I started spying on the Darloks, even though Draco claimed it was a hopeless cause. It was one way to gain knowledge without relying on the outcasts, idiot-savantes, and just-plain-idiots among the Sakkra, and there was no sense in worrying about diplomatic trouble when we were in the middle of a war with the shape-shifting freaks. Then the next year came, and Zygot of the Psilons decided he wanted a piece of me! He too was tired of diplomatic games! The two tiniest and most hopeless civilizations in the galaxy both had it in for me! I realized too late that I should have taken diplomatic action against the stupid 'Loks immediately. So much for peace!
At that point, I tried taking diplomatic action, believe me, but the bugs refused to break with their Psilon allies in war or peace. At least the Bulrathi agreed to end their Darlok alliance. They wouldn't consider all-out war, but I'd always been happy with peace. In spite of feeling Amiable toward us, they also refused a non-agression pact though, so Bullux might have just been in a bad mood that day. Alexander also refused a Darlok war, but he had other things I was willing to discuss, particularly Deep Space Scanner. He was ready to exchange it for neutron pellet guns, duralloy armor, six-parsec fuel cells, or warp 2 engines, and in the end I decided to take it for Nuclear Engines in hopes of inspiring someone to likewise give or trade engines to me. The scanner would help my spies a little bit, but its main purpose was of course to warn of incoming enemy fleets. In hindsight, Irridium would probably have been a better trade, but the outcome didn't really hurt me.
The following year, perhaps jealous of alien scientists getting all my attention again, our scientists came up with radiation-proof colony bases! Still wishing to advance the state of the art, I was offered the chance to go for Cloning (by Tiamat! - on top of our normal breeding rate?!), Atmospheric Terraforming or Advanced Eco Restoration. Making the Sakkra happy was becoming my top priority, and I wanted all the room for them that I could make, so it was time to learn to make hostile worlds friendly. If only we could do the same with hostile aliens! Just as I left my meeting with our Big Blue Planetologist, the holo-call beacon lit up, and I saw that the bugs were coming to join the party. Xantak begged my pardon for failing to mention his hopeless intention of destroying my people. (Oh, he didn't call it hopeless. You just wait.) I ignored it for the time being, holding onto an imaginary peace as long as I couldn't have the real thing, while I scrapped my previous colony ship designs in favor of the Sunlander 2 and LR Sunland2, each with Nuclear Engines and a Radiated base, the latter with reserve tanks as well. Sssla would finish a Sunland the following year, and Mu Delphi would finish the cheaper version the year after. A Sunland was also being built at Crius, and a Sunlander at Beta Ceti. In the meantime, I could have tried extreme measures to set up defenses at Nitzer in case of bug or brain attack, but I doubted I could succeed, and hoped they'd just ignore the snowball anyway. I did not ignore it of course, and sent it resources from our reserves continuously.
Our labs developed Dotomite Crystals in 2397, and our excited research teams revealed their plans for ... still ... no ... engines. I could have gone for Energy Pulsars, hoping to speed the race to still more advanced technology, but instead selected Warp Dissipator (hey, at least it wasn't more range) as I no longer expected to ever see a decent engine from the clowns in charge of my propulsion laboratory. I resigned myself to sending transports at warp 1 indefinitely. Meanwhile, with a Psilon colony ship and Star Streak approaching Mu Delphi (or the vicinity) we arranged to build a missile base there simultaneously with shipbuilding. With the Humans suddenly allied with the Darloks, I realized I might face a war on all fronts before long. I took it philosophically though. The Sakkra were itching for a fight, and for more space to breed. If I couldn't have galactic peace, at least I could make my people happy!
The funny thing is, I was thinking of Draco, and how to convince him we could live without galactic peace, when I received a design for a postcard, requesting approval to send it to Morfane.
