A quick start I made inspired by submarine and guerilla warfare.
As the name suggests, Stealth is the main focus. Diff 7 plus lots of extra modifications should hopefully make this fairly challenging.
Tooltip:
Spoiler for Hiden:
Bit of a grim scenario. You are on your own.
A heavy focus on stealth; both AIs are difficulty 7 Ghosts with enhanced Warden and Hunter Fleets plus a Scourge, and worst of all you never know where their waves will spawn.
You too can do plenty of sneaking around however, with a cloaked starting fleet. Webbed defenses and a standard support fleet can help you find those pesky stealth enemies.
Several other enemies lurk in the darkness; the Dark Spire, Macrophages and Marauders are all out there and wil attack anyone, but your main enemy will usually be the AIs.
Due to the sheer number of wormhole links on your home planet, setting up a fortified perimiter is probably not a good idea. Maybe buy some extra defenses from that Trader?
Somewhat worryingly, very few usable ship wrecks can be found in the galaxy. Though the AIs seem to have hoarded a lot of ship designs you can steal, so there's that.
For the best "cloak-and-dagger" experience, try to mainly get stealthy units and technology. But that is, of course, up to you.
Yes, a Botnet Golem spawning on a lightly defended planet two hops away might make things a bit easy... but I actually don't think botty will be
that useful against Ghost AIs. And keep in mind, it costs a total of 70 AIP to get that thing!
I will post details on my first playthrough here to show how it went for me.
I may make more versions and upload them here. If I figure out how to do it I'll add the Backdoor Combat Factory and co. to the starting support fleets.
Feedback is welcome and encouraged!