Well, well, well! Do my eyes deceive me, or do we actually have the beginnings of an attack fleet, all ready for me to use, before I even take over the empire? And almost the beginnings of a plan, even! The bombs on the colony ship are a nice touch too - cheap, but plenty good for bombing out that last population at the colony we want to rebuild, just in case our bombers don't quite nail it. Just a couple things that need changing: Research emphasis should be more on CPUs for that sweet little battle computer upgrade, and our fleets need to be consolidated. Once we take Aurora, everything else is going to fall like a set of dominos, but we need to make sure of Aurora: Chase two rabbits, and we're gonna wind up with no stew! That also means finishing only one colony ship at Kakata this year, to give us more options later. No problem there though; I'll just do a slight redesign on our new combat settler and give it a decent name - Tour Bus just isn't cutting it. Oh, and one last thing: As long as we have the Aurora Option, there's no need to spend all these resources trying to get a fast spy hit on Ixitixl. If Stabilizer's worth a major investment, we'll figure one out for ourselves when the time comes! I'll keep intel up to date and give that theft a chance, but that's it. Overall though, not bad at all for a travel agent trying to run a war!
2403: Nothing against the birdbrains, you understand...
...but if Zoctan was open for scouting, I'd have put up a big sign to say it. A bunch of freshly-built Neutrinos also head down to Xengara, ready to proceed to Aurora once it's ours. They'll put up a nice reception for visiting alien fleets and especially any transports that might drop by for a chat. At the same time, my lone remaining Neutrino 2A hits the scrap heap because the Klackons are getting on my nerves - more are incoming to Berel - and in spite of our long-range assault fleet and defensive fighters, we don't really have a navy. Well, Kakata's getting set to build one: A one-ship navy!
A few of our other worlds will help out with reserves, but Berel's all done building defenses. It's not going to need any more.
2404: Aurora's got a Ranger in orbit now, but that shouldn't put any serious crimp in my plans. My Scout just retreats. Now, there's something I have to say, and it's this: This spying thing is ridiculous. Our computers are about a hundred times better than anything the bugs have got, and we haven't had a spy success in ages, but here the Klackons go blowing up an entire Meklon factory! Now, where do they get off doing a thing like that? It's costing Meklon something like 1% of its GNP to put another one up in its place. Oh, and the bugs have death spores now, so we'll probably have to exterminate them sooner rather than later, sad to say.
2405: The enemy Ranger retreats as our Tourorists move in on Aurora, and we find out it's a good thing I didn't split the fleet like Refcreational wanted. Even as it is, it'll take us another year or two to properly turn this planet to glass!
2406: Well, we're at the second battle of Berel. You can see why I didn't bother with any more bases: We've got a whole navy in orbit - specifically, the Navy 2.0!
I have to admit I handled this wrong. Should have gone after the Rangers first thing. As it is, they managed to take out all our bases with those rockets of theirs before I could destroy them all. Of course we won the battle - the poor bugs can't harm my Navy in any kind of permanent way - but a mistake's a mistake. Small loss, even so. It'll save us some maintenance, and I'm not really afraid of the Klackons going after the place anymore.
We go ahead and bomb Aurora, but it's no good: They've got three million insects left. That's a real shame, since there are probably bug transports on the way already from close by, and that's going to delay our long-range plans ... but that's all right; we've got a Navy now to deal with Kholdan, and most of the Aurora bombers can still go up to Tyr, just to get started on it. I'm leaving plenty behind to take care of business.
2407: Like I said...
...plenty to take care of business. The rest of the Tourorists follow their buddies up toward Tyr. I notice the Klackons have a new Cutlass design, but it's not going to be that much better than the old one. They're also at war with their long-time allies, the Alkari - no doubt because the voices in Ixitixl's head told her the birds were cleverly-disguised aardvarks or something.
2408: The Navy stuck around at Zoctan for a look at the Psilon Dark Stars, and it turns out they're carrying nothing but Death Spores. Afraid that means the nerdlings'll have to be wiped out like the bugs: Soon. The ones arriving at Zoctan retreat too fast to even get killed, unfortunately. There's better news coming though: It looks like the Klackons never sent an early batch of transports - just a slow one from far away - so we should be able to interdict them without trouble, and I go ahead and add our seventh world to the empire!
The new Aurora colony's scanners show that I was right: Plenty of time for my Neutrinos to play with the Dreadwing at Xengara, and still head down to stop the transports coming Aurora's way. Meanwhile, I send Meklar transports there! There's no way I'd do this, of course, if I wasn't dead certain our fighters would kill the bug transports as they try to land. We're not putting any of our people on the same planet as insects! Those bugs are contaminated with life on hostile worlds!
2409: Our first wave of Tourorists reaches Tyr. The defending fleet runs away before we can do more than advance. Then it turns out there are Psilons visiting Xengara as well as Alkari - and the Brains' Star Blade has a maneuverability class of at least 4! It's armed with Gats, but doesn't seem to be able to do much damage with them. Maybe there are a bunch of spores on there too. It kills about 5 of my ships - not enough to matter - before it dies. The birds' Dreadwing carries lasers too, but of the Heavy and Normal varieties. It kills one Neutrino. So....
Looks like Ixitixl's down on all six of her knees, begging for peace. She gets a horse laugh for her trouble. No mercy for civilizations that use death spores - or any other planetology tech, for that matter! Also this year, around the time bombardment commences at Tyr, we discover that Whynil has 80 population, so it must be another habitable world. In case you were wondering, that means this galaxy is officially ours. My entire Xengara fleet heads down to Aurora to stop transports, and we're ready for phase 2 of the Klackon war!
2410: The battle for Kholdan commences. The planet opens by firing on our Neutrinos, then goes after the Mobile HQ, forcing those ships to retreat without firing a shot, and leaving the Navy to take everything on without any help from its buddies.
No problem. The enemy ships retreat when they see it's hopeless; it isn't too long before there are too few bases left to even match the Navy's repair rate, and pretty soon, it's all over.
Our spies get the keys to a Klackon base, but it's just a planetology research center, so I tell them not to bother investigating. We don't want any of that junk. Better to do our own research - as Refrens eBook amply demonstrates when he brings in plans for MRVing versions of our current rockets! He says something funny about a Graviton Beam, which I chuckle at politely as I inform him that our next research project will be into an Anti-Matter Bomb. We get scouting reports of Kholdan and yet another toxic world (Exis, at the red star south of Arietis) before bombing Tyr to within an inch of its life, and bombing Kholdan ... somewhat less. The Navy's quite the space superiority ship, but its bombardment capabilities are less than I was hoping. Well, it's still a good ship, and me, I don't tell pit bulls to run, and I don't tell greyhounds to fight. The Navy is given a more suitable task.
Well, that's all! My successor will have to deal with another fleet bound for Berel, but that shouldn't be a problem; those Ranger missile boats mean fighters are the best response until Refrens can figure out a planetary shield. And you've seen the bombardment limitations of our Navy and Tourorists, so I've taken the liberty of designing a TacNuke 2.0, and giving orders for their construction throughout our core. I'm sure you'll agree this is our priority now: Get these spore-bearing Klackons - and Psilons! - out of here!
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Next: Toying with the Enemy?