Draco wasn't as infallible as I had thought. That 'Lok research lab that held the secrets of Reduced Industrial Waste 80% had fallen like a ripe peach. I passed up Computers (which would have been ECM I according to my reports) and Propulsion (almost certainly Deuterium) because I wanted the instant boost to our economy (we had no reduced waste tech to that point). Then the following year, one of my aging Monitors finally limped to the Darlok homeworld and discovered their fleet.
In addition to this essentially worthless collection of ships, the planet had 10 bases, but they bore only class 2 shields and Hyper V rockets. Mind, my Monitor still had to retreat, but I wasn't too worried about the 'Loks, even before Battle Computer IV came in, which would ensure my spying superiority for some time to come. Better still, I finally had a choice in the field, and not only between the latest battle computer and ECM technologies! Oh, those were available, but I gladly selected Improved Robotic Controls IV!
The election was coming up, and I was convinced I'd hold a veto, barring spores and insane shield levels on the incoming Psilon fleet, but I still tried a little electioneering. Alexander was allied to both the 'Loks and the insectoids, and though willing to go to war with either one, would not do so unless I gave him our terraforming technology. After a brief recess to roll my eyes and make fun of his ridiculous demands among my advisors, I moved on to requests for breach of alliance, but he may have overheard us laughing, because he wouldn't even consider the possibility. That time wasted, I got serious, proposing a trade for his Personal Deflector Shields, agreeing to give him Duralloy for them. My people were clamoring for ground wars, and I didn't want them to go in unprepared. With that hole filled, and Alexander sick of talking, I called up the Bulrathi to propose a united front of ground-pounders against the evil shape shifting dweebs ... and he agreed to go to war with the 'Loks! With good old Bullux on the right side of things, I felt a little less lonely in the galaxy, and suggest a Non-Agression Pact as well. Again he agreed, demonstrating that he really was just in a bad mood the last time I asked. Since we had no special use for Bulrathi technology (I could tell because he claimed to have no use for mine) and I didn't feel like renegotiating trade contracts at the time, I called it a day on the diplo front. I was building missile bases on most of my worlds in preparation for Planetary shields, and just to be sure Mu Delphi would win its battle, I also made plans for a new ship design, the LR Newt 2.0, with Nuclear Engines, Maneuver 2, Reserve Tanks, and an NPG apiece. Mu Delphi was to build me 11 while also completing its third missile base, so that they could then replace the outmoded Newscouts around the galaxy. And then we came to the turn of the century.
2400-11: The Quotation Marks Go Away
The Psilons arrived at Mu Delphi, and by Tiamat, the Star Streak had Death Spores! No shields though, and between it and the colony, their only ship-to-ship weapons were two lasers - one normal, one heavy. Mu Delphi fired on the Star Streak, our Newts advanced, and our helpless Newscout retreated. The next planetary volley aimed for the Colony Ship, and I guessed right: The first one took out the Star Streaks without trouble. Though My Newts tried to close with the Colony Ship, it retreated before I could destroy it, thus leading us to the High Council meeting!
I was up against Xantak, as I suspected I would be, so there was no danger at all. Then the first things I saw were the 29 vote total, meaning I (just) had my veto, and Bullux giving three votes to me! That made me feel warm and fuzzy for a bit, though it didn't really matter to the election. Morfane (3), Alexander (5), Xantak (6), and Zygot (2) all voted for the bug of course, but it didn't make a difference. I abstained with my ten votes, and it was a deadlock again. With various bug ships approaching Sakkra space however, the war between the two powers in the galaxy was about to get serious, whether I liked it or not.
I wasn't worried.
In 2401, we colonized Paranar, underscoring the fact that the aliens should never have declared war. With a pure-neutronium planet on which no one else could even land, to say nothing of Arietis and our countless other worlds (and Tyr, about to be ours in the far West) and a massive lead in computer technology ... well, anyone can lose a battle here and there, but we weren't going to lose a war with anybody. Case in point: A pair of Human Corvettes that had appeared before I ever colonized the world seemed to be bound for Nitzer, moving s-l-o-w-l-y. I thought about it a while, but decided in the end to just let them arrive unopposed, and unless Alexander was truly more Honorable (ha!) than Xantak, let him send his transports the long, long way - at warp 1 - across the galaxy. Meanwhile, sick of watching the outdated version crawl through space, I ordered Sssla's assembly plants to build a trio of Monitor 2.0s with LR tanks, scanners, mark 2 computers, Duralloy armor, Nuclear Engines, maneuver class 2, and a pair of NPGs apiece.
