Birth of the Federation, an AAR, Part 9

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CHAPTER NINE: YOU CAN’T UNSEE IT

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The last time I saw anything that disgusting was when a dancer named ‘Wolf 359’ bent herself so far over, she turned into a singularity and disappeared. I will not watch movies about people eating people any more. I have people to do that for me. The idea is sound, but there’s no reason the leader should be exposed to such trauma.

I’m staring at a pretty decent fleet, though it’s very civ-heavy. Meaning, more Troop Transports and Colony Ships than actual ships that can ‘bring the pain.’ Since we’re all flower children more or less, having a gigantic fleet-in-being is not only not conducive with Federation aims, it’s also a huge drain on the economy. It’s still early yet and I need to do some more colonizing so I can do some more taxing and graftin’ (daddy gotta get HIS) to support a large fleet. For purely defensive purposes, of course. And so far, my expansion is small, though that will change soon. I don’t like the idea of being spread out and having no good ships to defend myself should big ol’ greenie meanies come sniffing around my people like they’re sides of beef (Soylent Green was MY idea, after all).

Thing is, in Birth of the Federation, the Federation gets huge penalties for being war-like. Doing things like bombing planets into dust will piss off the population at large, so a little alien cleansing…IF we actually find aliens, that is…is not on the to-do list. But, I like to bring it up during the staff meetings every so often, just to see how many shades of pale I can make everyone sitting around the table.

God, it’s good to be the king.

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We’ve continued our expansion into two systems, Kenda and Makus, which aren’t particularly lovely systems, but they do have a good population cap. I love this All Ages mod, because the vanilla Birth of the Federation would often stick you with systems with four tiny planets and a population cap of 70, which you really can’t do anything with. As the Federation, that would be a big brake on your growth, especially when you have more aggressive neighbors that have no compunction in taking nice juicy worlds away from the minor races they encounter.

Seriously, I’m beginning to wonder if we ARE the only life out here…

Kenda is the first system to be fully terraformed. Another beautiful thing about the All Ages mod – it doesn’t take forever to terraform planets. Two or three turns is all it takes for the huge planets, and the small ones are generally done in one.

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I’ve been so bored watching our expansions into other systems, knowing our rinky-dink destroyers are probably going to get blown away by the first hostile race (allegedly) that we come across. So it was with great joy when my scientists timidly knocked at my door (they’re learning) and meekly announced the above big, beautiful Light Cruiser.

Just like in Star Trek: The Original Series, in fact. This is the beautiful Constitution-class ship, and the first of her kind is going to be built here in four turns. That’s exciting, because these ships are rather powerful. They do cost 30 per turn each for maintenance, though, so I gotta be careful building a huge fleet of them, at least for now. My treasury is huge, about 20,000 credits, but that’s because I haven’t been building things that will suck it dry. Now that these wonderful ships are starting to get ramped up in my Federation Shipyards, we can start building the backbone of the newly-established Starfleet.

Though…the only thing that really worries me is the naming convention. You know, normally the first ship of a new class is what that class is named for. I’ve expressed my woes at leaving naming to some bureaucratic board of directors that thinks ‘fun’ is going home and reading Yeats while listening to hipster records. Me, I prefer the new Starfleet Babes cheerleading team. Whatever floats your boat, I guess. But God help us if this first ship is named Pansy or Nuthatch or something.

Meanwhile, muh-muh-muh-MY SARONA system decides it wants to birth too many babies for the food supply, so there’s a little starving going on over there. You gotta keep an eye on your Summary screen to see which systems are getting low on food and tweak the construction queue accordingly.

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This Type 2 Automated Farm is only going to cost me 185 credits to build, which is nothing compared to my treasury right now (either that or wait two turns, but more people can disappear thanks to empty stomachs, and that’s bad for production). Since dead hands are idle hands, I’ll cough up the cash and buy the farm. That’ll solve the issue for the short term, so I’ll have to change up the Sarona queue to build some more Automated Farms to deal with this.

I generally hate micromanaging, especially in a game like this that will get hugely obnoxious within a short period of time, especially on a map this large. It will be very easy to lose track of what’s going on, and since the game’s Summary screen is not all up in your face every turn, you need to make it a habit to check it to be sure you’re not forgetting things, like terraforming a system and leaving a Colony Ship to sit there and twiddle their thumbs for many turns on end, or worse, finish terraforming a system and forgetting to colonize it. Or leaving a Troop Transport in a sector without building an Outpost. There’s all kinds of ways to screw the alien pooch in this game, time-wise. If you don’t like micromanaging, you won’t like the larger versions of this game.

Finally, after decades of advancement, after years of planning, and months of building, the first Light Cruiser is ready to leave spacedock on her maiden voyage. This ship represents the pinnacle of Starfleet technology and how some of the best minds (snicker) have come together to…blah, blah, blah, yeah, we’re all very happy to hear how wonderful we are.

BUT, WHAT is the ship’s name? WHAT did the bureaucrats come up with?

Guess we’ll need to find out next time.


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