With Bulrathi transports about to arrive and steal my technology, not incidentally sitting their immovable ursine behinds on Yarrow, which would force me to send in unreasonable numbers of troops or bomb away all its hard-built factories, I resorted to a move of desperation. The huge Bulrathi ships, complete with 25 Death Spores apiece, were still in orbit, and I managed to build a single Firenewt to face them. In spite of its clever attempts at dodging, its superior speed wasn't superior enough, and it perished ... but not before accomplishing its true purpose: Giving the Bears' overzealous pilots a chance to commit a major strategic blunder.
By using their death spores to destroy the colony in the course of the battle, they rendered it uninhabitable for their incoming 50 millions. The Sakkra at Yarrow were doomed anyway, and living on a contaminated world. With this stroke, I would be able to decontaminate it with the help of a colony ship later on, and the Bulrathi would lose their chance for a foot-hold in Sakkra space. It wouldn't have done them any good if they had it, but it saved me a lot of logistical headaches ... and isn't that the really important thing? The peaceful Ref of the 24th century would have balked at seeing his own people spored to death when they could have died fighting Bulrathi, but I had a different perspective after the Bulrathi betrayed me ... and the people of Yarrow would die knowing they were taking 50 million Bulrathi with them! I at once proceeded to scrap our old Newts in favor of a bare-bones Lander 2.0 and ordered one at Maretta, ready to restore Yarrow to me.
We continued to repel or destroy incoming enemy fleets while (in spite of our five front war) never neglecting our all-important scientific discoveries! The first came as we infiltrated the Darloks' Reticuli research center again and stole ECM1 from them. Next, our research centers came through with Atmospheric Terraforming, and I let our blue-scaled Planetologist know that Advanced Soil Enrichment would be much appreciated, though Terra+50 looked pretty nice too (as did Advanced Eco Restoration, which she had suggested on a previous occasion). All our hostile worlds started work on atmospheric terraforming, with the sole exception of Rhilus (which was still immature, vulnerable, and in the heart of Darlok space, and therefore wished to remain uninhabitable, at least for a while longer, to the enemy) while our fleet and transports were converging on Trax, the last of the Klackon-poached worlds that should have been ours for decades at least.
Just as our Simius fleet dispatched a trio of Avenger spore ships and chased a Knight missile boat away, in 2422, our Construction teams came through with Improved Industrial Tech 6! The new possibilities were IIT5, Reduced Waste 40 (which I would normally have chosen) ... and the one I chose after all, just to make a statement to the galaxy: Armored Exoskeleton technology!
The following year, the Yarrow colony was reestablished, with its first set of transports already en route through the nebula. Its factories (and waste, which we had allowed to build up while we struggled to complete that single Firenewt) remained intact after its sporing, but we would need to do a lot of terraforming to restore it to what it had been. Meanwhile, a moderately substantial Psilon fleet was seen heading toward one of my eastern worlds (Draco kept cursing our lack of something called "Improved Scanners," but I had no idea what he meant) and I decided the Brains' lives had been hard enough with their miserable starting position. I was prepared to dismember the Bears and the Klackons for their perpetual sporing, but I didn't feel like diverting energy from Paranar or a portion of my Bulrathi fleet to deal with the Psilon fleet, and with an election coming up, I still had a faint hope for peace. If the other races could agree to stand behind me, I still hoped the galaxy could unite in peace under my rule ... a peace that would begin as soon as the united galactic forces exterminated the vile insects from the face of the galaxy! I therefore called Zygot and asked if he would be willing to make peace. For once, an alien leader agreed to this request, to my shock more than my relief. I didn't go so far as to actually form a trade agreement or anything of course, and continued working on planetary shields all around Psilon territory; after my experience with Bullux, I had no illusions that, barring my election, there could be any lasting peace.
In 2424, I sent my fleet of MerCobras, with its attendant Gecko, directly up to Ursa, and scrapped the Lander design, its purpose served, for a new fighter, the DiNewt 2.0, with Nuke engines, Maneuver 2, Comp 2, and a pair of NPGs each. After a spy of unknown race (and about whom we cared not in the least) destroyed ten factories at Beta Ceti, the High Council convened. I was up against Alexander again, with the insects taken out of the running thanks to their loss of Simius and Centauri. Hillariously, Bullux gave his three votes to me. I guess he was technically at war with old Alex, though their war was completely phony, and he technically was not at war with me, though he'd destroyed one of my colonies and I had a death fleet on the way to his homeworld, with more reinforcements on the way. Morfane of course threw his three votes the other way, as did Alexander himself with six. (My immediate reaction was, "That's second-best? Sheesh!") Xantak still had six himself, and of course voted for the monkey, so I wouldn't have won the election even had Zygot voted for me (he abstained with three). I had 15 votes of my own, equal to or greater than any other three races combined, but politely abstained. It always pays to be polite in diplomacy ... even if diplomacy is about to become irrelevant to the galaxy! The alien peoples had chosen, and they had chosen unwisely. When Alexander followed up the election by asking me for peace, I told him how sorry I was that I could not in conscience look to peace while a single Klackon remained among the living. Besides, as Draco pointed out, there was much knowledge to be gained from the Humans, including planetary surveys which could never be made unless we cleared away their missile bases and fleets! The fleet I'd been building at Kronos was primarily defensive, but significant in size, and right by Human space ... and Tyr, right in the middle of Human space, started building Bombards that very year!
