Monoceteris VII - Galactic Cycle 1 - Tick 30, 09:30 07 July

 A quick update to demonstrate what I mean by front line stars and why they're important.

Asgana is sleeping on the job and it provides me with an opportunity to be more aggressive than I originally planned. In the image below I have highlighted all the front line stars. A front line star is a star that needs to be actively defended by fleets. Stars further back don't because you can always pull fleets back from the front lines to cover them if needed. 

As you can see one of the downsides of my advance is I now have more front line stars than my opponent in this part of the map. This is OK for the reward of extra stars, but it's undesirable all else equal so a good objective would be to close my lines. 

If Asgana had a larger fleet on Maru he would threaten my two stars to the south. I can not move fleets from one to the other in less time than it would take him to attack so both are front line stars. However, if I capture Maru I will no longer have 4 front line stars in this shot. I'll have Gala, Alren and the newly captured Maru. Koorla and Coria will no longer be front line stars.

Current state:

What I want

What I REALLY want (medium term objective) in the image here, I have launched on Sale from Maru, possibly some ships from Gala and by capturing Sale Maru is no longer a front line star because it can just about be defended from Sale if I react quickly. This minimizes the stars I need to defend on the front line. You should always be thinking about how to keep your front lines as limited as possible.

As a final explanation I will share an image from another game to explain the real danger caused by having long front lines. This is from a long match against Yellow, a very good 1v1 player, and I will eventually lose this game. 

In the image below taken at the end of some skirmishes at the end of the expansion phase, tick 124, Yellow and I have equal stars. 28-28 with two loose stars each at the back to take the tally to effectively 30-30. By original lines this map would have 6 front line stars per player. However, in the early fighting I have captured two stars on Yellows side and he has captured two stars on mine. This has stretched both of our lines but Yellow has gained more strategically advantageous stars, in particular the Red circled one. This means I now effectively have 9 stars to defend and he has 8. This really does matter. I would trade the two I've gained here for the two he has gained in a heartbeat. As of the current time of writing (Tick 440) I've never managed to recapture that Red star as Yellow has always been very well prepared to defend it, knowing it's importance. I go on to lose the game, I am sure.