Here was the galaxy map in the wake of my capture of Argus:
Although the Alkari still outnumbered me with 9 worlds to my 7, the game was clearly beginning to tilt in my favor. Many of the western Alkari "planets" were actually hot potatoes, locations where they were never able to accumulate enough factories to defend themselves before being destroyed once again. I tried to plant my own flag on several of these worlds, most notably Sssla down near Darlok space, but that turned out to be a lost cause. I'd have to develop more fleet strength before being able to begin my push forward in earnest.
Fortunately I had several important techs about ready to pop, this being the most important one:
Finally I can build gunships to go toe-to-toe with the Alkari fleets. The birds had been running around with those High Energy Focus cruisers for the last 50 or so turns, and let me tell you, it was no picnic trying to deal with that! On the lower difficulty levels, I got used to being the one with the best guns, the largest planets, running around with Advanced Soil Enrichment while everyone else still had dinky little planets, etc. The shoe was on the other foot in this game, and it was mighty tough going. This game really hammered home the importance of defenses, particularly when you don't have a prayer in the world of matching the enemy's fleets in the field.
There was one more piece that I was missing before designing a new Huge ship: I was lacking the Automated Repair special. It wasn't in my tree, or the Alkari tree, or the Mrrshan tree (before they were wiped out, that is). But the Darloks had it! They were unwilling to trade it to me, so I diverted my spies to Nazin for a couple of turns. With a massive edge in Computer tech, I was able to grab what I wanted, even from the mighty Darlok spies:
Bingo. The Darloks gave me some long faces and relations plummeted, but I ordered up some more bombing runs on Alkari worlds and that largely fixed things up. Whatever. I didn't really care how the shapeshifters felt; they were less than a threat militarily. I wanted that tech! Now to put together a new design making use of these techs:
This Disruptor makes the most of all of the goodies I've managed to collect. With Tritanium Armor, Class VII shields, and the Automated Repair special, this ship will regenerate 270 hit points per combat round, rendering it all but invulnerable to damage. With 42 Disruptors, Class IX Computers, and the High Energy Focus, I can hit enemy ships anywhere on the combat screen and decimate the Alkari stacks of Small ships before they either retreat or close with my own ships. And 30 Antimatter Bombs will allow me to attack enemy bases with a great deal of success as well. In short, this design should equal space superiority once I can produce them in large enough numbers. The only mistake I made was forgetting to add a Battle Computer for extra initiative and attack level. Whoops! 
I had been building a Hercular missile boat previously, but now I converted all fleet production over to the new Disruptor design. It was going to take some time to get a significant number of them into the field, of course. In the meantime, my spies continued to pick the Alkari tech tree clean. This one was especially significant:
Yes, I'll take another 10 points of shielding on all my planets, thank you! The new shields took me up to 22 points of planetary shielding, enough to protect against even the Disruptors that the birds were wielding. Unfortunately they soon showed up with an even stronger gun (the Tri-Focus Plasma) and so I wasn't completely safe, but their prospects for running over my core were looking less and less likely.
And here I am standing up Argus, the planet I had taken earlier. Even though it did not have any bases constructed yet, my first couple Disruptor designs had come off of the assembly lines and were able to protect my new acquisition without issue. Once Argus had bases in the double digits, I moved on and captured Stalaz, then Laan. Since the planets were only 4 parsecs apart I could defend them both with the same fleet, hopping back and forth to deal with trouble as it presented itself. And although it may have taken about a dozen turns to stand up defenses at the two of them, that just gave me more time to continue adding more Disruptors to my growing fleet.
Huh? Looks like the Darloks have been smoking some of the pungent weed. 
My growing power and population obviously led them to dissolve the alliance that had lasted for so many centuries. Of course the Darloks were hopelessly behind in technology and presented no threat whatsoever, but I was still sad to see them switch sides. I had hoped to remain their ally to the end, but it was not to be.
After grabbing Stalaz and Laan, I had paused to stand them up until they could defend themselves. I could have pushed forward faster, but I saw no reason to do so. Better to take things slowly and add real planets to my empire than push ahead and only create more spud worlds. Once that was accomplished, the next target was Ajax, which the Alkari were using as a staging area for their eastern planets. I took it intact with a LOT of factories for the maximum of six techs, including this whopper:
PLASMA Torpedos, geeze! 
