Part 80: 2140-2144 - Turning the pirate tide.

We are near bankrupt. The costs of our ships and protection money are breaking us. The Civillians have a lot of money, but we cannot convince them to lend us any.



A quick tax hike later, and things should look better. The Pirate Tax is not popular, but it is better than enslavement to aliens.



We sign a free trade treaty with Ugnar Industries, more trade means more tarrifs.







We make a try at a small pirate base belonging to the Menacing Fang Bandits.



Once again, the Pirates are impossibly quick with their reinforcements, and we lose ships before we can retreat.



We then come across the Erutkah, a group of refugees who claim to have fled from another galaxy. They seem friendly and give us a huge gift of money.



They only have one world, and are also followers of the Way of Darkness. Why does thunder clap every time I type this?




With huge fuel shortages and other key resources, I order the construction of numerous mining bases.







A war breaks out somewhere in the galaxy. It would be nice to have the worries of a normal empire.



The space over Ghana is quiet, but we need a large fleet here to protect our people. And half those warships are without fuel.



We do have 6th fleet, a huge number of ships, all with fuel. It is time to make a major strike against a pirate base.



I pick on one of the smaller pirate forces, we need to start small I think.







A new year starts, as does a new campaign to rid the Galaxy of Pirates.



The base is destroyed without loss, and we have struck a blow for freedom!



Meanwhile, the Sol Marauders make a strike at Ogoonu Prime. All this manages to do is cost them seven ships as our defensive fleets respond.



We target another small pirate base with 6th fleet.



This one goes the same as the previous one, except several pirate ships are destroyed alongside the base. We also learn the Refugees have built themselves some sort of super fortress.



The Fleet then jumps to Afrani, just in time to engage a haunted marauder attack.



We colonise another world, the Salt Desert is in the Calaan system, along with Gamma Draconis, and is an oceanic world with little land.



The Refugees begin to complain about a military ship in one of their systems – this is a mining base in a nebula, and critical to Ghanan defences.







We complete a small starport over Afrani, and the 6th fleet fend off a number of raids by the Haunted Marauders. We take out a good number of their ships with massed firepower.



The loss of these ships tips the Haunted Marauders to the point where they only have a few ships and less firepower than 6th fleet, so we order an assault on the Bandit Hideout, their unimaginatively named base.



The base takes over a month to destroy – the shields on it are extremely strong – but once it is destroyed we discover two abandoned mining ships. More importantly, the Marauders no longer exist as a faction to trouble us.



Ghana is making her first steps out of the age of pirates. Soon we will be able to get ourselves involved in world affairs.