Stellaris, Part 2

Stellaris - Part 2: Wherein we boldly go where no one has gone before and immediately hate/kill the things we find there...

The Terran Corporate Alliance has been expanded. Mostly through the use of giant space-station, rather than colonies. It turns out that contrary to what might have been suspected based on our rosy starting location (with lovely Continental worlds in two of the three closest star systems), most of the galaxy is uncomfortable and poorly prepared to host a corporate luncheon, much less human habitation. So we build enormous space stations to expand our official borders (though I’m not really sure about the utility of “borders” in space), medium-sized space stations to rip the minerals out of all the planets within those borders, and little space stations to rip open the fabric of the cosmos itself so that our ships can jump through the holes and reach new stars. Big, medium, and little. It’s like Goldilocks and the three bears…if the three bears devoted to the extraction and exploitation the universe’s natural resources. And in TCA children’s books, they are.

The Twax’lhdar (the giant four-eyed chickens we beneficently attacked without provocation in our last episode) live on chilly Alpine worlds. Humans can technically survive there if they have a good sweater (presumably one that would be made from Twax’lhdar feathers), but there’s a huge penalty to happiness for living on a world so different from your homeworld. And, what with the chattel slavery and all, company morale already isn’t everything it could be.

Technically the Gorf, a sentient fungoid people with stone-age technology, live on a roughly Earth-like planet nearby. They probably would be easy to conquer (they’re essentially mushrooms, right?), but presently we’re generating a ton of research points by studying them from orbit and I don’t want to give that up. Also, one has to assume that the homeworld of a fungoid species would require some serious mold remediation before it would be up to code, and that sort of thing is expensive.

The closest unoccupied colonial candidate is way out on the edges of known space, some 3 or 4 wormhole jumps from Earth. I send off a colony ship and rename the planet Far Point in the hopes of attracting Patrick Stewart to my empire. Shortly thereafter we encounter our second space-faring neighbors in the stars just beyond Far Point’s borders. Last time we made 1st contact, it was with enormous, intelligent birds. What new, unfathomable, wonders does the infinitely various complexities of the universe have in store for us this time?

Oh, for crying out loud…

Alrighty then. Apparently God has some sort of feather-fetish. Good to know.

It turns out, upon farther investigation, that the Sibulan aren’t actually that bad, as alien scum goes. They’re certainly our favorite of all the giant space-birds we’ve met so far! Unlike the Twax’lhdar, with their naïve (and frankly, offensive) beliefs about equality and the inherent dignity of peoples, the Sibulans are a Constitutional Dictatorship. Like us they are “authoritarian,” “industrious,” and “thrifty.” We can work with that. I set about making friends, both because it’s easier to sell stuff to your friends and because Far Point is essentially on their doorstep and I’m in absolutely no position to defend it. Also, they’re kind of cute.

Over the next years/decades we meet even more strange aliens, not all of whom turn out to be over-grown buzzards. For example, there are these enormous wild space-squid, each one larger than my biggest starships, who soar effortlessly between the stars, peacefully grazing on the vapors of gas giants. Naturally, I dispatch the Corporate Armada to murder and dissect as many of them as possible. Yay science!

We discover “Void Clouds,” mysterious nebulas of gas, small particles, and electric charges which have, miraculously, achieved sentience over the countless eons of their existence. Naturally, I dispatch the Corporate Armada to murder and dissect as many of them as possible.

We meet the Lahtrepians. Like the TCA, they are run by a megacorporation. Unlike the TCA, they are devoted to the principles of equality, peace, and spiritualism, which makes me think they’ve somehow missed the point of running a business. Their empire is on the far side of the Sibulan. The Sibulan don’t like them. We don’t like them either. I make a note that exciting franchise opportunities exist in that area.

And finally we meet the…oh, crap.

