Let's Play Stellaris: Part 3 - Slow Start

"To say the Cartel military got practically giddy at the prospect of armed conflict would be understating it by no small margin. The report from the science ship was garbled as they were too busy evading hostile fire to even bother examining the hostiles but that didn't stop an impassioned plea from the military leadership for more funds. A new ship was designed and several assembled, crews trained as the Fox Cartel military prepares for it's first military encounter."

Stardate: 13-06-2207

So we begin this episode preparing a fleet to take on those unruly blighters who scared off one of my science ships. I didn't get a good look at what they were which means I will adopt the policy of overwhelming force and smush them good and proper. I set my science ships on a different path to keep them surveying rather than cowering. The construction ship has enough to do claiming systems with outposts and building mining and research bases meaning for now things will just tick over, so let's have a look at the system these hostiles are in.

It appears to be about 1k fleet power which is not something I can easily reach with current available tech and I don't really want to throw away my ships this early on as alloys are slow to acquire. Much as the Cartel military is chomping at the bit to get to the conquering and space battles they'll just have to wait til we have better equipment. For now though I pause society research in favour of investigating these new neighbours designated 'alpha aliens'.

Another tradition can now be selected so I just continue down the discovery traditions selecting the science division tradition. Now this one is super helpful, an extra two levels to the max level for scientists but more importantly an extra research alternative meaning we'll have four options instead of three each time we choose what to research next.

Some good news however, whilst surveying a black hole system dubbed Eternal Horizon, we stumble across a source of dark matter (a strategic resource) as well as a level five anomaly, why do I feel nervous about that? We also finish investigating our uppity neighbours who scared off the science ship and find them to be ancient mining drones, so I approve the special project to study them, even if my generals whine they don't get to blow something up.

One of the Cartel's science ships scanning Eternal Horizon, a nearby black hole.

After spending a good year and a bit scanning the black hole my scientists determine it's just a bit 'wobbly' but on the plus side it means it gives more physics research, nine in total now, I'll take it! And then two factions form within the cartel simultaneously, the Committee of High Technology who basically want us to research the galaxy to death and the Battle Brethren who want us to explode the galaxy to death. So far they are both fairly content so for now I'll leave them be.

I continue to lament the lack of any suitable habitable planets though just as another tradition choice pops up, again, the discovery trees next option is chosen. Polytechnic Education, more leader experience and a higher level cap for leaders, always a plus. Kind of glad I didn't pick expansion as my first as right now there are no planets save that one the Cartel turned it's nose up at.

For now though it's been another quiet part to this Stellaris let's play but just hang in there, the space battles, galactic rivalries and other fun will come, just stick with me people! Thanks for reading though and as always I welcome all feedback either on here or twitter, don't be afraid to let me know what you think or throw ideas and suggestions out.

Keep an eye out for the next part soon!

The Cartel as it stands right now, one planet and six star systems.

If you missed the previous part, click here to go and read it!

Let's Play Stellaris: Part 2 - Dealing With Unruly Neighbours

"New planets had been surveyed, resource deposits marked, orbital research stations built but as yet no other sentient species. The Cartel did however stumble across evidence of a long dead space faring race who called themselves the Yuht, they hoped there would be more living beings to exploit in the future but for now they plan, they build and prepare for first contact."

Stardate: 24-03-2203

So here we are again in the early game, the exploration and discovery phase of Stellaris, sadly no more habitable planets for us so far but so long as we get a couple close by we should be alright. There are at least some resources nearby to exploit with mining and research stations so for now the Fox Cartel will build their economy up. Our governor, the venerable Faustus Volcatius leveled up but gained the stubborn trait giving him a -25% penalty on experience gain, well, not great but it could have been worse.

The Jor Mon Dir system currently being surveyed is proving to be a veritable treasure trove of resources so far and it's not even been fully surveyed yet but the minerals a lone mean it's going to be the next system I claim. Minerals make the galaxy go round, at least according to one Cartel philosopher. An anomaly is also detected just as the capital finishes a generator district taking care of the minor unemployment issue for now, after some pondering what to do with the building slot I opt for a corporate culture site, I know we have a unity penalty but as I see it traditions are still a massive help.

