See, everyone was attacking me for, uh... existing, mostly. Everyone. Five civs, plus the Dread Lords, spawned by a random event. Dread Lords are GalCiv's eldritch precursor horrors. Their Constructors - the spaceship equivalent of a crane of bulldozer, used to make starbases, unarmed, unarmoured and with 1 HP in general - can take on corvettes and break even. Even my ridiculous capital ships were no match for them.
In short, imagine a reasonably powerful nation being attacked by all of Europe, China, the US and Cthulhu at once. You now have some idea of how far I was from a point where ships could save me. Instead, I used the ships to clear paths and act as escorts. You see, every enemy civ had their planets clustered fairly close together.
Below are a series of screenshots that showcase the weapon I used: The Terror Star.
Harper, with only one planet and no asteroid fields to mine. The only planet, Harper I, is uninhabitable and utterly useless. Perfect for a demonstration. Observe.
Harper is gone. The entire Harper system - admittedly tiny - is destroyed. Harper I is reduced to a nice, mining ship-ready pile of asteroids. More useful than the planet will ever be. If there were any ships or starbases around when Harper went supernova, they would have also been instantly destroyed.
That, as they say, is no moon.
The best part?
) the whole time the other team is just like...what the hell are they talking about 0_o