Birth of the Federation, an AAR, Part 13

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CHAPTER UNLUCKY XIII

BOTF-13-001

Aaaaand still nothing. My explorations to the Galactic West reveal two new systems, but there’s nobody home. Just some big, fat planets waiting for some big, fat corporations to exploit. Yay, progress!

BOTF-13-002

This is the far end of the Galactic Eastern edge of the map. Yeah, I’m pretty sure there’s nothing out here. I’m going to ignore it from this point forward. Unless I have a massive lead in the game later, I’m not worried about empty space. My sense of wasting credits on outposts is overriding my OCD. Either that, or my Federation President alter-ego is wanting to save up for the next breakthrough in ‘Computer.’ I’m sure he has a lot of bad ideas of what that might entail.

BOTF-13-003

“You tell him.”

“Oh, no. YOU tell him.”

“Uh-uh. You KNOW what he’s going to ask when we tell him.”

“Whaddya mean, ‘we,’ kemo sabe? You’re the Computer Lab. It’s all YOU, bud.”

Sigh…

The geeks in lab coats meekly come into my office. I am dutifully playing some F117A Stealth Fighter while a copy of Hornet Leader and Quartermaster General both sit on my desk. Ancient, but good times. They tell me of this new computer breakthrough called “Molecular Data Imaging.”

“With this technology, computers can faithfully represent physical matter as data, and use solid matter as long-term data storage. In practice, this allows a material sample to be duplicated as easily as a data file.”

“So, you can build me an Orion slave woman?” I reply.

The geeks look at each other. I can swear they just rolled their eyes. I’m taking that as a ‘yes.’

We’re going to focus on getting to Level 3 in Construction next.

BOTF-13-004

Well, well, well. I found Wolf 359. Looks like a hick system compared to some of the fat, juicy planets I’ve been seeing in others. As it sits to my Galactic North, it is in a strategic place, though. That is, of course, if there’s ANY FRIKKIN’ ALIENS out there!

Still nothing. The peace-loving Federation, that has oodles of credits in the bank, have nobody to buy off. I guess that’s okay in a way, because it means I can bank oodles of credits. But if there ARE aliens out there (note: yes, there are, somewhere!), it’s very likely that my four AI opponents have found several of them by now. And it’s always much harder to bribe minor systems away from their owners than to bribe naïve, untouched, newly-discovered alien cultures.

Oh look, I’ve just described pretty much everyone, always.

BOTF-13-005

And we’ve made our breakthrough in Construction Level 3 (Monomolecular Epitaxy):

“Monomolecular Epitaxy allows the construction of material filaments one molecule wide. These filaments can be used independently or combined to make incredibly strong synthetic alloys.”

BOTF-13-006

This means I can build a Science Vessel II now (pictured here). Kind of a bulbous-headed monstrosity, sort of like that fake plastic rubber doll in the movie “It’s Alive.”

The interesting thing about BotF is, upgrades happen automatically, and instantaneously. Kind of unrealistic; one would expect having to put one’s ships into spacedock (or a Federation Shipyard, in-game), and paying for the upgrade, and then having to wait. But not in this game. We’ll just pretend, shall we? Like I’m pretending to be competent at this game.


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