The next year, we colonized Tyr and Rigel, and the year after that, as Klackon laser boats retreated from the Arietis missile bases and the large Klackon Avengers were found (by a Monitor in Klackon space) to be spore ships, we colonized Cygni and confirmed that the "honorable" monkeys had sent 55 transports toward Nitzer. We would really have to make an effort to shoot those down when they arrived ... but according to Draco's calculations, we would have a decade and a half(!) to prepare. In spite of this betrayal, I asked Alexander about breaking his alliances or going to war, but he was just a broken record. I called Zygot, and he refused my offer of peace. I shrugged and said, "It's your funeral," and went to see how our Arietis labs were doing.
In 2404, after a bunch of uninteresting battles, in which the interloper (my scanner or their "invading" fleet) simply retreated from defenses that included nothing new, Automated Repair System came in! For the first time in history, my construction research teams did a semi-competent job of meeting their promises! Their only new idea was Improved Industrial Tech 6, but I was perfectly happy with it - a great complement to RC4 - and tried offering peace to the Darlok people. Morfane refused as the aliens always seem to do, spoiling my hope for interstellar peace. "It's your funeral," I murmured, but Morfane didn't hear me. I went to listen patiently to my hundreds of shouting, squabbling military advisors, but my mind wasn't on their screechings. It was time for a long-overdue conversation with Draco Sstarshine.
With real sorrow, I explained the diplomatic situation to him, trying to make him understand that there was no more hope of galactic peace, that for all our hopes and wishes - though we would do our best to restore the peace if ever we could - the aliens had betrayed us and would continue to do so if given the opportunity. I said that against all my wishes, I felt I had no choice but to design and build an actual combat fleet. Draco looked away for a long moment, then looked back and told me, "I hate to say this after all our long friendship, but it would be wrong not to admit it: I've been humoring your pacifist tendencies for ages. Peace is well and good in the cause of learning, but those aliens have knowledge that our soldiers can steal faster than we'll ever get it by diplomacy!"
I blinked a couple of times, and tried to take it in. Then I said, "Okay, then!" And so our policy was made. From there, I proceeded to our assembly plants with Draco and both of the military strategists who were believed to be almost sane. After some work at the computers, we came up with the ship design that was to form the backbone of our fleet until nearly the end of my reign:
The purpose of the Gecko is basically to take anything the enemy can throw at it and still survive (thanks to its auto-repair - they just don't have that much to throw at it, honestly), while hammering enemy fleets with its NPGs. Simple, effective, and good enough to see to our security for a long, long time. The first would roll off the line at Sssla in three years.
We killed a Klackon Avenger at Kronos in 2405 long before it got near enough to the planet to think about sporing. A large Psilon Dark Star arriving at Beta Ceti the same year killed two of our little Newts as it approached the planet (it had Death Spores as well as Heavy Lasers) - they charged right in since it had a class II shield and an asteroid layout that would reduce our bases' effectiveness - but it was amazingly slow, and still armored with cardboard, so it too was destroyed before it reached sporing range.
In 2406, we scouted the Darlok colony of Reticuli, in the far north, an Ocean with little in the way of minerals or energy, and built a colony at Rhilus, right next door. Then the Newsdroid popped up, and announced to the galaxy that Mu Delphi had gone radiated overnight, due to an industrial accident on a scale nevere before imagined by my people. In other news, it reported that we were up to 18 systems, and if our expansion was not contained ... but, no, I'm afraid it was wrong. For all intents and purposes, we already did control the galaxy.
