Birth of the Federation

Was running a test game to see how all the recent changes work together, and a funny situation just made me laugh. I thought I should share it with whoever might be reading these boards.

I was playing the Romulans, starting from TL 1, Huge map. Romulus gets spawned right in the center of the galaxy. Hmm, it's a huge DQ, no way the Borg will be close by. So I send out some Scouts and Colony Ships. Terraformed a couple of systems (this slows down human players a bit - yeah, the AI cheats, for now!), colonized them, find the Antedeans and get an Affiliation treaty with them. I need more range to expand the Star Empire, so I build an Outpost in one of my colonies "up north", right on the doorstep of the DQ. A Colony Ship is dispatched to an interesting system right on the range limit, to terraform one of its planets so that I can then colonize it. Terraforming is in progress, almost done, when a Borg Probe speeds by my Scout patrolling the vicinity and opens up on the defenceless Colony Ship. The ship is destroyed, and the alarm is raised. I have a Science Ship in a neighbouring nebula collecting research, and the nearby colony with the Outpost. I noticed, during the battle, that the Probe has taken a beating somewhere, with only 30 Hull left, but the Shields fully regenerated... it'll probably still destroy my OP, negating me access to the 2 systems that I was going to colonize... that's a huge setback, adding to the loss of the Colony Ship and all the time it took to travel there. Oh well, at least I'll try to save the Science Ship, as the RPs are a huge boon to my research at this level. So I move it one sector away, losing a turn of free BioTech RPs. End Turn.
Where are the damn Borg?! They're gone. Impossible, my Scout should detect them. The Nebula! They must be there, my scanners cannot penetrate it. Wheeew, it was a smart move to get the Science Ship out of there. End Turn.
The Probe shows up at my colony, with Shields down! And only 30 Hull. Thank you gods of the universe! My pathetic Outpost I makes short work of the Borg Probe! ROTFLMAO!
Another Colony Ship is sent on its way to the system, to complete the terraforming. It's my 4th system, and the largest one so far without counting Romulus, I really want that system.

The Borg being so close is bad news. They will be back, just like the Terminator...
Bu tit was fun. Just thought I'd share this episode with you guys, and maybe inspire more gameplay reports?

42 turns in, 4 colonies, TL4 almost reached, upgrading PFs and building stuff, still no sign of the crash I was looking for - the index out of bounds one, reported twice. I've logged production output specifically for this, but no luck yet. Funny, wanting the game to crash

Heh. Yeah, that's pretty good, Iceman. Thanks for sharing!

Thanks Martok!

I will note here that the Borg are still very underdeveloped. Their Probes will explore the galaxy, and kill everything in their path (or not, as seen above - need to make them smarter), they will build more ships, but not much else.

They will automatically be at war with any major civ upon first contact, but not with minor races. In the future they might DoW advanced minors.
For now, they need to DoW in order to assault a minor race's system, but I'll change that in the future. They can Assimilate their system without DoW though, as long as there aren't any active orbital batteries - and if they have enough drones to overcome the garrison.