OSG 26 - The Bearperor Returns

[vmxa]

Lurker:

GG all. The vote always seems like a let down, unless I have crushed a few races.

[RefSteel]

Lurker:

GG all. The vote always seems like a let down, unless I have crushed a few races.

Thanks, vmxa! So ... let's see what we can do about that whole races-crushing thing, shall we?

GOT IT!

This may take a while though. I am not planning to play simple, conservative turns here, and (spoiler alert) I'm going to veto about a billion things from the inherited turn; for instance, for I think the first turnset I've played in this game, I am not going to focus research on planetology right now. I have a different research project in mind.

There are so many things that could go wrong with this plan - starting with a pRNG roll that technically had already been made before my turnset even began (but whose outcome I don't yet know) - that it would probably be utterly irresponsible even to try it ... if not for the fact that our empire's doing great, and it's going to be a lot of fun!

[Ianus]

Ooh exciting! Now we get to see a master player at work! A true... Master of Orion if you will.

[Psillycyber]

Ooh exciting! Now we get to see a master player at work! A true... Master of Orion if you will.

ba-dum-DUM!

Anyways, looking forward to it!

If I had to guess what Ref is talking about, I'd say he diverted all of our research to finishing warp dissapators in the hope of finding impulse drives at the next tech tier. That would be nice. Move-4 (with inertial stabilizer), Warp-5 bombers. And warp-4 transports—yes! We could probably blitz the Sakkra in about 10 turns with that sort of setup.

Although, even better if we could just steal warp dissipators first. If I recall correctly, the Sakkra or someone other that the Alkaris has warp dissipator already. Unfortunately, I never got a chance to steal propulsion during my turns, or else I'd have tried for it. But maybe Ref can get lucky....

[Ianus]

Yeah the tech ladder is the only "die roll" I can think of that has already occurred that he doesn't know the result of. I love the peculiarities of the tech trees this game comes up with! Even the propulsion-master Alkari are crawling around with Nuclear Engines. That kind of randomness makes research much more fun and even exciting as we go along.

[RefSteel]

Good guesses, but think crazier, more chaotic, and with more variables to account for. I didn't say I was doing something wise! Also of note: The Sakkra declared war on me a couple turns in and have a bunch of Spore cruisers. Still playing, still early, but this should get interesting!

[Psillycyber]

[Psillycyber]

Yeah, combat transporters crossed my mind...but that's way down the line.

Other crazy ideas I came up with:
*Death-sporing everyone (but that kinda ignores the Bulrathi ground invasion advantage, so unfun and unlikely, and it doesn't really rely on the RNG).
*Surprise-attacking the Alkari at a weakly-defended world like Gion (possibly even with nothing but transports?) and hoping that we get something nice from the tech loot, and then bracing for the hurricane while leveraging those new techs for a win? (Hey, we will probably be going to war with them anyways if we attack the Silicoids...)
*Leaving us all in suspense with this talk of crazy plans as a ruse while he calmly builds more missile bases and factories?

[RefSteel]

I got called in to work at the last minute, so I won't finish until tonight, but I'm up to 2439 (so ... close...) annnnnd that's all I'm going to say until I finish the turns!

[RefSteel]

Report Part 1: 2430-2435

2430: Political observers didn't know quite what to make of Bearperor Argagref "Steelclaws" Bjornsgrrr, elected in a landslide in the election of 2430 on th strength of his promise to bring tme empire together with faster starships and especially starships. Numerous Bulrathi in the far-flung empire had relatives living on other worlds, orbiting other stars, and longed to be able to make the trip in less than a single decade. When Steelclaws was told by key government officials shortly after entering office that his plan to acquire Sublight drives from the Psilon people could not succeed for the simple reason that - as he ought to have been aware - the Psilons didn't have the things either, the new Bearperor was unmoved. "Send in our best propulsion engineers," he suggested. "We'll see if we can do this on our own!"

