Let's Play Stellaris: Part 24 - Winds of Change

"From atop the Oligarch's tower he watched the comings and goings of a burgeoning empire. From this far up it looked like an ant colony, people flowing from place to place, shuttles and transports all but clouding the sky. Over thousand years ago they had been naught but a street gang and now they were a galactic power, it hadn't been easy to get to this point. They'd had to take on corrupt governments, religious cults and rival gangs and yet their greatest challenges awaited ahead. Among the stars, empires more vast and powerful were ever drawing closer on the map and unknowable alien horrors waited in every dark corner. Turning away from the window the Oligarch slipped into his seat, the holographic display illuminating his grey tinged orange fur, one digit outstretched swiping through the green light hanging in the air. 'Get me the admiralty, we have work to do.' "

Stardate: 9-12-2299

Here we are again, more Fox Cartel fun times abound! Hopefully anyway, anyone that plays Stellaris knows full well the lulls that can happen not to mention I tend to get a bit into the whole empire building and economy side of things a bit heavily at times. With that said let's decide on some current and future objectives to keep things moving shall we?

1. Boost our population growth so we don't have so many empty job slots and the new colonies become productive more quickly.
2. Terraform all planets currently within Cartel controlled space and colonise them
3. Increase the first fleet in size as well as ensure it is fully reinforced and always has the latest tech.
4. Build defensive star-bases in key hyper-lane choke-point systems and economic ones internally to boost the overall economy.
5. Construct and build defence platforms everywhere but focused on key defensive systems and potential weak areas to reduce the chance of small enemy fleets driving up our war exhaustion.

So as you can see we have our work cut out for us, something I noticed in our war with the Uriy Suns was their use of small fleets to attack undefended systems. I am also considering designing a variety of defence platforms but I'll get to that later. Once I have a few more cruisers and bulk out the rest of the first fleet and have the key systems defended I'll go say hello to the Uriy Suns again.

The Dyss Marauders send us a strangely friendly message meanwhile saying their fleets are for hire if we need them. That actually isn't a half bad idea, I could send them to weaken the Uriy Suns further before I declare war again or perhaps even send them to slow down the advancing Galactic Ymacera Assembly.

The society division finishes our food processing facilities tech so lets send them off to research 'insterstellar campaigns' basically it reduces war exhaustion gain and the influence cost of claiming systems. I set one of our new food processing facilities to be built on Hades for now, though looking at it Blissful Elysium has greater potential to be a farming world, I'll swap it for something else later. I also drop down another two generator districts on Nova Druzhnik, with the aim of turning that into a generator world (so I can actually maintain a large fleet and masses of star-bases and defence platforms.)

A dimensional portal on Blissful Elysium you say? Let's poke it scientifically with a stick and see what happens!

Something a little worrying happens on Blissful Elysium however, some kind of dimensional portal which makes the colonists their understandably a bit nervous. Science minions! Go and poke it with a science stick and see what happens please and thank you. It is going to put our physics research on hold for a while but I don't want to leave it and have some kind of horrific aliens start coming through and eating my colonists.

The marauders on the other side of the galaxy the Husko Raiders make a similar offer to send their craziest warriors to fight our enemies for the right price, how adorable. The Oligarch nods and smiles before closing the comm-link turning his attention elsewhere. Such as the more important happening of another branch office being closed down, time to spend some energy credits to set up some more on different worlds. I still wonder if there is a trick I am missing with branch offices for crime syndicate mega-corps. So let's set up about four, one in each neighbouring empire and see if putting them on something other than capital planets works better and have the first building be a front company on each when possible.

The portal on Blissful Elysium leads to a null void, a dimension of pure entropy which gives us some research toward null void beams (pretty sure we have those already) and some dark matter production, handy! Then something a little more worrying happens with our growing rivals in the Ymacera Assembly, their beliefs shift them from a democracy to a xenophobic imperialist which.. Means they will likely be expanding even more, uh, this is not good.

Luckily the engineering division sees fit to cheering up the Oligarch by finishing it's research into plasteel armour for our ships and stations. Let's get them even further improving our orbital mining stations as they form a good chunk of our resource income still. The physics division follows hot on their heels with the experimental hyper-lane breaching tech, which means my science ships can maybe get some more surveying done. I do send one of them to the homeworld to assist research though as I don't think I need two out there at this stage. Let's get these disruptors researched now as all the other options are not all that useful at present.

A non-Cartel pirate faction emerges in the Tatanga system and disables the outpost.

Pirates who think they can operate in Cartel space without a license pop up, I think not you scurvy ridden upstarts. The first fleet will deal with you very soon so just stay where you are and try not to struggle too much it increases the ammo cost. The society research division finishes once again and gives us some interesting options however let's get some of these cheap techs out of the way like gene clinics and alien zoos, so we have more space for better choices later.

The outpost in the Tatanga system fares poorly against the pirates further reinforcing the need for defence platforms everywhere. The first fleet however is flying at full speed toward them so that will be their only success.

Whilst we wait for the first fleet to arrive Nova Druzhnik can now upgrade it's capital building and the planet in the Acrux system is terraformed. Luckily the colony ship is already in orbit so let's name this one after another legend of the Cartel, Lycaon Prime is now the latest in the list of planetary acquisitions for the Cartel. Long may it prosper!

The engineering division finishes improving our orbital mining stations so let's get them researching synthetic crystal plants as it's the one strategic resource we have a deficit of. The first fleet finally arrives to engage the pirates who have broken their contract with the Cartel, so let's liquidate their assets. With explosions.

The first fleet rapidly arrives to deal with the pirates.

The well trained crews and state-of-the-art ships of the first fleet tear through the pirate fleet with frightening efficiency, leaving all 14 pirates ships and their ramshackle station destroyed without a single loss among the first fleet. Short of needing a new touch of paint here or there the first fleet returns home to Capella whilst we get to choose our next tradition, progress!

Both available options in the supremacy tree are tempting and we'll be getting them all eventually but for now I settle on 'War Games' increasing our admirals level cap by 2 and our fleet command limit by 20, very nice.

To finish things off for this part I make sure all star-bases in systems with colonies are upgraded to star-ports and upgraded with a trade hub and a hangar bay, the former for trade value the latter to protect the trade routes. Let's see how Vulpinus is doing as getting those upgraded alloy foundries is key to the next stage of the grand plan.

Down from 9 available jobs to 7, it's a start at least but to ensure I don't run out of housing and having no district slots left I use a building slot for some luxury residences, rich Foxes only and if you have to ask how much, you can't afford it.

As always folks, thank you very much for taking the time to read this and I truly hope you enjoy it! I welcome all feedback, tips, comments and chatting here or on twitter so don't be afraid, gentlemen foxes never bite. Til the next part!

The state of the galaxy so far, bit hard to read but basically the Galactic Ymacera Assembly (the blue in the west) are easily the largest empire around and they just turned from democratic to imperialist. Not good.

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