Outgoing Meklar Diplomat's Report, concluded:
The save is attached! (Which seems to be working again; hurray!) It's not at all in the state in which I would have ended turn if I kept playing, but I figured you'd want to adjust things to your taste anyway, and it's half past midnight here and I have work in the morning, so...
Have fun with it, shallow_thought!
- 2458 -
Stalaz was our next target, with less than half of the fleet sent forward to handle it: We had already scouted the toxic world long ago, before the Alkari claimed it, and thanks to my diplomatic work eight years previously, we were able to launch an invasion even ahead of this attack - though we weren't sure enough of ourselves to do so until comparatively recently. The rest of our ships were divided among planets whose space combat capabilities we had already removed - not perhaps quite surgically, but as surgically as we could - to limit Alkari muster points and attack vectors, though fuel bases were no longer a consideration. As we would soon discover though, this practice would have only limited efficacy.
Fortunately, as ever, we could always rely on the Special Operations arm of the diplomatic corps! We may have been at peace with the Klackons, and they may have loved the good work we were doing against their Alkari enemies, but that hadn't stopped them from sending attack fleets our way, so it didn't stop us from helping ourselves to a share in their knowledge of how to completely neutralize and obviate death spore attacks with a bio toxin antidote developed on their homeworld!
Meanwhile, the invasion arm of our military corps was busy at Lyae, with luck apparently going slightly against them again, but not enough to stop them from claiming the victory and another small trove of new technology.
Still nothing we were hoping for. The old nuclear engines and hard beams were barely of value even for miniaturization, and though an incremental improvement in our terraforming techniques were a nice little boon, we were getting very close to a greater improvement already, thanks to our own research teams. Still, we're not done yet - and neither were our enemies!
Grunk, no doubt upset that in addition to defeating his Alkari enemies, we were also claiming the spoils of victory, unsurprisingly felt it necessary to attack our Friction colony with a two-dreadnought, three-cruiser fleet. But the Alkari were most impressive of all: Their death-sporing colony ship appeared out of empty space, already half-way to our Poverty colony, apparently from Lyae, without any expenditure of Alkari resources, having never passed through our blockade of the Lyae system. This is known behavior for colony ships belonging to the other factions in the galaxy - some uncharitably ascribe this to some all-powerful deity of machines who chose to give our enemies means of defeating us in spite of their native imbecility - but it's a good reminder of the reason we can never feel truly safe. Our new antidote to their death spores wouldn't prevent the ship from causing havoc of other kinds, but fortunately we had an emergency response ready just in case. And, as ever, more transports were launching all over the place!
- 2459 -
When the Klackon attack fleet finally reached our Shieldless colony, roughly a decade after it was first spotted, we hadn't built even a single additional defensive base - nor even kept a ship in orbit to face the enemy.
It wasn't exactly negligence. We had the reports of our Special Operations division on their nonexistent engine and maneuvering speed, and those of previous military reporters on the designs of apparently-identical Klackon ships with identical names. The thing to remember about nebulae is that their shield interference cuts both ways, and these ships were far too slow to dodge scatter-pack rockets. A single volley from the planet's mere two bases was enough - with our advanced targeting and their miserable defenses - to destroy the Knight cruiser outright. Two more volleys burned the Cutlass laser fighters from the skies. They never got anywhere close. Outside of a nebula, of course, their weapons wouldn't be able to penetrate our shields anyway, so they would equally have been throwing their ships away. (Or rather retreating, and hoping to do so ahead of our Pulson volleys....) In this case though, we were lucky to have the means of retaliating for their attack right away!
There were more space battles in the meantime of course, including the Screen shipped down from - appropriately - our Blue Screen colony blasting the Alkari spore ship from Poverty's skies before it could get anywhere close to the colony, but our Special Operations division's work at Klackon Helos, retrieving the plans for their neutron blaster design, eschewing opportunities to try instead for their uninteresting construction or propulsion technologies. Some of the battles that did occur were more significant than others though:
Spica and Laan were a little too far from our worlds for us to launch invasions of either before I retired, but they're open now in case we want to claim more planets - and more Alkari technology - as the last resort of somebody else's diplomacy. In the meantime, through different channels from the last, we had made a somwhat less surprising discovery than Klackon neutron guns:
Our own scientists had a new upgrade ready for our jammers, and were finally able to suggest a research option - a hyper-advanced battle computer - that wasn't yet more and more ECM. But we still had another surprise in store, and a far less-pleasant one this time.