The horrible industrial accident would require massive waste cleanup and - far worse, as far as my people were concerned - cut the world's maximum population severely. I combatted it the only way I knew was sure: By ordering everyone onto ecology restoration, and sending half the planet's population off-world, to someplace that could contain them - in this case, Simius.
What's that you say? A Klackon colony? No, no, there must be some mistake. I'm quite sure it's ours! It's been on our list of colonies-to-be for almost a century!
The following year, Alexander and Bullux simultaneously dissolved their non-aggression pacts with me. Oh, well. Their funerals. Still, I had such hopes for the bears....
Since this meant I was at hot or cold war with everyone in the galaxy, I tried calling up the Psilons, but their ambassador indicated that his people remained suicidal. In a symbolic move, I finally scrapped our Newscouts and the old Monitor 1.0s, leaving no more warp 1 starships in my fleet.
In 2408, in a Klackon attack on Kronos, our new Gecko design saw combat for the first time. The planet started by firing at the 4 Knight missile boats, but changed its mind after two volleys and opened up on the Avenger spore ship. In the end though, it didn't matter. The Gecko just seriously rocked. With support from the planet, it took out all the offending Klackon ships while our Newts dodged Knight-based missiles. We lost nothing in the fight. And as if to prove their ... um, unique level of intelligence, the Humans chose that moment to join the hopeless war against me and my mighty lizard people.
All together now: Their funeral!
The same year, our new colonies submitted a joint petition saying they wanted to feel like they were participating in the war effort, so I designed the little Bombard 2.0, with Nuke engines, Manuever 2, and one Fusion Bomb on each. The closest thing to bad news was that Planetary Shield Vs were ready to roll out the following year - they were expensive, couldn't help against spores, and won't let us build more bases on any world where they hadn't been completed. Our next research project in the field would be a Repulsor Beam (still no choice in force fields!) which could deal with spore ships, fortunately. Just to give you an idea of what Paranar could manage even at this early date - especially when receiving reserve funding, as it did perpetually - it went cheerfully about the business of building a shield and missile base in a single year with plenty of production left over for other projects to boot.
In 2410, we killed another bug fleet at Kronos, in spite of four Avenger spore ships (all burned before they could reach the planet). The Gecko again proved its worth. According to GNN, our production ranked below the Klackons', but above everyone else. Since the Newts were really intended as armed scouts rather than actual fighters, I also designed Firenewt 2s, each a fighter with a single NPG, plus Shield, Computer, Warp, and Maneuver of 2 apiece. The following year, a Klackon death fleet of 5 Avengers and 15 Lancer laser mediums arrived at Sssla. The Lancers took out our Monitor and small collection of Firenewts, and the Avengers managed to reach the planet and drop spores! ... Well, one of them did. It managed to drop exactly two rounds before it too was destroyed by the Gecko and pair of bases, bringing the planet down to 122 population. The Gecko went on to take out 5 of the Lancers before the rest could retreat. In response, with transports long en route to Simius from much of the southern empire, the first sets began to depart for Centauri, in quantity. If there's one thing I can't stand, it's bioweapons dropped on my homeworld. I can swallow a lot in the name of peace, but that was too much! The bugs were going to pay dearly.
2412-19: Offensive
Our first military offensive began at last! Simius was defended by eight medium Pegasus spore ships and a pair of Hyper-X bases. My attack fleet consisted of 21 Bombards, 8 Newts, and a Gecko. The enemy ships, being defenseless, retreated, but the bases took out nearly all our Bombards before we managed to burn them both down (they had only Shield 3, not enough to stop my NPGs, so the Gecko would have gotten them eventually). Our troops outnumbered the bugs two to one, but it would be awfully close - they had Ion Rifles to our Hand Lasers, and they were on defense - but in the end, we were victorious, with 13 million Sakkra remaining, to salvage technology from the 89 Klackon factories! After much anticipation, we received ... um ... Controlled Tundra Environment. So ... yay?
