Production sabotage event

You need to build up you spies under your spending screen. When you get spies, instead of puting them out on other worlds you use them to eleminate your opposition spies on your worlds. It's a bit of a catch-22; create spies to do it to them or create spies to eleminate theirs. So far it's the primary way to get rid of them. If you have the race and technology to gain counter-espionage centers they will keep your opponents at bay so you can use yours against them.

Also, instead of looking around on your map to find the spies, on the espionage tab there is a window for spies placed on your planets. Highlight a building on that list that and then click remove spy when you have available spies. My personal opinion in the order as to which are more important depends on money. The more improvements you can get back on track to get you more money, the quicker you get more spies, thus the quicker you are spy-less.

I said that since the espionage slider is a % of your income. Each spy has it's own cost associated to it, so the higher your income, the faster you get to the cost of the spy. One other tip to pinch pennies, when the time remaining until you get a new spy hits 1 week, pull that slider down until you see it tip to 2 weeks, then just 1 notch back to 1 week. That way you don't overspend for the spy.

One way to have avoided this event (for future knowledge) is to do as tlwhite01 mentioned and place a Counter Espionage building on each of your planets as soon as you're willing to place them/learn the tech. They give a little bit of morale (25%?) as well as stopping future spies from being placed on that planet. They have a very high construction cost though, so it's best to plan accordingly.

In DA each race has access to this tech, it's requirement is...Diplomacy if memory serves me right. Some races in TA don't have access to researching this tech, so they would have to steal/trade for it.

The DA guide linked in another thread had touched upon spies a bit and might help shed some more light for you:
http://www.jeffpinard.com/espionage_and_spying.htm

PS
When the event said a ton of money to repair the damage....they weren't kidding. Espionage costs mucho mucho bucks.

In addition to what has been said (I only saw it hinted at but I apologise if I missed its explicit statement) don't fall into the trap I did when I was learning the game and think that Counter Espionage Centres will retroactively clean up spies.

My cunning plan fell apart when I threw all my spies into offensive roles and let enemy spies accumulate as I teched for CEC. Imagine my horror when I realised that existing spies are unaffected and since I had used my spies offensively it would cost billions upon billions to clean up.

Needless to say I started a new game and chalked that one up to experience. Hopefully I just saved somebody a few hours

Well, I'll honestly say I don't touch the spies unless this problem comes up. Playing as the Drath and I already have problems keeping a balance between keeping my people happy, maintaining my money, and producing ships fast enough so I can deal with races if the problem arises.

Thank you all for the tips though. I can play on normal games now and win about 1/3 of the time so it sounds like it's the perfect difficulty for me until I get some more experience under my belt here. Can't imagine trying to keep up with the AIs on harder difficulties D:

What are all these mega events people talk about though? Dread Lords showing up doesn't ever have an effect other than them stealing one of my planets from time to time. Likewise with the pirates, only they might take two or three planets instead. Neither really pose a problem though.

Some Mega Events are considerably underpowered and fail at the design intent (game destabalization - the Dread Lords event in particular is very very weak)

I daresay you weathered the pirate event well as you had a tech lead and a healthy military. When you have neither of these two things the pirates can be incredibly difficult to deal with.

I still wake up screaming from nightmares about the game when I heavily invested in starbases and as that infrastructure was completed and just as I was beginning on establishing a military the pirates showed up 1-2 squares away from each of my 10 or so starbases. (Disclaimer: I dont actually have nightmares about this but its creative license on my part to say I do)

Edit: I should probably also add I never arm my starbases.... *wince*

You can survive without a military for some time with a healthy diplomacy ability. The pirates kinda paddle your butt for doing that

As a sidenote I make healthy use of spies as having tabs on your opponents influence level is almost essential when you practice planet flipping. Not to mention how sweet it is when the level is high enough that you start stripping tech off them.

Another question if I may. Happiness doesn't seem to do anything. Say I have the third version (can't remember name) structure to increase happiness on a planet with 43% approval and research the tier 4 structure and it gets done upgrading it. Shouldn't I be above 43% now? Population doesn't change and I don't change the taxes so have no idea why it doesn't.

So after seeing my people still unhappy I research the next tier, it upgrades, and still 43% approval. Again, nothing changed. Do happiness modifiers even do anything? It sure doesn't seem like it does and I have no idea how to make them happier when I already have taxes at 3%.

The reason why your happiness improvements aren't doing anything, is because, as far as I can tell, they only help for tax-related unhappiness. Since your taxes are almost 0%, their effect is minimal.

I see. So how do I deal with them being unhappy because of population. This is the one I always take huge hits on, normally about 70% unhappy because of population. Ideally I'd like to not have to axe off my population but if that's my only real choice <.<

About the Starbase 'protection' issue above...

I found out the other day that it is possible to stack a fleet of HEAVY defenders on that tile to enhance its odds of not being so easily destroyed by anybody (including the darn Pirates!).
I'd say that beside high PQ planets, SBs are possibly the most valuable assets around for a number reasons;

1-- Count how many Constructors were dismantled to upgrade any of these. There is a LOT of investment in mining & other attack_defense capacities by constructing.
2-- Rare resources DO provide a swift percentage hike(s) of specific features. If it's yours, it is nobody else's.
3-- Econo outpost(s) also can make ALL trade routes highly valuable.

