<t> I'm new and so I probably don't know what I'm doing, but I thought the rail gun niche was prewarp, where the rampant pirates seem to be extremely nervous about taking damage. When you are outmatched vs. pirates early in a prewarp game you can't kill them with railguns but you can sort of drive ...

Thanks Locarnus and Bingeling. I think I "get" what the game is doing here better after reading your answers.

I do love outlying colonies with low military power. Time to change that!

<t> I've played just a few games now on classical era small/small and I find my games tend to get into a certain slump. There always seems to be an early game period where I get into a scuffle with an aggro racist bug dude (or someone similar). He has only one or two colonies while I have ~six. We ...