2476
Appears to be that we are fighting with, uh, everybody. Sounds right to me; they're probably all really dirty. So what're we doing about it? Got some worlds out at the edge of the galaxy trying to make money for us; that must be to help the worlds near the
middle of the galaxy fight dirty guys, right? I'm getting this! Only ... how do we get ahead that way? Doesn't seem to be anybody doing research anymore, and I feel like maybe if we don't learn anything new, we might be dead? Pretty sure we'll be dead. I see where the Acting Emperor ... errrr the
previous Acting Emperor ... was coming from, what with all the death and killing everyone's doing to us and all, but might as well pretend we have a chance here, right? Otherwise, why bother? So all these planets that are kind of sort of far away from the bad guys only not far enough but nevermind, they'll switch over to research now and maybe we'll learn something new before we die!
Only I don't have so much in the treasury right now. Where can I get a little more? Aha! I'll clean up
our fleet roster!
Had some old warp-2 Masks, slow as a mop bucket with its wheels in the mud. They had lasers on, which is pretty cool, you have to admit. Why, in my great grandcestor's time, there were people alive who still remembered an age when those were state of the art! Or so I like to imagine. Lasers! Well, the Mask 3s have them too I guess, but at least they're fast. Maybe they'll still be good for something. At least we can get them out to the middle of the galaxy in time to matter, right? We can even make more, with
more lasers on, if maybe they don't dance around as much, and maybe if we have a chance to shoot down some transports, they'll be worth something! I don't know. And let's see what else ... we have what looks like half a million hyper-rocket boats! This is great! The word "hyper" has such a cool sound! Hyper hyper hyper hyper! I love it! Oh, and we can also make tiny versions of practically the same ships for way cheaper that don't care as much about eating missiles and heavy beams, so let's maybe do that instead of making more. They'll be like those disposable wipes I use on every surface that I or anyone might ever imaginably touch. It'll be great!
HYPERRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!!!
Oh, and maybe there's a cheap way to get lots of heavy fusion beams into space? Since those guns are actually good I think? Turns out there's
kind of a way, except not really the part about "cheap" or "lots." I'll put that on the back burner for now.
Okay, so what else? Bad guys flying the skies at three of our worlds, good guys sitting mostly at this one Meklar star, but that's where the computer says Keep Out, so I guess I'd better listen. Let's get them out of there to one of our places that's getting attacked. Maybe that'll help. Computer pops up with some options, but our homeworld isn't in trouble ... yet ... and Sand Line is in so
much trouble, I don't think there's anything we can do about it, and oh, the computer is saying, "About Time" on the options list, so it must be getting impatient with me, I'll just choose whatever it's talking about. Plus, you know, there's the timing thing. They can still get to Waters Edge in time to meet the bear transports this way, and they couldn't meet the cat ones no matter
what we did! So.....
We're kind of in trouble it looks like. Waters Edge is already all messed up by bear ships. Weell, here's what I can do: I'll try to get some bases up and squeeze out a few of the super new LASER MASKS!!! That'll save it! Or at least if
anything saves it, they can shoot down some transport ships. Oh, and we need some defenses at the other place out there too; it's probably About Time, right? But it has a bunch of bases already luckily. So ...
I know! I'll make some of the new disposable wipes there because HYPER!!! Plus that'll mean we have whole different kinds of defenses around different places and we can find out what
works!
Speaking of work though ... that was a lot of it. And it's time I got down to my
real job!
Got my sanitizer. Got my mop!
Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh there's nothing like the feeling...
2477
Whoops! Computer wants my attention again! Now I get to see what the cuddle-bear spaceships look like! Some of them. That ... uh ... those don't look like they're going to be very impressed by my super-cool lasers. Although also they aren't impressed by about anything else Waters Edge can do. Those are the breaks, I guess! Is there a fight we
can win anywhere?
Ha! Yes! About Time! Looks like they want to get rid of our supply of Disposable Wipes! That doesn't do them much good because
they're disposable! Ha! Plus also fifteen scatter bases might be a lot better than two? Could be; you never know.
Anyway, we did lose one base there, and also some of our disposable wipes before the survivors ran away, but we also got rid of their spaceships, so that's a win! Yay for winning!
This is great because we hardly lost anything this year! Just a few space ships and missile bases and factories and ... 37 million people at Waters Edge. Mostly because of the cat invasion we couldn't stop with all those bears in the way. I'm not worried though! We have
lots of people! We can afford to lose tens of millions like that every year when I'm in charge, and there'll still be an empire left -
some kind of empire left - for whoever wanders into this room next after I'm done! Hooray!!!
It definitely won't get worse.
Definitely.
Oh, this has nothing to do with that of course, but I notice a few million people are leaving Sand Line for other parts of the empire again. That's been happening every year since I wandered in here! Everyone who was left behind there built some Disposable Wipes for our homeworld just at first, but then I realized that was silly, so now they're all just helping with our research. Really even
more people should have left probably, except it's just so
far to the middle of the galaxy, it didn't seem like there was any point in going all the way out there. Even though we
definitely are still going to have places for them to go in case any of them
do go out there! As for
why all those millions keep leaving, it probably has nothing to do with the unbeatable Meklar fleet that's been in orbit since before I got here, because I came up with the perfect defense against it: I'm pretending
really hard that it isn't there!
Meanwhile, our shipyards are putting together lots of parts for giant ships that will turn out to maybe be not so giant when they're finished. Including Waters Edge: It's being
very careful not to finish a missile base this year because finished missile bases tend to get blown up there. I do have ine planet helping out with our treasury again at the same time too, way back at the edge of the galaxy, but that's a special case, and we
are keeping up with our research still! Which is good because the thing with losing millions of people to Mrrshan invaders
definitely won't happen again!
