Imperium 9 - Conclusion

2475:

My fleets and the transports they're escorting perform their final missions in the divided galaxy.



We've claimed the ice world of Jinga - for aesthetic reasons, mainly. It's a nice balance to the rich ice floes of Yarrow, according to "Softy."



We've claimed the toxic world of Neptunus in one final ground battle ... because the Silicoids have been getting annoying, mainly. We did leave ten million alive up at Xengara anyway. And so we come to the galactic council that will seal the Hibers' galactic popularity.



The Council vote is practically unanimous. Only the Silicoids and Ssithra itself vote for the Darlok emperor; with a veto in Bulrathi hands, they receive the deciding votes of the rest of the galaxy.



Softy's declaration is as true as his assessment of the friendly kittens' honesty. A new era has dawned indeed! A new era, with a new sport: Starbattle! Wherein everyone designs and pilots the ultimate combat ships in battle for the glory of their home planets, through the asteroid fields of the galaxy!

Ursa Prime is 2 and 0 already.



(The End.)

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Back to the Front Page

Imperium 9 - A Little Help

The biggest mistake the Silicoids made was of course to choose the wrong enemy. They should have known better than to go up against the RBO-9 of the indomitable Kodiak City Hibers! They should never, ever have made the play for Romulas they did. Their next-biggest mistake though may just cancel out the first ... for the few million survivors of their species: They chose the wrong allies too!



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 a 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.

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Next: Conclusion

Imperium 9 - Wrapping Up

Our mighty soldiers have finally gotten in on the action over at Rhilus: Now they get to supply new technology for me and my fleets!



Obviously, Rhilus isn't the end of the line for us, even though the plans we picked up there for Class IV deflector shields, Battle Suits, a Mass Driver and out-of-date industrial technology represent all that remained of the Silicoid technology lead. As the monitor in the background shows, the next stop is Cryslon, the Silicoid homeworld, for my beautiful fleets!


2468:

More word from GNN! So soon? It looks like something terrible's happening! Our huge, fertile world of Denubius, the nearest to our home star, has gone into open rebellion! And unlike the other pansy species we've been dealing with, those rebels are Bulrathi! It's going to take all our considerable talent to reclaim the colony!


2469:

Transports are now en route. To where? That should be obvious, I think. To Denubius of course - we just sent a huge number from here on Ursa to complement the ones already in space - but also to the world we just scouted this year.



Beware, people of Cryslon: The bears control your skies! (My Swipes even killed almost a quarter of their Morey destroyers before the rest could retreat!)

Heh - and Munchy's just developed a Graviton beam, so he's working on a Fusion Rifle, in case our forces weren't invincible enough already!


2470:

Drat! Ssithra and that insectoid Klaquan called the RBO-9 to complain that we're basically too powerful for them ... and the RBO-9 responded by classifying all reports of combat for the year. I don't even know how my fleet or our ground troops did!


2471:

Well, all the work that's to be done is done, and they're releasing a report on the last two years' battles at last.



We ... good heavens! I didn't even realize we'd sent a force to Lyae! We must have conquered it last year as an afterthought after taking Denubius back from the rebel forces! And of course our Cryslon invasion force just arrived and took the Silicoid homeworld. They hardly outnumbered us by more than two to one, so they didn't really stand a chance. For now, we're just pumping more Swipe 5.0 fighters into space to deal with Silicoid fleets and ensure our new worlds remain ours - because we don't seem to need to replace any bombers; even after splitting up, they're handling the enemy bases in their sleep. This war was won before it began. It's all over now but the shouting.


2474:

We've rolled the Silicoids back to a distant corner of the galaxy ... with a little bit of help, it would seem!



A couple of once-Silicoid stars across the galactic core from our primary worlds appear now to belong to nobody! We didn't even send any bombers there! I wonder why that might be.

I suppose we'll find out; for the moment though, in spite of relatively few stationary defenses, especially in our core, our position is unassailable at this point, thanks in part to the addition of our mature ex-Silicoid colonies.



My beautiful fleets can defend us easily, and more are ready to appear at a moment's notice, thanks to pre-builds of Arctic (Bear) dreadnoughts at all our rich worlds. Transports are already on the way to the two remaining Silicoid worlds, though they do have one chance to survive (fortunately for their species, the one chance isn't up to them!) - as we shall presumably see. Things are pretty much wrapping up - I'm just sorry I didn't get to design more different kinds of ships during my tenure!

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Next: A Little Help

Imperium 9 - Breakthrough

2451:

I take back everything bad I ever may have said about old Munchy. He came through with the plans for a warp dissipator this year, and casually informed me of his new project: Impulse Drives! Once he works out the details of how to actually construct them, they'll let our bulky troop transports chug along at Warp 4 - twice the speed of my current starships - and enable Warp 5 engines for my fleets! Oh, bear, I can't wait; I seriously can't wait! Actual strategic speed!


2453:

More good news from the labs, as auto-repair systems and fusion bombs are ready for installation on the fleet. The boys will be happy to hear that Munchy's next project is an armored exoskeleton for them, and I suppose I'm glad to hear he's researching a graviton beam. Now, I do like streaming weapons more than most designers seem to; they're certainly versatile weapons in their way, since they can target more than one ship in a tightly-clustered fleet with a single beam. If our enemies started fielding weapons like these graviton beams, I would likely have to start phasing out my fighters in favor of larger, more durable combat ships. That said, the damage they cause can be somewhat unreliable, and their versatility has its limits. Legendary fleet engineers like Sullla and ZedF said Fusion Beams were among their favorite weapons - and no wonder! When an enemy fleet includes cruisers or battleships mounting shields, heavy weapons, and repulsor beams, missiles heavy weapons of your own are the only good answer - such as the heavy-mount fusion beam. Heavy Fusion cannons are so powerful, they're even good for knocking down missile bases on the surface until the target manages to put up a Class X planetary shield generator - as yet still only theoretical technology. And for the everyday task of wiping out enemy fleets, the regular fusion beam mount is hard to beat (unless you can get Megabolt cannons like our treacherous Darlok neighbors). Their only serious weakness is in dealing with large fighter fleets - single-ship targeting means lots of overkill and too few targets killed at each volley - and for those, you can send in ships with banks and banks of lower-tech weapons like my beloved NPGs. So, with fusion cannons on the table, why is Munchy working on graviton beams instead? Look, I'm just a starship engineer. Don't ask me.


2454:

Someone forgot to tell Grook that we never made any lopsided tech trades with the buggies. He's just "evened things out" a little by stealing a mark 3 battle computer from their labs at Dolz. Oh, well. I can use it, and the bugs aren't complaining, so I'm happy. Apparently Spica's missile bases can use it too though: My fleet left the system some time ago to head for Silicoid space, and three of those high-speed Darlok King Cobra cruisers, with destroyer escorts, are inbound, due next year!


2455:

Still no word on an ETA for Impulse Drives. Oh, by the way, apparently someone doubled the number of missile bases at our Spica colony. The King Cobras managed to drop a nuclear bomb or two that didn't do much to our heavy planetary shielding, but a few waves of 30 merculite missiles apiece blew the Darlok ships to pieces before they could do any meaningful damage. Poor things.


2459:

For some reason, Munchy is still working on projects that have nothing to do with our fleets. Advanced ecological restoration is well and good, and I guess advanced soil enrichment will be good to feed more troopers when the project is finished, but really - it's almost as if there are other interests that matter in the Bulrathi empire besides me! I think I'll just ignore it and have a look at a great new example of how NOT to design a starship!



Bear in mind we're going to get three of these next year. I never said I was perfect! Anyway, let's have a look at what's right and wrong with this thing. The Sniffer 2.0 is meant to be a scanner ship. Its entire mission is to meet enemy fleets, detect their weapons and related systems, and transmit the data home so I can design the most effective counter-fleets in response. To this end, what does it need? Our most advanced engines go without saying. (Most advanced for now, that is.) The idea is to find out about enemy star fleets before they attack our colonies. Besides, if we're looking for information about a specific type of alien ship, the Sniffer has to be in the same place at the same time as one of those ships, and coordinating that is much faster with an improved space scanner to see where the aliens are going and a quick Sniffer to reach its destination in time. Next, it has a battle scanner. That's the entire point of the ship, allowing it to sniff out the details of enemy ship design from maximum combat range. So far, so good. Now, it's also carrying reserve fuel tanks, and that makes a certain sense: Important enemy fleets may be hiding beyond normal fuel cell range, and this piece of equipment can also allow us to scan alien starfleets - like those of the Alkari - even before we make diplomatic contact with the people commanding them. And then ... an inertial stabilizer? Battle computer? A set of four NPGs?! Did I actually think this starship was going to get in a fight with somebody?!

