It seems like inactive gates often have ship graveyards. Guess during the Collapse that was where they got stranded and... Oh.
The automated fleet in my combat-only pariah run took some tuning. Eventually I caved and bought Expanded Mags and Accelerated Shields off a black market. These key upgrades and some careful tactics mitigated gamma core fearlessness to the point where the frigate wolfpack could reliably chew up pirate invasion fleets.
penultimate battle over Umbra, Asconia
That finally set up the next phase. Crew recovered from pirate wreckage let me barely run one of their Colossus Mk.IIIs. A bar mission in Nortia recruited 49 elite marines. Some heavy armaments and full fuel and supplies gave those marines barely enough support to invade and capture Umbra.
I lucked into two major quest locations before and got some industry items. Waystation with an alpha core was finished ~2 years after starting, immediately providing 910 crew.
Ruthless Sector + Nexerelin probably made it shorter than it would be in Vanilla. Optimizing fleet combat was a struggle but carried the run. It took some save scumming practice to figure out tactics and loadouts. No industry skills until one point in the end, when retreating for 25% hull and armor repairs before re-engaging became clutch.
The most tedious part was moving around cargo container stashes. Having to alternate between struggling against remnants for weapons and hulls and bulldozing pirates for crew and experience also made logistics harder. In the future I might relax the in-space refits only rule and get cargo ships with logistic hullmods. Could also look for a yellow beacon system near a pirate or pather base system.
The most interesting start I've had in a while.
