YESSSSS!!
I spent so long on that shot (about half of it trying and failing to reproduce it but about 2 lengths back, so I could catch the actual explosion in the shot . . . I got a ton that look sweet but the ship is a third that size or smaller :-/ ), so glad it paid off. :-D
(The hardest bit is that flight path of the cinematic varies [I think because the Thul Cruiser rolls randomly during the explosion sequence]. It's way worse on the over-the-top pass because that's further out.)
@tomc974, NICE shot - I had no idea they were using real nebulae, I'd never noticed the Horsehead before! Also, the sharp, menacing spore cannons are a perfect choice.
@Wesker: Nice dramatic lighting! Navagon's right, it makes a neat face, and I'd be pretty scared seeing that diving at me out of a sun!!
@Siannah: I like the explosion one (#2) - I considered using one where I towed those crates to the station and blew them up there. ;-) [Didn't get any as nicely timed and framed as yours though!]
Things learned: a) the station is completely immune to damage, despite having shield and hull bars; b) you don't get in trouble for wiping out every commercial ship, their escorts, a couple taxis, cargo-carrying drones, and a police ship, so long as you do it indirectly with huge bombs. >:-)
What are folks' stats? Mine is 0-10-0; I tried to get my 0-3-0 through the whole game, but I could not keep Hornblower alive at diff 5, so I jumped to max guns [I don't like turrets :-P]. At Mil Mk 2, Secret Service graviton guns have an out-of-line damage/energy bump, hence not using the cooler-looking spore cannons, which have top ratios later. I've left my plas gun at level 1, so I can try out any of the upgrade paths for a given mission. I'm kinda silly that way. :-D
Other fun things discovered during the hunt: You can position your ship such that it gets bumped into a dock during an in-engine cutscene (eg at the research stations), and it will go right to launch like it does any time you dock without permission. If the cutscene is long, you get control back early! Relatedly, you can dock with the Thul Cruiser, in both cloaked and uncloaked states - this causes you to fail the mission, so the game displays the launching view but stops before it spawns your ship in the hangar.
I've attached my favorite shots that I didn't submit. One running out of the explosion, one charging in above the ship as it starts to go boom, with some combat in the background.
And again, thanks to GOG for this contest! Being encouraged to get creative with our games is a lot of fun, and it would be neat to see more of this sort of thing in the future. :-)