Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion mega game and loss

I started in on the latest edition to Sins of a Solar Empire yesterday after playing more Warhammer Invasion LCG with Crabby Gamer and 4 hours later I had nothing but a demolished empire and a loss to show for it.

I played the TEC Rebel faction and was literally jumping in without knowing what the hell I was doing. By the end of the game I had a total grasp of the Black Market, the interface and more as the tutorial really did not do much for me. For example logistic points, starbases, waypoints all that fun stuff was really glossed over in a less than stellar tutorial. The best way to learn is to jump in.

My game started off well as I built colony ships and quickly expanded. I stretched to almost every planet in the random small system I had the game generate.

This is when my problems started however. I neglected my fleet and things became way too expensive. I spent too much money increasing and improving every planet and just clicking everything in research. My computer AI opponent was set to easy and not too aggressive so I had a lot of time to expand and learn the game. I even got a Titan built.

Around the third hour...yes 3 hours...I ran into a Pirate base asteroid. I warped in with my Titan and saw this:

Holy shit. I stayed as long as I could but my lack of understanding the technology tree had me with weak Titan armor. My shields went down and I got my ass out of there.

I had been playing the entire game with one battle cruiser (now level 5) and one Titan, just warping around killing small neutral ships. I guess that time was over.

I quickly set about building more Cruisers and ignoring Frigates altogether. A colossal waste of money that would haunt me later.

I came back and warped in and decimated the Pirate fleet then took over his base. After that I explored the systems star and warped to the planet after that. At that point I found the Computer AI. Sitting tight and hunkered down in his own system. Not expanding and acting dumb like more RTS AI's do. I had set him for that after all so that was my fault. Upon warping in I discovered his entire fleet and his Titan. I lost 3 cruisers and my Titan was almost again destroyed. I had awakened the beast.

Licking my wounds I sold my overabundance of minerals and crystals on the black market, crashing it for a bit. I enhanced my research toward all military and then built an engagement fleet. I lined up to warp into the computers home system again:

It was not enough and even though I took out his Titan, I was soundly defeated and limped off. By then it was too late and the computer AI was awake and pissed. He immediately warped out his entire fleet and we had a huge climatic battle around the sun. I lost everything and quickly built another Titan with the last of my economic reserves. In the meantime the computer player was warping from system to system seizing my planets and making my life hell.

After one final stand where I could not take out his cruisers my last Titan blew up and I had to resign. 4 hours...and I lost in the end. But it was one hell of a ride. On the upside I did get 5 Steam Achievements. One of them was mining over 10,000 mineral resources.