Twenty hours into S.P.A.Z., I reached the inner systems and encountered the zombies for the first time. Shortly after I posted my review, I nailed a cloak/cannon combo that allowed me to finally crack the hard stargate and blaze through everything else. At least until I reached the zombies. While the Civilians & UTA are very similar, the zombies employ swarm tactics that can infect your ships and turn them against you. The last time I fought them, they eventually infected & turned my entire fleet; looks like I have to switch my tactics again.

Rebuilding my resources after a nasty battle is becoming a chore, though. It feels like system resources grow exponentially, but after a particularly nasty battle you might not have the firepower to harvest resources in that system. I finally reserved a set of templates for mining/gathering ships; they pack more firepower than you'd expect, or perhaps that's because I'm 20 levels higher than them. Focusing on 1-2 techs also helped; the later research bonuses definitely give pack more punch per point.

The game's reached a point where I do a few hours of resource gathering to fund an hour or two of fighting in the inner systems, or make my way to the next plot point. It's still keeping my interest, but the game's definitely at a slow burn now. That may be my fault, though; I went with the default value of ~250 sytems with the galaxy generator. 150 systems would've probably worked better.