The Cartel's scientists decide that due to a complete lack of habitable worlds found in close proximity that we should undertake a massive survey effort to find more, I can only agree with them on that. However being a megacorp tends to mean you go tall rather than wide, besides, I can set-up 'employment opportunities' on other empires planets soon enough, ahem.

The Jor Mon Dir system gets claimed by the Cartel and all those tasty resources get a nice shiny mining station and we get another tradition to choose! I opt to go for the 'To Boldly Go' tradtion for increased surveying speed, super helpful this early on. An anomaly we examine turns out to be the wreck of a cruiser being crushed in a gas giant, sadly we can't add it to the 'mighty' Cartel navy but it does give us a nice pile of engineering research points. With not much happening I opt to let the game run at full speed for a while so we can get to the good stuff a bit quicker!

Expansion is slow and only a single unsuitable planet has been found not to mention unruly neighbours.

Right, something happening at long last the administrative AI research finished meaning a nice shiny boost to research speed so now, what next for physics research? For now I go for AI Colony Ships, on the off chance we actually find a world we can settle, even if the only one the Cartel has found so far is the wrong type having only 15% habitability for us, ick! Another tradition, this time I take databank uplinks so our orbital research stations give us that little bit of extra science.

Things take a slightly ugly turn when the FCMV Agathodaemon enters a system only to flee in terror from some alien scum.. I mean, potential customers. Sadly a fleet power of about 1000 means my frankly pathetic navy stands no chance. However, engineering research finishes so time for the next project, extra mining station output is tempting but with hostile aliens next door I opt to make my military happy and research ceramo-metal materials for better armour as well as design my first ship.

The first military ship of the Fox Cartel, the Cunning class corvette.

A missile boat is tempting simply for the range they have, a picket ship this early on likely won't be as useful as later so I opt for the interceptor for the 3 small weapon slots. So I throw in a pair of small mass drivers and a red laser as it's weapon loadout, a reactor booster, two armour and a shield. I don't have much to work with yet so it'll have to do. I name it the Cunning class corvette, long may she serve the interests of the Fox Cartel. I also retrofit the existing 3 ships to the new design and increase the fleet to more than double, having 8 Cunning class corvettes set to roll off the production line. Also for good measure I recruit an admiral, Mettia Carvilius whose starting trait sees her having an extra 25 years lifespan.

To end this part as society research finishes I don't have many good options to choose from, Hydroponic farming, offworld trading companies for starbases or the option I chose, ground defence planning, more naval capacity from soldier jobs and better damage for defence armies. These foxes are all about that military so it fits.

I am thinking that we won't be seeing much exciting happen for at least the next few parts, the early game of Stellaris can be somewhat slow and I am almost wondering if I should have set the galaxy to a smaller size. However, I feel that later on this is going to be a lot of fun as disgruntled neighbours try to put us out of business whilst the (eventually) mighty Cartel navy plies the starlanes.

Until then however thank you very much for reading, keep your eye out for more Stellaris on the blog soon!

If you missed the last part, click here to go to it!

Let's Play Stellaris: Part 1 - It Begins

"In a word the Fox Cartel could be described as ruthless. If you had something they wanted they would take it from you one way or another. Kings, armies, governments all fell to the cartel as the cartel at least was more organised, united in it's purpose and a lot more powerful than anyone else and they were not bound by rules or morality. So now they reach for the stars and you better hope you don't have something they want."

Stardate: 01-01-2200

This has been a long time coming but here it finally is, the Stellaris written let's play! So first things first before I even unpause the game, selecting my research goals to start us off. For physics research I select the Administrative AI, that +5% extra research speed will pay off in the long run the sooner I get it so it's an easy choice. Society research proves a trickier choice, do I go for faster population growth or more unity production? I opt for the unity with the Planetary Unification tech, maybe it'll offset that unity penalty I gave them during creation.

Engineering proves to be a bit of a meh selection of three choices, more engineering research, carrier operations and zero-g refineries. So I settle on zero-g refineries simply because I know I'll be building a lot of mining stations at the start. There are a few untapped resources in my home system, some energy, minerals and physics research so I set the constructor to start building those whilst the science ship I send off to scout the surrounding area.