He was to be disappointed. Propulsion research had not been prioritized in the Bulrathi empire in decades. Even in the golden age of research at the beginning of the 25th century, the Bearperor who conquered Cryslon had long avoided heavy spending on the propulsion project of that time since he over-hopefully supposed he might win it from the ruins of the Silicoid homeworld. Warp Dissipators were so far from a working prototype, it would have taken an enormous, dedicated effort to be sure of completing one within the decade, never mind any project that might follow. Sighing, the Bearperor went back to the drawing board ... and emerged shortly thereafter with the most hare-brained scheme ever proposed by any Bearperor in the long history of the Bulrathi.

It started, curiously enough, with CB-715 of the Meklar, whose engines were slow even in comparison with the Bears'.



The Class 3 Battle Computer for which Bulrathi scientists would exchange Duralloy Armor would provide another useful option for ship design, and provide a little bit of extra miniaturization and insight into computer espionage techniques for the ongoing galaxy-wide spy wars. Less obvious, though of course every bit of miniaturization counts for something, were the Bearperor's prolonged efforts to negotiate a fair trade for completely obsolete industrial construction technology, finally settling on a mass driver design - an oversized, power-thirsty, short-range ship-based weapon of questionable utility - as an acceptable exchange. Miniaturization or no, it was hard to imagine why the trade was worth the effort of making all the needed arrangements. The Bearperor insisted he knew what he was doing though, and his cabinet had to trust them, even though some whispered that he had gone as mad as Tachaon. He spent enough time looking over his spy reports on the four-armed fiend.



The next stage of the Steelclaws plan - if it deserved the name - was to scrap the empire's entire bomber fleet, reclaiming nearly a trillion galactic credits' worth of scrap metals to distribute around the empire, and replace them with a design that was ... somewhat more up to date.



There wasn't time to make enough of the new Swat Bomber design to please Bearperor Steelclaws, but he sent imperial reserves to Tannenberg, Porridge, Primodius, and Beedy, and ordered as many of the bombers built at each of those four key colonies as he possibly could ... as well as at Ursa, Keeta, Bohemia, Bjorno, and Cryslon, neglecting the Silicoid ex-homeworld's defense in favor of whatever plan he supposed the new bombers would serve. Not content to fund his spies - even taking a gamble against hopeless odds in Alkari space - Steelclaws had perhaps decided that the only way to distract his people from his impossible campaign promise was with another war: One more sudden, and not so stale, as the ongoing one with the Geode.

To be fair, of course, a stale war was better than no war at all, and the Bearperor had no intention of letting the Silicoids off easy. Even as he put his crazy scheme into cackling motion, with all the NPG fighters within range converging on the planet as well - even depleting Cryslon's fleet entirely - he ordered another raft of combat transports from Vulcan to the Silicoid colony of Tyr 4: A world so rich in mineral resources that its soil and even air were toxic to all carbon-based life. Until the year of his election, there had been no means of landing even a limited expedition there, but the planetology teems at the KEL just that year had finished development of environmental suits and atmospheric controls that would allow the colonization - and the invasion - of any world, no matter how hot or how poisonous, no matter though its entire surface was irradiated like a starship's reactor core. Starships ready to take advantage of this were already under construction at the 100 Acre Wood, and the troops preparing at Vulcan were suited up and ready. It was only a matter of time before the Bulrathi claimed the galaxy's greatest mineral riches for their own ... and of far less time than certain other races' plans would require, it seemed.




Ten Alkari transports were due to arrive at the Silicoid colony of Nyarl, there to subjugate and conquer its people, sometime around (but probably shortly after, thanks to the Bruno Nebula) the year 2450. Unfortunatley for all concerned, except perhaps the Bulrathi, the Silicoids' Nyarl colony had long since ceased to be: The Bulrathi had bombed it into the burning lava that served it for soil long since. The star system would belong to the bears by the time the birds' transports arrived, and would likely be fully populated and heavily defended by then. "The best part," said Steelclaws with a grin, "is that it must have been in transit for years already, just to get there!"

