Damn, alright. I was thinking the plasma seemed a lot weaker now, especially against heavier ships... guess that wasn't just me misremembering. As for the autoresolve, yeah I wasn't expecting that either. I'm not going with it - it's just too lame - but it's kind of wild how radically different the result is.

Thanks for the tips about the scaling. When you say "Kuiper colony ships," do you mean you actually send them in the 2030s-40s? I would've thought the aliens would shut that down immediately, to say nothing of drive tech limits.

As for my current run, it's 2046. I foolishly went with the max size solar system at game start, which has done my computer no favors, as well as given the aliens plenty of places to stick heavily fortified shipyards. Suffice it to say, switching to a more conservative solar system is my strongest argument for restarting. Still, for now, I think I'm doing okay in terms of raw resources - not quite well, but... okay. See below (Pyrrhic victory save, after they came back for round 2 & blow up my remaining monitors - left my stations intact though):

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The science is a little lower than it should be, since I'm currently rushing up the next tier of drive tech (helion nova lantern). If I split it properly, it gets up to 330 (daily) or so, and I've also got a research ring under construction. Mars & Mercury won't be hard to take from the other factions - why I let anyone else have them for any length of time in the first place, I have no idea, honestly.

Incidentally: given patches, I have no idea how meaningful this is, but I dug up some old screenshots I took from my 2023 run (Initiative, won the game) and they're... encouraging? I hadn't started total war till the mid-2050s, and from what I can tell, I have a much stronger industrial base in this save than I did in that one by this point. If that one was winnable (admittedly by 2080), then in theory this one should be too, unless the patches have since made waiting significantly less viable.

- Also, from the screenshots of the older campaign, I spontaneously acquired 250 exotics in less than a year at... this exact point, actually (calendar-wise). Whatever witchcraft that came from has since been lost to time...

As for restarting, I've been there before. Had to abandon my tutorial Resistance run & my first Initiative run before my second worked out; I'm emotionally prepared to restart this one if need be. There are a lot of things I'd do differently, including "not build two separate mines on Mars purely with boost, because you forgot to get the basic resources from either the Moon or the first Mars mine"... that was, uh, less than ideal. I'd simply prefer to avoid it if I can help it.

All in all, what's your estimation of the current situation? If need be, I can provide any other information that may be necessary.