Stellaris: Paradoxian Space Stategy.

[Narkis]

Scientists are abject cowards (despite being from the science based race)

You can set their stance on passive. That way they won't retreat at the first sign of trouble. On the other hand, they won't retreat at the first sign of trouble, and that trouble might catch up to them. I do it when I want them to pass through a dangerous system, and set them back to cowardly immediately after.

Earth was only 3 systems from my home world in a random map which was fun, subjugation planed, just hasn't happened yet.

Oh, cool. On what period did you find them? You can find Earth on any period of history apparently, from the home of cavemen to a post-apocalyptic wasteland.

Sweet, maybe "hit n run" guerrilla tactics are a viable thing? It was something I liked to implement in MoO2-- attack an enemy fleet with small but fast ships to strike specific targets and then flee before the counter-attack destroys my strike force.

You don't have that much control of your fleets during battle. You can't prioritize high-value targets within a given fleet. (unless there's combat computers for that that I haven't discovered yet) What you can do is cripple your enemy's infrastructure with hit-and-run raids. Especially if they're using wormholes, you can effectively knock them out of FTL altogether.

I ended up restarting my game. I felt confident enough to try Ironman for the achievements. I got more minerals now, but the nearby planets are much worse. And my neighbours are still Democratic Crusaders. No allies in sight though. This is gonna be interesting.