Well, sort of. In theory, if it was out scouting some planet that just had a couple of fighters on defense, it would get the chance to do a surface scan by knocking them out of space. If we were ever going to build a serious assault fleet that crawled across space at warp 2, it could conceivably contribute to a battle to which it was sent with a real combat force just to confirm the specs of the opposing fleet. That's not happening though - not with warp 5 on the horizon - and the chances of finding a planet defended by a couple of token fighters at this stage of galactic development are ... not great. Since we're building such a small number of these, it really doesn't matter. Our empire can afford to waste a few dozen BC on frivolous equipment these days. But arming my scanner ship for combat was still rather silly.


2460:

Well, my scanner ships look sillier than ever now that Ssithra has agreed to reinstate our NAP. The main reason I built them at all was to have a look at those of his fleets that hadn't yet approached our colonies. Others were going to head off to other fronts, and still will, but the entire exercise now seems rather pointless.


2463:

Grook is off in Silicoid space, trying to "make things even" with the enemy - and doing a rather poor job of it, I must say. If he'd stolen something for my ships, that would be great - but instead, he's stolen the Silicoids' personal deflector shield designs. That's only going to emphasize our ground forces' enormous inequality!


2464:

If Munchy isn't named Bear of the Year, there's something deeply wrong with the selection system.



Alpha Females and Gentlebears, we have Impulse Drives! Munchy's already started work on some kind of stargate project whose only saving grace is that it's slightly less pointless than ten-parsec basic range for a civilization that will soon control stars all across the galaxy, but that isn't the point. He has the right to rest on his laurels for a while. We have Impulse Drives, everybody!!!

I've already redesigned just about everything in the fleet. Our new Swipe 5.0 fighters are much like the old Cubs, but upgraded with warp 5 engines, class 7 maneuverability, and our most advanced battle computer - mark 3. The Scent 5.0 is sort of like the old Sniffers - and almost as silly - but has an important engine upgrade instead of a totally unimportant battle computer, and only mounts two NPGs. And for the first time in my tenure as Chief Starship Engineer of the Bulrathi People, I get to design a bomber that will actually see the starlight of night in the galaxy.

Of course my bombers will have Impulse engines. Of course they'll have a Fusion Bomb - the best we have available - apiece. But that leaves us with the same eternal question that always arises with fighters: Accuracy or speed? The truth is, it depends mostly on the expected defenses it's going to face. We can't cram a computer on this hull at the same time as a stabilizer and enough turning jets for maximum maneuverability, so if we were going after someone with advanced missiles and high-level jammers, we might have to rethink our entire design, for instance by using larger ships with more bombs apiece, or waiting until we can get better miniaturization. Sadly for the Silicoids though, they have no jamming capabilities, no missiles better than nukes, and no serious prospects of getting their geodesic claws on any in the immediate future. So we can basically do whatever we want, and if only for the ability to strike before their fleets can respond, I'm planning to max out on speed.



If I could have given up one level of maneuverability for a computer upgrade, it would have been worth it, but there was no such possibility. The new Mattock 5.0 bombers - designed exclusively for breaking up rocks in the land our farmers desire - are going to be a little speedy. A mere mark 1 computer would have increased their hit rate by a good 25%, even against the Silicoids' nonexistant ECM, but the tradeoff would be extra time to reach the target and likely more bombers lost en route (both because of the delay and because of the lower maneuverability - the Silicoids' best possible targeting systems have a 5% chance of hitting our Mattocks, but that chance would quadruple if they didn't have Stabilizers on board ... though most of their ships probably have no better chance of hitting the ships either way...). As a rule, I like to give my bombers maneuver class 6 when I can get it, then upgrade the battle computer as much as possible, then max out whatever maneuverability improvements are possible at that point. This is because Class 6 is the turning point that allows a bomber to reach its target after one less volley from the missile bases than something with Class 4 or 5 would see. (I hate building bombers with maneuver classes under 4, because they wind up dealing with 4-8 missile volleys where these Mattocks will only have to see 1 or 2).

All this accomplished, the plans are ready to send out to Romulas, which is going to build them at top speed out of the parts from its gigantic prebuild, its massive mineral reserves, and all the treasury funding it can receive. (The RBO-9 has built up a pretty enormous reserve treasury, and are ready to spend it freely, so I won't even question such loony-seeming decisions as agreeing to Ssithra's proposed trade package this year: An upgrade to 650 BC!)


2465:

We now have a respectable fleet.



With our transports blazing in at warp 4, timed to arrive at the same time as our fighters, after the bombers have already slipped in to wipe out all the planet's missile bases, whether or not there's an attempt to stop them by any kind of fleet, Rhilus is set to become the next ex-Silicoid Bulrathi colony!

Grook is way off at the far galactic rim, stealing anti-missile rocket plans from Xengara, which is sort of too bad; we're still not really even with the kitties, and it won't be long, whatever he does, before we have all the Silicoid's technology.


2466:

I mentioned that the Silicoids have no ECM to speak of, right? Well, we have ours up to class 4 now, which ... will help Grook with his hacking work, mostly. Nobody's going to be firing on our worlds any time soon, I'm afraid. On a plus note though, old Munchy's off to work on an Advanced Space Scanner to extend our scanning range still more, and plan out our planetary invasions in advance of hitting the worlds with our fleets! Meanwhile, my Mattocks should have reached Rhilus this year, but I haven't heard the outcome. Apparently it's top secret, and only being revealed within the official command structure of the military. You have no idea how frustrating it is to design such wonderful starships and not even know what they did!


2467:

The reports are finally in ... and we didn't lose a single Mattock!



We blew all 16 missile bases to bits before their missiles could even catch up to our bombers, and before the Morey destroyers even managed to retreat! And now it seems our ground forces arrived, outnumbered by less than two to one, and therefore took the planet, obviously. GNN is reporting we're the first to twelve stars - ahead of even the Darloks! What a breakthrough for the Bulrathi!

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Next: Wrapping Up

Imperium 9 - Friendly Kittens

2438:

The M.U.S.C.L.E. has plans ready to go for Zortium Armor and our first major planetary shielding; most of our established worlds have at least one missile base in place already, and are ready to start erecting their massive shield generators, while Munchy goes to work on an auto-repair system finally (Armored Exoskeletons would be fun for our troops to play with, but our fleet's the most important thing) and designs for a repulsor beam. For my part, I'm putting together a new Cub 2.1 design, enabled by the latest technological miniaturization, that mounts a Mark 2 computer, but is otherwise identical to its predecessor. It could have a shield or better armor too, but that won't help it kill incoming ships more quickly, so we're going to let it be.


2439:

We've got another Silicoid assault fleet at Romulas! Another of their interminable colony ships is escorted by the fourth Kraken battleship we've seen, and a pair of those Morey destroyers! Our fleet of 33 Cub 2.0s is now supported by five new 2.1s, just built right there in-system, and one of the old 1.1s for good measure ... and it's enough! Just bear-ly! Only 14 of our Cub 2.0s make it through the gauntlet, but the Kraken goes down in flames along with the rest of their fleet! The longer we can hold out here, the more the planet can develop its factory infrastructure, and the more surely it can defend itself permanently ... against the Silicoid poachers. If we have to deal with their allies too, there's no telling where this will end, and they seem to have formed an alliance with the Mrrshan kitties. Fortunately, our trade relations, NAPping, and friendly policies have built friendships with most of the peoples of the galaxy, and the Mrrshans can understand our side of the story.



