Part 6: The Next Dumb Name for an NX-01 is…

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The Troop Transport to our Galactic West has been built! For the first time in human history, we are able to push our borders back further into the inky void. I send a message to the skipper of the Seadragon to send me back a T-Shirt. He doesn’t get it. I tell him to just grab a souvenir or something. I thump on the microphone. What is this, an oil painting or an audience? 

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.

Part 4: Terraformin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo

While the terraforming goes well on Tohvun or Tenpin or whatever it’s called, the NX-01 Seadragon continues its clockwise path around its outer range.

We come across the star system that the Department of Galactic Naming calls Hurada. Note to assistant: mandatory drug tests for the Department of Galactic Naming. What they’re coming up with sounds like what my bowels did last night after that plate of ripe Ga’hk.

Hurada looks like a decent enough system, with an Oceanic planet that has a food bonus. That’ll be on the list of future colonies, to be sure; at least for now it falls behind Sarona.

Finally, those slackers on the first Colony Ship finish the work of terraforming the planets of the Tohvun system. I might have been off by a few pop points, but this system can handle 270. Since every 10 pop points equals one slot in the production queue, that’s 27 potential workers for the Federation’s glory. Not too bad. Could be better, but definitely could be worse. And if I were playing the vanilla version of Birth of the Federation, it likely WOULD be a lot worse.

Part 3: Oopsies all around

Wait…hello, nurse!

I’m using HyperSnap, and for some reason, the suns aren’t appearing in the screenshots. Nor are the dilithium displays. So, I’ve downloaded Fraps to capture these things, so let’s see if it’s done right.

Looks like it.

So, the Seadragon moves into the Sarona star system and finds not only lots of big planets with energy and food bonuses…but dilithium as well! This is huge news, because dilithium is what makes starships move, and starships moving means the Federation becoming big and powerful, which means we’re safer when we run into ali-err, I mean, IF we run into aliens, of course.

Part 2: Terraformin’

Fortunately there are no alien life forms in the Tohvun system. While this is a sad little system with tiny little planets (two Barren, one Desert, one Jungle, and one Arctic), the Jungle planet has a food bonus for its fertile soil, and the Desert planet has some great angles or something to it so it catches lots of rays for solar energy absorption. Or something. It’s pretty scientific, you probably wouldn’t even understand.

Those brave colonists immediately began to terraform the planets in the Tohvun system. Meanwhile, I took a look at how things were here in the Sol system. That’s where Earth is, don’cha know.

We’ve managed to terraform Mars, but not Venus, Mercury, or Pluto. Right now we have room for about another 80 population, but if we terraformed those three planets we’d have a shot at really growing our britches off.