start at Murderribfall, (IIRC, that was an option available; that or Tinmurd.) so I wouldn't be so far into a corner and have such an uphill battle, but things've worked out alright so far, I think. I wasn't entirely aware that the other ships I selected at the start would end up being special ships the AI controlled, so I had no clue what kind of headache I'd be giving myself with some of them, but it's turned out to be a good thing as it's forced me to adjust to handle them. My entire goal starting out was to utilize superior range to minimize friendly casualties, which is why I selected Railpods and have capitalized on the use of Missile Frigates; While it's worked out fairly well, what I was not anticipating was the level of crowd control I'd have to do, which has forced me to adapt my ways significantly, and beef up on fortresses, flak, lightning turrets, forcefields and the like.

From Tunejerdem I immediately captured Plukindo and Bingkoios, and because I didn't know my ass from a hole in the ground and am a bumbling idiot due to being new to this, proceeded to build a Survey Ship, and attempt to check out the Fallen Spire mission on Bobuos while weathering one of the first few waves, which lost me the shard. Somehow I survived, and since I had no idea what I had lost, I continued on my merry way, sending MSDs through multiple planets in rapid succession, killing everything with Railpod artillery and making my way up to Meka. I wish that I had known more about the Fallen Spire campaign, so I knew not to lose the shard, but, c'est la vie. The cities would have been nice, but I'm managing without them. I bought myself a Z Power Gen at Meka to bolster my early-game energy capacity, without having to resot to Matter Converters, and fought viciously to defend it. Clawing my way into Murderribfall took hours, and I almost lost my front line on Meka several times. I had extra knowledge accumulated, (I would've had more, but I forgot I didn't research on Plukindo.) but didn't know what to spend it on, and Murderribfall was a tough nut to crack. Up until this point I had not used a save state, and didn't have to by the time the fighting was over, but I got very close several times. Around this time I learned the trick of sending Railpods in as a group in Stand Down and proceeded to group-snipe targets one by one until the way was clear. Upon succeeding, I managed to get myself a Black Widow Guardian,which was a great boon to me. I expanded into Afrlocpu and Hascu, and in doing so I was introduced to several new things; Human Marauders, Dark Spire Vengeance Generators, Dire Lairs, and Turret Controllers. I managed to fumble the ball by capturing Hascu before hacking the turret controller, purely because I didn't know you could do that. The Dark Spire and the Dire Guardians weren't much problem, I just had o make sure not to send lots of railpods into Afrlocpu to fight Marauders and die. I killed the Lair, dealt with the consequences, and that was that. I spent an hour or so fighting Marauders off and on, not really understanding that I needed to complete the nebula to secure that border fully and stop their assaults, before I finally sent my champions in. I had no idea what on earth I was doing, but I managed to fight the Neinzul Astrids off of the Shattered Pillar and get out alive. I thought it was pretty cool having 3 champions that I got to customize; this became much less cool when my first Exogalactic Strikeforce - Champ Nemesis sent me 10+ enemy Shadow Frigates. Fortunately, I had saved beforehand and I began the learning process of how in the world I was supposed to deal with a huge enemy wave AND several enemy champs. At the time my defensive setup was a flowerwheel around the incoming wormhole to contain attackers, and let them get pummeled by flak, missiles, lasers, and lightning. This worked great, coupled up with railpods, but unfortunately it wasn't very effective against shadow frigates. I ended up buying 2 ranks of Riot Control Starships and holding them in a blockade of sorts while my own Champions and all the turrets left alive beat them to death. Next came the move into Tinmurd.

|| *Note: I don't genuinely remember whether I got the Botnet Golem before or after Tinmurd. My apologies. I think it was before, but I didn't want to say so incorrectly. ||
|| **Note 2: I went straight Economic for my Command Stations, because I desperately needed the resources and energy cap. ||