Thus, stacking defense numbers/values with parked ships (invisible to enemies as well AFAIK) on top of the SB upgraded assets can save you an incredible amount of invested BCs. Which is probably why AIs do make an habit at hitting opponents SBs, to cut supply and lower any impacts long-term.

Oh I don't have any trouble at all protecting my starbases when I have ships around. That was kind of my point - I didn't have anything to defend them with since I heavily invested in starbases before military buildup.

(The idea was to benefit from the production/research over a longer period of time instead of 'wasting' it building a fleet in a time of peace that im just going to rebuild/upgrade later anyway - Pirates kinda taught me the error of my ways here - be prepared for blazing electric death at all times)

I find a starbase with the propulsion bonuses and the enemy propulsion penalties makes even engineless vessels more than adequate to defend a region of space from any sort of threat without having to stack them right on top of the starbase.

Since everybody in the universe was at friendly or better I didn't think my lack of military was going to be a problem...

Just out of interest my military doctrine espouses the construction of tiny and small ships without engines. These are Light Fighters and Heavy Fighters respectively. They are for system/starbase defence, are cheap to produce, maintain, and gain the biggest benefit from starbase module stacking.

Medium ships are constructed around a twin engine extremely fast but lightly armed warship design. This is the Strike Cruiser class and they have two of the latest engines as well as a blend of offensive and defensive options (all my ships carry defences - I play the good alignment)

Their primary role is harassment as well as taking out targets of opportunity eg stripping planetary defences, unguarded troop transports, starbases, damaged or lone enemy warships etc. They also excel in escort duties, freighter protection, emergency fleet intercepts and just about any general combat related task against equivalent tonnage or lower. In a fleet of 4-5 they are very potent but typically I run them in task forces of 3.

Due to their lighter offensive armament they can be temporarily assigned to my main order of battle (large and huge, Battleship and Dreadnought respectively) without drawing enemy fire and serve as a force multiplier. (especially useful when battles occur within military starbase radii)

Battleships and Dreadnoughts only use a single engine opting to go weapons and defence heavy. They can afford to do this since I have roving task forces of Strike Cruisers handling tasks that require rapid deployment - late game Strike Cruisers start hitting the 12 - 15 parsec per week mark) Not to mention the fact that engines for the larger classes of ships are huge slices of the available space.

Anyways my point after all that, aside from geeking out over my defensive fleet design, is that there are plenty of ways of defending starbases and utilising starbases other than just making a super stack. If anybodies interested I can go into more detail about my fleet design (yes that was just the Cliffs notes - can you tell im excited about the new possibilities in TA?)

Also on the note about starbase values - it automatically updates when your ships are under the area of effect. To test this build a ship with a railgun then put it under the radius of a starbase with a laser equilizer. The ship should now have a beam weapons rating - it may take beginning the turn within the radius to show up.

The AI should react to the updated stats - I have seen the AI flee from some of my 'puny' fighters presumably because it saw they had about 20 modules worth of upgrades backing them up

On happiness. Typically I run my colonies on 76% or better to ensure the 1.25 population growth bonus (I use the Populist government choice to help with this) This can get a bit tricky once you pass the 20 billion mark.

On average colonies I wont exceede 20 billion. On cash/trade hub planets I go up to 30 billion but no further. 30 billion is already really pushing the limits on happiness and only really possible on planets with the political capital or secret police centre and the like.

Since I do this on 50-60% percent or more tax levels without happiness becoming too much of an issue it sounds to me like you have very large populations. There seems to be a really hard ceiling on population that no number of virtual reality centres can deal with.

If that isnt the problem then I'd like to hear more so we can figure out a way to help you out with it

I usually only have 6-16B per planet (only placing farms if there's a bonus tile). I find that usually a planet will like me, unless it's my capital which always seems to simply hate me and to a lesser extent the early planets I had colonized. Capital planet usually always drops down into the 30-45% approval ratings while the early planets I had colonized that weren't taken from the enemy would be around 60% approval.

This may sound a bit strange but I actually prefer playing tiny maps with 9 other races with habitable planets on abundant, tight clusters, stars abundant, and planets set to rare. This setup always gives me few planets on the map but if they're on the map chances are it can be colonized.

This setup pretty much guarantees that my approval drops below 60% no matter how much I try to make them happy. Unless I just need to keep adding in more recreational structures, but as the same problem arises I don't like putting any more than two on a planet as I'm already working with relatively few spaces due to the planet count and needing each planet to be contributing to the production.

As a sidenote, I played as the Thalan recently and stopped playing Drath constantly and they seem much happier in general despite not having the morale bonus that the Drath get. Taxes for them can sit at 21% with 100% production slider and still getting 100% approval (and making money every turn). Morale bonus just doesn't seem to work >.>