The Beta Aquilae system is the first one just to our galactic north that I send the science ship to survey and they stumble across some precursor remnants in the form of the Yuht plus something strange in orbit of the star, so I set them to investigate. Realising there is a lot of galaxy for one science ship to cover I order a second one constructed, so a new Hephaestio class science ship soon rolls off the ship-yard assembly line captained by Marcus Nautius. Hopefully that should ensure we get a good picture of our surroundings sooner rather than later.

Precursor remnants from a race known as the Yuht were found on this lump of rock in the Beta Aquilae system.

It's at this stage we get to choose our first tradition, exciting! Expansion is tempting but of limited use to a Megacorp as we simply can't make ourselves too big too fast or the admin costs would grind us to a halt. So I opt for the discovery tradition, maybe it'll help speed along the early exploration stage of things for our curious Foxes.

The Ribblor system is now fully surveyed though it's a fairly disappointing patch of space, 2 energy credits and 6 minerals hardly being the treasure trove of wealth the Fox Cartel wants but I'll claim it anyway. The expansion begins! Kind of.

The science ship examining the strange container orbiting the star in Beta Aquilae I opt to not study it further as my scientists are too low level and I have more important things to do like finding planets to settle.

The population of our homeworld Vulpinus is growing and now they need jobs so I slap down an energy generator district for now. I tend to keep my homeworld balanced to at the start when it comes to districts

Whilst I know not much has happened so far, that is just the nature of early-game Stellaris but hopefully things will start picking up in later parts. Will we find ourselves at odds with aggressive neighbours? Will we find a race of peaceful space bunnies and nick all their carrots? Watch this space for more!

One new system claimed for the glory of the Fox Cartel, it won't be the last.

I am still figuring out a good length for these so any feedback is greatly appreciated, I won't be doing this like Rimworld though. Stellaris can oft have many game years of not much happening so restricting myself to one or two years at a time may not work. Do let me know what you think!

If you missed the previous part, find it here!

Lets Play Stellaris: Part 0 - Empire and Galaxy Set-Up!

It was pretty much inevitable that Stellaris would be one of my written let's plays given my love of both sci-fi and strategy. However one of the hardest parts already has been trying to decide what kind of civilisation I want to play, so after much pondering I finally got inspired enough to create a new empire for this written LP of mine!

So naturally the first thing I do is select the Fox species portrait and make sure my race are called Foxes because, why wouldn't I? I'll leave the biography blank for now until I have done everything else. As for the name lists I figured it'd be amusing to use the Human (SPQR) name list, Roman empire foxes I think that works! Ship prefix again I'll leave until later. I am however aiming for some kind of Megacorp type empire.

Now for the first important part of empire creation, selecting positive and negative traits, I've always felt this needs a bit more expanding on but we'll make do for now. First off we need some more points to play with so I select the negative trait 'Quarrelsome' the negative to unity production won't hurt us that much I feel. For the positive traits as I see it foxes love money and good ships, so thrifty will ensure our trade jobs make that much more trade value and natural engineers will help us make better ships down the road.

Next up we choose our home-world type and name it along with our home star! These aren't your garden variety foxes so I set their preferred world type to be Alpine, us foxes love our pine trees. Home-world name will be Vulpinus in orbit around the star our people call Capella. I'll just leave the city appearance as mammalian.

The next part is arguably the most important part of empire creation if you ask me, choosing your government and ethics. First off we are definitely choosing the Corporate authority, this means we will be building tall instead of wide at least to start with. Ethics wise I think what fits the concept for this empire for me is them being fanatic militarists with a point in materialist, they like ships and they care not for all that spiritual mumbo jumbo.

Finally we have the civics choices, the first and arguably most important of these I selected is the criminal heritage. They have few scruples when it comes to gaining wealth and power and are a fairly mercenary people which helped choose the second civic too, naval contractors given my last game as a megacorp having that larger navy is going to help when they get annoyed with all the crime I sow on their worlds.

The Fox Cartel begins!

With our race created and raring to go it only remains now to set-up the galaxy in which they will attempt domination. I go back and add in a basic biography and add my ship prefix, FCMV (Fox Cartel Military Vessel.)

I have set everything to default in a 600 star galaxy with the only exceptions being that this will be on captain difficulty and as always it will be an ironman game.

So it begins, near the galactic core on the north side of the galaxy, this is gonna be fun!