That's tech level 50, top Weapons tech on the tree. I didn't have any plans to use these at the moment, but nice to know about them just the same. Keep in mind, I've had to climb literally the ENTIRE tech tree to catch the Alkari, heh. Now that they're into the "Advanced Weapons Tech" area, I've finally run them down.
What a tough game.
By 2675, the bar graphs reveal that I've reached a winning position. I've edged ahead of the birds in Population, Planets, Technology, and - for the first time - in Total Power. There will be no more opportunity to lose this game. In fact, I would have won the 2675 vote if the Darloks had voted for me instead of abstaining. The game ground on, but it was clearly not going to last much longer.
I continued to build more and more Disruptors; the Alkari simply did not have an answer to my design. I was shooting down their Small ships by the hundreds now, even getting a chance to blow them up in droves before they could retreat. A stack of 10 of my Disruptors (sporting 42 guns each) could blow up nearly 500 Small ships each combat round. And with the birds losing worlds left and right, they were increasingly unable to replace those losses.
The capture of this planet was symbolically significant, if not strategically:
500 captured factories would allow me to flip it around into a safe platform into a matter of turns, allowing the advance to continue forward.
With new techs in hand that I'd discovered or captured, I saw fit to upgrade my Disruptor design with a faster and more powerful Huge ship:
With faster engines and Neutronium Bombs on hand, this is a world-killing design intended to make short work of the remaining Alkari planets. Unfortunately I screwed up a bit with the guns! I would have been better served to include more guns that were weaker in strength, in order to kill more of the Alkari Small ships. 99 Tachyon Beams instead of 24 Tri-Focus Plasmas probably would have been smarter, for example. But this was the first time I'd ever gotten to play around with some of the late-game toys, so you'll have to forgive me for wanting to use the latest and greatest stuff. Too bad the game would be all but over before I had the chance to put some of these into the field!
I felt I had achieved a winning position by 2675. True to form, the game quickly reflected my dominant stance as I ran over world after world in the next two dozen turns. By 2699, the mighty Alkari had been laid low:
And the bar graphs:
Go back and compare those to the ones from just 25 turns earlier, if you will. It's amazing how little mop-up work there is in this game; once the Human achieves a dominant fleet, the game just... ends. Very little mess or fuss. After century upon century of huddling protectively behind defenses, I finally gained space superiority and absolutely crushed the birds. I could walk from here to an Extermination victory in less than 10 more turns. However, that would mean wiping out the Darloks too, and even though they turned on me at the end of the game, I could NOT have done this without them, and without help from the Mrrshans. In return for that assistance, I will take a Conquest win in 2700 and leave the severely weakened birds alive, probably in a cage somewhere.
My glorious fleet. I got good use out of the Herculars, but the Disruptors were the ship that won the game for me. The birds simply could not cope with that design. Sirian once wrote in one of his reports that "Disruptors plus High Energy Focus equates to space superiority", and now I finally know what that means.
Finally, look at my bloated tech levels. 59 in Propulsion and 58 in Weapons! This game went on way too long, heh. Terraforming +80 was about to pop in Planetology, which would have given me an even larger population advantage.
And so, in the year 2700, I finally put this one to rest with a Conquest win. What a game it had been! I've never experienced anything quite like it before. I have to say, this really is a magnificent game. It's hard to believe I had never heard of Master of Orion before coming to Realms Beyond; somehow I missed this one even though I played lots of Civilization and even Master of Magic growing up in the 1990s. Better late than never, of course.
This game really drove home the defensive nature of MOO. It's one thing to HEAR that the game is based on defense, quite another thing entirely to experience it, huddling with three planets behind missile bases while invincible enemy fleets attack turn after turn after turn. But the beauty of this game is that IF you can defend your planets from attack, AND you can muster enough poplation or allies to avoid losing the vote, you can prolong things pretty much indefinitely, even from a vastly inferior position. Defense really does rule all. And THAT is how a strategy game is supposed to be! (What a difference from Civ3, where you could Right of Passage Rape the AI, or Galactic Civ2, where a massive sneak-attack alpha-strike on AI planets is usually the most effective strategy.)
I hope I get some more games like this in the future from Master of Orion - well, maybe not TOO much like this one! 