It might be said that Redwing had made a small tactical error in sending ten million Alkari literally across the entire galaxy, there to eventually attack - and die at the paws of - their chief rivals, the Bulrathi. But it was nothing to the crippling error that Steelclaws may have been making, turning trillions of galactic credits desperately needed for infrastructure, research, and defense into a fleet of shiny new bombers, preparing to launch transports out into the void. A long-awaited improvement to the empire's robotic factory controls was reportedly on the verge of a breakthrough, with a 24% chance of success within the year, and a 4% chance of developing shields to match the Psilons' as well, but the first chance could have been much higher, and planetology labs updated in much greater numbers for the development of atmospheric terraforming if only Bearperor Steelclaws had refrained from losing his mind.



2431: It might also have helped if the Sakkra hadn't decided to go to war with the Bulrathi for no discernible reason - but it couldn't have helped very much; Tyranid had already sent his most powerful war fleet at Cryslon long before he officially declared a state of war. As for Bearperor Steelclaws, he apparently decided that two implacable enemies were not enough in one galaxy: Arguing publicly that Tachaon was already attacking - a hapless Psilon fleet had been repulsed by Cryslon's bases earlier that year - and that the Psilons' were allied to the newly-Bulrathi-hating Tyranid, Steelclaws privately admitted that he was simply tired of waiting for the erratic emperor of the Psilons to get around to a random war declaration as he went ahead and launched all the transports that the Porridge star system could produce in a single year. With still more transports departing around the empire - bound for underbeared worlds rich in mineral resources, and to partially repopulate Porridge from Keeta - and with computer scientists and field mechanics engineers reporting breakthrough odds of 25 and 16%, the Bearperor blithely ignored the Sakkra threat, and kept pushing the agenda for yet another war.

2432: Another bearperor, more economically inclined, might have celebrated his people's new technology for the strength it would lend to his planets' industry. Bearperor Steelclaws however, merely rushed the specs for advanced factory controls to his spy network hard at work in alien space.



His next research target would be an Avanced Scanner, the better to coordinate future invasions with his fleet. Of course, given his limited research spending, there was no chance of his ever acquiring them before he was termed out of office - partly perhaps because, in spite of his war-like speeches, he did heavily emphasize the construction of new factories - but that was the reason he gave for the choice in public at least ... and certainly he didn't build labs and factories everywhere; force field research was only funded to within a 20% shot at a breakthrough, while at Tannenberg, Beedy, Porridge, Primodius, and Cryslon, he went right on building a fleet.

2433: The Sakkra warfleet of two Colossus dreadnoughts, supported by a Dragon cruiser and 29 Spirit destroyers, arrived at the Cryslon colony at which Bearperor Steelclaws hadn't bothered to build a single additional defensive base since his reign began. Since he'd also sent the local fleet of fighters away, there was nothing to protect the world but a small clod of new Neutrino fighters ... and the flagship of the galactic core.



It was more than enough. The Spirits' Hyper-X rockets couldn't keep up with the Neutrinos; the Dragon, though terrifying with its ten fully-loaded spore pods, was a slow and single ship, easy prey for the Care Bear's heavy blast cannon arrays - and the Colossus dreads, though built along vaguely similar lines to the flagship designed by Bearperor Psillycyber, were just generally not as good. The planetary bases helped to destroy one Colossus before the other fled, but the Care Bear could have taken them both on its own had there been a need.

Elsewhere across the empire however, the first cracks seemed to appear in the Bearperor's single-minded purpose. If he were so focused on his soon-to-be-triple war, why did he spend the resources to send a colony ship to Rana, and rename it the CA Republic as a bear flag flew there for the first time? Perhaps his resolve was slipping, and his administrators were falling into old habits.



Or perhaps the 431 fighters and bombers produced around the galactic core told a different story. As transports departed the Wood for the Bear Flag Republic, where a Silicoid colony ship would arrive, if any Silicoids still existed in the galaxy by then, a decade later - a decade late, the fleet set off to meet transports sent just two years before ... and to begin another war.

All of which made it a curious year to scrap all the old-style unstabilized NPG fighters; perhaps Tachaon was rubbing off on the bearperor after all.

