Part 34: Back to the Designing Board

Back to the Designing Board

After attempting to piece together a middle ground between all the various pieces of advices given by the Royal TechnoGeek Council, their intrepid leader proceeded with the a plan. The first step was to wait a galactic cycle for further mass driver miniaturization.

SD 3525.1 - The Klackons had a battleship/colony ship combo headed to Fierias, and I'd sent a battleship there to oppose it. Unfortunately, their complement of advanced missiles plus large numbers of neutron blasters outgunned us, and we were forced to retreat and cede the system. For now.

Also the Antarans have returned, but their fleet isn't showing on my scanners. I think they are picking on someone else this time around.




That looks like a toolbelt with a harness to me. But what do I know.




Let's work on physics a bit, as recommended for improving our weapons systems.

** Multi-Phased Shields - Strength of shielding increased by 50%.
** Phasor - 'a trans-warp beam of phased energy that actually exists in several dimensions simultaneously'. Of course it does. 5-20 damage.
** Phasor Rifle - +20 combat edge for ground troops.







Here's the new ship redesigns. Taking the 'more guns' approach that seems to have the most support, and focusing most of the available space on standard AF mounts with a few heavies and point defense variants thrown in. I'll gradually be replacing the current fleet with these, scrapping the existing ships as needed in the interim to make room while I fight a mostly defensive campaign in the interim.




Next turn, we have a repetitive and fruitless Fourth Session of the High Council. Everyone abstains except the principals. 19 votes for us, 17 for the Sakkra, 12 Silicoid, 11 Klackon, everyone else five or fewer. It doesn't look like we'll find a diplomatic solution, not that I want one anyway.




We return in force and snag this away from the bugs, at least for now. Interesting that they have great armor, but the overall equipment picture is much more in our favor. It'll be fun pounding through that kind of plating on their ships though.




Bizarre that we get this on a just-founded colony, but this is what opens the door to the new ending introduced in this game. That's how I plan to win. A long time from now, after I've pacified this galaxy. It's the only way to stop the Antaran raids. The resistance there .... well it will be considerable. And if you think the battles so far have been long - just you wait. But we have other fish to fry before we can even consider that. This is also another one of those 'why doesn't this cost more' moments. At 500 industry, it's not much more expensive than a cruiser.

Also, that's a real ugly green color our troops are wearing, which is the only difference compared to the normal one. Where are their power suits?




An impressive-looking weapon. The shields look cool as well, while the rifle looks like a badly designed Hasbro action figure with way too much copper.




Evolutionary Genetics has a couple of interesting things.

** Heightened Intelligence is a racial boost of +1 research per scientist.
** Psionics adds another +10 to our spying bonuses, and +10 morale for dictatorship/imperium governments. Unfortunately that's not us.

Heightened Intelligence comes in, and I regret screwing up the screenshot. Basically it looks like something out of the Matrix, a 'bacta tank' housing a naked humanoid in some sort of liquid with various bits of equipment inside and a tube connecting the tank to who knows what. I don't even want to imagine the methods involved. Psionics is a very similar picture.




** Lightning Field - Overloads the targeting system of torpedoes, fighters, and missiles. 50% chance of destroying them.
** Pulsar - Damages anything adjacent to the ship, a radiating energy field of sorts.
** Warp Interdictor - Planetary structure that slows all enemy ship movement within 2 parsecs to 1 parsec per turn. I'm a little curious how a 'warp destabilizing field' magically doesn't affect your own ships, but whatevs.




SD 3525.9

The first 'Klackon Incubator World' is ready. A second is almost there, and a third is being worked on. When all of them are up and running, we'll be getting nearly two Klackon citizens per turn. Yummy.

Also, our first Titan is now in service, with a few of the next-gen Battleships already finished.




Interesting - this wasn't a thing in the original. It would go straight to I think Ultra Poor if it was reduced at all.




SD 3526.1

Our warp-speed trip through the tech tree continues. Next, Advanced Robotics.

** Bomber Bays give us, well, bombers.
** Robotic Factory builds mechanical workers, adding to the industry of a planet based on how rich it is. 5-20 can be gained, which isn't a major amount since our industrial output on some worlds right now exceeds 200 annually.

It also occurs to me just now that I forgot to refit the existing battleships, which probably would have been better. But it's really too late now.




They're back again, barely a year after their last attack wherever it was. Lerion is starting to get its feet underneath it, but is not ready, and I've already seen how ineffectual our mass drivers are against damper fields. We abandon these colonies to their fate.




Bombers are dark and mean-looking.




Back to military applications.

**Class V Shield does what it sounds like.
**Gauss Cannon is apparently a souped-up mass driver, dealing double the damage (18).
**Multi-Wave ECM Jammer uses the entire spectrum somehow and gives a +100 missile evasion; standard version is +70.

Picked this basically because it gives us a new weapon and also a shield.




*sigh*. It could have been worse though. This wasn't the rich planet in Lerion, and one citizen is left. With no infrastructure. So basically we're just starting from scratch without needing to recolonize.

SD 3526.4 - A spy is killed, but no other info on what happened. It's been a long time since we had that issue.




You could make a good argument that it's time to design a new generation of ships by this point. And we haven't even built the current ones quite yet.

Let's play with some Plasma (Phyics) and see what happens.

**Plasma Cannon - 6-30 damage against all four shields! Range penalties are doubled though.
**Plasma Rifle - The best personal weapon there is, +30 combat bonus.
**Plasma Web - Envelops a target in, well, a web of plasma. Range of 15 squares and damage of 5-25 dissipates by 5 each turn. Sounds nifty, but I'm unsure how useful it is.




We haven't gotten any new leaders in quite some time and there's no risk here, so I accept.

We have a ridiculous amount of money, much of which I'm about to spend on rushing out a couple more ships, and then it'll be time to go on the attack again. We've seen very little activity - everyone appears afraid of their own shadows.