A tale in three screenshots.
Yes, chase that champion ... ignore the martyrs floating just off the port bow.
Couple of questions on this actually. Firstly, is it intentional that the martyrs only damage AI carriers if the auto-target carriers logic is turned on? Makes some sense I suppose, if you want to avoid blowing someones computer with 20,000 suddenly spawned ships. Which leads me to my second question. Did I actually kill all these special forces? There only ever seemed to be 2,000 or so ships on the planet no matter how many carriers I exploded, were the rest culled / magically teleported somewhere else without taking any damage?
EDIT: May have answered this myself:
"Doing special carrier deployment logic for carrier 1198548 (AICarrierII); Game Time: 13:34:16
On planet Hargioaos
pouring these internal contents into chipper shredder:
84 SpacePlaneII @ 2.23 each, so total for line = 187.52
77 MLRSII @ 5.05 each, so total for line = 388.99
43 TackleDroneLauncherII @ 72 each, so total for line = 3096
108 MissileShipII @ 4 each, so total for line = 432
22 SpaceTankII @ 4 each, so total for line = 88
452 FighterII @ 4 each, so total for line = 1808
76 BomberII @ 4 each, so total for line = 304
44 ZenithElectricBomberII @ 20.21 each, so total for line = 889.26
50 ZenithBeamFrigateII @ 8 each, so total for line = 400
27 TeleportBattleStationII @ 16 each, so total for line = 432
2 MicroParasite @ 9.79 each, so total for line = 19.59
1 SpeedBooster @ 5.88 each, so total for line = 5.88
14 ZenithMirrorII @ 4 each, so total for line = 56
Grand total: 1000 ships, 8107.24 strength
Due to current AI-ally count on planet being 1782 max ships for this spawn = 150
Since carrier contains 1000 units, need to combine them
Simple mark-upgrading combination resulted in 395 units with 63.12 leftover strength, so need to trim more; multiplying mark-upgraded counts by 0.25 and converting the strength into mkV combat guardians
carrier spawn settled, actually spawning:
8 CoreAstroPlane @ 5.58 each, so total for line = 44.65
7 CoreMLRS @ 12.63 each, so total for line = 88.41
4 CoreTackleDroneLauncher @ 180 each, so total for line = 720
10 CoreBattleCruiser @ 10 each, so total for line = 100
2 CoreSpaceTank @ 10 each, so total for line = 20
45 CoreFighter @ 10 each, so total for line = 450
7 CoreBomber @ 10 each, so total for line = 70
4 CoreZenithElectricBomber @ 50.53 each, so total for line = 202.1
4 CoreZenithBeamFrigate @ 20 each, so total for line = 80
2 CoreTeleportBattleStation @ 40 each, so total for line = 80
1 CoreZenithMirror @ 10 each, so total for line = 10
10 AIGuardianSpiderV @ 480 each, so total for line = 4800
4 AIGuardianFlakV @ 480 each, so total for line = 1920
Grand total: 108 ships, 8585.16 strength "
Repeat about 30 times. Uh, did I just spawn myself a threatball full of max level guardians?