2434: The people of Bjorno had seen the Psilon fleet coming a long way off, and doubted if it could do anything to their missile bases even without a defense fleet in orbit. Since the Fnarglo Sector Flagship was idling away its time in orbit however, the Psilons' immediate retreat was all the more inevitable. The Alkari however were a different matter: They were a force to be reckoned with in the galaxy, and when Redwing called on the holophone, even Bearperor Steelclaws answered right away.

"Bearperor Argagref Bjornsgrr, I presume? And may I call you Ref?"

"Grumph," Steelclaws answered noncommitally. His Official Diplomatic Translation Protocols had broken down the Alkari emperor's words into their actual meaning: Precisely nothing.

Redwing said something about reckless expansion and plagues through the galaxy. He warned about eliminating threats. Again the Official Diplomatic Translation Protocols hummed, and again they had no trouble piecing meaning together out of his flowery words. The message reported to Steelclaws was brief and to the point: "You're successful. I don't like that. I don't like you."

Moments later, another message appeared on the holoscreen.



"Oh no!" cried Bearperor Steelclaws when the holotransmission ended with Tachaon's declaration of war. "Whatever shall I do?" he asked, turning to face the chief Bulrathi ministers that composed his Cabinet. "If only I had anticipated something like this happening! If only I had already set plans in motion to go after him with the full force of our military might!"

The bearperor looked around at his Cabinet with an enormous, toothy grin. "Oh, wait."

The first minister to speak was the aging Stralian Drop, Minister of Military Intelligence. "There's been a spate of new technological discoveries lately - not in our own labs, unfortunately." Running through the reports, empire by empire, he certainly got his bearperor's attention: The Alkari had developed a cloaking device, the Sakkra, megabolt cannons, the Psilons toxic environmental contols, the Meklar a fusion beam, and the Silicoids presumably some hidden but as-yet-unknown technology known as, "Somehow not dead yet in 2434 in spite of basically being at war with the galaxy."

Steelclaws nodded grimly, staring at the reports, and finally sighed. "I suppose I'll have to make a deal with the devil then," he said with a hint of a smile.



This time it was he who initiated the call, and after lengthy haggling, he finally managed to arrange an exchange of outmoded technologies: His own state-of-the-art robotic controls were old hat to the Alkari, who had another model, still more advanced, already. Their spies would benefit from the new computer technology, but their computer nets were unbreakable anyway. In exchange, the Bulrathi received the secrets of survival on toxic worlds - which they could do already thanks to their own recent and still-more advanced technology. The alternate technique would allow minimal savings on certain colony ships that would never be built, quality of life increases on every world that would slightly boost Bulrathi productivity ... and, as the bearperor put it, with a quiet growl, "Get them out of the way."

That accomplished, more transports were ordered to CA Republic from 100AcreWood, every single ship in the empire was sent somewhere across the deeps of space ... and with 1 and 20% chances of breakthroughs in weapon and force field technologies, the Bulrathi people prepared to take the war to the enemy.

2435: Nearly a hundred years before, with a Psilon fleet on approach to a then-young Dither colony, Bearperor Ianus II had issued Tachaon an ultimatum: "Stand down and leave us in peace, or our forces will conquer Iranha in retaliation for your acts of war." Tachaon, on what must have been a good day for him, not only responded in lucid language but agreed, even parting with nuclear engines in exchange for true peace. Decades later, on a much less lucid day, he had forgotten the lessons of Ianus II, not only sending fleets to test the defenses of multiple Bulrathi colonies but openly declaring war against them. So it fell to Bearperor Steelclaws I to make good the threat of his predecessor in a previous century.



Though their ships could virtually outrun the planet's nuclear missiles, a series of piloting mistakes cost the Bulrathi nearly a hundred bombers. It still wasn't enough to save Iranha. More than 320 Swat 2.0s remained in the fleet when the final missile base was bombed into a smoking crater. After that, it was only a matter of waiting for the transports to come down.