Behold the Reshethi [Holy] Guardians. They’re a Fallen Empire, a Stagnant Ascendency to be specific. Incredibly advanced and ancient, they once bestrode the stars like gods but have now settled into a placid apathy from which they will neither expand nor seek conquest. You’ll note that their power is listed as “Overwhelming” in every category. As Holy Guardians, they’ve dedicated themselves to the preservation of a series of “holy” Gaia worlds and will violently express their disapproval to any empire that tries to colonize one of them, but otherwise they just seem to sit there. In short, the Reshethi are an old man, forever sitting on his porch, with a shotgun in his lap and a big ol’ sign that says “KEEP OFF THE LAWN!” I inform the Armada that there are decidedly NOT exciting franchise opportunities in THAT direction.

Well, now that we've met the neighbors, my next goals are mostly about internal development. My frontier outposts and diplomatic agreements with the Sibulan have strictly limited by influence. We've developed terraforming technology and are about to start harvesting some a strategic resource which will reduce terraforming costs by 25%, so I might be able to transform some interior worlds into places worth living. It might also be time to try and transform the Twax’lhdar from tributaries into a full-on subsidiary (aka vassal) of the TCA. And I'm seriously considering simply invading the Gorf homeworld. It's a nice, big, Earth-like planet. We'd lose the society research from the space station, but could gain a lot of physics research on the planet. Also, the Gorf represent an untapped market segment.  We've developed a strong relationship based on abduction, involuntary probing, and dissection. No doubt they'll welcome us with open arms...er, fungal pods, or whatever.

And we have robots now! They aren't good for much (our slaves are more efficient in every way), but they can live anywhere without complaining. If I can upgrade them to true androids, I think I could start a robotic mining colony on some sort of hellhole planet without having to terraform it first. And we could upgrade them further to true artificial intelligence to make them more efficient! And then connect them all together in a network stretching between the stars and across the sky! A "Sky-Net" if you will. I don't see how that could possibly go badly...


This is the galaxy in 2229:

Stellaris!

Behold the glorious Terran Corporate Alliance! A global plutocracy dedicated the material enrichment of mankind (or at least to the capital-owning members of mankind). Whereas some theorize earth developing into some sort of pinko-commie democracy with namby-pampy ideals about liberty and equality, the TCA embraces a more manly sort of authoritarian materialism!

Now, are the minimally paid lower classes working the food and mineral tiles “slaves”? Technically yes. Are they wretchedly unhappy? I don’t know (we don’t track those numbers) but who cares! They’re [presumably joyous] dedication to labor, combined with our innate industriousness, thriftiness, corporate structure, and domineering mining guilds give the TCA a whopping 25% bonus to both industrial production and energy generation. And isn’t that really what life is all about? Yes. Yes it is.

If we believed in God (which we don’t, being fanatic materialists), we’d have to assume He was smiling on us. A complete survey of the solar system reveals a combined 18 minable resource and research sites! I haven’t played this game much, but that’s far and away more than I’ve ever seen in a single star system. And mining resources, baby that’s what we do! Humanity spends a relatively [I assume] long time focused on developing our home system in order to establish a powerful economic engine.

Early interstellar exploration reveals that there are, in fact, extraterrestrial life forms … just not any intelligent extraterrestrial life forms. However, continued expansion demonstrates that life on other planets comes in three different flavors of stupid. Alpha Centuri and Sirius both have remarkably (some might say suspiciously) earth-like planets full of alien fauna and flora, but none of it evolved enough to scratch the dirt with a stick. Our first encounter with sentient life comes in Lytirin star system where we find the Gorf, some sort of mobile, conscious, mushroom people still living in the stone age. Early analysis suggests that they won’t make good  employees and probably aren’t edible. 

We build a frontier outpost (the first of our Babylon stations) over their star and an observation post over their planet to secretly abduct, probe and study them…aggressively. Shortly thereafter they mysteriously gain the “fanatically xenophobic” trait. Yay science!

