Overconfidence, followed by a ragequit.
I've recently downloaded the most recent build of this game after a long absence (last time I played, it was still called Starfarer). Boy, is it different, and boy is it good. After a little while dinking around on normal mode, I switched to ironman to spice things up a bit as I felt reloading battles for that "perfect" result cheapened the whole experience a bit.
But man, ironman mode can be really rage-inducing. Like when you get spanked bad for the nth time in a playthrough and have to limp back to the Core with the sad remnants of your fleet, keeping well out of the way of any hostiles because your only surviving combat ship is an Omen with a Salamander launcher and two point defense lasers.
I know it's my own fault, too. Like the time I thought I could probably keep my carriers safe while whittling down the masses of pirate junkships (I couldn't), or when I decided three falcons with support was probably sufficient to go up against a Redacted Mordor (it wasn't).
Either way, great game, I'm having a blast. Now, if I jcould ust learn to be more careful, maybe I won't have to revert to delivery missions to rebuild my fleet every other month. To borrow a phrase from another great game:
Remind yourself that overconfidence is a slow and insidious killer.
