Part 5: Muh-muh-muh MYYY SARONA

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While that Troop Transport makes its way to the Sarona system, where my bounty of Dilithium awaits exploitation, I’ve moved my Colony ship to the neighboring Altair system. Altair is not on my short-term plans to colonize, but while I’m waiting on the Troop Transport to arrive and build an outpost, I can go ahead and terraform the planets in this system so it will be ready later.

Meanwhile back in the Sol system, my next NX-01 peak of technological exploration, my spearpoint of…uh, exploration…is nearing completion. I’ve gone ahead and queued a couple more Troop Transports so I can send them to the Galactic North and East of Sol to help expand the borders that way.

Oh hey, the scientists came knocking at my palatial office doors to tell me about this breakthrough in Biotech!

BIONICS: Bionics are synthetic tissues which replace organics. Bionic tissues can be used to repair injuries, strengthen fragile tissues, and aid in surgical procedures.

Allows: Aquaculture Center, Type 2 Automated Farm.

Everyone’s awfully pleased with themselves, but they don’t quite know how to answer when I ask, “So, how is it our food supply becomes more ample…from creating “tissue?” Sounds awfully The Hills Have Eyes to me.”

They didn’t have a rational explanation other than some long-winded stuff about synthetically growing synthe-meat, which sounds gross. But be that as it may, somehow it’s found its way into our farming system. I’m hesitant to order an upgrade, fearing I will turn the population of Earth into a bunch of degenerate, flesh-eating monsters.

Oh…wait. Yeah. Nevermind.

I’m going to pour our next efforts into Propulsion. Hopefully this will help our short-legged ships get out further. We got a LOT of galaxy to explore!

Uh-oh. Reports come in that there’s starvation ahoy here in Sol. I guess my slowness to embrace synthe-guts to put on our citizen’s tables might have made a few of them die from being hungry.

This is one of the conundrums that Birth of the Federation will give you. Namely, your systems with a huge pop cap will grow pretty damned fast, especially if they have a world that has a food bonus (see the little corn stalk above the Earth in this last screenshot?). That will give you tons of labor, but also will mean a LOT of mouths to feed, and that’s the straight I find myself in now. Since Sol had starvation, we lost 6 pop points, down from 600 to 594. Note our food surplus is +1 now.

I wonder, “What’s the problem? We have a surplus now that those pesky starving people are gone.”

Soylent Green, perhaps? I make a note. My scientists turn pale. I make another note to get funnier and less squeamish scientists on staff.

I have to make some quick adjustments to the queue. Since we technically have a surplus right now (albeit a tiny one), we’re not in danger of starvation again. The Troop Transport I’m building in the queue right now is almost done, so I’m loathe to cancel it. I go ahead and put an order in to upgrade our Automated Farms to the Type 2 we’ve just unlocked through research. I have visions of cannibalistic hillbilly shacks loading “foodstuffs” into delivery vehicles for distribution everywhere, but a little Romulan Ale fixes that right up.

Wait, we don’t know what Romulans are yet. Strike that last part.

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