Tinmurd was a hard move, truth be told; I spent a long time trying to establish any kind of foothold, because my planetary strength was escalated so high from turrets that the enemy didn't want to enter my system, so it just kept a huge garrison of ships blocking my path instead, (And all this while, Spire Civilian Leaders had been jacking my AI Progress up.) I finally managed to break the line by building a bunch of Mk I starships to draw fire long enough that I could move the Black Widow Guardian in, tractor everything it could handle, and retreat back through the wormhole over and over again to kill enemies in smaller groups with turret assistance. I managed to bleed their standing guard dry, and push up into Hais with ease, (Fairly sure this is where I got the Hive Golem.) taking it and setting up turret emplacements on both Hais and Tinmurd to weather any attackers coming down from Murdoch. This was my first T3 planet, and was a very, very scare move due to it being a hub world, with attack coming from any direction. Up until this point I had relayed on bombarding a single point of entry, so this was new for me. Utilizing similar tactics as before, and with the help of the Botnet Golem, I was able to finally make my way in, but the looming question was what on earth I was supposed to do with the place now that I had control of it available. I started off by building turrets, (Badly.) in areas to protect the entrance wormhole, and lost the command station over, and over, and over again. I learned from my mistakes, though, and eventually got to the point where I could stick a command station right in the middle, having bought Mk I Hardened Forcefields, and proceeded to pay an arm and a leg to a trader over time to get myself a Black Hole Machine, an Armor Booster, a Radar Jammer Mk II, a Counter Spy, and 2 Mass Drivers, in that order. Over the course of all this, I managed to live through several waves like the cockroach that I am, and had moved all of my things up from Murderribfall, although I left the turrets on Hais and Tinmurd as a safety net, since Neinzul Shadow Frigates can bypass Black Hole Machines and I didn't yet have the capability to completely block the entrance off securely. Once I was halfway set up in my new home, I took Mondur, which was an inconceivably stupid decision, seeing as it forced me to defend 2 fronts when I could just manage one. Not thinking, I just wanted another Z Power Gen, and to save the Human Colony on alert. It would have been better if I had waited, and let the Colony get close to losing invisibility, (With 5 minutes or so remaining.) instead of saving it with slightly over an hour remaining. It all worked out, even though I completely borked the order of things, since I ended up with a second Black Widow Golem, a Z Power Gen, and a Colony producing for me, and proceeded to conquer the 2 short arms attached to the hub, complete their Champion missions, and snag myself a Regenerator and Bulletproof Fighters out of it, (Which I'm still not really sure if they're good for anything.) I began construction of a SuperFortress on Murdoch, along with the new Modulars, and set up a Starship Warpgate for all the new toys from my Champion missions. Somewhere along the way I managed to get Spire Maws hacked, but I've done very little with them since. I figured since they're really easy for my setup to destroy, that a wave of them is actually a good thing, as it means I won't have to deal with a wave of Spire Stealth Battleships if Maws get picked. Likewise, I haven't interacted with a Design Backup Server for Railpods at all, because I already have them, and AI Waves of them are absolute peanuts; the AI is not programmed on how to use them effectively, at all. If it took one group shot with them all, and killed something, and then retreated to let them get repaired, it'd be ridiculously hard to deal with, but instead they just suicide into hundreds of different targets and do nothing.