The price they asked to throw over their Silicoid alliance was exhorbitant - we didn't even ask them to join on our side of the war - but Grrrarrrmgrrrr "Softy" Morgrag (411 Knockdowns, an unbelievable 170 Assists and 60 Secondary Recoveries, with 28 Crippling Blows but no Confirmed Kills) of the RBO-9 says when he looked into Jasana's bright green eyes, he was sure that we could trust her. Some of the other RBO-9 have started jesting that he's in love with the kitty, which is fine - if anyone else dared to make those jokes though, they'd get their head pounded in for their trouble. Teaching the Mrrshans to use robotic controls just to break up their Silicoid alliance might have been crazy, but I don't argue with the RBO-9. It's possible "Softy" was just being diplomatic, and he figured if the cats learned to use robotic controls, they'd wind up with more factories for us to capture intact if they ever turned on us. Or maybe he did see something honest in those funny-looking green eyes.

Oh, and speaking of green eyes, Munchy's happily talking to engineers on all our colonies and all our fleets, explaining how to install the new improved space scanners. He's going to work on a Mark-IV ECM Jammer as soon as everything's working okay. Of course you know what that means: More miniaturization for my fleets!


2440:

Wow ... just trying to pick myself up off the floor and make sure each of my bones is in one piece. All of a sudden the planet decided it didn't want me or something - that I ought to be up in hyperspace with my fleets! News reports are saying it was an earthquake - an unbelievable 12.0 on the Rrrrichterrrr scale, I believe - and that we lost 26 million people and 248 factory-cities. Just when you think your homeworld's safe, I guess ... natural forces still pack a whallop! Well, then - time to start rebuilding! Good thing we've got other worlds carrying the load now. Like our rich world of Yarrow, that just maxed out its factories!


2441:

One of my brave little Runaways made it all the way down to Jinga, the most distant Silicoid colony we can reach. It's got a little snowball of a world packed with Silicoids, but we've got a planetary survey now, and as soon as we have a colony close enough, our invasion troops will be ready to roll. For now, I'm just sending out the latest GlowDen colony ship to claim an actual radiated world - the rich one orbiting Mu Delphi at the edge of the galaxy.


2444:

Well, it looks like not all our neighbors - not even all the non-Coidy ones - are friendly!



Even as the GlowDen out of Yarrow founds our colony at Mu Delphi, Ssithra proves it's serious about seeking the new star systems it supposedly so direly needs by breach of our non-aggression treaty. It seems its first fleet - three destroyers and a cruiser - was launched in the same moment it canceled the pact with us. How sad for the poor Darloks that they have such a dire need for star systems ... especially when beautiful worlds like Mu Delphi's were available right on their borders if they would only turn their efforts, like us, to researching planetology. Instead of, you know, building attack ships to batter against our missile bases and my increasingly invincible fleets.

Our Mrrshan friends have the right idea at least: We teach them to use one critical planetology tech, they teach us to use one.



As in the case of robotic controls, they're clearly getting the better part of the deal, though enhanced eco restoration is only a single-level upgrade from their existing version, just as the terraforming they're trading to us is the smallest possible upgrade over our existing variety, but this is a trade that helps us both, and that can only be a good thing. Besides, we'll find ways of making things come out even eventually....


2448:

The first Darlok fleet has arrived - more are coming already! - and unlike the Silicoids, these leaders in virtually every statistical category in the galaxy have armed their assault ships with modern weaponry! And by modern, I do mean, "Way beyond anything ever dreamt of in our part of the galaxy." Fortunately, we make better use of what we do have - and by "we," I do mean "me."

We've got five bases up at the planet, with triple-merculite missile tubes on each, braced up behind our planetary shield and their own individual class 3s. And remember those Cub 2.1s I mentioned, upgraded over the 2.0s that handled the Silicoid battleships for us? Remember how I mentioned that NPG fighters practically never go obsolete? Remember how I sang the praises of tactical speed? Well, we've got 81 of those 2.1 fighters here, and the enemy's anti-matter bomb cruiser is rated 1 on maneuverability. See where this is going?



We lost four or five little fighters. They lost their fleet. Of course, there's a lot more where it came from ... but thanks to our rich worlds, there's a lot more where our fighters came from too!


2449:

Another Darlok fleet is making a run on Spica - this one with a fast-moving King Cobra cruiser. Their Tarantula twin-mass-driver destroyers are so slow, and so loaded down with those bulky wastes of space (mass drivers have their uses ... under very occasional circumstances indeed) that we don't really have to worry about them at all, but the Venom destroyers with their stabilizers and Megabolts cannons (hyper-accurate beams that can hit even our fighters pretty consistently) could cause trouble in numbers, and the King Cobra, moving in with maneuverability of at least 4, mounting no less than 9 megabolts to deal with our interceptors, would be a serious problem if our ships had any less tactical speed. It would surely even have reached the planet to drop some of its nuclear bombs ... whereas, thanks to our fighters' ability to close rapidly with it and survive most of even its megabolt beams (we're still fast enough that they miss most of the time) we burn it out before it gets in range. Please be aware, everybody: Speed kills.


2450:

Ah - just as I suspected, we've started to get back toward parity in our tech exchanges with the Mrrshans. True, gatling lasers aren't worth a tremendous amount, but every little bit of miniaturization helps ... and you can't beat getting them for nothing!



I'm sure if Jasana were to actually find out where we got those designs, she'd look into Spymaster Grook's honest purple eyes and realize he was just trying to make our trades come out even. She did vote for Ssithra in the latest High Council election - so did practically everyone else - but with ursine voting power approaching a full veto and the Alkari abstaining from this election, we should be safe from the danger of backstabbing eyes-in-cloaks inheriting the galaxy.

Now if only Munchy would actually finish his projects in propulsion and weapons research, so I can build even cooler new ships. It's been over a decade since they were first reported "on the verge of a breakthrough!"

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Next: Breakthrough

Imperium 9 - The Chips Fall

2430:

Yet another Silicoid colony ship - it's as if they have an infinite supply of these things - has shown up at Romulas with another Morey escort. We have dozens of fighters en route to the planet - three dozen of the Cub 2.0s alone (plus almost twenty more finished this year) - half of which are due to arrive within two years ... two years too late. We had only 13 Runaways in orbit when the Silicoid fleet arrived, they scored some lucky hits with some of their early fire, and the crippled remnants of our Romulas fleet had to live up to the ships' names and retreat: They had no chance to destroy the enemy. Not so for the fleets en route to Romulas as I write this. The Silicoids have planted their flag. Let us see them hold the world in the face of the Running/Blocking Offensive 9 of the Kodiak City Hibers ... and my new-minted combat fleet!



They sent fleet after fleet to this world while our starfleet was in orbit and our colony on its way. The Silicoids may pretend to be at peace (so long as they get to take what they want from our people) ... but 38 million Bulrathi assault troopers and dozens of combat fighters know it's war they declared when they attacked our orbiting fleet. We colonized Darrian this year, at last claiming the second-nearest star to our home ... and mark my words, in a few years more, we're going to claim Romulas too! With Merculite Missiles installed at our missile bases since their development two years back, and fusion bombs on the way in case we need to take the battle to the enemy, we're ready - just about - for anything!


2431:

Dunatis is ours. Far though it is from our homeworld, the ship we finally built to fly there at warp 2 arrived sooner than the warp 1 ship we sent to Yarrow the moment we were ready to send anything. Such is the power of strategic speed.

Transport ETA: Four years more.

Starfleet ETA: Next year!


2432:

The rich tundra world of Yarrow is a Bulrathi colony at last ... and eighteen Cub 2.0 fighters are arriving at Romulas IV. The Morey with its gatling lasers is still waiting in orbit, but it stands no chance against our latest fleet. With their incredibly maneuverability and the rate at which they'll blast away its armor, piercing its shields, I'd be surprised if it even kills a single fighter ... and it doesn't. The Morey is in full retreat! Now we just have to deal with their incoming starships: A cloud of colony transports that will never reach the planet ... another Morey...



...and no less than three Kraken battleships! To say that we have our work cut out for us is the understatement of the century! It's a good thing we've been sending our main battle fleet!


2433: The Krakens are expected to arrive at the same time as our invasion transports. If we can't defeat them, they'll shoot down all our mighty warriors in space! Meanwhile, their 33 transports are due to hit the planet this year. They shall not establish a foothold on this, our world!



The Silicoid colony on Romulas has been destroyed from orbit by our fighter fleet. Their incoming transports all have burned. The Silicoids have officially declared the war they began by sending their fleets to Romulas. And in two years' time, the battle begins that will decide the fate of this vital, rich star system for the rest of history!