With eyes on every star and every part of space within attack range of Escalon, and no enemy fleets that could get there by 2459, we had left it unprotected while our fleets shuffled around to cover other critical needs. But that year's Alkari colony ship magically appeared out of empty space en route to Escalon "from" close enough that it arrived the same year! Fortunately, our antidote prevented them from murdering our people or ruining the world, and the lone factory they destroyed wasn't anything like a big deal, but it meant their assault transports would be on the way immediately!
In spite of the beating they were taking, they still had the galaxy's largest starfleet besides, though the fact that we ranked second and had been handily beating them for years perhaps suggested that the rankings didn't take our tactical and strategic skill into account adequately ... and also reinforced my belief that we truly were never going to be slaves again in this galaxy!
- 2460 -
In the year I retired from my diplomatic post, the first faction to try to challenge that belief of mine was the Bulrathi - they of the second-weakest starfleet in the galaxy.
Probably almost their entire imperial starfleet was having a go, and it didn't go very well for them. Their ships were well-shielded and had weapons aboard that could penetrate our shields - sometimes, technically - but we had a MEGA autorepair repulsor dread and enough defensive bases to send forty-five pulson missiles their way in each volley. They made the mistake of pressing their attack, so very little of their starfleet survived long enough to retreat.
Next was Escalon: Against a single colony ship, we redefined overkill with five different dreadnoughts and a missile base, because we didn't know how many transports were coming and wanted to make sure none of them landed.
That worked, obviously. Then it was our turn to go on the offensive.
That went a little better, in spite of our ground forces enjoying their usual run of slightly-bad luck. Capturing Altair was quite the diplomatic statement: "Stop trying to murder us and pretending you can treat us as slaves and chattel. As of now, we own you're homeworld!"
GNN weighed in on the subject as well, for the first time since the Alkari reached their twelfth colony. But of course if you've been keeping count, you might be wondering about its math. Why nineteen? Well, you may remember how I said that we could send transports to Stalaz setting out even before our fleet arrived.
We did that. And then sent some more from close by. And for once had just about exactly average luck on the ground. So with Stalaz in our possession too, there was little left to do but go through our new factories in search of attractive new Alkari technology.
It was a pretty good haul, even a smidge above expectations in terms of the sheer number we brought in. Thanks to our Altair reverse engineers, we can now land anywhere in the galaxy where there's a planet without concern about fuel cells or degree of habitability, use a battle computer even more powerful than our previous version, probably never bother to put an ionic pulsar on anything, and boost the planetary shielding of all our non-Shieldless colonies except - apparently - for Reactor, which somewhat to my surprise appears to be in the nebula as well; it must never have been attacked for some reason or we'd have known already! Then Stalaz gave us the Alkari designs for Omega-V bombs, an upgrade in theory even over our AMBs. Apart from a single garbage tech from each world, they all were at least worth mentioning, and they cleared out half of what the Alkari had to offer.......
...but we still somehow didn't get any of the techs I was actually hoping for from them.
We can do that from some of their other worlds if need be. If we do, we'll probably end up facing the Bulrathi in the next High Council election unless we start retaliating for their attacks on us too, but there's nothing to fear there anymore either way.
With all our new technology, it might be fun to try some new ship designs. If so, we can easily make room:
Even before we improve our engine technology and replace basically the whole fleet, any or all of the three designs I've indicated have, I believe, outlived their usefulness, and can be retired with honor.
Regardless of whether we do or not ... well, we seem to be winning.