There was worse to come. Five Knight Hyper-X boats showed up at Simius the next year, and though I managed to destroy one, our local Gecko was lost under a storm of rockets, due to a miscalculation and piloting error! Klackon transports would be en route at any moment, and their transports move at warp 2! I tried to scrounge a small fleet of fighters to handle the problem, but I was going to need a lot more than I had on hand!
By the next year, there were six Knights at Simius, and all we had at hand was the single Firenewt Simius itself had scratched out the same year. It closed and fired, doing minimal damage, but dodged the enemy missiles successfully, thanking Tiamat that they fired some at the planet as well as the ship (they took out a few factories, but that was it) and when the Knights ran out of ammunition, the Firenewt could closed without danger, and forced them to retreat! Unfortunately, the story doesn't end there. Klackon troops from Centauri hit Simius immediately, and though our brave defenders killed 27 million bugs, they reclaimed the planet, and - from the same factories (actually fewer, thanks to their missile strikes) that gave me one lame and obsolete tech - they took NPGs, ECM2, and Class 5 Planetaries! My military advisors all screamed as one that the pilot of our Gecko should be tortured for his error, apparently forgetting that he died in the fireball when the rockets hit his ship. More pragmatic, the rest of my people prepared to take back what was rightfully ours, itching for the fight to come, with tens of millions boarding transports from our core worlds!
Throughout this period, Human and Klackon forces were arriving at my planets only to flee or be destroyed. With 8 layers of shields, my bases were immune to everything but Klackon spore ships, and my bases and Geckos could get rid of those easily. A major battle at Kronos in 2415 saw a huge Human Warship and a large support fleet burned down by nine missile bases and a couple of Geckos (I did lose some unimportant small ships, but that's it). The same year however, 5 Klackon Avengers reached Beta Ceti, supported by 31 Lancers and 323(!) little Daggers. Fortunately, my Gecko was all but immune to laser fire, so it pretended the escorts didn't exist, and with help from the local bases managed to take out all the Avengers, though the last one managed to drop a couple rounds of spores (much like the one at Sssla some years before) before it was burned. The Lancers all died as well, but most of the Daggers managed to retreat. This only incensed me more against the Klackons, who not only use bioweapons routinely, but had the gall on two separate occasions to actually manage to drop the things!
It would never happen again. At long, long last, too late to save millions at Beta Ceti, our weapons teams developed Merculite Missiles, which would slaughter any further incoming insect fleets. The chief weapons researcher mentioned with some reluctance that he could advance the state of the art by studying Graviton or Fusion beams, but then started mumbling incoherently. I liked both options, and in the course of deciding which to choose, I started to say, "I understand that..." ... and as soon as the "I un..." was out, he interrupted, "Yes, sir! We shall get to work on Ion Rifle immediately!" He raced from the throne room without another word or even a backward glance, and if I weren't such a peaceful soul, I would probably have just executed my entire weapons research team! (And the propulsion one too, but that's another story.)
OOC Note: A sheer misclick. I moved my finger on my laptop's track pad, and the cursor careened over Ion Rifle and interpretted the motion of my finger as a click. If the game wasn't already in hand, I would have been furious, especially after a careless tactical blunder cost me so much time and effort at Simius. Fortunately, the game is in hand, and it doesn't really matter what I research. My propulsion team of course is just being blamed for our no-engines Propulsion tree. Hey, I've gotta blame somebody!Next, our incoming troops (they thought they were coming to reinforce our own colony, but were pleased with the prospect of battle when we briefed them in mid-space) killed all but 11 million of the bugs at Simius. Then, with hundreds of transports on the way to two of his worlds, fresh from sporing millions of innocents on Beta Ceti, Xantak offered me peace. I laughed heartily. When I was all done laughing though, there he still stood, asking, "Well? What about that peace treaty?"
If there's one thing I can't stand, it's a cheeky insect with death spores. Xantak had gone too far. I sighed, and looked him in the eye and said, "When the last insect in the last nest on the last world in Klackon space has been burned from its foul, dark hole, then and only then will there be peace!" It was a promise I intended to keep.
