Attacked!

Building ships requires materials.  Lots of materials.
Even though we live in an amazing age where matter can be disassembled, assembled, stored digitally, compressed, and converted into compounds, components, and parts in very small spaces, it could not be created from nothing.

So while I would rather spend my time building the Alannis, it became clear early on that I would need to retrieve far more materials from space than I had already mined.

I took a missile-turreted SVG Speeder out to known asteroid fields and soaked up rock.  And more rock.  And still more rock.

While mining Speeder's sensors detected two incoming pirate vessels, and her missile turrets opened up. Before long the pirates had called in re-enforcements and it was time to retreat back to the safety of my turret-defended shipyard and budding base.

But for every pirate vessel that got destroyed, three more appeared, and soon my shipyard and it's defenses of several missile turret emplacements were swarming with small pirate attack craft busily carving up my defenses.

The dumb-fire missile turrets did their best to predict the movement of the enemy craft, but only 1 in 20 shots landed... and although highly effective when they did hit, they didn't hit often enough to make a real impact.

Before long the pirates were taking down turrets and shooting up Gustav, SVG Speeder, Taxi and my shipyard too.  The Alannis took a small share of fire but the pirates seemed to be focusing on the active vessels and turrets... perhaps they felt the Alannis was worth salvaging rather than destroying.

By the time the smoke had cleared the pirates were gone, my turrets were completely destroyed, and my shipyard and budding factory had huge holes smashed in them.  Gustav's remains glowed hot and red.  It was a sad sight to see all my hard work all but destroyed.

I decided I would need much greater defenses.
Missiles were far more effective than lasers for the same materials and space investment, but they were slow and therefore often missed.  I would need to look into ways to make missiles that could track a target and hit it regardless of it's maneuvers.

Time to build some homing missiles and build a solid defense... the next attack would probably be much larger.