I started up the game with the sole plan of playing an easy one and getting a quick win, just to finally knock off the achievement for actually finishing a game (which, despite owning it for four years, I have not yet done, mainly due to a very short attention span).
I started off, found myself in a corner of the galaxy which I should be able to quickly annex before the (easy) AIs start to take notice of me. A few planets into my planned annex, however, I stumble across a co-processor. Not wanting to boost the AI progress up that quickly, I decide to simply neuter it, skip it, and take it later on once I've found the other three co-processors. No biggie.
I proceed to thrash the AIs out of that quadrant, taking a couple of advanced manufactories while doing so. Sweet. Time to scout the rest of the galaxy!
And here's where I slipped up. I sent out scouts as far as I could, but then, not wanting to waste the knowledge to unlock Mk 2 scouts (and thus get more), I decided to scout the galaxy using my main fleet. After all, I can blow through anything short of a Class IV planet, and I'm only doing this to look around. As long as I stick to just clearing out tachyon guard posts so my scouts can get through, and avoid attacking anything provocative, no harm, right?
Wrong.
I delved deep into the AI-controlled galaxy, cutting a bloody (well, rusty) swathe through the tachyon guard posts in my path, leaving the route open for my scouts to fan out behind me later. I found two of the remaining three co-processors - excellent, that's my main objective here, let's just poke my head through a couple more wormholes...
The AI is gathering threat due to your deep strike on NobodyCaresVille.Huh. Oh well. I'm not going to be here long, and it's never going to gather a huge amount of threat this early in the game.
A few minutes pass as I carve up another couple of scouting paths. Threat builds to 20, then 30. I figure that's enough, and just nudge through one more wormhole before I plan to scrap my fleet...
It's a Class IV planet. Aha. I guess one of the homeworlds is next door somewhere, that's int...
Core Raid Engine Guard Post: 22 Class V ships to [unknown] in 4 minutes....ah crap. Well, time to abort. I scrap the tattered remnants of my fleet (down to about half a dozen ships at this point). I'm sure that'll stop any problems at all from ever occurring ever.
About ten minutes pass.
Wait, what's that large number of AI ships marching their way through my now-scouted territories and towards my front door? I mean, I can handle a few dozen ships, which is all this looks like, but...
Mk V ships.
Including three Mk V starships. Which are immune to tractor beams and therefore pretty much immune to my carefully-constructed turret-based defences around my homeworld.
They tear through my defensive line like it was wet tissue paper. For a moment I thought I'd earned a reprieve, as I manage to churn out a dozen Mk V sniper ships from my captured factories. They take out two of the starships, but the last one is a plasma sieger, and I see it go down onto 3% health just as its final shot connects squarely with my home command base, whose forcefield has long since been destroyed.
There is an explosion, a musical shift, and then the mocking voice of the AI.
Player A not responding: Abort, Retry, Fail?Fail. Definitely, definitely fail.
Lesson learned: do your scouting with scouts. You muppet.