Ok, update on my campaign. I've now taken Bangnow and liberated Mirisia.
Bangnow was quite a struggle, although not exactly the way I expected.I kind of sent an experimental invasion force of most of my stronger ships in to see what would happen, and then committed when I released it was holding it's own. The attack proceeded pretty smooth, didn't lose much of my force at all. However, it did rile the AI quite seriously, to the point of a 1,475 strong Neinzul Youngling Tiger reprisal at Zimb, which was quite a shock and partially spilled over into my homeworld before I defeated it. As you can imagine, I had to scramble to defend against this, withdrawing from Bangnow in the process, and then I got distracted doing other things, which allowed the AI to rebuild on Bangnow, including reinforcement of 6 Hybrid Hives. Got re-organised and launched a 2nd attack, and finally cleared out Bangnow. Established a beachhead on Mirisia, and things went pretty smoothly (just waiting to see what kind of a reprisal I get).
Also finally got around to scouting the rest of the AI planets. Looking at Hybrid facilities, most of them are concentrated on 2 branches, the smaller the south west and the bigger one on the south east branch (which is where the other command AI is). Got a scouting network set up so I can check on hybrid activity via the galaxy map work, so hopefully that'll help til I start killing hybrid facility, so all in all I think I'm on top of the hybrid situation for now
Trying now to plan ahead. After taking Mirisia my AIP is to about 181. I assume this is probably the time when I need to start being selective ? I've read the wiki plus a few forum topics on the subject of AIP, but I'm still a bit confused - is this ok at this stage and what sort of AIP is going to be reasonable to deal with in terms of the endgame ?
As far as plans so far go, I'm thinking of deep striking Neimurder and Kudusama to get rid of one of lot of hybrid facilities, as well as Shloape, (I enabled Dyson sphere too, among other things, and it spawned there). Haven't got to much further with plans(I'd like to get rid of the other, bigger lot of hybrid facilities, but that's where one of the AI command stations is, so may not happen til the near the end, should I get that far) . Would like advice on what ship fabricators to go for on the galaxy (see screenshot).
Thanks for the tip on Lightning warheads, that might come in handy (I've noticed a second planet with a large concentration of Riot control starships - in fact this is probably a bigger threat (Sekqui has 17, Juakishlo 46), so both of those are probably priority raid targets.