2435:

The battle is joined! On the side of the Silicoids, we have three gigantic death ships and a gatling destroyer. On the Bulrathi side, we have 108 highly maneuverable fighters, more than half of which are of the latest Cub 2.0 design!



The evolution of the Cub is visible in this shot, always using stabilizers for maximum maneuverability, increasing computer power when it became possible, then reducing it again to make room for nuclear engines. Not pictured is the Glow(ing)Den radiated colony ship, also with warp 2 engines installed, but operating as an unarmed civillian. (It retreated from combat range as soon as the battle began). The Kraken monsters all turn out to be armed with a deadly combination of missiles and both heavy and standard beams, capable of striking from virtually any range. My fighters dodge around the missiles as best they can, close with the Morey and burn it from the sky, and then - those that have survived - take on the deadly Krakens themselves! All the Cub 1.1s are destroyed; the smaller fleet of 1.0s follow them to the fires of the planet's surface, and the Cub 2.0 high-speed dancing fighters begin to burn ... but they're hammering the Krakens with round after round of blazing neutron pellets, and they've somehow managed to take the first Kraken down! The second burns under heavy fire, and finally it's a face-off in the fiery skies of Romulas between the last of the Krakens and the last of our NPG fleets!



Victory! Bear, those Cubs must be pretty good combat vessels. Someone buy that starship designer a pot of fermented honey! (Why, yes, that would be me.) Romulas is ours, as it was always meant to be. 33 Cub 2.0s survive to defend the world against no further incoming Silicoid fleets. (None yet, I mean). Now it's time to consolidate control of our new ship-building center so we can take the battle to the enemy!

_______________

Next: Friendly Kittens

Imperium 9 - Rising Tensions

Maps of Mrrshan and Silicoid space provided by their respective leaders reveal the most crowded sector of the galaxy, with empires overlapping to a ridiculous extent between the three known aggressive races. (Silicoid expansionism and Mrrshan militarism are regular bywords among galactic travelers and merchants, but Crystous and Jasana are as aggressive in their pursuit of those ideals as are the Klackons in the pursuit of industry.) This becomes particularly apparent when clicking through the standard image display to see the full map of the galaxy, with the rough borders of different species' space marked in their respective colors. The patchwork of Klackon/Mrrshan/Silicoid space contrasts sharply with the enormous Darlok empire, the far-flung Bulrathi worlds spread out across wide gaps of empty space, and the unknown stars presumably belonging to the Alkari on the far side of the galaxy.



The same map also highlights the way galactic political development was shaped by the ... shape ... of the galaxy. Between the Primodius asteroids in the central nebula, the vast reaches of empty space at the heart of the galaxy, and the hostile worlds of Yarrow and Dunatis, near to the galactic core but on the opposite side from Silicoid space, it's no wonder that most interspecies meetings occurred far from the galactic center. The importance of the dotomite fuel cells Munchy developed this year should be obvious: With our "short-range" fleets and transports finally able to travel 7 parsecs from our fuel bases (and extended-tank scouts ready to travel 3 parsecs further still) we'll finally be able to protect Romulas with a real defensive fleet, and of course we're finally able to speak with our neighbors. Unfortunately, the importance of actual engines is also manifest, and we don't have any. Even now, Munchy and his M.U.S.C.L.E.-bound cohorts are working merrily away on an Warp Dissipator device to slow down enemy fleets in battle - a device that does nothing in the deeps of interstellar space, where our fleets are slow enough already! Of course we'd be working on an engine if the lab boys could imagine any way to develop one ... but they can't. It's impossible, they tell me.


2413:

It's hard to have a lot of respect for our science teams when a new discovery doesn't even turn on any new lightbulbs in their brains. Supposedly they had to "backtrack" to develop the new improvements to our industrial technology, and supposedly the auto-repair system for which I keep lobbying would mean more "backtracking." As Nero Beare would say, Pfui. At least now they're developing Zortium armor for my cruisers- and dreadnoughts-to-be.


2414:

I think we're in 2414. I hope I didn't oversleep this winter. Anyway, I'm feeling better about Munchencrunch and his boys now; our new Robotic Controls are ready to roll out, and more importantly, they're working on an improved space scanner that should double my scout ships' scanning range and tell us exact destinations and ETAs for every alien ship we can see. This will be enormously helpful for planning and timing the design of the most effective possible fleet. Assuming we ever get good enough engines for the fleet to ever show up at its destination.


2418:

Still a little fuzzy from hibernating. What year is it again? It is 2418, right? Right? Somebody? Well, anyway. It seems a few days before I woke up, Jasana called up the RBO-9 and offered a non-aggression pact! Ha ha, obviously I was napping at the time, and our leaders were more than happy to NAP with her. They were so happy about our new pro-fur relationship, they taught her to use our latest industrial tech improvements in exchange for doubling the potential of our terraforming techniques. She gets a 22-30% discount on factory construction, we get room for an extra ten million bears on each of our worlds. Maybe I'm just in a good mood from a good winter's sleep, but that sounds like a good deal on both sides to me.


2419:

I really need to start setting an alarm. I'm pretty sure this is 2419. I think. Anyway, what woke me up was a major GNN news report. Something's happening in the galaxy.



Must have been five years ago that the droid ranked empire production and put the Klackon bugs first in the galaxy. (We were next to last, ahead of the Silicoids, but that was just before we started building robotic-control factories all over the place.) Now their Selia colony's gone fertile, speeding their growth curve, upping their maximum population, and improving their productivity. These bugs are pretty impressive. But they don't have me designing their fleets!


2422:

Uh-oh. Scanners are picking up an escorted Silicoid colony ship, and I don't need an improved space scanner (good thing, too, since one won't be ready for a while) to tell where it's headed. They're finally going for our (yes, our) Romulas colony-to-be! Thanks to some questionable planning by the RBO, and our continuing miserable lack of engines, we've only managed to get one of my NPG fighters up there to join the original long-range fleet! Just one colony ship and a Morey destroyer escort, but we may be sorry our leaders didn't listen to me ... and build more of the ships I'm designing!


2424:

Here they come! We've got to fight them off, but they're firing on my fleet already! It looks like the Morey's armed with gatling lasers, which are useless against anything with significant shielding, but dangerous for little fighters like the ones in our fleet! The colship's got a laser too, and we have less than two dozen fighters in our fleet!



Got 'em! We only lost the fighter and four Runaways! We really should have sent more fighters though. If they'd come with more than a token escort, we'd never have held the world. Even as it is, we'll eventually lose by attrition unless we can get a real fleet into space. We should have sent something up there the moment we developed Dotomite and it came into standard fighter range. I just hope what we can build at Klystron now won't be too little, too late!


2425:

This is amazing! Munchy's brand-new Radiation Control bases actually work! We can convert the giant placeholder ship right here on Ursa into three colony ships to carry them by next year - and while I'm not all that excited about Munchy's new project to advance our ecology restoration techniques, I am excited about the merculite missiles he keeps promising will be ready any year now! It's enough to make me forget about the high council vote, where half the galaxy voted for Ssithra (not including the RBO-9 this time) and caused endless pointless hand-wringing by people more interested in politics than the coolest new starships. Me, I'm sending designs to Klystron for a brand-new fighter, with a stabilizer to help it gain initiative, close rapidly, and evade enemy attack, and our most advanced battle computer for NPG targeting. (Thanks to the miniaturization afforded by robotic controls, our most advanced battle computer is now reasonably cheap.) No real trade-offs needed on this one; it might actually have made sense to fit them with duralloy armor since the enemy is still fielding lasers (gatling or otherwise) and the increase in cost would be small, but I'm going with titanium anyway. True, with their warp one engines, these ships are likely to be scrapped before the duralloy would start to look silly ... but old habits die hard, I guess.


2426:

Another Silicoid colony ship showed up at Romulas today, unescorted. It took out three more of my Runaways before it burned under their fire. At this rate, my fighters will never get there in time! People are still talking about the Klackon courtesy call, where they thanked us for trading with them and talked about relaxing tensions, but I don't see the point of that, personally. What good did diplomacy ever do for our fleet?


2427:

So ... Grok "Face-Masher" Horgis (607 Knockdowns, 73 Assists, just 3 Confirmed Kills, but 43 Crippling Blows) paid me a visit on behalf of the rest of our RBO-9, to present me with "a little something we picked up from Ssithra."



