Aw, c'mon! Where's the fun in building a bunch of bombers that are virtually obsolete? I want more spies and more research, and different research priorities! Kakata can handle our ships! I'd like to build some Scatter bases to handle the incoming fleet at Berel too, but I guess it does seem like a waste against that particular fleet. Okay, then! Everything's ready! This should be fun! Let's go!
2411: Ha! Tyr bombers leave a couple million bugs alive on the world, and our bombers at Whynil spot a big fleet advancing on them around the bases, and have to immediately retreat! The Admiral didn't know what he was doing quite as well as I thought! Just one more excuse for me to make my own calls! All right!
2412: Wheeeee! We get to fight at Incedius!
Its fighter force actually contributes to the battle for a while, so I have to kill a bunch of them before they give up and retreat. Then the Navy makes the bases go away, and that takes care of that! Also, Whynil doesn't have as many defenders anymore, so they all run away from my reinforced fleet of bombers.
OOC COMMENTS: Note that the bombers that retreated last turn did so without firing a shot (or even moving). I don't consider it exploitive to retreat and return while gathering your fleet, as long as you don't use it as a way to fire and reload expendable weapons like bombs or missiles turn after turn - but of course, others may differ with me.
Incedius is a very unusual planet: A jungle rainforest with such constant and perpetual cloud cover that it shines white from space! Whynil is a jungle too, but semi-normal looking. We both bomb of 'em, of course, plus Tyr.
That last is an Arid world that now looks like glass from space! Also, Admiral Refpect got one thing right: Our fighters wiped out all the transports that Ixi sent to Aurora. Good riddance.
Our spies and researchers are still sitting on their hands, so Kakata just builds a bunch of Neutrino fighters to send up to Berel. They're going to be brand-new, redesigned Neutrino 2As though, without any shields. They're cheaper this way, and it won't make much difference in a fight, and we didn't need the TacNuke design anyway. Oh, and there's an Alkari cruiser on its way to Zoctan, but I went ahead and put up that sign the Admiral was talking about: They can scout the place if they feel like it; I couldn't really care less at this point.
All right, hang on tight, everybody! We're about to meet the Psilons!
2413: Refrens comes in, beaming, to say that he's finished up plans for our new planetary shields. I ask him what I'm supposed to do with them now that the Klackon fleet is just a year away from tiny little Berel, and he sputters a little bit. Must be a malfunctioning hydraulic system. He should get that fixed. When he gets it under control, he suggests that we could start working on a repulsor beam or a ship shield as good as the new one for our planets, but it all looks like a lot of hard work to me, and I ask if we can't just go back and work on the Class IV Deflector Shields he was so quick to scoff at back in Turing's reign. His pleasure LEDs all sort of fade with disappointment, and he hangs his cybernetic head-analog a little, but he complies.
Tyr is ours, and Whynil is on its way down, and what did I tell you?
Looks like the Psilons have an Honorable Industrialist running the show. They've only got three planets, and even those are really spread out, so it looks like the galaxy is officially ours, in case it wasn't already. The Psilon emperor says nice things when we meet, so I tell him to get bent in a friendly tone of voice. When he burns all his spore fleets, together with all his death spore, terraforming, ecology restoration, and hostile-world colonization design specifications (oh yeah, and destroys any colonies he may have on hostile worlds already) I'll be happy to talk to him again!
OOC NOTE: This was another huge stroke of luck, though I didn't know it at the time. After Imperium 10 and most of the reports from Imperium 11, I was getting used to seeing Stunted Psilons. I'll bet that wasn't so common in this game though!
2414: The bugs try to go after Berel again. I'm not the best pilot in the universe, so I don't quite kill as many as I should: Fully a dozen of their fighters manage to retreat after I destroy all the others (55 Dagger fighters and 9 Ranger cruisers) at the expense of 60 Neutrinos.
After the bugs retreat in a couple other places - such as their homeworld - Refrens comes hurrying into my office with a sheaf of important-looking papers! His pleasure LEDs are all lit up again! And it turns out what he's got in his cyberclaws are working blueprints for a Warp Dissipator! Great! But it turns out there's even better news! After glossing over something about 9 parsec range, Refrens shows me the plans he's drawn up to start research on Impulse Drives! You can bet I take his suggestion! We shake cyberclaws and do a little bit of a dance which I'm glad wasn't caught on videotape, since it might have been slightly beneath the dignity of the acting head of the oligarchy, and he rushes off to start work on the things. We're friends again, obviously.
No sign of the Alkari at Zoctan, so I guess they ran out of fuel when they got there. They must have been counting on their one-time bug alliance, which is really pretty dumb when you consider which "ally" it was.
2415: Good news! Maretta is habitable! I can tell because it has 98 million Psilons on it! It also has a dozen missile bases, so my lonely little Scout retreats. Oh, and the Klackons run away from us at various once-Klackon worlds. I'm not going to bother reporting that kind of thing any more, because a) there's a lot of it, b) it's kind of boring, and c) that kind of thing's just going to be happening more and more! We also continue the slow bombardment of Kholdan ... and finished the quick bombardment of Whynil! There are some enemy transports on the way to the glass from Arietis, due to arrive in a few dozen years (well, five years anyway - long enough) but that won't stop us from colonizing the place.
Now! It looks like the Psilons have Sublight Drives (plus stabilizer and a whole bunch of stuff I don't care about much if at all) so I keep right on spying! Also, their bases are still packing nukes. Feel free to laugh at them if you want to. I know I did.
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Next: More Fun and Games.
