u/Feeling_Row_8681

I've played Vanilla for at least 1k hours and have the fundamentals down pretty well. Recently decided to try out some mods. I'm running all of AoTD, RAT, Nexerelin, Secrets of the Frontier, and Second in Command. I've built my fleet up pretty well and had about 1mil after messing around for a bit. Decided to start a colony and check out the tutorial mission for ground battles. Started my colony, sent a cryosleeper over to the system, and realized I had absolutely no clue how I was going to go about building it(Tundra with decent ore, farmland, organics and vast ruins with other good worlds in system and adjacent). Went to go see what ground battles were like at the tutorial mission and showed up without marines or heavy weapons like an idiot. Proceeded to lose the tutorial mission. Figured I'd see if anyone could help me understand the basics for both since I clearly can't defend my colony properly if I don't know how to build it, let alone go on the offensive if I don't understand ground engagements. Any advice would be appreciated. Thank you.

The most bonus exp I've got since I started playing the game was a little over 680%, I sat outside my system in low power waiting for a pirate raid and managed to get like ten of the twelve fleets to engage me at the same time. The bar that shows you what you would be fighting was entirely broken. The fight went on for well over ten minutes and was completely chaotic. I couldn't stop enemies from retreating. I had a Paragon, a Legion, and the MK1 alongside three Omens. The Legion and two of my Omens went down. So many enemy ships managed to retreat that they forced a second battle after I cleared the first wave. I had to limp through the second fight with severely reduced combat readiness and I think the only thing that saved me was elite combat endurance.

I'm curious to hear about the hardest fights the community has taken on while managing to come out on top