Small maps are "cheating" from now on for me.
Either small maps or starting with more than one home planet. That's how I got my Godlike: 10 planet map, 8 of which
I started with.
If you want to get even cheesier than that, go into the game settings and Edit Players and invite in a friend (or three). You yourself count as "8" players, then they show up and get the "joined the game, single core command station" but start with
8 random special units. Each.
I would wager that if you did that and got 8 people into the game you could rotf-stomp two level 10 AIs on 60+ planet maps. It would not happen quickly though. If you try and fleet that many units the game WILL lag. In a game I'm playing with one friend (we each started with 4 homes and are fighting two AI 8s) we get a HUGE lagspike when the AI assaults this one planet because my Lightning Turrets blow up some 2000 ships at once and the host computer has to dedicate all possible CPU towards deleting those units (and other such processes from dead units). Takes a good minute or so.
The raid starship is a relatively low hp starship that is super duper fast (fastest thing in the game by far) and bypasses anything that stops regular ships including shields, mines, tractor beams, black hole generators, etc.
Raiders (IIRC) are faster. 148 speed. Yes, they're stupidly fast.
Bullets don't even more that fast (except that if a ship is traveling faster than the bullet, then the bullet's speed is [target's speed] +2*).
*They're thinking about raising it to [target's speed]+5, because Raid Starships are unkillable when the AI uses them against you. It shows up, nukes a building or two, and heads to your next planet before any of the shots you fired hit it.
This is why Gravitational Turrets are so good (aww...what's that? Your speed is 2? Poor baby).