"The list of serious threats to the Cartels future was an ever growing entity now. From a pair of highly advanced fallen empires and hostile crystalline entities all the way to a roving band of nomadic marauders and an ominous mystery from the past. So it was only natural for the militaristic Cartel to continue the military build up, bigger ships, more powerful weapons and improved defences. Whether or not they would win any future conflicts it was clear the Fox Cartel wanted to ensure they survived."
Stardate: 04-04-2248
Here we are again, back in the decidedly opulent hot-seat of the fledgling Fox Cartel, the current objective is still to prepare to take out our nearest rival in the form of the Unified Uriy Suns empire. More immediately I need to improve my economy further, namely in the area of alloy production so I can more freely build up my fleet. Also I will need to start looking into defences, more star-bases, more defence platforms just to make sure if those marauders get any funny ideas we can hold our own.
It seems the Uriy Suns are really adept at shutting down my branch offices as they close down the one on their capital of Uraya again. They will pay for that, in time. It's a minor set-back hopefully we'll find juicier targets soon, just one more reason to work on improving my economy further. The newly surveyed Uzun system now infamous for the battle against the mining drones has a fair amount of useful resources in (22 minerals, 2 energy & 3 rare crystals) making it a good next system to claim.
One of our science ships finds a ship inside the atmosphere of a gas giant so I approve a project to see if they can retrieve it. The capital world opens up another building slot in the meanwhile, I'll wait until all the current jobs are taken before I build something though so we'll come back to that later. Meanwhile I drop a mining district on Hades, still a little on the fence whether to specialise or generalise it.
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| From weird injections to free resources being handed out, the Cartel begins to wonder if the Homolog Continuum is just a bunch of robots a few thousand years overdue for maintenance. |
The Homolog Continuum had been quiet for some time only to suddenly out of the blue open a comm-link and offer us free resources. The Cartel is naturally dubious of such an offer but they take it regardless as they are a firm believer in never being able to have too many resources. Then a curator station contacts us, preservers of knowledge, now this could be helpful so let's see what they have to offer. So, 1000 energy credits to improve our research speed by 10% for 10 years that is what the Fox Cartel refers to as a bargain so we do that. Every little helps when surrounded by more advanced empires.
The science ship that claimed to have found another ship in the atmosphere of a gas giant actually managed to recover it, it is far larger than anything currently in the Cartel navy. Even larger than the Heuntzelman-Class destroyers, a cruiser class ship with more advanced weapons and armour than anything else we have available, that was surprisingly good. I was half expecting it to be filled with flesh eating aliens.That ship alone has the same power rating as a third of my current fleet, a little scary.
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| A cruiser-class ship is salvaged from a gas giant and pressed into service with the first fleet. |
Something a little unusual pops up after finding a drifting stealth bomber it appears as though we may have discovered some hidden labs filled with weapons technology. Needless to say that got a science ship rerouted to explore that possibility rather quickly indeed. It seems our science ships are finding us all kinds of goodies today a good omen perhaps? (If the Cartel believed in such superstitious nonsense.) Once that new cruiser arrives at the home system I will add it to the first fleet and send them off to deal with some of the weaker crystalline entity fleets nearby.
Meanwhile it seems our neighbours have expanded to yet another planet and their borders are getting worryingly close to mine, so I do the neighbourly thing and establish a branch office on their new planet. It's population is too low for us to do anything else with right now but hopefully that will mean it doesn't get shut down just yet. Also I finally get around to getting our social division to seeing how the 'zeta aliens' actually are, let's just hope they aren't yet another powerful empire who despises our fabulous foxiness.
Figuring we have enough excess food to support it now I make use of a planetary decision on both Vulpinus and Hades to encourage population growth, another thing that will help our economic and military build up. Again our science ships find yet another ship adrift, this time in an asteroid field with our scientists recommending we send a constructor ship to tow it out, it's going to be a long trip and this is a timed one so, let's see if one of our constructor ships can get there in time.
With the cruiser finally arriving home it is examined, crewed and pressed into service and the admiral given the order to clean out the Bikhul system of hostiles. Just as at long last the physics division enters the office informing us they have finished researching improvements to physics research speed, so let us see what they have to offer next.
Better lasers, unlocking disruptors (tempting), chemical plants which are able to turn minerals into volatile motes, better reactor boosters and better reactors. A useful if largely dull collection of offerings but for now I will research better reactors for my ships, what good is a big gun if you don't have the juice to fire it?
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| Well, that is all kinds of disturbing. |
To say our research of the weapons lab was wholly disturbing would be an understatement and I find myself actually glad that whatever was in them seems to have been destroyed. Bio weapons and other such things are not something the Cartel would consider using at the moment, they prefer to have stuff to take and people to press into service for profit, killing everything is wasteful as far as they are concerned. Then the engineering division not to be out-done finish researching star-holds, the next step up from our current star-bases, so let's see what they have for us now.
A new utility item in the form of afterburners, a new weapon in the form of the auto-cannon (my admiral would be grinning from ear to ear at those), improved planetary building speed, improved city districts. The last two being improved mining stations and more engineering research, some tough choices but I already know which I am picking. The auto-cannon, this will be the primary weapon of my Cunning-class corvettes going forwards. Swarm combat role, auto-cannons, full of foxy fury, also it looks pretty awesome seeing space filled with tracer fire.
While we await for the first fleet to reach it's destination we find the 'zeta aliens' are in fact nothing more than docile space-faring creatures who feed on gas giants, at least they aren't hostile. Meanwhile our research on the 'Prince' project seems to be important documents from some other civilisation, so we'll return it to them. It gets us some energy credits not amazing but again, at least it wasn't something else trying to explode our stuff, eat our face or enslave us. After the longest time we actually get another tradition to choose, extra clerk jobs for city districts or extra housing from the prosperity tree. I opt for more housing for now.
The first fleet then finally arrives and moves to engage the three crystalline entity fleets in the system, let us see how this cruiser we found fares.
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| The first fleet and it's new cruiser engage the crystalline entities. |
To say it was a largely one sided battle would be selling it short, the 1st fleet so utterly pulverised the crystalline entities three fleets that they only lost a single corvette and a single destroyer. The cruiser we found proved it's worth by far, often engaging multiple targets simultaneously making our admiral politely ask when we might actually research larger vessels such as this. The first fleet are now at two victories for three battles, let's hope they continue their streak, I have a feeling we will need it in the future.
We got to end on a space battle at least! I know there are a lot of lulls and slow patches but that is basically just how Stellaris is so I hope you enjoying reading and I thank you for taking the time to do so. I greatly appreciate any feedback or support you give, keep being awesome folks!
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