Im in a game starting with etty. I got quite behind some other empires because i early got me a Slith planet for troops with two other empires having it as priority as well. So i had to spend quite some resources defending that.
Roleplaying i didnt go for my usual organic stealth bomber fleet but first for robotics and then for asteroids.
Early after acquiring that planet i got some good use of the stockpile. The southern Abaddoni neighbor sneaked an outpost behind my defenses and build it successfully, cutting of the Slith planet from production.
My military was bound waiting on the Slith planet to defend against the next onslaught.
I used the stockpile to produce comsats and building shipyard/drydock to repair the fleet.
For those (and especially the comsats) it didnt matter so much that the ratio was "only" 0.4 - i really needed those.
If the ratio had been 0.2 maybe I would have retreated my fleet instead of rushing shipyard/drydock.
In turn 174 im now second best. Northern neighbor is leading - very strong, big fleet (Self-gravitating with plasma guns and fighters - but on mass driver level), else good tech/research and good production.
Has detection 50 which is bit too much for my stealth ATM.
Luckily not very aggressive. Found me some ancient ruins with Misiorla and a Laenfa planet.
So Im sure I will rule the planetary stealth game and also come around soon.
Around turn 180 I captured one computronium moon inside my neighbors territory (luckily were trith on the planet so my stealth is like 60 there). My biggest fleet basically got stranded there with one of my neighbors forces between the fleet and my empire. I build on that planet using the imperial stockpile: some comsats (which are now mostly useless around t190), shipyard, drydock and finally a resonant moon to "upgrade" some of my ships there.
For the resonant moon i had use of my 70PP extraction limit.
Meanwhile I started slowly eating away the third best empire, which is now about to collapse soon.
My research is now way better than the northern neighbor and Im almost catching up on production.
Also with new ship stealth tech the production for disruptor ships started (stealth bombers for interrupting supply lines). Also new planetary stealth tech is about to arrive, making my planets untouchable for the northerner.
This empire was not distributed because the neighbors were too close and stealth tech too late. At the borders there was some use of the stockpile like in the two described situations.
So probably will play until I kill the northern main force and then the game is won...
edit:
...which took longer than anticipated. Luckily the AI sent one main fleet on a death mission to my stronghold, opening up the way to its computronium moon. Else it would have taken even longer.
In turn 220 Im finally clearly in the lead. In production is nice, you can see its production going down when I started disrupting the supply lines. And it went up again when it researched the next detection level and killed off my disruptors. Then with my next stealth level, there is again disruption and production going down
If the AI researches omni scanner I will need to rebuild my main fleet a bit but not much.
In the end game i sometimes rushed production when i couldnt decide which project should be delayed.
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Look, ma... four combat bouts!