My most epic game ever coudl've cost me my capital really fast.
I was playing against a hard, aggresive TEC, and i was also TEC. I had been building up my fleet, focusing on Sova carriers and Kol, and upgrading them by jumping them into the pirate base (the pirate attack mode was off) and taking out a couple pirate Kodiaks at a time. Using that, i got up about level 7 on every one (which was about five kols and four sovas.) So now i was feeling really coky, cuase i was killing all the pirates, and i had a nice big fleet of Cobalts, PErcherons, Javelis, and a few Kodiaks. So, i set up four Arcovas in what i call a Junction, which is a anomaly map, (in this case a plasma storm), where there are two or three ways in, and it's always full of trade ships and refinery ships. The arcovas sat in there, killing all the enemy trade and refinery ships, cause i figured that i could take down their economy, and then go for the capital, which was only three planets directly from my farthest colony.
So the arcovas hang out there for a while, and i kinda forgot about them. Next time i check on them, when i zoomed in, i ot a brief flash of the last one exploding, a f***ing giant fleet. So i kinda freaked out, because my entire fleet was beating on another civ, across the entire solar system. So i recalled them really fast, and scrambled my sector fleet to my colony. (each of my sector fleet consists of a Kol, two percherons with max fighter and bombers, six cobalts, one kodiak, one cielo, and three javelis). That was smart, becuase they had just arrived when the enemy fleet jumped in. They had 5 Marza Dreadnoughts, each like a level 5-7, and an incredibly stupid amount of Cobalts, with a ton of kodiaks. So they jumped and attacked my tiny little sector fleet. Ouchy. I lost my kodiak really fast, and then they concentrated on my cielo. The Kol and the Cobalts tag teamed one MArza, while the javelis got the h**l out of there. I had to bail out the Diomedes (which was the Kol), becuase it was about to die. So the first battle of the siege of Centauri ended with me losing almost my whole sector fleet in that area, with the enemy losing only one Marza. Then they started shelling Centauri. Bombs away.