I'm kind of speechless. The Inertial Stabilizer we taught them to use is in theory a more advanced and nearly-unique technology, but we got plans for Nuclear Engines in exchange: An actual engine, that actually moves ships above half-thawed molasses speeds! It's almost too good to be true!

All right; time to get down to some serious designing. We'll get a warp-2 radiated colony ship started, obviously ... and get Klystron producing Cub 2.0 fighters immediately!

First thing I do when I'm designing a new starship is to plan its engines in. I always use the state of the art, except in the most extreme case of ultra-specialized single-mission emergencies for which they don't fit and aren't needed. In theory, that can sometimes happen, but it's about as common as a blue-necked unicorn, so as a rule, engines go on first. Next up is the neutron pellet gun. This is an NPG fighter, so it has no reason for existence without one. We could consider downgrading to a laser if it were a special-purpose design meant just for fighting in a nebula, but with the only star in the galaxy's lone nebula empty of planets, there's no reason to even consider it.

There's only room for one weapon on this fighter no matter what we do, and it has no need for reserve tanks, so that brings us to the Eternal Fighter Question: Speed vs. Accuracy. The more maneuverable a fighter is, the more easily it can dodge enemy weapons, up to a point - but the better its battle computer, the better it can hit things with its weapons, which is the entire point. All other things being equal, I'd take a superior battle computer over better maneuverability ... but all other things are rarely equal. If it were just a question of Mark 2 computer at Maneuver Class 2 or a Mark 1 at Manuever Class 3, the advanced computer would be the better option ... but that's not the question here. With a stabilizer in place, we can instead go to Maneuver Class 4, which not only improves the ship's chance to evade, it adds more to the ship's initiative, and allows it to close with its target half again as quickly as at maneuver 2 or 3. This is useful for dodging missiles, and critical for defending colonies against bombers or spore ships, and for controlling the course of the battle: With high enough initiative and maneuverability, our pilots can choose which ships they fight when, and at what range, relying on reactive fire when necessary. If we can someday push them up to class six, our fighters can even swing "cutting out" missions, striking locally-overmatched alien vessels before they can even retreat! Tactical combat speed is a big part of the reason I love maneuverability. It's almost as much fun as strategic speed!




So, here's our new Cub 2.0: A NPG fighter with nuclear engines, inertial stabilizer, and a mark-1 computer, and maximum maneuverability. What's the mission of this fighter? To defeat Silicoid colony ships and gatling-laser escorts? No. For that, I'd have considered a shield and even duralloy armor. When I consider a starship's mission, I mean its mission in existence, not just the emergency for which it's originally built. Sometimes a desperate need or the luxury of enormous production might allow the design of a special-purpose ship, but much more often, a long-term mission has to be considered. These fighters are meant to be mobile defenders, holding uncolonized worlds and immature colonies against incoming enemy starships until they're superceded by a superior fleet. I assume the Silicoids have other designs flying around with heavy weapons or NPGs, and they're known to have Death Spore technology. These ships are meant to hit the enemy as soon as possible, as hard as possible, and let the chips fall where they may.

_______________

Next: The Chips Fall

Imperium 9 - Progress

The presence of a Klackon colony right next door to Klystron could have a serious impact on our ship-building needs. My drawing-board is crowded with possible designs, though the only thing in production is a huge placeholder ship whose parts will be used for our actual fleet. For the moment, we're still waiting for critical new technology - already on the verge of breakthrough, according to Munchy at least. In the meantime, I'm told the Klackons seem friendly - in spite of their aggressive industrialistic tendencies - and have already joined us in a trade agreement to the tune of 150 BC. As a result, the RBO-9 is more concerned with the other spacefaring peoples on that side of the galaxy: The Mrrshans and especially Silicoids whose diplomats we've yet to meet!



The latest starmap images of Klackon space include some of the stars belonging to these races - those of which my fleet has managed to learn - appropriately labeled. Clicking through the image of course reveals the area in the context of the entire galaxy. The latter is important, as it makes starkly obvious the most important fact about our empire to myself or any other designer of a combat starfleet: The ridiculous distance between our worlds, especially between the Bulrathi core and the stars on the front with other species. What we need more than anything else is a superior engine design for our ships!


2382:

Well, this isn't helping. It was well and good for Munchencrunch to present me with designs for a new battle computer and an inertial stabilization device for our combat ships, and I suppose his new Robotic Controls project will be helpful eventually: In theory, it will allow us to keep half again as many factories operating per capita as we do already, and that can only mean more production for a larger fleet. The problem is with his propulsion research. Apparently, there's still no hope of any kind of engine more advanced than our retro-chic, retrograde, retrogressive rockets. We're working on Dotomite Crystals now, to extend our range still further and no doubt spread our worlds still thinner across the galaxy without hope of moving a fleet between them at any reasonable speed. In the meantime, I need to find a way to hold the stars we need, even though it's apparently going to take even longer to come up with an engine than for our slow-moving fleets to crawl across the galaxy.



This is the best I can manage with current miniaturization techniques: The Runaway (Cub) 1.0 is the most basic of laser fighters, with nothing added but the reserve tanks it needs to reach its destination. These are not meant for homeland defense, obviously! Their purpose is the same as a Long Range Lemon's would be: To sit in orbit above the rich world of Romulas and keep off interloping Silicoid colony fleets ... until we develop the technology to claim the world for ourselves!

Now, could I have designed something better to accomplish the same purpose? Possibly. A larger ship could mount a battle computer and more lasers, and each would have more staying power in combat besides. The problem is that there are no good long-term solutions possible right now. All our weapons are rapidly becoming obsolete. Alien weaponry is expected to be able to punch through Class II shields and duralloy armor with ease - the Runaways could mount duralloy instead of titanium, but it's not worth the extra cost; one more point of armor durability unlikely to ever make a real difference to the little ship's survival now that alien fleets will be mounting non-lasers, and the extra cost means fewer lasers in space. As a result of all this, our ships' best defense is to avoid getting hit in the first place, which means staying small and maneuvrable. A stabilizer on a larger ship would reduce the number of lasers it can carry to such a degree that these little long-range fighters remain the best option I can see.

A big part of the reason for that is the possibility of enemy shielding. As time goes on, the lowly laser will become an increasingly pointless weapon, capable of doing little or no damage to enemy fleets. Space-eating heavy lasers aren't a whole lot better. No matter what I build right now, its effective lifetime will be limited indeed. A fleet of these little guys at least has some versatility: Its ships can be reassigned to scouting duties when they become obsolete as defensive ships without crashing the budget, for instance. And the RBO-9 is unlikely to feel too invested in ships of this class to scrap them when their time is at an end - a more significant consideration than one might think. In any case, a cloud of these will be sent up to Romulas as soon as they can get there, in the hope and expectation that they'll be replaced once we can build a real fleet.


2390:

At long last: A real weapon to install on my starships!



It's no wonder that Munchy is grinning; Neutron Pellet Guns are simply amazing. They're space-efficient enough to fit on a fighter pretty much immediately, and unlike lasers and even ion cannons, they practically never go obsolete. Class 1 shields don't affect them at all. They always penetrate for at least minimal damage through starship shields all the way up through class 3. They're as effective against Class 7 shields as lasers are against Class 2s, and have a chance to penetrate anything below Class 10 aboard a ship - they can even damage planetary bases until they get class 4s installed. They miniaturize so effectively (unlike more powerful shield-piercing weapons) that I'll likely be able to choose between an advanced battle computer and mounting a pair of them on a fighter eventually, and large gunships will be able to carry dozens of the things. My Runaways assigned to protect Romulas are nearly obsolete already, and they haven't even reached the star; the new short-range Cub NPG fighters I'll be designing shortly won't go obsolete until I'm ready to redesign our entire starfleet ... with better engines! (We will have real engines someday! Hopefully!)


2400:

It's the turn of the century! After another inconclusive High Council vote (very similar to the first one, remember, only with more votes for each party) everybody's been preparing all year for the centennial festivities! Well, almost everybody. Munchy being Munchy, he's been working day and night on reducing our waste emissions, and he's finally gotten them down to 60% of what they used to be. I wanted to shout with joy when I heard ship-based Automated Repair and Zortium Armor projects were on the table, but he's pushing for another improvement to our industrial technology instead - cutting factory construction costs by about 22% - in preparation for the robotic controls that M.U.S.C.L.E is working on simultaneously. With all our planets' industrial development complete (except at poor Talas, where it never will be) it certainly won't help for our regular factories!


