Part 41: A Billion Strong … And Growing

A Billion Strong ... And Growing




Uh, we could have a problem. I don't really have that many colony ships. I wonder if I've hit some sort of fleet overlow bug like in the first game? Hoping not. Gonna keep a save around from a turn or two earlier though just in case.

** Note: I eventually was able to just get rid of the remaining ships when they weren't needed anymore, with no apparent further issues. So I have not, at least yet, broken the game.

Also worth noting that I'm now caught up on everything in terms of stockpiling, building up freighters, etc. We're using about 600 each turn as you can see and are constantly at the settler limit. Research is almost 10k per cycle.

Darlok Genocide (0:14)


Since everyone was clamoring for it, here it is. The Darloks are no more.







And now only Temporal Fields is even a choice.

** Class X Shield - Again, does what it says.
** Phasing Cloak - Allows a ship to not just disappear, but literally enter another dimension temporarily *cough hogwash cough* 10-turn limit; ships can't be attacked or detected, period, during this time.
** Planetary Barrier Shield - Does what Radiation/Flux shields do, ups damage absorption to 20 points. Also totally prevents bioweapons and ground troops from attacking while it is up.

I actually won't be building the Barrier Shields, just because there's no point - with Jump Gates we should be able to get the fleet anywhere it needs to go to intercept. But still, all this stuff is quite kewl.

After I've eliminated them, I am notified that 'Darlok spy steals Gauss Cannon'. AFTER.




That there is one big gun. It won't fit on anything short of a Titan. There won't be many places I need to use it - only one or two - but anywhere that has a Toxic non-Rich planet will get the treatment for demonstration sake. I'll only need one Overkill for that purpose. Even with all the empty space, it's still somewhat more expensive than our most modern Obscenity ... which isn't that modern anymore, really.




How deluded you are. There was long since no such hope.




And now its time to plow through the Hyper-Advanced techs and get more miniaturization. Right now, at 11.6k RP per turn, we're estimating three turns for each of these. So at least we'll be able to do it quickly.

Planet Destruction (0:41)


I learned the hard way that I can't use the Stellar Converter on an unoccupied planet. Still there were a couple of others deserving the treatment. Here we get the bonus of Sakkra genocide, and a Meklar world will soon receive the attentions of our ultimate weapon as well.




Here's what the game thinks if you just eliminate everyone and get a 'conquest' victory. The ending video is the same - you just get the second half of it, without the diplomatic part tacked on at the beginning. Of course, I'm leaving the Meklar with one crappy small desert poor planet, so that I can finish the proper objectives here.




SD 3533.8 - This is a repeated scene on many worlds and systems in the galaxy. We no longer have any use for such structures which serve only as fixed defenses, with the fleet able to literally cover anywhere it is needed. All they do now is suck up taxes that would be better used building stuff faster. Partly due to the citizen transfers keeping all planets at 20M or below in population, we now have four dedicated agricultural worlds as well. And still yet more remains to be done.




They've killed a couple of our spies, and a third this turn, but now this. Either there was no choice of available targets, or you don't get to choose and it just picks something.

SD 3534.4 - The TechnoGeek Empire hits 1 Billion citizens. I suppose that's as good a place as any to cut off this mini-update. Right now I'm plowing through a few turns at a time as regularly as time permits, it's just that not much is happening in a short time scale.

In research, we're over halfway through the Hyper-Advanced I projects at one every three turns. Next tier the price goes up from 25k to 35k, which is faster than our investment is proceeding. We're waiting for the Antarans to return to hit Orion still, and in the meantime the galaxy is basically in stasis. The Meklar aren't even trying to do anything on their one wimpy planet. You might say we've boxed them in and there's only one Wei II survival for them.

Roughly four freighter fleets are produced every turn to keep pace, with total freighters in operation nearing a full thousand. Still overall galactic population is definitely well under half of the maximum. Rush job investment is a little over a thousand BCs per, and most of the bootstrapping of growing colonies is done with since there aren't that many of them left. The biggest chunk are now roughly in the terraforming stage.

There are still a number of systems with more planets to build as well. Nir is a particularly bad example, with two small radiated-poor planets from which I need to eventually construct a trio of rocks from the other orbits. So that'll take a bit. With research, population growth, and planetary infrastructure all needing major investment at the moment, I can't hit any one of them with maximum force and there's still considerable waiting to be done.