2426-30: The Last Straw
The battle for Ursa was swift and painless. Dozens of MerCobras moved into position, fired their volleys, moved back, and retreated. My Firenewts advanced but wouldn't really be needed; my large Gecko was more dangerous than their huge Grizzly in ship-to-ship combat, and the missile volleys wiped out all the planet's bases! I wound up losing some eight of my Firenewts by engaging the enemy too directly, but...
...the 15 survivors dealt the final blow to the Grizzly, and took control of the Bulrathi homeworld's orbit.
Next, at Kronos, we discovered that the new Human Cruisers had Fusion Bombs - just one on each ship, and they were armored with cardboard, but they also had class 4 shields ... and there were 18! Each also bore a number of Ion Cannons of the standard and Heavy varieties, and when I carelessly failed to consider just how much damage those could do, I lost my local Gecko to their fire! Fortunately, they also stopped to deal with my DiNewts, and though they managed to kill a lot - only 30 of the DiNewts managed to retreat - the bases pounding from behind took out all the Cruisers in the meantime, and the rest of the harmless-to-my-shields Human ships retreated. Then at last came the long-anticipated battle for Trax, the planet that should have been mine all along but for a foolishly-made NAP agreement. I feared that the Klackons' new medium Horsemen might carry Fusion Beams or something ... but they turned out to be Hyper-X rocket boats. I took a moment to send a message to my number one enemy: "Sorry, Xantak. Not going to cut it." Then I sat back and watched the carnage. We had two Geckos on the Klackon front, and with the 78 Firenewts, they made directly for the missile boats, running interference, watching the spore ships flee. Only 74 of the new Bombards and 55 of the old ones made it to the planet, but it was enough. The bases all went down in flames before they could get off another shot ... as did all the missile boats. After an unknown spy took out 7 of Yarrow's idle and irrelevant factories, we scouted Ursa, still unimproved with even the slightest terraforming, and I did a token bombing run (a token run because there were no actual bombers present) on its factories and population. I did not bomb Thrax and its 148 factories however. My first wave of 191 transports was coming in against 78 million bugs. Being equal except for their defensive browny points, we were left with 96 million survivors to swarm over the factories. So we got their state of the art Battle Computer Mark V, finally acquired an Improved Space Scanner, and ... that was all. I hated the bugs more and more every time I took one of their worlds and somehow failed to find Sublight Engine plans in the ruins. Meanwhile, Bullux called me a villain for attacking his planet. I didn't even bother mentioning Yarrow, and he didn't even bother declaring war on me. Morfane, on the other hand, was extremely pleased with my behavior at Ursa, and babbled about the incredible threat of the Bears. I did not fail to remember that he, she, or (I think I'm definitely going with) it was the one who started this whole galactic war in the first place.
The first thing our lovely new scanners told us was that we were threatened at no less than 7 different worlds! Looking over the incoming fleets, I wasn't overly concerned about most of them - the threats were distant, feeble, or both. I thought one exception was the Human fleet bound for Crius...
...as, at the time, I was biting my claws over those 4 Cruisers. What I'd forgotten was that they represented - at most - 4 Fusion Bombs per round, while each of my bases would be lobbing three merculite missiles at them long before they could close to bombing range. Meanwhile, my fleets continued to gather on all three fronts that mattered, with 66 Bombards en route to the southernmost Human colony of Misha. For the rest of my reign, I would continue to advance my fleets, sending transports whenever it seemed appropriate, sometimes long before it actually was (a handicap of lacking decent engine technology).
In 2427, the battle for Crius went better than expected, as I thought my instant defensive fleet of 5 MerCobras would be wiped out, flying far too close to the enemy fleet in the course of launching their missiles.
OOC Note: One reason I prefer exploit guidelines to exploit rules: The missile back-up rule from the exploit list states that missile boats in the presence of friendly missile bases must advance to the limit of their ability. With Merculite 2-racks, my MerCobras could hit any point on the screen long before they reached the advanced position you see here, and thus would not have actually exploited the AI's anti-missile yo-yo behavior. Nonetheless, in order to follow the letter of the rule, I had to put them in the line of fire, giving up part of the value of their advanced, long-range missiles. Didn't matter here of course, but it's something to consider.Fortunately, they survived the first shot from the Cruisers, and safely retreated. After that, it was just a matter of letting our bases clean up or chase off the enemy fleet, and hitting Ursa and Misha with orbital bombardment.
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Next: Chaos Reigns
