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A small showcase of The Expansion Mod and The DWUR Mod.

I Picked Lipid because I can't remember when I played them last. No other reason. Settings are:
700 size, 8x8, very hard, unstable, occasional colony, rare independent, good system, normal corruption, no Shakturi, no tech trade, very many strong pirates.

I didn't want to subject myself to an extreme game. Playstyle and choices are too rigid. Very hard won't give me a headache. Shakturi is also too predictable so they're out. I substituted with pirate hell.

Being a moon is always good.

A pirate has been hassling me but there's not much I can do early on. I buy them off until they leave, rinse then repeat. They sold me info on a Paratis Empire. Their spying bonus is too good and my chance to steal a territory map is too low (38%). So I'll have to find them the hard way.

Just an overview of where I'm at. I like rings because of a feeling of front lines. And More density.

Ok so something weird happened. The Paratis are gone. I didn't see a notification if they were destroyed. Idk what happened. Pirates could have done it.

Now I'm sure they were destroyed. That was fast. The Tirra system on the right was their homeworld (Tirra Collective). More evidence is the Independent on my left, and the sub warp wreck in Tirra. Maybe something else happened idk.

Doing a little pirate hunting. Money is tight. I only have ten military ships, and I'm being harassed by multiple pirates. I can't afford to pay them all, but luckily my mines are holding on with heavy rails. I have to weaken them at every opportunity.

Paid to see more empires, and more pirates decided to visit. I can't pay since I'm -10k, and I'm trying to keep taxes low (14% for +1 happy bonus) to fuel pop growth. If I can get to max pop on the homeworld fast most of my problems are solved. The pirates are bad. All I do is rebuild in the three systems by me that I have mines. I just have to hang on.

One pirate took the independent over which was unfortunate because I could have colonized it (friendly pop), whenever I researched colonization (taking forever). Now I have to conquer, and with money scarce it's a problem. I'm up to about 17B pop, and I might increase taxation to invade and get rid of them.

Paid to see more Empires. I only did 9 or 10 since I don't want to play forever. Brown pirate is a royal pain. Besides mine raids now it's sabotage as well. Swell.

So I finally stole a territory map. The Teekan have two colonies which is troubling unless they found a colonizer. Teekans are dumb and if they're out teching me already I'm unhappy. I also found a brown pirate base to the south. I can't leave them be so it's maximum effort to eliminate.

Taking this was a priority. Understatement. Without that colony money, brown pirate will hopefully stop sending 10-15 ship fleets at me. Of course there could be another. Now I will be after the pirate bases in the area as soon as the new colony is somewhat defended. Btw I set the hyperspeed at 2x in the startup.ini.

Taking the pirate planet and removing two small pirate spaceports in the area has given me a respite. For awhile I was going insane with two factions fighting me and each other without end, but it has finally abated. I've dropped the tax back down to refuel growth. Yes I'm at -45k, but I have a surplus of 350k due to mine upgrades. I'll play it by ear. I have an ok navy of 30 escorts and 5 destroyers (escorts on auto), and one good derelict that has saved my behind more than once. Compared to the other known Empires, I am behind on tech. Not horribly, but it's an issue. The streamlining of Ai research makes them dangerous. I have bugs to the distant south, they're the alpha, and I need to prepare sooner than later.

I have five colonies now with transports shifting migrants on repeat. Homeworld close to max pop. I feel more secure. Pirate attack warnings don't give me a heart attack like before. Someone, though, has a super spy I can't catch and he is beyond annoying wrecking stuff. My tech level is inferior across the board, but I'm gaining ground thanks to a high Paratis population giving me their bonus. Only pirates are nearby which is a shame.

One thing I do when I have passenger ships on repeat is to rename them so they don't get lost if things change. In this example I have the R first just for sorting purposes then the planet origin name then the planet destination name. Yes you may laugh at my lack of planet naming originality.

Things slowed way down for about 10-15 years which gave me time to build up. Suddenly idk what happened but the pirates are back in force. This time I'm ready, but it's still annoying. A few things I did wrong at startup: Not enough empires, not enough independents, too many strong pirates. I'm never satisfied though. I researched Bakuras shipyard, but I'm still behind in research (smaller gap now) thanks to a good spy. I'm using the Lipid Ai weapon choices (Ion, area, rail) just because, and I put my constructors on auto. I manually got what I needed so I'll just let them go. I want to concentrate on other things. The pic is a local map nothing special going on.

I spent a few hours doing nothing really. The first thing that happened when I loaded in today was a Tsunami on my homeworld. 10B pop gone. So I resigned myself to defend until I rebuilt. This game is pirate hell. Ai Empires are having problem coping with the insane amounts of raiding. I gathered a 25 ship fleet to start doing something, but it feels like I'm bailing water out of a ship with a cup. The pic shows some of my efforts and what's out there. The pirates on the right are different than the left, but I wanted to show what we're up against. He's bigger than every other Empire.

There's 25 pirate factions and I can only find one. I'm starting to dominate so I'm going to start pushing this along as fast I can. The pirate world to the south is my first target, but I'm waiting for fast hyperdrives.

Things are slow. The more I move south the more pirates I face. I destroy a space port, they build two more. Or I come up against what's in the pic and get obliterated. I haven't taken that pirate world yet hopefully tomorrow.