Yup, I even made a little chart to make it easier. I normally don't use retroseries mostly because I don't find it fun. To get the RW base it took the original starbase construction then 8 (!) retrofits to get it all the way to a RW base. At least I know it's possible now to prevent that event, provided your research, resources and system defense can support it.
I thought of this too late, but I should have saved the game off and released it as a scenario.
maybe after declaring war on all the AI's first...