Finally finished my first full game, on normal, and I have to say that Durantium Drivers are a bit OP. Having researched everything for a tech win (game is bugged, said Altarians were ahead of me on Ascension Victory THE ENTIRE GAME, so I ended up going for tech win - I only went into first place once I researched first Ascension tech - Altarian ships were only mid age of war tech level)....anyways, I noticed that Durantium Drivers were only matched by Singularity Drivers obtained at the end of the military tech tree.
If you get plenty of mining techs, you will have enough Durantium to keep a few fleets comprised only of Durantium Driver ships that will own everyone the entire game. I killed fleets 3-4 times the size of me, simply because I had 6x the firepower they had. Plus with Durantium being the overwhelming resource in the galaxy, and not very useful for planetary building IMO (unless you have MAJOR population problems), something seems a bit skewed with the game. If the resources were split up better (Elerium and Anti-Matter), and the AI actually used them, that would be a much more interesting game of rock/paper/scissors. I think it would be better if these mega-powerful weapons were not available until later in the tech tree.
Do I do the same strategy again next game on higher difficult level? Energy weapons definitely look more cool, but when lasers do 2 damage and D-Drivers do 12, its hard to do the same thing over again.