Let's Play Stellaris: Part 22 - Expansion

"Resources were flowing in larger quantities than had ever been conceived, population growth was booming and the Fox Cartel was becoming a highly prosperous crime syndicate. It all had a purpose , a grand design, every ship component, every ingot of refined alloy, every scrap of food was all now aimed at a singular goal. It had been dubbed by experts as 'The Grand Plan' the goal of which to turn the Cartel from a back-water upstart into an economic and military powerhouse able to claim all other empires as subsidiaries of itself. Or at least hold their own against less business minded empires who saw it as their goal to conquer the galaxy or cleanse it for whatever twisted alien purpose they had. For them there would be no negotiations just fire, rubble and unforgiving cold of the void."

Stardate: 03-01-2291

Right let's get this galactic conquering underway shall we? Or at least the important things that will let the Fox Cartel succeed at the conquering bit or I guess turning the galaxy into it's subsidiary. Same difference in the end. It will involve lots of big guns and bigger ships I am sure.

Before I go around kicking down space doors for space loot I will need to continue improving alloy production and energy credit production so I can afford to beef up my defences. For now I just continue using one of my construction ships to claim a few more systems that have some resources in I just hope the Yeon Progenitors don't get annoyed with me claiming systems so close to them.

Meanwhile it seems our latest terraforming target is nearing completion so I order a colony ship in advance to cut down on wasted time (that and it takes a year to build one so terraforming will finish first.) I take a look at Vulpinus and realise it only had space for two more districts at present so I drop a mining district and city district down so I don't have to worry about the capital anytime soon.

The Skanuri Bloc and the Prossnakan Star Hunters are once again engaging in fisticuffs with each other, honestly I am hoping the Skanuri Bloc come out on top. Mainly because I can actually construct branch offices on their worlds unlike the Prossnakan's who just want to blow up anything that isn't them. For now though the Cartels goals remain firmly on economic gain for the sake of supporting future military campaigns, the foxes are definitely playing the long game here.

A shining new world for the Fox Cartel, named Blissful Elysium (after a follower Blissful Kitty!)

With the new world terraformed and the colony ship on it's way its time to name that shiny new green and blue marble. Blissful Elysium is chosen as a name but it will be some time before it is up and running. Hades has a minor unemployment issue but not enough population for another building slot so, let's drop an agriculture district, foxes enjoy being well fed after all. That and it still counts as a rural world giving basic worker jobs a resource output bonus, may as well make use of it right?

Vulpinus seems to be suffering still from having masses of empty job slots so with the food situation back into a comfortable surplus let's fire up the planetary decision to increase population growth. Hopefully that will help as once the home-world is working at full tilt it's going to be pumping out masses of resources which we will definitely need when we go knock on the Uriy Suns door again. I really need the extra population so I can upgrade both the alloy foundries, that should really jump-start my preparations.

We then get a flood of decisions to make as two techs finish researching and we get another tradition choice pop, so let's start with that first. As we are already working on the 'Supremacy' line I opt for the 'Master Shipwrights' as part of the Grand Plan, which makes our ships not only cheaper but we can build them faster as well, always a plus.

Now let's get the research sorted, the society division gets us the extra admin cap improvement for the next tech I go for one that increases our star-base capacity for one good reason. The hyper-lane layout is a bit awkward at the moment, the western side of my empire is fairly easy to block off but the eastern one is not. So more star-bases mean I can cover the gaps as needed.

Our cunning fox engineers finish researching star-fortresses which will be a huge help in securing Cartel space in future. For the next one I opt for the upgraded auto-cannons the aptly named 'Rippers' I am sure the captains of future Cunning class corvettes will have fun with those.

The Yeon Progenitors Starbase is pretty scary and huge, let's hope they are friendly neighbours.

The physics division is last into the Oligarchs office with the upgraded point defence tech, not much catches my interest for the next tech so I just opt to get UV lasers off the list, I may use them on defence platforms, we'll see. Meanwhile, I claim the system right next to the Yeon Progenitors half expecting them to go into a frothing genocidal rage but not so much as a squeak, phew. One of the newly claimed systems has a continental world within it which we are going to terraform for the glory of the Cartel, so lets get that started.

It's at this point I realise I accidentally built two colony ships though it's not entirely a waste as I can move them toward the world I am currently terraforming, should save a couple of years at least. Then we get some sad news, the admiral of the first fleet perished at a frankly ludicrous age of 124, let's find a replacement. Admiral Statia Orbilius is next in line who has the skill of boosting our fleets weapon damage and hull strength at the cost of making it less likely for our ships to disengage when damaged, very much a 'no retreat' kind of fox it seems.

The alloy shortage is still plaguing the Cartel even now, meaning the first fleets reinforcements and all the planned star-bases are still on hold til Vulpinus' population catches up to fill all the job slots. The physics division quickly finish off researching slightly shinier lasers, I opt for the research institute as the next research project as it basically gives a percentage boost to the planets total science output which will be very good on Vulpinus right now.

The expanding first fleet, in drydock at the Capella station shipyards.

With things mostly ticking over nicely and some baby-steps in terms of progress in the current plan I think it's time to call this part to a close for the day, as always hope you enjoy reading and I welcome all feedback, comments, support on here or twitter!

Til next time fox fans!

If you missed the last part you can find it here!