CHAPTER XVI: MAKING FRIENDS AND INFLUENCING ALIENS

Well, I offered a Friendship Treaty to both the Edo and the Xindi. I didn’t expect the Xindi to offer me their own Friendship Treaty, which I accept heartily. I can now establish trade routes with them, and make even more money! Woo-hoo!

The Edo, unsurprisingly, rejected my Friendship Treaty. It’s going to take a little while before they’ll warm up. Usually, bribing a minor alien race is best done when you put about five turns between bribes, to ensure their effectiveness. So it’ll be about 20 turns or so before they warm up. Meanwhile, the bug-faces find themselves inundated by human trade ships, in something very akin to a California Gold Rush, or the Great Beanie Baby Scam of 1995.

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CHAPTER XV: CONTACT!  (FINALLY!)

A breakthrough in Construction! Phase Transition Bonding. Whatever that is. Oh wait, let’s read the description:

“Phase transition bonding merges two pieces of material by temporarily changing the phase of one item., When the phase distortion is reversed, the two pieces are inextricably merged, and the density of their intersecting volume is doubled.”

This allows for both Industrial Replicators and Type 4 Mass Replicators. Upgrading to newer versions of Mass Replicators can be a very expensive proposition. Well, expensive, in that it takes for-freakin’-ever to do it. This is why having a good, solid agricultural base is so important: you can drag people off of their farms, sometimes kicking and screaming, to working in a factory somewhere. Ah, the choices of an autocracy.

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CHAPTER XIV: WHY ARE WE USING ROMAN NUMERALS IN SPACE?

We are exploring more and more of the vast galaxy we call home. And more and more systems are coming under our banner via colonization. So much so that I’ve stopped announcing each one, but because I’m a good person, I’m going to give you a bit of an overview of my systems and my fleet. Besides, it would be nice for me to know these things, being the leader of the Federation and all.

System-wise, the Federation (or more accurately at this point, the Terrans) occupy 14 systems, including Sol. Some are rather fat and bountiful; others are a bit thin, but not bad at all compared to the vanilla version of Birth of the Federation, where systems were sparse. It was like trying to find a free dollar in a whorehouse, or a surface without STDs in a Florida strip club. In other words, impossible. Just in case you didn’t get that.

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CHAPTER UNLUCKY XIII

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!

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.

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Chapter XII:  NO SNAPPY SUBTITLE

So let’s take a look at the intergalactic love-fest that is the human race. It’s been a while since the last update, and so that means as President of the…uh…Federation…something, it’s my duty to carry on the time-honored traditions of world leaders going off on vacation for weeks at a time, to play golf or something. I hate golf, unless it involves putting creds into stripper’s zero-G-thongs. (Hey – don’t judge. At least I’m honest, unlike most politicians.)

Here’s the Galactic Map, showing our slice o’ the universe as of our last outing. We haven’t even explored a quarter of this vast, wide galaxy, and we’re 160 turns into this game!

I KNEW I should have stuck with the small map…

In any case, it is what it is.

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