Stalaz was our next target, with less than half of the fleet sent forward to handle it: We had already scouted the toxic world long ago, before the Alkari claimed it, and thanks to my diplomatic work eight years previously, we were able to launch an invasion even ahead of this attack - though we weren't sure enough of ourselves to do so until comparatively recently. The rest of our ships were divided among planets whose space combat capabilities we had already removed - not perhaps quite surgically, but as surgically as we could - to limit Alkari muster points and attack vectors, though fuel bases were no longer a consideration. As we would soon discover though, this practice would have only limited efficacy.
Fortunately, as ever, we could always rely on the Special Operations arm of the diplomatic corps! We may have been at peace with the Klackons, and they may have loved the good work we were doing against their Alkari enemies, but that hadn't stopped them from sending attack fleets our way, so it didn't stop us from helping ourselves to a share in their knowledge of how to completely neutralize and obviate death spore attacks with a bio toxin antidote developed on their homeworld!
Meanwhile, the invasion arm of our military corps was busy at Lyae, with luck apparently going slightly against them again, but not enough to stop them from claiming the victory and another small trove of new technology.
Still nothing we were hoping for. The old nuclear engines and hard beams were barely of value even for miniaturization, and though an incremental improvement in our terraforming techniques were a nice little boon, we were getting very close to a greater improvement already, thanks to our own research teams. Still, we're not done yet - and neither were our enemies!
Grunk, no doubt upset that in addition to defeating his Alkari enemies, we were also claiming the spoils of victory, unsurprisingly felt it necessary to attack our Friction colony with a two-dreadnought, three-cruiser fleet. But the Alkari were most impressive of all: Their death-sporing colony ship appeared out of empty space, already half-way to our Poverty colony, apparently from Lyae, without any expenditure of Alkari resources, having never passed through our blockade of the Lyae system. This is known behavior for colony ships belonging to the other factions in the galaxy - some uncharitably ascribe this to some all-powerful deity of machines who chose to give our enemies means of defeating us in spite of their native imbecility - but it's a good reminder of the reason we can never feel truly safe. Our new antidote to their death spores wouldn't prevent the ship from causing havoc of other kinds, but fortunately we had an emergency response ready just in case. And, as ever, more transports were launching all over the place!
- 2459 -
When the Klackon attack fleet finally reached our Shieldless colony, roughly a decade after it was first spotted, we hadn't built even a single additional defensive base - nor even kept a ship in orbit to face the enemy.
It wasn't exactly negligence. We had the reports of our Special Operations division on their nonexistent engine and maneuvering speed, and those of previous military reporters on the designs of apparently-identical Klackon ships with identical names. The thing to remember about nebulae is that their shield interference cuts both ways, and these ships were far too slow to dodge scatter-pack rockets. A single volley from the planet's mere two bases was enough - with our advanced targeting and their miserable defenses - to destroy the Knight cruiser outright. Two more volleys burned the Cutlass laser fighters from the skies. They never got anywhere close. Outside of a nebula, of course, their weapons wouldn't be able to penetrate our shields anyway, so they would equally have been throwing their ships away. (Or rather retreating, and hoping to do so ahead of our Pulson volleys....) In this case though, we were lucky to have the means of retaliating for their attack right away!
There were more space battles in the meantime of course, including the Screen shipped down from - appropriately - our Blue Screen colony blasting the Alkari spore ship from Poverty's skies before it could get anywhere close to the colony, but our Special Operations division's work at Klackon Helos, retrieving the plans for their neutron blaster design, eschewing opportunities to try instead for their uninteresting construction or propulsion technologies. Some of the battles that did occur were more significant than others though:
Spica and Laan were a little too far from our worlds for us to launch invasions of either before I retired, but they're open now in case we want to claim more planets - and more Alkari technology - as the last resort of somebody else's diplomacy. In the meantime, through different channels from the last, we had made a somwhat less surprising discovery than Klackon neutron guns:
Our own scientists had a new upgrade ready for our jammers, and were finally able to suggest a research option - a hyper-advanced battle computer - that wasn't yet more and more ECM. But we still had another surprise in store, and a far less-pleasant one this time.
With eyes on every star and every part of space within attack range of Escalon, and no enemy fleets that could get there by 2459, we had left it unprotected while our fleets shuffled around to cover other critical needs. But that year's Alkari colony ship magically appeared out of empty space en route to Escalon "from" close enough that it arrived the same year! Fortunately, our antidote prevented them from murdering our people or ruining the world, and the lone factory they destroyed wasn't anything like a big deal, but it meant their assault transports would be on the way immediately!
