Fight Dirty?

[Pooka]

Okay, so I'm in a PBW game with some local friends. Sure enough, the two people in the game who get along the least well got shoved right next to each other in a corner. That being me and this other guy. (We'll call him Hippo to protect identities here and 'cause I'll need a name for him.)

So, Hippo's got like a dozen systems and 30+ planets. I've got 3 systems (boxed between a black hole with the #1 player's home system on the other side of it and Hippo's empire.) with perhaps 18 planets. Most of those are brand new gas giants I'm working towards colonizing since getting the tech to do so about a game year ago.

Naturally he's able to utterly out-produce me, he's got the support of two other complete newbies who've fed him a lot of tech before I informed them how bad an idea that was.

So he's got Dreads, I've got... (don't laugh) cruisers but really I use Frigates and light carriers.

Looks like I'm hosed right? Well, there's more. Hippo, you see, is a complete newb. He's done such classic things as build space stations on battleship frames. Not a big deal, right? Well, except he didn't give them engines or supply storage so they're just dead weight.

Other ships have DU1s and DU5s on the same frame... it's a mess.

What's more, he doesn't group his ships into fleets, he just leaves them in a big stack. He's camping the warp point, as am I, but I'm doing so with intent to build Psychic academies and such and build up a fleet of small, high-potency ships to work him over with.

Meanwhile I find his newest, biggest ships and hit them with intel projects. (I'm pretty sure he has intel tech, but can't find the intel button, etc.) So every 3 turns or so I get a new battleship or dreadnaught or space station. I then run his ships in suicide attacks at his colonies 'cause he has no mid-system defense. I've taken to grabbing the occasional mine layer to boot so I can lay mines in his back quarters and make life hell on him.

The problem is, I see dreads and I'm getting nervous. I know he's got minefields to boot. It'll be very hard for me to extract him from his position.

If you guys would be so kind as to help me put a newbie in his proper place and teach me not just to fight off this obviously superior foe, but to fight DIRTY so I can possibly win enough to build an industrial base, I would really appreciate it.

The Last thing I need is this guy gloating for eons and eons.