They began their final approach, the troops watching the disc of Iranha 2 grow larger in the viewport or sending messages home to their families while General Grunstif monitored the official Bulrathi command feed in case of last-minute breakthroughs. He wasn't disappointed: One of Stralian's agents way out in Meklar space had found his way into the main research complex in the Kakata system and smuggled out plans for the most advanced battle computer design in the known galaxy.



He spared another glance for his destination, the jungles of Iranha 2 invisible from his distance beneath thick clouds and atmospheric scattering though the world already loomed large in the forward viewport. Somewhere across the galaxy, he knew, another world - nominally more hostile, but in fact a peaceful haven of lava flows and igneous rock so thick with neutronium, charged alloys, and other elements formed by the same supernova that had shaped the nebula around it that the planet would rival the Silicoids' Tyr and the Bulrathi's own California Republic. Reportedly, it would be named Balloo as a slightly mis-spelled and obscure reference to something called a Krakatoa Sundae.



Perhaps the Sundae was alcoholic and the surveyor had one too many? Either way, Grunstif was glad there were Bulrathi out there who could enjoy such peaceful celebrations. He knew his job - his bloody, warlike job - was to make sure it stayed that way.

The planet nearly filled the forward screen, its atmosphere glowing along the rim in the blood-red light of its sun, Iranha. He glanced again at the command feed - and did a double take. In his revery, he had missed something that might be of critical importance: The science teams back home had finally managed the breakthrough they'd been reporting at roughly 20% annual odds for years!



The new class-5 deflectors would be too bulky to protect his troops, but they represented a small extra margin of safety for planetary bases, and the follow-up class-6es contemplated by field mechanics engineers would help out even more ... and most importantly of all, matching the Psilons in force field research meant one less distraction for his troops once they took the world. He knew why he was sent to Iranha, and he intended to fulfill his duty.

The heat shields went up, closing off the viewport. The maneuvering engines screamed. The transport dove down through the atmosphere of Iranha 2 and before there was time to think, the pads were out, the pods were down, the bays were open, Bulrathi soldiers pouring out, hand lasers already lighting up the jungle, and the battle was joined.



Fighting hill to hill, tree to tree, factory to factory, the Bulrathi storm advanced into heavy Psilon fire, their deflector shields shrugging off armor-piercing rounds as they nimbly evaded heavy cannon and mortar fire, burning through entrenched Psilon positions while doing everything in their power to preserve such factories that had survived the battle for the planet's skies. Not until the last Psilon soldier went down, hold-out pistols blazing in each of his four hands, cut in half by a laser beam from a shielded Bulrathi commando, did quiet return to the jungles of Iranha 2. One hundred and five batallions had perished in the battle for the world - only twenty three of them Bulrathi. The Psilons had simply been and totally outclassed. Almost a hundred and fifty of their factories remained intact on the planet's surface, which meant the probability was almost obscenely high, but Bearperor Steelclaws had seen more improbable failures in the past, and had only one question after the battle when his holo-image appeared before General Grunstif: "Did you find it?" His voice was a deep, expectant growl.

"We found something," Grunstif answered cooly. "When our combat engineers have figured out what, and how it works, you'll be the first to know."

Reverse-engineering takes time and effort, and simply has no chance in a race with rumor. Word had spread across Bulrathi space by the time the work was done, and even the galactic news had its take on the story of Iranha.



General Grunstif knew very well however that his Bearperor was not concerned about arbitrary planet counts. The empire had done everything in its power to make absolutely sure, but there still was the chance, no matter how slim, that the Psilons might have discovered some new, unimportant device at Iranha before the battle, and that it would be the only technology recovered from the ruins. So he waited for his engineers, and when they came up with their verdict, he reported, his voice carefully emotionless.



The Bearperor's was not. He cheered. He whooped. He growled out, "Yes!" so loudly that it reverbrated from the ceiling of the palace back on Ursa. He had the warp dissipator he so desperately had sought ... and their design, as he had hoped, as he had promised in his first-term campaign before he knew if it was a possibility, was capable of being reversed, to accelerate ships through their warp coils with a continuous impulse of speed. It was only a matter of time and research before his beloved, purely-theoretical Impulse Drives would become a reality.

