"The Fox Cartel had launched into the void a little over sixty years ago, so much had changed that to many it felt like far longer. The galaxy map in the oligarchs office had gone from a single pinprick of light marking out their ownership of the Capella system in a vast spider web of hyper-lane links, unknown stars hanging like dew to the strands and now? A fairly sizable swathe of space now bore their colours, twenty-eight star systems, two planets, with rivals empires opposing colours pressing up against hypothetical borders each race marked out. No longer were they alone in a vast expanse of nothingness, the risks were great but so were the potential opportunities."
Stardate: 08-10-2260
Here we are again in the over-sized and frankly far too comfortable oligarchs chair of the Fox Cartel, looking out across a fairly sizable empire (for a MegaCorp.) Our current objectives remain largely the same, to build up our military strength, improve our technology then kick down the Uriy Suns proverbial space door and take all their space candy. Also to start throwing out more corporate branches to help in that endeavour through extra resources and weakening those target empires by sending their crime rate through the roof. We are a crime syndicate after all, we do not play fair.
Things get off to a good start with the physics division finishing that oh so lovely null void beam weapon technology (we'll redesign our ships and platforms later.) So let us see what they have in store for us next. Better reactors for our ships, better plasma cannons, better research complexes, better point defences (to shoot down fighters and missiles) and chemical plants to turn minerals into volatile motes. Not a lot of wildly different or new options there so let's stick with what we know is going to be helpful in the near future and get those better plasma throwers researched. If we are going to turn the Uriy Suns into a subsidiary then let us make sure we succeed first time around. Losing a battle against mining drones is one thing, losing an actual war to another empire could see us losing territory or worse.
With the star-base at Capella now upgraded we now have two module slots and a building slot, so let's see what we will do with it. It is tempting to stick more guns and missile batteries on it but this is my home station so I will turn it into my primary shipyard and have other stations on choke-points as the 'battle-stations' as it were. So, one more shipyard for an extra build queue and an anchorage for more naval capacity for our module slots.We don't have an many options for our building slot that are useful so for the time being I just throw in a resource silo, so we can if need be stockpile resources a lot higher before hitting the cap I can always replace it with something else later on as the need arises and better options become available.
The Uriy Suns then manage to shut down that new branch office again, they are really cracking down on them hard. The deficit on food and consumer goods persists however at the very least the food one will solve itself over time as Vulpinus has three vacant farmer jobs which should take care of that. I will have to wait before upgrading the alloy foundries until there's enough population to work in them though. Hades is a little trickier as it lacks amenities right now (which makes the little fox folk unhappy) so, perhaps a holo-theater or luxury residences will have to fill that building slot soon.
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| The Hades Colony, slowly growing with the only problem being a corrupt (more than usual) governor. |
The engineering division at least helps with the problem of consumer goods by giving us the upgraded fabricators, another upgrade that will have to wait for more workers though. So let us see what our engineering division has for us next. Rare crystal mining (could be handy), better missiles, an afterburner for our ships utility slots, space torpedoes, plasteel armour, more engineering research and finally better sub-light thrusters. I am actually going to go for the boring option this time and get the extra research, I am playing the long-game here and as my ships use neither missiles or torpedoes yet I don't see much need to go for them.
Just as I set a holo-theater to build on Hades to give them some much demanded amenities we get our next tradition choice. There is only one left in the prosperity branch, which will give our city districts one extra clerk job (they produce amenities and trade value.) Now, we also have another ascension perk, the options that we have access to make me consider just sitting on this one for a while and waiting. However 'Grasp the Void' is quite tempting given how many hostile empires we have popping up as it gives us a five extra starbase capacity, which would give us ten. That would allow us to make Cartel space very very costly to invade. So I go for that one, even if I can't really afford more star-bases right now it's good to know I won't have to be so picky where I do put them.
The society division finally finishes researching the increase to naval capacity which is a massive help with our plans to take over Uriy Suns space, so let us see what they have for us next. Even more naval capacity, off-world trading company buildings for our star-bases, genetic modification (tempting), hydroponic farms, better farming or that near useless energy siphon. For the sake of maybe in the future making a farming world to be the bread-basket of the Cartel for now I go for hydroponic farms, a bit dull I know but trust me, we may need it later (also I want to get it out of the list to make room for better options.)
One of our science ships actually gets us an entire new tech from a nanite anomaly, and it gets us an L-gate insight.. Why does that make me nervous? The Cartel may be an unscrupulous criminal empire but even they would be wary of using something as unpredictable as nanites for anything, I am not even sure where the L-Gate actually is, I'll have to poke around for it. Our other science ship finds some explorers logs, initially we considered selling them to a private collector but we opted to send them to the home world for study.
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| One of our science ships examining a crashed pre-cursor ship from the Yuht. |
For a long time everything seems quiet, the Cartel simply ticks over, resources are accrued, science ships survey buildings complete. I opt to upgrade the outpost in the Bonos system to better protect the Hades colony in the lull. Once I get I slam my fox ears straight into the mineral cap despite the resource silo, no matter as always I sell the for energy credits and then spend those on alloys. It gets me enough to fully reinforce the first fleet but not enough to expand it just yet however I think it's time to start really preparing to take on the Uriy Suns before they make too many friends with big guns.
I begin training assault armies on Vulpinus, ten of them should do for now and I'll look into a general once that is done. Just as the physics division finishes the new plasma throwers, not many new or massively interesting options, rare techs like wormhole travel and the curator lab don't feel important enough right now so lets get the auxiliary fire control done to give an alternative to reactor boosters or nothing in the utility slot for our ships.
The governor of Vulpinus decides to flop over dead, so let's find a new governor. Primus Centenius seems the best candidate given he boosts research and Vulpinus is home to both our major research complexes. Well done, you've got the job if you mess up well, best not to find out what happens if you do mess up in the Cartel. Just ignore all those white and orange fur rugs in the Oligarchs office.
We get our improved engineering research done, with some good resource boosting options available I decide to improve our miners. We may be at a mineral surplus now but as soon as those upgraded alloy foundries and consumer goods factories go online they will happily gobble up a lot more minerals.
As it looks like another part that is more build up than action let's end this part on something more interesting, some ship redesigns! Let's start with the venerable Cunning-class corvette, I start by replacing the forward coil-gun with the new null void beam and the two plasma throwers get replaced by auto-cannons. The idea with these is to have them rush in and strip away the shields of the enemy fleet as quickly as possible. They will have the swarm-role combat computer, and later on they will also have an afterburner.
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| The upgraded Cunning-class corvette, it's role is to charge in and take out enemy shields as fast as possible. |
Next up is the Heuntzelman-class destroyer, it gets three plasma throwers in the bow section, a medium and two small with it's main job being to punch through the armour and destroy the hull. The aft section gets a pair of auto-cannons, to make sure it can still deal with shields if it has to but also give it some extra punch against the hull. The Gladius class defence platform gets some small tweaks, the blue lasers are swapped for void beams to deal with shields and it's three plasma throwers are upgraded to the improved version.
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| The Heuntzelman-Class destroyer is designed to complement the Cunning-class by being good against armour and hull but also still having some anti-shield capabilities from the auto-cannons. |
I know a lot of this is largely seeming like just filler but I promise you soon we are going to be having a lot more space battles or possibly even fighting just to survive. Thank you as always for taking the time to read this, the feedback, support, comments are always welcome so don't be afraid to prod my twitter account, keep your eyes peeled for the continuing story of the Fox Cartel!
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