2403:

Tremendous news! Munchy finally managed to enhance our ecological restoration techniques, and he says the final element in the breakthrough suggests that totally self-contained, radiation-shielded colony bases will be possible someday! Once we've come up with a design and I've installed them on colony starships, they should make it possible for bears to live on any planetary body - even fiery Darrian and Romulas, or still more hostile worlds as yet undiscovered by Bulrathikind! This is so exciting: I can't wait to design those ships!


2407:

Still no breakthroughs, though Munchy claims that four different techs are "on the verge." At least the politicos have something to cheer about.



Not only did xenophobic Ssithra call up our invincible Running/Blocking Offensive Nine to propose a non-aggression pact, it even remembered to put a comma after its name! Better still, it proposed the pact at a time when there weren't any Bulrathi fleets en route to scout Darlok worlds, which means we won't be helplessly "violating" the pact in the moment of its inception! The RBO-9 decided to leap at the chance. We're gambling that Munchy will beat the Darlok scientists to the means of colonizing rich Dunatis, over by Darloks space, but he's working on it already, so the gamble may pay off.


2410:

It seems we're extending the gamble. With Class 3 Deflector Shields ready to roll out ever since last year, and Class V Planetaries under development, it seems we've requested and received another non-aggression pact, this time from the Klackon buggies ... and taught our Darlok "friends" how to build my beautiful Neutron Pellet Guns just for their trick for building a cheap ECM Jammer to mess with the guidance systems of missiles and bombs and things. I guess the stupid thing will help with spying a little, and help defend our missile bases, but it's so bulky and expensive, I'll never put one aboard a starship!


2412:

The diplomat corps' orgy of xenophilia is continuing, I see. No sooner does Munchy come up with Dotomite Crystals to fuel my starfleet than they race out to talk to our new "buddies" - the two races finally close enough for our combat, trade, and diplomatic fleets to reach. The Mrrshans, I understand. They're nice and fuzzy, and like to build starships (like me) and their empress, Jasana, agreed to a 275 BC trade package right away. Plus she gave us a deep space scanner design when we taught her to make my beautiful NPGs - meaning not only a little boost for our spies, but a full extra parsec of scanning range for all my little starships, and two extra parsecs from our colonies, allowing us to see enemy fleets sooner, and giving me longer to design in anticipation of our defensive needs. But what about the Silicoids?



They only agreed to a 200 BC trade package, and all they gave us for our NPG design was some kind of low-grade terraforming techinque! We can do at least four times better after our radiated base plans come in, and ... well ... I guess it will miniaturize my colony ship designs a little ... and, well, yeah, allow another ten million bears at each of our colonies, with attendant factories ... but still! These are the guys most likely to poach our (yes, our!) rich worlds from us, and rich worlds are perfect for building fleets! How will my beautiful starship designs ever reach their full potential if we don't have rich worlds to build them in enormous quantities? It's a good thing we didn't ask for a non-aggression pact with them or anything. (Not that they'd have agreed if we had.)

_______________

Next: Rising Tensions

Imperium 9 - Dangerous Meetings

With years in preparation as we anticipated Duralloy Armor and followed the advances Munchencrunch produced, we are prepared to roll two New Den 1.0 colony ships off the line within the year!



Sometimes - indeed, often - simplest is best. The New Den is nothing but a large hull mounting a standard colony base and extended fuel tanks, with room to spare thanks to our advances in planetology and construction technology. The best thing to do with the extra space, as none of my predecessors understood, is of course to leave it empty, thereby saving production and maintenance costs and streamlining the ship. To most engineers, this is obvious for colony design, but it must be remembered that nothing is strictly obvious when it comes to starship engineering. It has been said that a brilliant engineer named do0m once advocated including a single laser on every colony design. His debates with the legendary ZedF were reportedly better ways to learn the field than the most advanced engineering courses. I subscribe to the Zed school of colony design, that holds - if I may paraphrase - "If you want guns in the system when a colony ship arrives, you'll want them more once the colony is made. Better to spend a little more on even a single fighter than to arm your colony ship" - but specialized circumstances can sometimes arise for which the do0m school is a better fit.

In any case, what's obvious for a colony also applies to every ship in the fleet. Each starship should be designed with the equipment it requires in order to complete its mission ... and nothing more, no matter what will fit! It has been said by wiser bears than me that the key to understanding combat ship design is understanding the missions each combat ship must complete. Fortunately, if the Darloks continue as they have been, I may have an opportunity to explore that idea in greater depth! (Yes, I said fortunately. I'm not going to be the one on the front lines fighting, you see. Although to be fair, most of our ground troopers enjoy the thrill of battle - which they tend to always win - as much as I enjoy the thrill of designing a fleet!)


2361:

The boys have some new hand lasers to play with, and the attendant miniaturization techniques should help a bit should we need to design any combat ships. (Sadly, being enormous masses of ursine muscle, nigh-invincible in ground combat, especially with these new toys, we can get away with delaying them longer and better than any other race; this is sad because I want to design some ships here; it's my job and everything!) Munchy has even better news for us though: His next project, among lots of good choices, will be the development of Neutron Pellet Guns, one of the most versatile starship weapons in the galaxy!


2362:

At long last, the first New Den 1.0 has arrived at its destination: The lush jungle world of Klystron!



The atmospheric landing craft - my own design, of course - is settling to the planet's surface with the new inhabitants of the world, even as the ship itself undergoes an automatic disassembly routine to create habitation modules for the new Klystronians. How different from Denubius, where I had to carefully walk them through the task of salvaging the parts of their junker colony ship without blowing themselves to bits! Better still, the rest of our fleet is already crossing the stars: Two of the New Den's sister ships, one completed just last year, and no less than thirteen new Stretch scouts to take advantage of the new refueling base and bases-to-be. At long last, my beautiful starships are truly beginning to cross the galaxy.


2364:

Another of my New Dens has reached its destination, and the world of Spica is ours - only minimally habitable for ursine life, but so huge a world that scattered population centers in its few semi-fertile valleys can one day amount to the same total population as the jungle of Klystron itself. There's just one frustrating problem: The moment we formed the colony, something calling itself "Ssithra Emperor of the Darloks" warned us to stay clear of its territory, growing so ill as a result (by its own report) of our mere existence that it refused to even attempt to establish trade. I don't know what a Ssithra Emperor is, nor how it differs from a regular old-fashioned kind of emperor, but it doesn't bode well for attention to important starship design programs. People are going to be talking about these Darloks again for ages, as if all it takes for something to be interesting and mysterious is to be a heretofore undiscovered alien race that looks like a pair of glowing red eyes deep behind the shadowy cowl of a hood, harboring a dangerous secret agenda or something!

Well, if everyone's going to be talking about them, I may as well use the momentum as I can. I'm going to include a galactic map here, with such limited knowledge as we have of it, to illustrate a couple points about starship design. And because I think it looks kind of cool. The imbedded image is just a view of Darlok space - apparently someone in the RBO-9 had the brilliant idea of calling up their Ssithra Emperor to ask what territory we were supposed to be staying away from, and was actually greeted in halfway decent fashion - and the map also includes our southernmost colony and some information about the local fauna. Clicking through it should show it in context, revealing a map of the entire galaxy.



One thing to notice is a particular aspect of the local fauna: The Bobcat destroyer passing by Spica toward the galactic rim. It responds to all signals as a "Mrrshan fleet," indicating that the Mrrshans of whom the newsdroid speaks so highly (they were ranked first in production just this year, above the Klackons and our Darlok neighbors, while we outranked only the Silicoids) seem to live near the center of the galaxy. This Bobcat is obviously an armed scout of some kind, bound for the red star rimward of Spica that we plan to scout for ourselves with my super-cheap Stretches in a few years' time.

