Unsurprisingly, the Silicoids have no technology the Bulrathi don't have too. But notice as well their alliance and their wars! We never asked anyone to join our war with them - we were handling it just fine all on our own, thank you - but in addition to us Bulrathi, the Silicoids seem to be at war with the Darloks and Klackons! And if there were room on the display, as Jasana's report reveals, it would show that they were at war with the Mrrshans too! So, while we were conquering their core, others of their numerous enemies were wiping out some of their peripheral colonies. How did this come to be? Well, I honestly couldn't tell you for sure, but I can hazard a pretty good guess: Notice how they're allied with the Alkari? And notice how Jasana is at war with those very same birdies, and allied with every other non-bear species in the galaxy? Cats and birds never do seem to get along; I'm guessing that when Crystous joined an alliance with the leader of the birdies, he immediately got dragged into a war with his feline neighbors ... and those lovely, friendly kittens certainly seemed to make allies easily. It wasn't long then, it appears, before Crystous and the Alkari leader found themselves at war with everyone else they'd met (including us in the rock-heads' case, thanks to Crystous refusing to acknowledge our right to Romulas and foolishly declaring war when we were forced to claim the place over Silicoid bodies).
Wait, did I say Jasana was good at making friends? That she was allied with everyone except her enemies and us Bulrathi? I think I accidentally made one exception too many. Grrrarrrmgrrrr "Softy" Morgrag seems to have looked into those honest green eyes again and trusted her to uphold an alliance in perpetuity. I must admit, based on events to date, she really is as trustworthy as he believed. She did send one war fleet to Rhilus, but it was a Silicoid world when the starfleet left, and when it arrived, with weapons that couldn't penetrate our planetary shields, we didn't fire a single volley, and their admiral beat a voluntary retreat. For that matter, they're the only race we've met that's never fired on one of our ships or sent us a threatening message! In any case, we're allied now - and not only to our kitten friends!
The bugs likewise are awfully pleased with the way we've been killing their Silicoid enemies. The RBO-9 has formed an alliance with them, and could probably have swung one with the Darloks too if they were deemed remotely trustworthy. Or if there seemed any point to it, frankly.
Apart from showing the growing dominance of our mighty ursine species, these charts reveal the liklihood that we'll be facing Ssithra again in next year's election. An alliance with it under those circumstances wouldn't really mean much of anything, as the xenophobic nutcase might decide to break our alliance just for refusing to vote for it. So instead of bothering Ssithra, we're just working on relations with our real friends, boosting our trade agreements with the Klackons and Mrrshans, among other things. (For my part, I get to teach some of Jasana's starship engineers how to build anti-missile rockets. In exchange, some of her planetologists are teaching ours outdated ecological restoration techinques that should nevertheless help our people's productivity very slightly.)
One thing the graphs don't show clearly is the real strength of our fleet. In spite of some silly errors, I'll take my designs over the aliens' on any day of the week.
Those slow-coach Sniffers are still around, having accomplished basically nothing that has any meaning. The Mattocks, Swipes, Scents, and Glow(ing)Dens, we've seen. And as for that Arctic Bear? It's a placeholder, okay, intended to have its parts salvaged for smaller ships instead of ever getting completed ... but it's also a placeholder that wouldn't make me weep if it's accidentally built. A Battle Scanner, Auto Repair, maximum-short-of-stabilizers speed and maneuverability, our very best armor and shields, no ECM, and over 80 NPGs mean it's going to be a real bear in a fight ... and that warp dissipator can keep its enemies nicely frozen when necessary. If I were actually to build it, I'd probably wait for a Repulsor Beam to add (in place of the dissipator, not in addition) since the tech has been on the verge of coming through for years ... but other than that, it's about ready to hit the skies. A huge gunship of this type should always have the best equipment money can buy: The most advanced targeting computer and battle scanner available, along with the best maneuverability class that can function conveniently, should increase its effective lifetime - an important consideration for a starship as expensive as a dreadnought like this tends to be! - and auto-repair extends its lifetime in each combat mission; with good enough tactical speed, it can in theory recover from every non-killing blow by dodging around its enemies, more or less indefinitely. Of course the Zortium armor helps with that, both leaving it more leeway before it would be destroyed and allowing it to recover more quickly. The shield likewise helps prevent too much damage from getting through all at once to cripple the ship. And of course it wouldn't be a gunship without its guns. The thing about NPGs is that, even when more advanced weapons come along, miniaturization often puts the little guys ahead, thanks to their shield-piercing capabilities. Sure, we could have crammed the ship with graviton beams instead ... but the number of graviton beams (or, in many cases, even fusion beams) we could actually fit on board still can't match four banks of over 20 NPGs apiece. (Naturally, with this many guns, our best targeting computer is obligatory. As a rule, each increase in computer level is worth at least one gun for every nine already aboard the ship - and it's most often worth one for every four or five already on board. In this case, our Arctic Bear can do more damage per volley with its mark 3 battle computer than it could with a mark 2, even if that would have left room 14 extra NPGs.
Of course, none of that actually matters in our present circumstances.
Ironically, the Silicoids' choice of enemies and allies has all but sealed the future of galactic peace.
_______________
Next: Conclusion
