Hey,
So naturally when the final mission came around and we learn we are going to die (and did, quickly) I decided I wanted to come back to the mission and try hold out. Which I did, and nothing happened. It was a little disappointing.
I can post some pictures if liked later but I pretty much had two massive ships with Reactors and many smaller laser only ships. (Lasers are super OP) From there you can pretty much feed a full defensive effort. I even managed to get back to the islands (though ironically the two mines I had left couldn't feed my ships so I had to keep them outside the range of the mines for my supply ships to feed them)
I really feel like this was a missed opportunity, either to have a true ending or even to ramp up the difficulty until you can't hold out. It's a bit strange when you can pretty much hold out forever yet the opinion of your crew is "RIP we're all going to die".
The story was based around the fleet given to you, and this basic fleet cannot hold out for too long, no matter how good you are. Thus hiding a secret ending would make people feel forced to create their own fleet to get it. Spending time on making this mission unbeatable with a custom fleet was in VirgilW's point of view, better spent elsewhere.
Couldn't you just scale the emitters until they produce an overwhelming number? I'm not thinking about anything complex.
Also it could have just had an ending based on a timer: (10 minutes later if they are still alive have a bit of extra speech from the crew asking the captain what is happening and the captain saying it looks like they are to fight forever) I don't imagine something like that would take too much extra to implement unless the tools are not already available in CPRL.