2478
Ha! I
knew it! I don't really know
why we have peace, because I have no idea what the cat was saying - first of all, we don't have any translator devices, and second of all, I had carefully shapeshifted into a Brohan's Earless Space Beetle just to make sure I couldn't hear her - and if I'd had to actually write something like my name or whatever on the piece of paper she started waving around at one point, it definitely wouldn't have happened, but luckily she must have just meant it as a metaphor or something because all I had to do was pick the fastest, surest way of getting rid of her on my screen and
poof! Our empires were at peace!
Also there were no battles this year, so that probably means everything's fine and the Meklar definitely won't be killing any of us anymore, no sirree. I mean ... I think there was some
bombing over at Waters Edge, from those stupid Bulrathi cruisers, but that doesn't count because I shapeshifted into a blind cave lizard when the report from the front was due to come in and didn't change back until it was safe to look around and not see anything I didn't want to again.
Now here though - here is something I
do want to see:
I wouldn't normally build a shieldless cruiser, but that's because
this isn't a cruiser! No, no, this Sterilizer gunboat is actually just a
really big fighter with duralloy armor on!!! This is the point: We have exactly one type of weapon that's worth the paper the blueprints are printed on against heavily-shielded fleets like the Meklar and Bulrathi have in space: The Fusion Beam. Heavy beams are good too if we desperately need a longer-range weapon, but they take up more space than when my second cousin CowlyFace accidentally shapeshifted into an extinct species of spacefaring whale shark with vacuum gigantism, and it's not like four beams on a cruiser are going to impress the Meklar repulsor dreads anyway. So my Sterilizer's job is going to be to move
first - at least as first as I can make it - with battle scanner, stabilizer, and our best computer and maneuverability, and then hit as hard as it possibly can, with a total of ten Fusion Beams! The armor should hopefully help it stick in a fight without taking up as much space as a shield - because in the first place we're bad at making shields altogether right now, and in the second place most of our enemies are using shield-piercing weapons already!
This isn't a theoretical ship either: It's a ship with a mission! Waters Edge is getting visited by Bear transports next year, and
we hate visits; we don't want them!!! Just look what happened when the Mrrshans came this year! We had to laser all of them to death from long range and then quarantine half the colony while we sterilized the area some more!
This ship's job is to sterilize those cute little bear transports in
space, before they have a chance to land and wreck anything! That won't work unless we can beat the bear fleet in orbit, but with one of these in space, I think we
can!
As for Waters Edge itself, it's getting all the reserves we managed to put together so it can build up the almost-finished missile base facility from
last year into
four bases by year's end, and
still build another ship to help defend itself, along with the entire fleet coming up from About Time
and the new Sterilizer: The Spray 3.0 is pretty much a Sterilizer that hasn't been scaled up quite as many times: A destroyer hull with Titanium armor and only one Fusion Beam, but everything else the same! ... Well, the Spray
does have a laser too, but only because lasers are
cool and super-cheap ... and because transports don't come with shielding.
2479
This is basically our whole fleet right now, except for like twelve Disposable Wipe hyperrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr rocket boats back here at the homeworld that couldn't make it in time. The old Masks 3.0s are really just here to help shoot down blimps, but everything else here will be helping to take out all six of those Bulrathi cruisers! The light-colored Grizzlies with their heavy blast cannons and quad hard beams are the real problem; once the dark-colored Tooth cruisers use up their missile payload, all they've got is one ion cannon apiece, and that's not scaring our bases - as long as we have any left! - or even the duralloy Sterilizer if the missiles haven't chewed it away. Plus the Grizzlies have a weaker shield and no ECM, so with all the pitiful little rockets we're spewing out of our bases and ships, we obviously have to target those first. I lost a more than half of the Disposable Wipes to Stinger fire, but that was expected; it's even in their name! And the last Tooth did get away before our impotent Scatters and lone Sterilizer could finish it off, but that was a small price to pay to be rid of that Bear fleet - and to be ready to meet their 70 million horrifying, smelly, germ-ridden, muscular ursine troopers
before they could land and kill us all, while they were just so many cold, sterile transport pods in space! I
did order about 25 million transports of our own last year to help supplement our ground troops since I was confident we'd win the space fight but afraid we might need all the help we could get in case some of the transports made it to the ground, but these are
bears! Even that might not be enough! I just hope we......
Got! Them!
All!!! I can't see or hear the Waters Edgians (thank the faceless and nameless omnipotence of shapeless form on high!) but I know what they're doing down there: Just like me in the Acting Emperor's Office, they're cheering our amazing victory! We are the champions! We are invincible! There's nothing these smelly, germ-infested aliens can...
...oh. Right. The Meklar. Turns out their advantage over us in sheer ground technology makes them more dangerous than all the muscle and might of the Bulrathi. That, plus the Tornado in orbit that nothing in our fleet or in our bases can ever fight, meant this was pretty much inevitable. We killed less than twenty of them, and the ones that arrived took over all 160 Sand Line factories, along with the top-of-the-line waste scrubbers we'd installed on them. So ... that's not exactly great. But on the other hand, there's maybe a little silver lining here. I know it's hard to see it, especially on the secret report I've had compiled over the past three years, since the last one we had was more than three decades out of date...
...but it
is there, over on the left: These machine guys are at war with the cats
and the birds as well as us, and their robo-emperor, QX-537, is so completely nuts that there's a chance we'll randomly wind up at peace again at any time!
...
Well...
...maybe not at
any time. But still, sometime, maybe. Hopefully? I don't know. For now, I've got some cleaning to do - and some rebuilding!
.
So all this trade deals and checking for tech trades is new to me. In my single games by the time everyone is pissed off at me I usually have blocking majority or I'm close with single race abstaining being enough.