2249
2249.01.10 -- The
Suggron has been repaired.
JIMGA Jr. heads back out for survey duty, in a decidedly different direction. The Nekklar system is a no-fly zone until the fleet is ready to deal with it.
01.19 -- The order is given for Eusrim's armies to land on Krolldar Prime. I decided this was as good a time as any to give our ground troops and General their moment in the sun.
It's difficult to show bombardment effects in a screenshot. You can see the bright spots on the planet where a small part of a landmass has basically been obliterated, and the after-effects of atomic-level explosions can be seen in a few areas. We have bombardment on the 'middle' setting, Limited(out of Light, Limited, or Full). Full basically doesn't give a crap about civilian casualties and can only be used by militarists.
The purpose of bombardment is to eliminate ground fortifications. With fully developed fortifications(which happen automatically in peacetime), a ground invasion is only possible if you are willing to lose tons of troops -- they will only do a tenth of the normal damage. It scales down slowly at first, and gradually faster and faster as you bombard away those defenses. With no fortifications at all, any concentrations of force can get hammered by the orbiting fleet and our armies will inflict double damage in an assault. It's pretty much always worth doing, but it does give the enemy time to send in a fleet to break the siege.
The ships in the upper left are the transports, and each of these 'pods' descending to the surface contains one assault army.
This image, after two and a half weeks of fighting, shows what ground combat looks like. Our invading armies are the turquoise on the right, their defenders on the left in red. The outer circle turning red in segments on each of ours shows the damage taken, and similarly on theirs. The tooltip there in the lower right is something we can see for any of the armies, we can see they've taken some damage. The battle continues until all armies on one side or the other are eliminated. It's kind of crowded here because I landed I think 13-14 armies, the Kroll had I think the full dozen which is the most you can have on a planet, and several garrisons as one would expect for a homeworld. I've also left three on the occupied planet in Deteenal to make sure it doesn't decide to try and revolt. There aren't a lot of entertaining visuals here. Ground invasions are mostly about the fleet taking care of any orbital defenses in the area and knocking out the fortifications. The actual army landing and battle is pretty much mop-up work, but it's essential.
You can also see the two generals here:
Vikal Vigon,
Eola Eusrim's opposite number, is not as skilled.
03.18 -- We have taken Krolldar Prime, with the ground battle lasting less than two months! The fleet will now head for the Kroll frontier outpost, and see what else it can find in the systems near the Djomar border. The Star Commonwealth is not yet ready for a complete surrender, but soon they will have no choice.
04.01 -- Later than expected, the Humboldt Spaceport begins the upgrade to cruiser production.
04.03 -- Analysis of the battle debris in Deteenal is complete. Disruptors, Ion Disruptors, and Nuclear Missiles(the Kroll corvettes were seen to be using these slow-moving ballistic weapons) have all joined the research queue now.
04.07 -- Passing through the Baxom system, the third one we must take,
Admiral SirFozzie notes token resistance; no ships, a mid-level spaceport, and a single mining station. We'll be back, but for now taking out that outpost will be first. Scouts are dispatched to various systems along the Kroll-Djomar border. It'll take them some time to arrive, but they should provide a bit of warning if reinforcements come.
05.16 -- Science lab finished on Eskogg. The first of two Biolab upgrades now commences.
06.06 -- We are greeted by a new empire, the
Buhavilaa Ascendancy
It's worth paying a little extra attention to what they say here. They appear rather bored and dismissive, they don't introduce their leader, etc. This is our first meeting with a special kind of empire, the 'fallen empire'. We didn't have to research their communications -- shortly after entering their territory, they used their Trekkian universal translators and contacted us. Fallen Empires are 'older' races who've experienced the whole 'going into space' thing, expanding, meeting other races, diplomacy, war, conquest, research, etc. They've been there, got the T-shirt, and are basically sick of it. They have a sizable amount of territory, but not an enormous chunk of the galaxy. They also have extremely advanced, massive fleets by the standard of any 'young race' such as us at this stage of the game. Naval power, Naval capacity, and Technology are all listed as Overwhelming compared to us(in red as well, in case the word didn't give us a hint). The scale of comparison runs, so far as I know, from Pathetic - Inferior - Equivalent - Superior - Overwhelming.
In other words, we don't want to mess with them now, or ten years from now, or probably even 50 years from now. Eventually, if things go well, we could become strong enough to take them on. They aren't invincible, but they could basically send their border guard to yawn it's way through smashing our fleet. Speaking of borders, theirs are always closed.
There are different types of Fallen Empires -- these guys you may notice are listed as 'Keepers of Knowledge'. All of them have some major thing about the galaxy that is really important to them. It's technology in this case. Using(not just researching) certain types of technology that they consider dangerous(such things are marked as Risky or Dangerous or somesuch and we haven't gotten to any of them yet) will upset them. We really, really don't want to upset them right now. Blasphemous though it may be, I'm pretty confident even Boojie could not save us if we did that. If we don't do anything to tick them off though, we will remain beneath their notice. Unless you are the 'nail that sticks up', a Fallen Empire will leave you alone. They don't do diplomacy, offensive wars to expand their territory, etc. Hence the term 'fallen'. Being a 'speck beneath their notice' is the only safe place to be ... for now.
Here's where they reside, just past the Ibannic Veil on the middle arm. This means our explorations in that direction are basically done. There are more planets we can colonize out that way, but with closed borders we can't just go through their territory to what is beyond it, and the inner arm is packed. Lots of room yet, but I think we are getting close to the end of the major exploration phase.
07.12 -- The Hixaros Frontier Outpost is gone. A surprising number of corvettes were damaged, but the fleet still has plenty to handle a mere spaceport, which is all that defends Baxom.
09.02 -- Centralized Command research completed, while Engineering continues to be occupied with debris analysis.
10.02 -- Applied Quantam Physics research finished. Humboldt Spaceport has also been prepped for Cruiser construction.