And seeing his commander-in-chief all but break into song with the news, General Grunstif permitted himself a small grin: It also meant that someday, his troop transports would cross the stars at warp-4 speeds.



Geode was no doubt gratified to see Bearperor Steelclaws leaping about and roaring and laughing with joy when the rocky leader called to compliment the Bulrathi for their Psilon-slaying prowess. How could he tell that the revelries he witnessed had nothing in the least to do with him? In fact, it took about nine days for Steelclaws to finish dancing and throwing parties for everybody; he almost invited Geode to one accidentally. Even so, and long before the partying was even well underway, even while he was singing his operatic ode to Impulse Technology for the very first time, composing it on the fly, the Bearperor took time out to give orders to basically everyone in the entire empire.

It didn't take long. All the orders were pretty much the same. The previous bearperor had felt that an emphasis on planetology research would be key to the empire's success. He had devoted several worlds to research, and committed something in the neighborhood of half those research efforts to atmospheric terraforming. Though Steelclaws had vetoed them almost entirely, barely trickling any research into the field at all as he focused the empire on growth, factories, reserves, and preparations for the Iranha invasion, Bearperor Psillycyber's orders had been sound, and a perfectly workmanlike effort to speed an important technology. Bearperor Steelclaws was not interested in sound, solid, workmanlike, wise, or realistic efforts however. This is what resulted when he decided to commit his empire to seeding what he considered a really important new technology:



Fozzie was permitted to keep up its work on mines and factories. Both Balloo and the California Republic, newly-founded ultra-rich colonies that they were, were permitted to work on their own infrastructure, with extra funding from the treasury. Iranha, about to be attacked by a speedy Psilon countering fleet, was permitted to throw together a hasty destroyer-class starship for defense. Every other citizen of the empire not needed to keep the others alive with a functional ecology was united behind a common purpose: From planets rich in minerals and planets with fertile soil, from ice fields to jungles to arid plains, from back-lines planets and threatened planets and unshielded planets literally about to come under attack, everyone was assigned to support the Bulrathi research push, with nearly a trillion credits in reserves saved up over the past few years committed to helping them along. And something close to 80% of that effort was poured into a single project: Over seven trillion galactic credits' worth of labor committed in a single year to the quest for Impulse Engines.

They would get the project off to an enviable start - but they weren't done pushing it yet.

Part 2: 2435-2440:

(Reviewing my notes, I find that the screenshot of the 2345 tech spending was not the final one for the turn. I later decided to adjust it futher, dropping weapons research drastically and construction research slightly, and pushing propulsion up above an 8 trillion credit investment on the first turn. And from there....)

2346: At Iranha, the Psilon fighters outnumbered their Bulrathi counterparts by a factor of 5, and were supported by all four Psilon colony cruisers. while the Bulrathi Neutrinos - with their bombers incapable of contributing to the fight - were backed only by a single destroyer-class hull ... but the Growl was no ordinary destroyer.



Thanks to its repulsor beam, the entire Psilon fleet was destroyed at the cost of just two Bulrathi fighters. The people of Iranha could rest easy once more, with the Bulrathi fleet on the job to keep them safe.

Well, the fleet and the diplomatic corps.



Noticing that the Sakkra and Meklar had formed an alliance, chief diplomat Grrtaot O'Bear - in the interest of not winding up at war with the entire galaxy - appealed to CB-715 to end the deal rather than entering the war on the wrong side. The Meklar leader demanded a more-advanced version of its existing ECM Jammer in exchange, but after consultation with the Bearperor, Grrtaot agreed: The Meklar wouldn't gain much, and didn't represent any kind of long-term threat.

At nearly the same time, observers at the Primodius Long-Range Scanning Facility noticed a Psilon fleet in orbit at the Silicoid world of Phyco, bombarding it from orbit cheerfully. When the news was brought to the Bearperor, he simply grinned, for what he reported were, "A small collection of complicated reasons."

And as for the Bulrathi themselves?



It was pretty much more of the same.

