The Ancients
v2.7 adds a new, non-hostile spoiler race called the ‘Ancients’.
Background
This is the race that built the ancient constructs and pre-dates the precursors. At some point in the distant past, they vanished. Their departure meant the ancient constructs became dormant and no longer prevented the formation of aether rifts, allowing the Invaders to enter the milky way galaxy.
When the ancients departed, they left behind many artifacts. Some of these were colonies, with intact factories, research facilities and other installations, including orbital habitats. Others were large harvester stations, terraforming stations, maintenance bases or asteroid mining stations, or even a rare ancient warship. Over time, many of these artifacts were destroyed by alien races, precursors, invaders, raiders or star swarm or succumbed to the ravages of time, but some still survive, hidden away in systems that have seen no alien presence in thousands of years. These ancient colonies have no populations or defence forces and the ships and stations have no crews. They await the first intrepid explorer to discover them.
Details
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Ancient colonies and ships have a very small random chance to appear. This chance is much greater on bodies with an ancient construct and in systems containing an ancient construct.
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Ancient colonies or stations will not appear in any system generated with an NPR or other spoiler race.
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Ancient colonies can be captured with ground forces.
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Ancient ships and stations can be captured by boarding parties. Like any captured ship, they will be of little use until provided with a crew.
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If an ancient harvester, mining station, etc. is captured, it will use the technology of the capturing race when determining its production capacity.
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The various spoiler races will destroy or capture any ancient relics if given the chance. Ancient stations tend to be large, so this is of particular benefit to the swarm.
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Any ruin with an ancient construct will have the Ancients as the ruin race and will be TL5.
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There is a very small chance that a random wreck will be an ancient ship or station.