My current segment of the game really occurred as a result of a desire to secure my borders better; I wiped out Shokal and Womi, (Not realizing still that I could've just hacked that Turret Controller on Shokal, because I'm a moron.) and proceeded to send strikeforces into Vilyunrev, setting myself up to make a secondary base, in an effort to better protect my ZPower Gen on Mondur. I proceeded to send my Champions and Black Widow Golems together on raids to clear out Bozuzpuz, Mesicra, and Nara, where I met the Neinzul Rocketry Corps, (More on that later.) I've managed to keep the Generator so far, which is certainly a plus, but as a result of being stretched thin I've had some real doozies in regards to incoming waves. Trying to defend against 39,000+ Vorticular Cutlasses when you're split up, or 55,000+ Neinzul Youngling Shrikes... (They're particularly deadly to me because they're immune to sniper shots, and also reclamation damage. No Railpod help, and no Botnet help.) Yeesh, just the 55 full Carriers could wipe out a Black Widow Golem if they all concentrated in one volley. I had to redo that wave over and over, until I did something I wasn't really ready for; I created a full on, forward base on Bozuzpuz, off of a save where I had roughly 5, maybe 6 minutes to prepare from the last save where the incoming wave was announced, (From announcement, through to spawning, and travel time.) I managed to just barely get an Armor Booster built from a passing Trader along with the shield and turret setup seen in one of the imgur pictures. At the time I also had the Riot Control Starships, my Attritioners, and my Translocators and every other Starship I owned there, in order to buy me enough time to finish the last few percentage points on the Booster. I got extremely lucky, and managed to finish out losing only one Attritioner due to dumb placement by yours truly, and 3 Translocators, a Mk I and two Mk IIs. I was kind of expecting that though, seeing as they were on the front line, protected by the Riot Shields, right behind the HBCs. Between them, the Black Widow Turrets, and the Spider Golems, I actually ended up with much less pressure on my Forcefield ball, an while previous attempts at holding on Vilyunrev had only yielded a few thousand enemies dead, I watched them fall below 40k, 30k, down to 20k before my eyes... I didn't lose anything irreplaceable except for the aforementioned Spirecraft, and that was a cheap fix, only Reptite and Pysite were needed. It's actually stupidly effective having a blockade wall of Riot Shields; they hold up much, much better than their stats would suggest, and they saved my bacon several times during that fight, by containing AI forces long enough for the shields over the Wormhole to Vilyunrev to be rebuilt. So, a few waves I've got my head on straight, both bases fully rebuilt, arranged to be pretty and effective, and with the proper units at the proper places, and I'm currently preparing to try and hack an ASC on thing on your footliuas in a moment of calm between waves. Wish me luck, I'll keep everyone posted.
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END TRANSMISSION - 1:
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So, some questions I currently have: Besides the obvious derps I mentioned, what else could I probably have done better? I really like the ship I chose, but could I have done better? I know that a lot of people here are of the mindset that getting to the AIP levels I have is a terrible, awful, unmanageable idea, but I'm actually holding up really well, and I'm about to get a lot stronger, seeing as there's a 2nd Regenerator Golem available soon, several more planets' worth of resources and energy, more knowledge and therefore more turrets, and maybe I could finally switch to a Military Command Mk III from a Logistical III on Murdoch, (Which I actually really like, because of all the free metal, and needed for a while, due to lots of Teleport Raiders, and a lack of Fortresses with shields at the time.) I'm also kind of excited about hitting Mk IV AIP, since that will spawn more Design Backups and Fabricators; which brings up the question, will they disappear if AIP dips back down below Mk IV? It's a valid question, because I know the location of a few Spire Civilian Leaders that I'll be ready to make a move on soon. Another huge question I have, is would I be able to destroy a Neinzul Rocketry Corps by placing a Planetary Armor Inhibitor on the same planet, and proceeding to kill it with AoE since nothing seems to want to directly target it? If so, would the same thing work for Vengeance Generators? I don't really need to kill the Vengeance Gen, but it may be useful for another game, and while I have 0 need to kill the Rocketry Corps, as I already have a very workable solution, it would mean I wouldn't have to hear the warhead explosion noise anymore, which would be nice. I'm assuming it's -possible- to kill, "invincible" ships, because I had the Zenith Trader come through once very heavily damaged, about 60% total remaining HP; I would imagine if one can get damaged, so can the others, somehow. Any other feedback or comments are more than welcome.

[Radiant Phoenix]

You seem to have done very little picketing or in-depth scouting in general. (Picketing is when you leave a scout at an enemy planet to get continuous intelligence updates)

[zoutzakje]

first off, let me start by saying congratulations for doing much better than I did on my first 7/7, especially since you have a lot of nasty options turned on. That being said, I believe you might have some major difficulties with the endgame due to your high AIP. Don't get me wrong, you can definitely still win. High AIP games are still possible, at least on 7/7 anyways. Tread carefully once you decide you're ready for the AI homeworlds. The botnet is immediately written off as all mk V ships are immune to reclamation. Different tactics are required depending on what kind of nasty core guard posts the homeworlds have. Might require some trial and error and possibly more than 1 save/reload. The biggest thing to watch out for when attacking the homeworlds, is that you don't put them on alert for too long. Homeworlds on alert for too long will cause massive ship reinforcements, especially with your AIP. I played myself stuck in my first 7/7 because of this. The second you decide to push through to the mk IV planets surrounding a homeworld (called core worlds, they always have 2 warp gates), you either need to find a way to push further and kill the homeworld as soon as possible or unlock warp jammer command stations and place one on the coreworld. This prevents the alert of all surrounding AI worlds, giving you more time to prepare. Your black widow golem is going to be a useful asset in this endeavor so don't lose it before then.
My first 7/7 game went nearly flawless (though I didn't have many scary options turned on) until I reached the point of the endgame. I captured a core world with a military command station, not realizing I was putting the homeworld on permanent alert. Meanwhile I send my entire fleet elsewhere to deal with some waves and a CPA. It wasn't long until huge loads of mk V ships started leaking out from the homeworld and waltzed over most of my worlds. I think they even reached my home command and killed it.

To bad you lost the fallen spire shard. The fallen spire storyline would have been absolutely perfect for the map type you're playing on.

