Hey, Darkmatter, I have a question
The Slaver Empire I'm making is, to say the least, big, and powerful. However, they are overconfident from years of easy conquest, the four subspecies have technology on par with people who may just be a couple centuries into the stars, while the AI ships, which are all clustered in the middle of the empire, are insanely powerful [except when you use 4 sublight antimatter/40-megaton missiles in one spot in less than a second, in which you can slip two more in through the energy shield's gap less than a second after it's broken open to cause irrepairable, irreversable damage, which would cause the ship AI commander to self-destruct, for fear of someone gaining the technology]
Can I send it to you by PM as a side-threat? One that a major Region power or a Quandrant power would have some trouble with, but less so if you're intuitive and catch them by surprise. I will give you the strengths and weaknesses, so that you can see that it is a strange sort of balanced.