Updatan!
No epic battles, sorry but the empire has grown so it's time to show some progress off:
It is now the year 2041 and Jumper Charlie, my third survey TF, just jumped into a new system, named Eta Cassiopeiae. Very interesting looking binary system - the main star is classed G0-V, meaning it's one-and-a-half times the size of Sun, though only slightly higher mass and slightly lower luminosity. However, the companion is a K7-V class star, slightly larger than Sun, though with lower mass and luminosity. This means that the system is quite weird - usually binary/trinary systems have dwarf stars instead of two main sequence ones. The companion takes whopping 464 years to complete a single orbit and is 71 AUs from the main star. There are seven planets orbiting the main star - three gas giants, one Pluto-style chunk and three terrestrial worlds, two of which are fairly easily colonizable! The third planet has a temperature of 44.7C, gravity of 0.65 and mostly Nitrogen atmosphere, though with large amounts of both Oxygen and Carbon Dioxide! Though, just like Mars, it is a dry, desert planet. The fourth planet is a frozen hellhole, with slightly worse gravity and its atmosphere is 82% Helium with 18% Hydrogen, which needs to be pumped out before real colonization. Luckily it has extensive ice sheets (63% of the surface in fact) so warming it up will be relatively trivial operation. So after few years of terraforming, we'll have the perfect tanning planet and a luxurious ocean resort, next to each other. Tourism board will go bananas.
Not to be outdone, the companion star has plenty of friends too - six planets all together. A single Super-Jovian, two gas giants, single chunk and two terrestrial planets, both worth terraforming - one already having liquid oceans. Put together, the system also has 113 asteroids and dozens and dozens of moons on the various planets. Rich find!
However, there's a little wrinkle in all this:
Wreck of 109,350 tons!!!!!!!
HOLY MOTHER OF GOD
Okey, so my shipyards are just about able to pump out civilian ships of the same size so this could be a gigantic terraformer or asteroid miner or something.
Anyway, I'll take the risk and send my GEV and GSV out to see what they can find. It's very probable that there's existing, intelligent life in this system, with such nice looking planets and all.