Also, only spirecraft on medium can not be repaired. Golems on medium however can be repaired. They just cost a huge amount of energy and AIP to activate.

Also... I don't think reaching mk IV AIP threshold spawns more design back-ups/fabricators. All of these are seeded into the map the moment you start your game IIRC. Unless they made a change I'm unaware of but I doubt it.

for the neinzul rocketry corps and vengeance gens... you can easily check their immunites by hovering over them with your mouse. They should all have aoe immunity. I'm also not entirely sure how the trader got damaged as I believe it shouldn't be able to take damage, but it's been ages since I played a proper game.

General piece of advice for defending more than one hostile wormhole: Don't know if you already know this but...You have nearly full control over where you want regular enemy waves to come from. All you need to do is go around to enemy worlds bordering your own planets and kill everything that counts as a warp gate (don't bother with structures listed as reinforce only, they don't count). I believe it's warp gates, warp gate guardians (if they appear on 7/7) and any type of AI eyes (sentry, raid, trans, etc). Kill them all, but leave them alive on just 1 bordering AI planet. That's where all the waves will come from. Build massive meatgrinders there and it should be able to stop almost any wave on 7/7. Make sure that you don't kill every single warp gate, but leave 1 alive. If you kill them all it will be even worse because then even the wave warnings won't show where it's coming from. This kind of wave control can help immensely. CPA's, exo's and counter attacks are not affected by this of course and could still come from almost anywhere.

Some of my info might be a bit outdated but I hope I've still been of some help. good luck =)

[CheshireGray]

The Botnet has been immensely helpful to me, since I've been encountering constant waves of at minimum 20,000 ships for quite a while. Every time the Botnet fires that's 50 ships converted, which messes up AI targeting and is about as good as if it had killed 100 ships, since as the battle goes on the relative strength of each side shifts as I attain a larger and larger zombie fleet. I'm sure it'll reach the end of it's usefulness, but I doubt I would have made it this far without it. I'll definitely remember to use Jammer Stations when assaulting the Homeworlds, (Which I'm assuming are the green and yellow X's far from where I am, past Celau.) thank you for the information

I must've misread about the Golems then, when going through the options list; my mistake. I try to avoid ever playing anything on Easy though, with any game, so Spirecraft pretty much had to be on Hard; the Shield Bearers already annoy me to death with their inability to be repaired, I would not have been happy if they all shared that trait. As far as the Corps and Vengeance Generator go, I've gone ahead and checked, and neither the Vengeance Generator nor the Rocketry Corps are immune to AoE damage. They've got 2 million HP, 2 million armor, and nothing seems to want to want to target them, but despite being nuke immune they don't appear to have other AoE immunity, as I've seen on certain ships.

I wasn't aware of the ability to pick which wormhole assaults came from. I just cleared out the surrounding bases to generate a neutral zone, seeing as otherwise I'd end up with very large garrisons of threat waiting, and instead of a few waves, (Around 10-15k at the time.) I'd get one giant superwave of 35-50k before I was honestly ready for that, [And Kahuna's defense guide has been non-useful, probably due to the scale of the waves I'm fighting. Either I end up with several thousand ships getting dumped out of a Carrier and swarming all over, in what doesn't even vaguely resemble a straight line, (Or worse, Teleporters before I had Logistical Mk III unlocked.) or I'm left with 40-50 Carriers walking through Minefields and ignoring Tractor Beams.] Now I just leave Scouts on adjoining worlds or those with an active warpgate I'm either looking to attack, or seriously worried about. I honestly hate Scouts, though; it might just be the amount of Tachyon emission the enemy has at their disposal, but I'll sometimes throw 10 Scouts at a base, and have all of them die immediately, or soon after, even if the Tachyon Sentinels are dead. I've had much greater success with just sending 20 or 30 Mk II Science Labs into a hostile enemy planet, and manually checking them as needed, (I picket! With Science! Although in reality, perhaps I should be using Hackers, since they're faster, have more HP, more armor, and are immune to things like Nukes and EMPs.) They're more durable, and I can have as many as I want without needing to buy more ranks of something I hate using. I'll definitely have to try out leaving one adjoining planet active, though.

According to the Hacking and Design Backup pages on the wiki, the AI has Backup Servers for all ships it's current Tech Level allows access to, with more spawning as it reaches new thresholds. I had inferred that the same would be true of Fabricators, in regards to ships it didn't have access to yet. Perhaps the wiki is outdated on that aspect, (As it has been on many, many other topics.) but I have yet to see a Backup Server for a ship type the AI hasn't at some point attacked me with, despite deep scouting with Science Labs, and there are definitely ships seeded in the game that it can't yet access. Perhaps an Arcen response would be best, to see if that behavior is still the case.