2437: Admiral Rufleth examined his fleet's specifications with interest. Literally everything in it was going to go completely obsolete the moment Bearperor Steelclaws saw his pet research project succeed. The Neutrinos and Growl were still needed for defense, and the Care Bears - capable defenders all on their own - probably weren't going anywhere even when they did go obsolete. As for the Swat bombers though, they had mor or less served their purpose. They could have provided useful scrap, and maybe that was the best use for the things, but he felt it would be better to make friends among the Psilons' many enemies and give the four-arms something to think about - and suppressed defenses - at the same time. That's why, when the surviving bombers arrived at Mentar, he ordered them to attack - resulting in hundreds more deaths among the pilots, but destroying nearly two thirds of the planet's bases. Rufleth didn't care - they weren't his lives - but many observers were surprised to see the Admiral demoted for his trouble. As the bearperor put it though, "I could have used that scrap. And if you were going to try this, you should have sent the rest of the bomber fleet."

In the meantime, for the first time since the discovery of Dissipator technology at Iranha, the Bulrathi empire had resumed something at least vaguely and broadly resembling normal spending habits, with Fusion Beams reaching a 14% chance of a breakthrough ... and Impulse Drives already at 1%!

2438: At last, long after the successful conclusion of the second, the first assault on an alien colony launched by Bearperor Steelclaws I arrived at its target - supported, just in case, by a cloud of fightercraft.



In a massacre almost worthy of legendary General Frregrar, Bulrathi forces managed a kill rato of better than 7:1, easily capturing the colony with all 34 factories intact. The secrets of Hyper-X rockets were not contained within any of the surviving structures on the planet's surface - at least not in a form that the Bulrathi could use - but it didn't make a difference; Steelclaws hadn't launched this attack for the technology; he had launched it to claim the unthinkable mineral riches of Tyr Prime itself.

Of course, Redwing wasn't happy about the growth of Bulrathi power; neither was CB-715, and both complained vocally. Bearperor Steelclaws carefully filed their complaints personally, under "Compliments and other signs that I'm doing something right after all." With research slowly increasing once again, bringing the latest industrial technology improvement up to a 1% chance of a breakthrough, Fusion Beams at 20%, and Impulse Drives up to 11, there was reason to be hopeful, but no guarantee that Steelclaws would have anything greater than his four - admittedly amazing - new worlds and somewhat questionable fleet tactics for his legacy.

2439: Over the past few years, various alien fleets had approached and fled Iranha and - once - Ursa itself, but this time would be different. Arriving at the Bears' colony of Porridge 2, a Sakkra fleet got right down to the business of trying to eat it all up. The pilots of their Colossus dreadnought and three Spectre destroyers clapped with glee when they noticed the planet had only a single missile base and a single defending starship ... until the latter came around the planet, into view, and they could see its hull emblazoned with an enormous plush heart.



Again and again, they hit it with their heavy weapons; again and again it fired back, and as the armored hull of the Colossus burned away under heavy blast cannon fire and occasional missile strikes, its captain tried to taunt his opposite number. "Why is that thing called a Care Bear?!" he demanded.

"Auto-repair nanites," the Bulrathi captain responded sanguinely.

"But we have those too!" The Colossus was starting to come apart all around its captain.

"Maybe," the Care Bear's captain responded, "but our guns are better. Point is, in a fight like this..." She shook her head as the Colossus went down in flames. "You can fire on us all you want; our ship will bearly even care."

And with that ... with that....



With that, the grandest party in the history of the Ursa system began. As of this writing, it still hasn't ended. Impulse Drives. Fusion beams. Ion drives and Megabolt cannons are both terrific ways forward, but it almost didn't matter. The Bulrathi had Impulse Drives. In one fell swoop, they had achieved true strategic and tactical speed. Tentative starship designs were proposed by engineers across the empire, but Steelclaws put off construction to give his successor a chance to design his own. Transports departed for worlds that had seemed too distant before, or that were suddenly brought so close by the bears' new technology that they would arrive without any delay at all. Long-lost relatives were reunited. Generals whooped. Admirals hollered. The Bearperor basically dedicated the remainder of his reign to a single, enormous interstellar parade. He had fulfilled his campaign promise after all, and nearly everyone in the empire, at last, was happy.