We can't tell anything else about that ship from this range, but I can speculate about what it would look like were it one of mine. Scouts, like colony ships, normally have no need for armament of any kind, but there is a special use for an armed "scout" that I would have considered during my tenure here already had the timing of various encounters and discoveries worked out differently. It's about the opposite of what the poor Mrrshans are doing here, but with their enormous production base, it sounds like they can afford some inefficiencies. They're sending a single, regular, short-range destroyer (foolishly trusting in Darlok fuel bases thanks to a long-since-dissolved alliance) to scout an unknown system far away. A better early use for the destroyer hull is to build a combat-ready long-range scout, with fuel tanks and as many lasers (even just two) as it can cram aboard, then churn out enough to provide meaningful protection for a world that colony ships can't yet reach, but which is of major strategic importance. This is in some ways as much of a risk as leaving the world undefended, since ships like that (often called "Long-Range Lemons" by my fellow starship engineers) are pretty much worthless except for the specialized purpose of keeping a key middle-distance planet safe in the early stages of galactic expansion, and resources spent on them could otherwise be used to get closer to actually colonizing the place ... but if the planet is at risk, this tactic can be well worth the costs. I would likely have used it myself had circumstances been different. (For instance, if I'd seen any sign of the so-called Silicoids near Yarrow!)

Another important thing to notice from the image of Darlok space - apart from the Ssithra Emperor's xenophobic tendencies and purported love of technology - is its sheer distance from Spica. If we were to go to war with them, we would need long-range combat ships (inefficient in the extreme) to reach them in their homes, while their regular combat fleets could hammer away at Spica; since we're in contact at all, they obviously have better range technology than do we. Worse yet, our skilled and mighty ursine warriors can't reach their worlds at all until we develop better technology or a more advanced refueling base! This is one of the (many) reasons propulsion technology is so critical to the success of our starfleet. If our xenophobic neighbors elected to attack us right now, they would have nothing meaningful to lose, and everything to gain!

Well, okay, no, actually they'll also have nothing to gain. They'll never take Spica from our ground forces, and anyway I won't give them the opportunity. If they decide to attack before the planet is developed enough to build its own defenses, it'll be a great opportunity to design a new defensive combat fleet! (If not for our incredible ground fighters though, given the distance from Spica to our other worlds and our dearth of engine technology, it might have proven wise to design such a fleet before we get attacked, is the only thing.)


2371:

If only it could have been one of the outmoded clunker-scouts....



For the first time in my tenure, we've lost a ship in battle - one less Stretch in my beautiful fleet! Unlike at the Mrrshan world of Hyboria two years back, the Stretch wasn't able to retreat in time, and was destroyed completely. I asked the RBO-9 to erect a memorial, but Bolork "The Hammer" Brugrup (493 Knockdowns, 84 Assists, 43 Secondary Recoveries, including 17 for Goals, and 8 Confirmed Kills) growled at me to get back to work on the new Cave 1.0 I've been promising. It'll be finished on schedule before the end of the month, so he needn't have worried, but - to quote a famous product endorsement tagline from his playing years - "You don't argue with The Hammer."

I tried to go to Munchencrunch for sympathy, but he's still buried in his project to enhance our ecological restoration techniques. He hasn't come up for air since he finished the death spore project two years back and locked the results away in a file marked, "NOT FOR USE," so I guess I'll have to console myself by watching my teams' work on the Cave. The ship is completing exactly as planned - no reserve tanks of course, but it doesn't need them for its only mission to Rotan - the red star almost directly rimward of Spica. Scans suggest that the Mrrshan Bobcat we saw heading there a few years back burned up in the atmosphere of Rotan V when its orbit decayed for lack of fuel. The planet is barren of life of course, but the automated disassembly routines of our new Cave 1.0 will generate habitation modules with all the life support systems necessary to sustain a colony there. It's a good thing it's finishing quickly too: We've got some catching up to do! My coreward Stretches are sending back reports and surface scans from still more alien colonies: 70 million Mrrshans at the ocean world of Firma, and a few million Silicoids at Rhilus - a star whose second planet is as hospitable, and nearly as large, as Ursa Prime! No doubt Primodius would be colonized by now too, but even Silicoids can't live on asteroids, and that star lacks even a single planetary body.


2377:

Word on the street is that the Darloks have finally agreed to a trade agreement - something on the order of 150 BC. It also seems that Ssithra is their emperor's name, not the type of emperor they serve; they just don't use commas the way we do. Go figure. Anyway, this is semi-interesting news because it should give me an opportunity to study some of their trade ships and see if their design suggests any new ideas to me. Since Munchy still hasn't stopped talking about the Class III Deflector Shields he's been working on since the Class IIs were ready - is it really three years now? - I have to take my insights where I can get them!


2379:

I've completed my analysis of Darlok trade ships. Let's just say I'm not impressed. The Klackons might prove more interesting though: They just showed up at the mineral-poor world of Dolz with an armed colony ship and fighter escorts! The Stretch that had been patrolling the system is now on its way home for a full debriefing.

I'm still not sure if it was that Klackon colony at Dolz or ours at Rotan - both were finished this year, almost simultaneously - that triggered the latest galaxy-wide broadcast from the Guardian's star system.



I guess it would be pretty neat for the RBO-9 to be elected emperor of the galaxy, but it's not going to happen anytime soon if the Darloks have almost twice as many votes as we do - especially as we seem to have voted for them - and more importantly, it has nothing to do with my beautiful fleet! I'll leave the RBO-9 to get it sorted out by the next election; I'm glad I don't have to deal with politics myself, and anyway, right now, I'm busy.

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Next: Progress

Imperium 9 - Hiber Nation

The following entries are taken from the Journal of the Chief Starship Engineer of Ursa Prime, Mooguroraragh "Refrigerator" Gorkrug. Mooguroraragh's nickname, often shortened to "Ref," appears unrelated to that of the much more famous Hiber star, Borup "Refrigerator" Ripost. "The Fridge" was named of course for his massive size (he complemented his ursine muscle with a fair sampling of blubber, which seemed for whatever reason to make him an even more impressive blocker) but "Ref" was scrawny in comparison, weighing well under the half-ton average for inhabitants of Ursa Prime. It is said that "Ref" earned his nickname by constantly forgetting his lunch in his haste to reach work; he was regularly seen looking forlornly for communally-available meeting leftovers in his workplace breakroom fridge.


2320:

At last! After decades of cost overruns, design inefficiencies, and construction snafus, our new rulers have seen the light ... and hired me as their chief starship engineer! When the Running/Blocking Offensive Nine of the Kodiak City Hibers was elected to collective power on a wave of unstoppable popularity, I thought the case was hopeless - amazing as they are at playing and winning at our national pastime, what do those jocks know about hiring engineers? The clunky old colony ship and scout designs whose prototypes we finally - finally - completed this year, with technology decades out of date, are proof positive of the previous engineering team's incompetence ... but now, at last, they've found the right guy: Me!!!

Not that I'm conceited, you understand. Probably there's a much better starship engineer than me out there someplace. Like that girl at the ribs bar who solved the hyperspace calculus problem I was fighting with over lunch. She said, "You look like you're trying to do too many things at once," and of course that made it obvious that the whole problem was applying gravitational folding coefficients in too many dimensions simultaneously. She might be a genius who saw that intuitively, and a better starship engineer than me. Or she might have just been appalled by the way I was scribbling diagrams on my napkins while gobbling ribs face-down in my plate and operating a dodecimensional calculator with my feet. But just you watch! Even if the girl at the ribs bar is better, at least I'm decent at this sort of thing.

First order of business is to scrap all the designs my idiot predecessors made that aren't already in production. "Fighter?" "Destroyer?" What?! Anyway, they'd have to be plating their toilet seats in platinum to explain those ridiculous costs. (Just got a report from the Colony Ship on its way to that green star now. Apparently not. Their toilet seats are encrusted with diamonds, and the crew is complaining about the effects on their rumps. I told them to pretend the hydroponic park on board constitutes "woods" and use that.) Right. We're going to need more scouts - and colony ships eventually - but not with those preposterous designs. I hit the drawing board and come up with a Stretch 1.0. They'd be just like our old scouts if they cost an extra 25% or so to build, cost a lot more to maintain, and were infinitely less comfortable to fly. Mine look better too. And the RBO-9's already approved three for next year! Hey, I'm liking this job!


2323:

Got word back from that outmoded colony ship now. They've reached Denubius, and it's a beauty.



