We may loathe and despise planetology tech, but I'll tell you one thing: We are masters of the interface between mechanics and biology! When I took over this mess of an empire for the first time, I didn't think I'd live to see us escape our miserable little corner of the galaxy. Now however, thanks to Refairs nMedicine and his cybernetic longevity treatments, I'm still alive to rule the empire again one hundred and twenty five years later, with our enemies on the verge of annihilation! Frankly, this is going to be easy! No clue what Refspand was thinking (if you can call what he does "thinking" in the first place) with some of his latest decisions, but...
...yeah. It just doesn't matter anymore. I do a few things just to be able to say I did something, and prepare to end this war.
2461: Refspand oMatic apparently still likes forming new colonies regardless of their strategic importance.
Fortunately, amidst all the nonsense, there is one colony made for reasons that actually make sense: Cygni is ours, opening the way at last to Morrig in the far northwest. This is especially important because - with the glassing of Vox this year - it is the very last Bulrathi colony!
This will be the final year of our galactic war, so as minister of intelligence, please allow me to present the galactic map...
...and our up-to-date spying report on the Bulrathi empire.
Strictly for contrast purposes, I've also had my teams put together a little report on Meklar technology.
We seem to have a slight edge here, wouldn't you say? And as for our empire:
Yes, we're doing just fine, thank you. You might notice, incidentally, that we have no missile bases or shields on any of our worlds. How did we get away with this, do you ask? Pretty simple, actually: By finding ourselves in a dominant position, with isolated core worlds, slow-moving, slow-witted enemies, and a fleet that looks like...
This. There was no point when any alien ship or combination of alien ships represented the slightest threat to our Navy, and it could sit on a planet or shuttle between two nearby worlds, and ensure their complete safety from anything but fast spore ships, indefinitely. Our hundreds of swift-moving NPG fighters, continuously updated throughout our various reigns, flew circles around the enemy and dismantled them with ease. Even the spore ships could do nothing against a few dozen of these ships once the oldest generation you can still see here, the Surgeon 2.1s, came into play. We could outfly them with ease, firing on them twice before they could close with the planet, and had them thoroughly outgunned continuously. The extraordinary strategic speed of much of our later fleet, combined with heads-up redistribution by our acting heads in response to enemy attacks, meant that no alien race could mount a credible threat against us, even when they all attacked simultaneously at different planets. And of course ships like the Nukem were used to continuously roll back the line of battle, away from the worlds that the aliens thought they were attacking, by blowing enemy colonies to bits - with Landers and their predecessors to fill in the husks left behind when they were habitable at all. Of course, all this was only possible (or at least only this easy) thanks to our rich worlds' contributions to the reserve, speeding up our developing worlds, and to shipbuilding, ensuring we always had a superior fleet in space, even in light of constant redesigns of key components of our fleet. So much for the lecture. Let's move on to times of peace! Without any evil, warlike, death-spore-loving, planetology-using, hostile-world-dwelling aliens to mess things up for us!
2462: From the battle, it looks like Morrig is habitable - probably a steppe. Refspand will be so disappointed that he didn't build a too-late-anyway Lander for it!
Wow! Not only a steppe, but an Artifacts world (currently polluted down to the minimum possible size, but no doubt much larger naturally)! Oh, well. It'll be ours now eventually. We just need to get the glass cleaned up first! Say good night, Bulrathi!
...
Awwwwwwwwww. I forgot. They can't say good night - there's no more of them left in the galaxy! And you know what that means! Our planetology-free Meklon succession will continue indefinitely! For a thousand years or more, we'll rule the galaxy together, with no danger of polluters overrunning the bright, hostile worlds of the galaxy; with no threat of planets' natural environments being transformed via terraforming; with no destruction of planetary environments through death spore technology! Who says we're not environmentally friendly? Yes, the benevolent reign of the Ruling Bionic Oligarchy at last extends to the far corners of the galaxy! Who could possibly object?
Hmmph! I'll have you know, Mr. Newsdroid, you will not be serving under a ruthless tyrant! You'll be serving under a dozen of them! Starting with me!
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Post-game note:
I got pretty disgustingly lucky on this one, between rich Kakata and fertile Paranar, no bad events, and mostly-stunted AI civilizations ... but I didn't realize just how lucky I got until I played the game a second time. Why'd I do that? Well, for one thing, I did feel I was just too lucky in this one, and for another ... well, have a look for yourself!
