that is strange but do you recall an event in wich it says this *the waning civilazation has found a device that gives them an almost unlimited power*? if you have it causes every thing they have to become incredibly strong and i usually lose against them.

It was a glorius battle but the fact that I had absolutely no money coming in from trade when the war started did me in. My ships were heavy on defence and was plowing through most of the Drath and Arcaen forces with ease. I had a few capitol ships with a bunch of fighters designed to counter their attack and defences(for some reason the ai only used mass drivers). So that made it fairly easy. Was a about to deal the terrans a major blow when they pulled out 2 dreadnoughts and about 30 fighters, they learned to counter my attack. So for about an hour it was a Cat and mouse game. I would keep the bulk of my fleet in range of my starbases with loads of starship attack and defense modules (those help out more than I would have thought. The Terrans were just too strong. I had to set my tax rate to over 80% to keep out of the red.

I wish I could have saved the videos of the final battles above the home planet.I had pulled every last ship back when all was lost. I kept some of my faster fighters and Falcon class Fighters on as raiding parties taking out any Transports. My raptor class fighters (tiny hulls 5/4/0att 0/0/20def) were legendary in their defence of homeworld. But in the end it was a crushing defeat.
It was a hell of a lot of fun though. My Medium class fleets with fighter escorts were blowing through everyone that I thought I might of actually had a chance. Figuring their defenses and attacks early in the game really does pay off in the initial stages of a war.

I still am perplexed as to how it happened, everything was going fine than I click on empty space and the research graph had shown me no longer on top and the terrans dark blue line was at the top and all the rest were in this little line hovering just above the bottom. It was not a gradual climb either, Checked the Influence, same thing. I had almost made allies with the Yor but the Terrans had conquered them in short order.

It was a hell of a lot of fun though. My tiny Destroyer and Cruiser class fleets with fighter escorts were blowing through everyone that I thought I might of actually had a chance. I am keeping the save game to see if there is another way out of this.

I know a lot of people play on Higher levels and all but just starting out I can not put myself through that yet.