In the meantime however, Grrtaot O'Bear, ignoring the celebrations, continued to monitor alien activity. Observing a troubling alliance between the Silicoids and Alkari, doubting if either one would break it at his request, he pondered for a while, and finally asked the Bearperor - by direct hotline to the lead float in the interstellar celebratory parade - "Do we need anything from the rocks anymore?"

"Sure," Steelclaws answered cheerfully. They have a colony ship due at Incedius or something in about 2445. Once they claim it, we can take their last semi-decent world from them and leave them to languish at their newest colony."

"Hmmm," Grrtaot murmured. "Would it be completely terrible if we had to delay the invasion much past 2446?"

"Nah," the Bearperor laughed. "That's up to the next bearperor anyway, and I'm sure we can wait for some factories to go up and just do it at our liesure."

"Very good," Grrtaot murmured.



Receiving the peace deal by holocam, Geode readily and immediately agreed. Grrtaot even tried to trade technology to the rocks for their Hyper-X rocket design, but sadly found all their offers unreasonable before Geode finally hung up on him. It didn't matter. At last, for a while, their two races were at peace.

2450: When a final 12% shot at developing better industrial technology during the Steelclaws administration fell short, the latest two-term Bearperor finally bowed out of office. He had done all he had planned to do, and in spite of mistakes had gotten just lucky enough to make it work. Only after he had already passed on the reins of office did he notice that he'd left a rich world uncolonized, way off in the galactic corner. "Next time," he promised himself. "We'll get it next time. That, and the rest of the galaxy."

* * *

[EDIT: Report complete above. Notes for the next bearperor below.]

1. There are currently three starship designs of which zero have been built yet. Observe:

Ahem. I believe I said: By hook. Or. By. Crook!

I may have gotten a little exhuberant with the advent of our new engines here.

Obviously they're just suggestions or food for thought; I look forward to seeing what alternate designs you prefer!

2. I have spent no reserves yet this turn - not even on the URs*. You have 648 to play with in the treasury.

3. Our reports are current on most of the races, but I've been neglecting the Silis since I don't care about Hyper X rockets and they can't be lighting the tech tree on fire right now.

4. I have sent no transports yet this turn - not even to the URs* - but there are some still en route: 7 will reach Balloo next turn (which is why I've left it terraforming) and 2 more the turn after (they think they'll arrive next turn too, but the nebula is causing them to lie.) 23 will reach Tyr next turn. I wanted to send transports to Shardik and Irving now that we have some strategic speed, but I've left that up to you. Also, ten Alkari transports will reach Balloo at or (more likely, due to the nebula) shortly after the end of your turn set. So ... be aware of that, I guess.

5. Some fleets are still en route as well, including Neutrino fighters and the Growl Repulsor destroyer due to meet a Sakkra fleet at Cryslon and a Care Bear due to reach Primodius next turn. Note that a Silicoid colship will arrive at CA Republic in 3 turns, but will immediately retreat without combat if we have any ship in orbit due to our recent peace treaty (just signed in 2439 since the rocks and birds were allied at the time and the 'coids had nothing I wanted anymore).

6. There are BCs already in ship pre-builds in a handful of systems: Tannenberg, Porridge, Fnarglo, and Beedy. They're the ones with dreadnoughts queued instead of fighters.

7. I wouldn't actually be putting this much into research this turn if I were playing instead of handing it off; I'd be building a fleet! That's up to you though, obviously.

8. The save is attached!

* - [Edit: Oh. Yeah, we have three URs now, including baby Balloo, whose base size is 15. One of them used to belong to the Silis. Also we have Iranha, a nice big jungle world, but the Psilons are still a 2PE, having taken Phyco from the Silis. In case you want to take Mentar, note that I suicided a bunch of obsolete bombers into it recently, and it's down to less than 20 bases (13 in 2437).]