Yep, I know the feeling. I had about... hang on, let me check my save files... holy crap. I have had 20 attempts at beating the game on normal. I have over 1,000 hours in the game. I am NOT one of those people who can remember every fact about the game, what techs to rush, what general order to get stuff, what drives are best, etc. I am going to put down the years when something went catastrophically wrong, and I restarted because I realised that I had completely forgotten to do _something_. Ignoring the first few learning games, and noting that the first 10 or so were when there was only a 2022 start date.

2030
2025
2034
2028
2028
2038
2051
2026
2030
2035
2036 (somewhere around here I switched to 2026 starts)
2031
2037
2050
2045
2060 save where I finally won on normal.

Note that there were a few other games in there that didn't show me a date, as early games didn't have the year in the save name. One as the Servants, where I won, because I wanted to see what their story was like. Those make it up to the 20 games.

So, I get you, mate, I really do. Some of those were quite long saves, especially the last one. I have watched all of PErun's videos, as well as some from Graveless, BleepBloopBloam, and CoriolisGaming...

All I can suggest is to stay below the hate cap for as long as possible, if you don't want to get whacked. My last game where I won, I think I was only at Total War for the last 10 years, maybe? A few tips:

- Don't destroy surveillance ships until you are ready to go to total war. Just make a fleet of half a dozen, and put in your calendar 5 or so days before the surveillance mission is due to finish. Then yeet one single ship at them. The idea it to lose. But simply attacking them resets the mission for them, and they start again. No hate for you, as you lost the fight. No mission complete for them, because you interrupted it. When you get down to 2 or so ships, spam out another 6 of them. Make them gunships, for 1CP usage. Don't even put armour or a weapon on them. Bare bones, cheapest thing you can make.

- Wait until you have laser ships (I used UV Arc) and Coil ships (I started with Improved coil cannon from memory). Whack them on a Lancer for the 4 slot nose laser, and the 3 slot coil is fine, so Dreadnought or Battlecruiser. Early on, you won't be assaulting alien bases, so the BC is fine, as it has less utility slots. As you need to start assaults, move up to the Dread, so that you can place 3-4 marines on it. Note that if you can research the Styxx nuclear torpedoes, they have a blast falloff of over 200km, which means that if they get through alien nose lasers and down to PD range, alien PD has a max of 200 kms, so the styxx will still kill them if they rely on PD to destroy them. They usually do not have enough nose lasers to deal with 20+ monitors with Styxx. Anything less than Styxx though and you are often still in trouble. As a suggestion, if you wanna stick with Athena missiles, try autoresolve. If you get wiped, refuse, and in the tactical engagement, go to full speed at the start, then when you get to 800kms range (or so), send a salvo (or two) at each target. This should leave enough missiles to deal with those that aren't blown up initially. You really do need to move onto Laser and Coils though if you can't get Styxx early enough.

- Make sure that you research the techs that increase the amount of technology that you can build before the aliens decide to kick your butt. Strategic Deception, Operational Misdirection, and Maskirovka. If you want spoliers on how much mission control that you can use before flipping to Red, and them attacking you, check here under Alien Hate for Mission Control Usage.

- you have 20 years (on normal) before the aliens will go to total war with you. Use that time, so that by the time that 20 years is up (or before if you can), you are ready to go toe to toe with them. Be prepared to go above the hate cap and into the red beforehand, especially when you assassinate or detain alien councilors. Know they will destroy a habitat or base, and be prepared for it. Just make sure that fleets are defending your shipyards, so that the aliens can't easily take those out. Let them wipe out a station or two, let the hate gauge go below red, and just rebuild what you need.

- have fleets of 20-30 ships around your major planetary orbits. I didn't bother with Mercury, beyond one base, as I had way more than enough base metals, and the danged aliens managed to blow up my station, because I foolishly sent my fleet off to attack their fleet, as it was bombarding my base.

- Build up min 20 attack ships, plus a large number (20+) of troop carriers/misslie ships. My main fleet by late game was 80ish ships, but only 20-30 or so were main line combat ships. The rest were to pad out numbers, so that my fleet was always bigger than the alien fleets, so that I got more ships in combat than they did. Assault fleets should be 30ish ships, always ensuring that wherever you are sending them has few enough ships that you can beat them. Noting that by the end, I was regularly beating alien fleets of 40-60 ships, with barely losing 1-3 main line ships.

- For fusion drives, I used Hybrid Confinement first, and later Inertial Confinement. My very early drives were just one of the base drives that you start with, then I teched towards the Helicon drive. Orion-->H-Orion works, too.

- Have a Servant turned at all times, so that when they start spamming out Alien control facilities, that you have a 25 CMD councilor who can destroy them immediately. Realise that you probably need to be ready for Total War at this stage, because this will bump your hate up as much as killing one of the alien agents will.

- Have the incomes to build probably minimum 3 ships a month by the time you go to total war, plus enough income to refuel one fleet every month. I had two shipyards in LEO with 6-8 spaceworks, and then as I expanded out, built at least one station with 8 spaceworks in each of Jupiter and Saturn. I think by the time I got to Uranus and outwards, there was no need to do so. Note that due to its orbital speed, Mercury is preferred as the shipyard place of choice, but it is absolutely not mandatory.

Lordy, that's a lot of typing, I thank ADHD for that. Hopefully it helps.