The next sentient species we counter proves that a society can build starships and still be stupid. The Twax’lhdar are giant birds devoted to equality, peace, and spiritualism. Bless their naïve little hearts! Needless to say we hate them immediately. We look forward to bringing them on as sub-minimum-wage out-sourced employees of the TCA.

The Corporate Alliance and Twax’lhdar State have an uneasy peace for a while, but one of our various unauthorized spying missions into their system of origin reveals a flotilla of 16 missile-armed corvettes. In my book, that sort of extreme dedication to the safety and preservation of their homeworld can only be interpreted as a belligerent provocation. In terms of technology and population, we’re about equivalent with the Twax’lhdar, but our various traits and whole-hearted commitment to strip-mining every planet within our borders means our industrial base is considerably stronger than theirs. We commission a “Grand Corporate Armada” of 20 corvettes; they have essentially the same loadout as the Twax’lhdar ships, except that we have deflectors and they do not. At this point our interstellar mining operations are so extensive that the shipyards above earth can focus on the non-stop construction of corvettes and our mineral stockpiles will still increase every month. We declare war. The Twax’lhdar ambassador’s response is only two stuttered words “But w...why?” [I wish I had that screenshot!]

Irritatingly, the Twax’lhdar home-defense fleet elects not to vainly sacrifice itself against our larger Corporate Armada, suggesting that these pinko, peace-nik birds aren’t completely stupid after all. They’re just cowards. Their ships huddle around their home planet’s starbase, which has too much firepower for the Armada to tangle with, refusing to join battle even as my ships sail about vaporize the local, allegedly “civilian” mining and research stations. I withdraw the Armada back to the nearest wormhole station. I have a plan.

The Twax’lhdar ships have warp drives, so they can travel freely between any two stars in their range, but it takes them time to travel, you can see them coming as soon as they enter sensor range, and their warp engines have to cool down after they arrive before they can warp out again. My wormhole-drive ships are tethered to massive wormhole generating space stations I have to construct in the outer-reaches of star systems and can never travel outside the range of one of these stations. But they can travel instantaneously between the wormhole station and their destination, arriving with almost no warning.

I break three corvettes out of the Armada and send them to raid a small Twax’lhdar colony in the Xiger System. The planets industry is woefully under-developed by Corporate standards, demonstrating a clear need for new management. As hoped, only a few days into the orbital annihilation of Xiger’s inhabitants, the Twax’lhdar fleet is detected warping into the system; having calculated that the far outgun the raiding party, they’ve finally left the protection of their starbase in a cloyingly sentimental effort to rescue their nestmates. The raiding force, in a bold display of devotion to the company which should be emulated by all loyal employees, recklessly hurls itself at the Twax’lhdar fleet, guaranteeing that the battle commences on the outer edge of the system. A number of middle-manager level are vaporized by the opening Twax’lhdar salvo. They will be forever memorialized in printed certificates of appreciation.

Once the Twax’lhdar fleet is fully engaged, the trap is sprung: my wormhole station opens up a tear in space-time immediately behind them and the rest of the Corporate Armada pours through. None of the alien corvettes survive long enough for their warp engines to recharge and take them back to the protection of their starbase. I savor my victory. Tastes like chicken!

With the entire enemy fleet destroyed, I dispatch armies of unpaid interns (:::cough::: slaves :::cough:::) to carry out an aggressive corporate restructuring of the Twax’lhdar colonies. I still can’t take their homeworld because the starbase is too strong, but it doesn’t matter. They surrender and become an official franchise (aka tributary) of the Terran Corporate Alliance. Henceforth, they will pay us 25% of all the minerals and energy they generate. Our HR department declares the settlement a Win-Win solution.

As humanity marches into the year 2221 everything is going great and everybody is happy … Except for the Twax’lhdar … And the Gorf … And possibly the slaves (we don’t track those numbers).

Next time: We launch a more expansion exploration of the galaxy in search of other species in need of a good*, honest, job. Also: Robots! Because nothing makes a giant corporation more lovable and community focused than extensive automation.