Grarrogrraagroaaa, their new Planetary Governor, called in gleefully, "Atmosphere's breathable! We're settling down here and tearing this old clunker up for parts!" I warned him to be careful since my predecessors weren't great on safety protocals, and I walked his salvage crews through the disassembly process, including how to keep the fuel tanks from exploding spontaneously, and they've got the place running pretty nicely now. Some kind of jungle paradise, and there are rumors the local flora includes powerful aphrodisiacs of some variety. Might be propoganda, but people are buying into it. We've got millions of Ursans heading out there to join them already. And for what it's worth, the projected birth rates there sure make it sound like they're doing a lot of breeding.

More importantly, my new Stretch 1.0s are following the old fuel-guzzling Scouts out toward the stars! I've boxed them in blue on my scrapbook images. Beautiful, aren't they? We could have twice as many without even a line-item in the budget if not for those already-obsolete Scouts my predecessor designed eating up expenses. I'm going to lobby to get rid of the stupid things as soon as they can be replaced.


2325:

First scouting reports are in. Care to guess whether they came from an old Scout? Ha! In spite of giving them a year's head start, it was one of my Stretches that brought our first images of fiery Darrian, the nearest star to Bulrathi space. Of course, it helps that none of the Scouts were going anywhere that close to home, but they could have been if not for the cost overruns that only let us build two with the resources we had at the time!


2326:

It's been another great year for my little pet starships. The reports from the dry world of Talas, with barely a trace of minerals on the surface, were all but forgotten in the wake of the images and scan files from the jungle world of Klystrom and the mineral riches of icy Yarrow! I've already talked with Munchencrunch at the Main Ursa Science Complex Laboratory Enclosure, and he's starting pilot projects in planteology and propulsion already, so we'll be able to fuel our ships with Deuterium - good enough for five parsec range so we can use Klystron as a refueling base and stepping stone to the other worlds - and rapidly develop planetology technology, the sooner to build a colony ship suited to Yarrow's icy surface! The RBO-9 has committed some token funding to the project, and I have every confidence that when Munchencrunch confirms he can research the techs we need, they'll get the serious funding they deserve.


2327:

Don't mind me. I'm just going to go home and weep now, okay?



We're not working on Deuterium. Munchencrunch can't even figure out where to start. The best he can do is try to come up with a basic hydrogen fuel that won't get our colony ships past the fire fields of Darrian. He'd hoped to speed up our whole economy with improved ecological restoration techniques or improved terraforming too - he even thought terraforming could be set up super quickly and rapidly developed into a way to live on ice worlds like Yarrow. When push came to shove though, the best he could do was to design colonies for a theoretical class of world no one has ever even seen, that's barren of life, but with otherwise acceptable environmental conditions. He was pretty unhappy about it himself when he told me, but a few minutes later, he came in with a huge grin. I thought he'd had a sudden breakthrough ... but no. Apparently the RBO-9 agreed to fund him anyway, and even start his proposed pilot project in construction technology. Well, yippee for him. What am I supposed to do with hydrogen cells and barren bases? I think I'll go see if there's anything in the fridge.


2328:

There's never anything in the fridge. And Munchencrunch was all depressed about his latest pilot project; it looks like improved industrial technology will be able to cut our factory costs by about 10% pretty soon, which I thought was a good thing, but he says it means we'll have no way of cutting down on industrial waste for decades, and have to keep cleaning it up the hard, expensive way. He cheered up pretty quickly though; the RBO-9 is still funding him heavily, even though I'm starting to think his M.U.S.C.L.E. is crowding out his brains. The improved industrial tech he described should be a super-quick research project, and open the way to real construction techniques: The kinds of things that will let me miniaturize my starships and get some serious colonies going, finally!


2333:

So, what kind of compromising pictures does Munchencrunch have of how many of the RBO-9? He calls all his projects major disappointments, and yet look at this guy's funding!



Why can't I have 133 billion credits to play around with? The truth is though, I'm happy for him. Look at all the energy he's putting into construction tech, even though it's ready for a breakthrough soon from token spending alone. That's pretty much a gift to me. The idea is that we want to know right away whether we'll be able to translate our industrial tech improvements into a new kind of armor for my starships. If so, then that immediately becomes our top priority, so I can use it to fit reserve fuel tanks on a new super-efficient colony ship design and send one out to claim Klystron ASAP. If not, we'll have to hope the hydrogen fuel cells we're pushing will suggest means of building Irridium ones to extend our current range by half - a much slower project for Munchencrunch's construction-specialized staff. And if those aren't available, then the disgusting death spores he's reluctantly designing now just to advance the field of planetology (they turned out to be the only thing toward which our brand-new terraforming techniques opened the way) become much more important: We'll need the insights they provide into colony miniaturization, along with another industrial improvement, to achieve the same long-range colonies.


2335:

Well, our hard work paid off: Factories are ready to go up faster than ever, and Munchencrunch finally had a choice about what to study! We're going to have duralloy armor for my beautiful starships someday, and the attendant miniaturization means long-range colony ships coming soon ... to an orbital pathway near you! Munchencrunch is getting to work on the project at top speed. This is great. I've decided to start calling him Munchy.


2339:

I just saw the plans for our new hydrogen fuel cells, and they're brilliant - don't even take up any more space than the old petro fuels, and I can get my Stretch 1.0s retrofitted with the things all the way out in deep space. That only brings one new star into range, but it's something. Anyway, I'm looking forward to next year's giant party. We're projected to finish our 200th factory-city here on Ursa, and there's going to be a huge celebration! There should be enough leftovers in the office fridge to last for weeks!


2347:

Would you believe it? There are aliens out there! They call themselves Darloks, it seems.



The Stretch scout ship that's been taking orbital surveys of Spica for the past five years spotted an anomaly in the outer system, and investigation revealed a "Darlok Scout" swooping into the system. It appeared at first to attempt an attack run, but either it was bluffing, or it changed its mind when it saw the sleek design of my Stretch 1.0; the Darlok ship turned tail and fled the moment it caught sight of my baby. The RBO-9 and the diplomatic corps and everyone else is in a frenzy of activity, but I'm not impressed. Whatever Darloks are, they obviously don't design starships as well as me.


2350:

I can't believe people are still talking about the Darloks three years after our one and only encounter. There's important stuff going on here, like the fast-growing chance of a breakthrough on Duralloy armor, and the new funding for my department - we're getting ready to build long-range colony ships as soon as the new technology is ready, by designing a huge hull with the same properties, and testing all the common components. And at the same time, Munchy has pilot projects going in three new fields! The reports just went public today that his teams will be studying a brand-new Mark II battle computer and Class II shields to protect our ships, and forgoing a new rocket design and a "gatling" laser nest design in favor of laser miniaturization - theoretically to the point of making hand weapons of the things! People are talking of "in case the Darloks prove hostile, bla bla, haven't heard from them in years, bla, what might they be planning, bla bla bla bla bla bla. But what it really means is: I'm going to have some new toys to play with before long! Wheeee!!! New ship designs! Weapons miniaturization to fit more on each ship! Life ... is ... good.


2356:

Well, I'd like to say I was right, that the Darloks are the least of our worries. It's been just about two years since that deep space broadcast of a solid gold newsdroid babbling about census rankings, and the furor about Mrrshans and Klackons and Alkari and Silicoids - and whatever that newdroid thing is for that matter - still hasn't abated. Some people say it's actually a Darlok propoganda machine, but who knows? (And, frankly, who cares? What does it have to do with my starfleet?) So I'd like to say it, but the trouble is, the stupid 'loks ranked first in those census rankings - we bears ranked third - and now we're getting a brand new droid report saying those same Darloks control six stars!



There'll be no end to this, I suppose. Every time I try to bring up really interesting topics like the implications of trepyon conductivity in a pyroplasmic medium for fuel cell microefficiencies, everyone wanders off to talk about the stupid Darloks and their six planetary systems. Seriously, what's the point?

Well, there's kind of a point, I guess: With everyone so excited about these aliens who own three times as much territory as us, I'm getting lots of interest in my new star fleet. Ever since Munchy ran into my office last month with a fevered look and a sheaf of plans for duralloy armor designs, my entire team's been hard at work on our latest design: While Munchy passes over an auto-repair system and further industrial tech improvements in favor of ways to cut down on our factories' major waste products (his theories should cut them by 40%, I believe - he was doing some kind of dance when he told me; I don't think I've ever seen him so drunk and so happy at the same time) we're assembling new ships to start claiming our own stars!

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Next: Dangerous Meetings