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You use the newfound impetus and motivation in your population to push for two advancements for this year- a busy schedule along with pumping out more ships from the Nan shipyards, getting everyone out of the Xin project once it stabilized, plus trying to make up for lost time during your decadent phase. You manage to complete both <span class="mu-s">Ship Boarding Tactics</span> research as well as <span class="mu-s">Energy Scattering Latices</span>. Both of these research projects' data are at least partially being sourced from the last <span class="mu-i">engagements</span> with the Consortium. While you already have excellent soldiers and have vast experience at boarding enemy ships- the Esaal are a much different beast to fight then the Consortium. Much more cautious, tactical, but lowering in morale and raw strength. You specialize your ship boarding parties to go against what you assume to be Consortium security- Leraay or equivalent species won't be too much of a threat against your Alpha marine soldiers. On top of this, you experiment in mock boardings with Bio-Bots as living targets and find out what parts of the ship to storm for maximum damage- the bridge and engine rooms could be disabled or locked down by a dedicated team of soldiers. With these newfound tactics found, ship boarding has become more viable- but your soldiers are not practiced enough for mass combat. While you could capture a single high value ship during the battle- a string of engagements in different ships would be a bit much. Still, this is progress. You are unsure how useful they will be in the final battle...
You also look into the energy lattices. The Consortium used these against you to great effect in their second attack to block some of your artillery fire and prevent you from destroying them in a single powerful volley while they warped in. It is likely they will do so again- but this research may let you turn it back on them.
Made mostly of copper and other conductive materials- these sheets are unrolled or warped in besides and in front of ships to absorb the energy of enemy weapons before hitting your own ships. They can absorb quite a lot of damage, and best of all are very cheap to mass produce and bring along with a space fleet- which is probably why the Consortium is so found of them- but they break apart after a few good hits and just become useless debris after being shot up once. Your scientists say that an Azurium lattice would be even better- but that would defeat the purpose of cost-effective barriers! If you could afford to create paper-thin sheets of Azurium to act as mobile cover for starships, you'd rather just build the damn hulls out of Azurium to begin with. In any case, these lattices will provide a nice one time defense against the Consortium's first volley of energy weapons.