To repay the generous Klackons, I designed the Bombard 2.1, identical to the 2.0s except for the addition of a Class 2 battle computer. Unfortunately, there was more trouble coming. The Bulrathi, the furry, loveable teddy bear Bulrathi, my friends since we first met, who voted for me in the centennial election, who agreed to join my Darlok war with me, who signed a Non-Aggression Pact ... er ... well, I guess they broke that, yeah, but ... the only race with which I was not at war in the galaxy, arrived at Yarrow with two Huge Grizzlies. I was aware that they were coming, but thought I had another year, and didn't have enough resources in the area to get any ships into play, or indeed to finish the planetary shield and build more missile bases than the one I already had there. The Grizzlies had plenty of Hyper-X rockets to beat my single missile base and its three layers of shielding ... and they each carried 25 Death Spores. In the first year of bombardment, they destroyed 9 factories, and killed 53 million Sakkra. Officially, of course, we still were not at war. After all, why would we be?
With Geckos around to do our scanning for us, I scrapped the Monitor design in favor of the MerCobra 2, which carried a pair of Merculite 2-racks, Class 2 computers, and Nuclear Engines, allowing Maneuver Class 2. Everyone - everyone - within anything like reach of Yarrow and Bulrathi space started building them at once, especially including Paranar (which was previously responsible for lots of Firenewts and Bombards). One of my spies in Human space learned the secrets of Improved Terraforming +10 and I was so busy getting ready for the Bulrathi front (not the war front, you understand - the Bulrathi peace front!) that I didn't even remember to give him a back-handed compliment.
In 2418, my forces reached the Klackon world of Centauri. We easily dismembered the fleet of Dagger fighters, and then closed with the planet, losing a couple dozen Bombards en route. Once there though, we lost only one more bomber before it was all over. I didn't bomb the planet. I just let my 218(!) transports arrive. I was expecting roughly two to one losses, and it came to roughly that; we still filled the planet with a few million Sakkra to spare. We also had a sizable fleet of Firenewts at Nitzer, but fully 24 Human transports somehow got through nonetheless. Fortunately, we still held the planet easily. Part of the reason was that we had rapidly outfitted our defenders with Ion Rifles after learning how to do so in the factories at Centauri, thankfully allowing me to choose one of the weapons research projects I actually wanted ... under the auspices of a new head weapons scientist (the old one unfortunately had to be reassigned to a mental institution ... on the Yarrow colony). We also learned how the Klackons make their (and the Bulrathi's) favorite things: Death Spores ... in case I should ever have the slightest wish to even look at them. More importantly, we found designs for a Fusion Beam and Deuterium Fuel Cells, the first an entirely worthwhile weapon, the second clearing junk out of the way so our spies could concentrate on more important things in enemy propulsion labs. I chose Graviton Beam as my new research project, as I knew I would never have a need for Omega-V Bombs or any other weapon more advanced in the course of my reign. For that matter, I would never need the Graviton Beams.
Zygot approached me with a peace offer, but I turned him down. I was busy deciding what to do about the 50 ursine transports approaching Yarrow, and didn't want to worry about reading fine print or signing anything. I would later reconsider, but at the time, I was busy forming a desperate plan to thwart Bullux's evil scheme.
First, our Centauri fleet returned to Simius, where it had no chance to reach the Klackons' Avengers and Daggers before the enemy's retreat. I had left one Firenewt behind at Centauri, and with the 11 others the planet built for itself, it took on 11 Klackon Daggers as they arrived. I assumed it would be no contest, and I was correct: We didn't lose a single ship, and all the Daggers died, bringing us to the fourth battle on the surface of Simius in just eight years. The 94 transports in my first wave would be more than enough, naturally.
Notice that we found no new technology there. I had taken the planet twice, with 170 total factories, and the bugs had taken it once, with the same 81 you see here. In the course of those battles, I learned the secrets of Tundra bases, massively obsolete, and they managed to steal three valuable technologies. Now, that, my friends, is what I call offensive!
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Next: The Beginning of the End