In spite of the beating they were taking, they still had the galaxy's largest starfleet besides, though the fact that we ranked second and had been handily beating them for years perhaps suggested that the rankings didn't take our tactical and strategic skill into account adequately ... and also reinforced my belief that we truly were never going to be slaves again in this galaxy!
- 2460 -
In the year I retired from my diplomatic post, the first faction to try to challenge that belief of mine was the Bulrathi - they of the second-weakest starfleet in the galaxy.
Probably almost their entire imperial starfleet was having a go, and it didn't go very well for them. Their ships were well-shielded and had weapons aboard that could penetrate our shields - sometimes, technically - but we had a MEGA autorepair repulsor dread and enough defensive bases to send forty-five pulson missiles their way in each volley. They made the mistake of pressing their attack, so very little of their starfleet survived long enough to retreat.
Next was Escalon: Against a single colony ship, we redefined overkill with five different dreadnoughts and a missile base, because we didn't know how many transports were coming and wanted to make sure none of them landed.
That worked, obviously. Then it was our turn to go on the offensive.
That went a little better, in spite of our ground forces enjoying their usual run of slightly-bad luck. Capturing Altair was quite the diplomatic statement: "Stop trying to murder us and pretending you can treat us as slaves and chattel. As of now, we own you're homeworld!"
GNN weighed in on the subject as well, for the first time since the Alkari reached their twelfth colony. But of course if you've been keeping count, you might be wondering about its math. Why nineteen? Well, you may remember how I said that we could send transports to Stalaz setting out even before our fleet arrived.
We did that. And then sent some more from close by. And for once had just about exactly average luck on the ground. So with Stalaz in our possession too, there was little left to do but go through our new factories in search of attractive new Alkari technology.
It was a pretty good haul, even a smidge above expectations in terms of the sheer number we brought in. Thanks to our Altair reverse engineers, we can now land anywhere in the galaxy where there's a planet without concern about fuel cells or degree of habitability, use a battle computer even more powerful than our previous version, probably never bother to put an ionic pulsar on anything, and boost the planetary shielding of all our non-Shieldless colonies except - apparently - for Reactor, which somewhat to my surprise appears to be in the nebula as well; it must never have been attacked for some reason or we'd have known already! Then Stalaz gave us the Alkari designs for Omega-V bombs, an upgrade in theory even over our AMBs. Apart from a single garbage tech from each world, they all were at least worth mentioning, and they cleared out half of what the Alkari had to offer.......
...but we still somehow didn't get any of the techs I was actually hoping for from them.
We can do that from some of their other worlds if need be. If we do, we'll probably end up facing the Bulrathi in the next High Council election unless we start retaliating for their attacks on us too, but there's nothing to fear there anymore either way.
With all our new technology, it might be fun to try some new ship designs. If so, we can easily make room:
Even before we improve our engine technology and replace basically the whole fleet, any or all of the three designs I've indicated have, I believe, outlived their usefulness, and can be retired with honor.
Regardless of whether we do or not ... well, we seem to be winning.
The save is attached! (Which seems to be working again; hurray!) It's not at all in the state in which I would have ended turn if I kept playing, but I figured you'd want to adjust things to your taste anyway, and it's half past midnight here and I have work in the morning, so...
Have fun with it, shallow_thought!
The Alkari have been removed from the top of the galactic rankings, and we have captured much of their tech. Thorium cells and radiated are very nice to have, along with better shields of both kinds. We have not (yet) gotten their top offensive techs like HEF and phasors, but we did get omega bombs.
Ion Rifle, Hyper-V, Graviton Beam. Nice. Very nice. The Darloks declare war. We get orbit over Collassa, which turns out to be poor. I lose a stack of the old "Enough" bombers, which is annoying (misunderstood what the planet was targeting).
I think we are clearly in a winning position at this point. Unless we just want to wipe everyone else out, I would take a council win in 2475 if we can get one.