Thank you both for the feedback so far

[zoutzakje]

hmm well maybe design backups do appear with higher AIP threshold, I'm not sure anymore. design backups are still a fairly new concept in my mind. Fabricators definitely do not spawn with higher thresholds.

the botnet is absolutely epic. I've always enjoyed creating zombie armies so large that they lag my laptop whenever I try to zoom in on my worlds. I only ever play with it on medium since I believe that to be a fair price for using such a powerful weapon. I try to be careful not to depend on it to much though. Higher difficulties and certain AI types have to many ships that are immune to reclamation.
Homeworlds should be easily recognizable. Not only do they have the largest planet icon on the galaxy map, they also have a bunch of unique structures that can not be found anywhere else + they're the only worlds with only mk V ships. Coreworlds have a combination of mk IV and V.

cool that the neinzul rocketry and V-gens don't appear to be immune to aoe... still that would be an awful lot of warheads/martyrs to waste on them

the amount of ships you are getting against you surprise me a bit, even for that AIP. I assume you play on high caps?

scouting can be a bit tricky to get the hang of initially. but I can guarantee you that in 99% of all cases it's better to use scouts than to use science labs. Sure they die fast, but the ability to leave a single scout behind on an enemy planet can provide a good amount of constant info (threat/reinforcement build-up, special forces movement, exo movement, CPA movement, etc). Also, mk II scouts + mk I and mk II scout starships can scout incredibly far together if you group move them for relatively little knowledge cost.
Granted, ships and structures with tachyon are a pain in the ass. But as long as you can get a scout at edge of planet and keep it alive for a few seconds, it will cloak again and nothing will ever come near it. The only threats to your scouts are structures with planetary tachyon and counter spies, which generally don't show up that often.
I always play with extra fog of war and the option "show unexplored wormholes" off. For me personally this makes scouting actually a very interesting part of the game experience. Always wondering what's through that next wormhole and what other planets it's linked to. Nukes and EMP's really don't happen often enough to even consider. Well, maybe they do with the astro trains I believe you're playing with. I don't play with astro trains enough to be able to judge that.

Looking forward to see how the rest of your game turns out =)

[CheshireGray]

Enemy EMPs are a real risk in my game, not just from those accursed trains, but largely due to the combination of Rocketry Corps, Roaming Enclaves, and the Dyson Sphere. The roaming Dyson Gatlings and the Neutral and Friendly Enclaves that keep spawning in the middle of nowhere put large chunks of the map spontaneously on alert, causing any Rocketry Corps in the vicinity to immediately start pumping out warheads, with at least 1 getting built and firing off before going inactive again. 1 in 15 is an EMP, and they seem to be going off any time they encounter any of my forces, including zombies. The problem is exacerbated by frequent EMP Guardians who pulse every so often. By the time I've gotten a planet or two deeper than I've sent a fleet to, I've lost most of my scouts due to Tachyon Sentinels uncloaking half of the cloaked ships that pass by them, and they're immediately destroyed due to their piddly health. Science Labs usually survive to the edge of the map, and one can be left there just as a Scout would be. I still get notifications about alert-level events like warheads from them, and I can zoom in and check out the situation manually; all I miss out on are cloaked ship counts. Give it a try sometime, if you've got the energy to spare, (As stated, I'll probably switch to Hackers.)

As a side note, yes, I'm playing on high caps which I feel actually makes defensive setups harder, due to the fact that certain things such as the SuperFortress, (Among others.) don't get a cap increase. I'll have a new update on progress up tonight.

[zoutzakje]

yeah I only ever play on low caps myself. Somehow I feel I just have more control over all of it this way.
and hmm I've yet to have an EMP intensive game. There used to be a bug in the game for a very long time that caused EMP guardians not to spawn anymore, at all. haven't played a game from start to end since then so we'll see. I've only played with rocketry corps once or twice, but that was on a realistic map so they were easier to avoid. maybe I'll try scouting with science labs someday, but it's probably not meant to be for me personally.
I do remember fighting the EMP guardians though... what a pain in the ass they were. I made it my mission to check reinforcements on enemy worlds every few mins and take them out with a small strike force. Back then EMP guardians would only go off whenever they entered a wormhole so I made sure they never did. Of course zombies and dysons would make that a little difficult sometimes.