"After months of scanning, studying, even some risky sample taking the Cartel's brightest minds were still no closer to unravelling the tubular mystery hanging over the capital. The initial fear and panic it caused faded as days turned to weeks without this enigmatic object doing anything at all. The first fleet was soon dispatched elsewhere to more critical affairs and yet it remained it's intent and purpose still a mystery with the only answer providing only fuel for more questions."
Stardate: 25-01-2314
Here we are once again at the glorious helm of the Fox Cartel, with just one rather large tube shaped mystery hovering in orbit over the capital world. It could be a huge potential advantage or it could exterminate everything in the blink of an eye, pros and cons you know. So, before we dive in and get to the difficult work of galactic criminal enterprising let's see what our goals should be meanwhile.
- Investigate the mysterious ship in orbit of Vulpinus and hope it does not murder-death-kill everyone in the meanwhile.
- Continue preparing for war with the Uriy Suns by building our fleet up and improving the defensive star-bases covering the hyper-lanes into Cartel space.
- Try and improve the economy further still especially when it comes to alloys as it is the one thing we are critically short of since forever.
So getting things rolling I decide to upgrade one of the alloy forges on Vulpinus which may cause a need for some juggling with job priorities but that is fine I need alloys badly. There is also a short-fall of consumer goods so I build civilian industries on Nova Druzhnik to take care of that, I know it's a generator world but it's not that big a deal. Let's also build city districts on every planet we have especially our new colonies to ensure they have enough housing, I'll worry about jobs a bit later.
Meanwhile we get our next tradition, there's only one current choice in the supremacy tree but it is a most welcome one given we are about to go to war. Increased rate of fire for my ships and more damage from orbital bombardments you say? The Oligarch approves.
There is then a flurry of activity, with the researchers on Blissful Elysium successfully poking the dark matter portal with their science sticks to generate even more dark matter for us to harvest, neat. The physics division also finishes researching the advanced combat roles tech which we are going to plug into all our ship designs. First let's see what is next on the science shopping list, not a great deal of amazing options so let's just knock x-ray lasers out pretty fast to make room for something better next time.
After some market fun with resources I manage to scrape enough alloys together to upgrade our two defensive star-bases to star-holds, given I am expecting each one of these to hold off a fleet or two by themselves they'll need the upgrades.
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| The mystery remains with the first fleet ever ready to defend the capital should it prove hostile. |
Speaking of upgrades I make sure all my ship designs are updated with the latest tech only for the Oligarch to nearly fall out of his over-sized leather chair in shock at the retrofit cost, over 1100 alloys needed, yikes! However our improved alloy production is helping to blunt that a little. Sadly our branch office in the Ymarcera Assembly gets closed down, it does feel like that happens far too often at times.
The engineering division is next out of the gate grabbing us the reduced star-base construction costs, let's see what's next. I opt to grab the rail guns next whilst reducing ship cost and construction time is tempting I'd rather not lose too many ships to begin with right now.
Making immediate use of the reduction to upgrade costs for star-bases I drop another gun battery and hangar bay onto each of our two battle-stations as well as a disruption field generator. Reducing enemy shield hit points sounds perfect for their role.
The first fleet briefly leaves it's position near the mysterious object to retrofit as war preparations continue apace. It's at this point more pirates emerge well talk about bad timing, the first fleet for now continues it's retrofit ahead of chasing down the pirates, it being deemed a more immediate threat than the alien object which to date has done nothing since entering orbit. The pirates have a grand old time wrecking the mining bases in the Ishnor system unaware the newly upgraded first fleet is now tearing across the galaxy to flatten them.
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| The pirates are quickly crushed by the vast might of the first fleet. |
To say the pirates stood little chance against the state of the art firepower and defences of the first fleet would be something of a gross understatement. They leave the wreckage behind as a warning to others whom would engage in unsanctioned piracy within Cartel space when the political landscape of the galaxy changes for the worse as well. A federation has formed between the Prime Wardens and the Ziiran Mandate, whilst they are far enough away to not be an immediate concern it does cause some heated debate among the Cartel as to what it could mean if more empires join together in this manner.
The remainder of the first fleets reinforcements are now under construction as the Cartel prepares to make it's move on the Uriy Suns before they federate or garner the protection of another civilisation. The enigmatic cache after months of research leaves our scientists just as confused as when they started, they gather it's a probe of some kind that is foreign to our galaxy beyond that it remains a mystery. So long as it isn't the kind of mystery that blows up suns or some-such let's turn our attention to our neighbours.
Our engineering division finishes off the rail gun research and we finally have the rare crystal extraction tech roll around again making it an easy choice. Ahead of that research finishing I deploy a constructor to the systems which naturally contain these rare crystals. Meanwhile the society division gets us a tech to improve our workers resource output, I get them working on a ministry of production next to improve our alloy output even further.
The rate at which empires are now federating is becoming a worrying trend as the Alvothari Hegemony join the Golden Alliance too. We need to move fast now or we risk being crushed before we have even started, the first fleet and the transport fleet move to their staging area in the Janna system ahead of the declaration of war.
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| The first fleet ambushes what appears to be the Uriy Suns main fleet, vastly outgunned they stood little chance agaisnt their upgraded firepower. |
The goal of this war is not to wipe them out of course but to weaken them enough that the offer of becoming a subsidiary of the Cartel becomes all the more appealing an option. The first fleet ambushes an enemy fleet on route to it trying to defend one of its colonies with disastrous results (for them) as they get obliterated without so much as a single loss inflicted on the first fleet. Emboldened the Cartel fleet moves in to Peya to begin softening it's colony up for a ground invasion. The star base is the only significant threat in this system however.
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| The planet Flem in Uriy Suns space is subjected to an orbital bombardment ahead of landing troops to occupy it. |
The first fleet makes quick work even of the star-base and the few ships that escaped the ambush and begins bombarding the planet Flem. They are selective, targeting only military bases and planetary defences in part as there is no money in ruling a bombed out ruin of a planet, plus ammunition isn't cheap.
With the war now well and truly under way and the mystery of the strange object hovering over the capital world no closer to being solved it's time to draw this part to a close. As always I hope you enjoyed reading as much as I enjoyed writing, keep your eyes peeled for more Fox Cartel fun soon!
I welcome any feedback, tips, comments or just general chatting here or on twitter, go on, I don't bite!
If you missed the last part, you can find it here!
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