Broken Stars and No Free Lunches!

[Samara]

I’ve debated for quite some time over whether or not to do an AAR and finally decided to bite the bullet since it might give me the motivation to actually finish a campaign for once (and will distract from schoolwork). It’s going to be a relatively small-map game in the current version because I’m a genocidal maniac at heart, and for full disclosure I’m running the game with AuroraWrapper with the Solaris theme via Proton because that’s the only way I’ve been able to get it to run on Linux Mint, my current OS (and the only one I’m going to have access to for a long time). There are still some graphical errors and weird bugs that I’ve been unable to fix but that’s the tradeoff and I can live with it. I’m not expecting to update regularly or to carry the campaign anywhere near to its conclusion, but it’ll be very nice to play the game with a more concrete goal in mind. Anyways, on to setup.

35 systems total at 15% research speed, limited research admin, realistic promotions, and so on. Real stars, ruin generation chance is very high at 50%, as is randomized NPR generation at 75%, with 25% chance each for Pre-Industrial, Industrial, and Minor races. 5 NPRs to start, which can generate at any distance from Sol. Spoilers are set to appear only once all systems are surveyed, and invaders are currently off. I want this to be a somewhat chaotic game, where moving in usually means pushing somebody else out. Even after so many years of playing this game I’m not even going pretend I’m good at it. It’ll be a fun test.

Some house rules:

Researchers are only allowed to research within their specialty. None available? Then no research in that category until I get one.

Any body with a max colony cost below 8 and with a max capacity of 30 million or more MUST be settled and have at least a small police force, STO capability, a cargo shuttle station, and no more than five tracking stations. Settled bodies with a max capacity of roughly 3 billion or more must also receive a spaceport, two ground force construction complexes, a military academy, their own (usually small) orbital defenses, and their own ground army of about a million tons which is to be built on-site only. This is going to be very expensive.

New systems will not be settled until the minimum requirements for the currently-being-settled system are met (ground forces can still be under construction). Listening posts are fine though, as are stabilization and scrapping runs, but not ground forces. Oh, and all planets, dwarf planets, and moons will get named (although I will use a name generator for this).

I’ll add other things as I think of them (like the medal pack I just now recalled but can never remember who made, plus a minimum of two officers for anything bigger than a FAC), but for now let’s get started with the actual game.

Techs I’m giving myself:

• Construction / Production:
  • Just the basic jump stabilization tech since I hate waiting for that one.
• Ground Combat:
  • Construction, decontamination, geosurvery, Xenoarcheology, and all of the various capabilities with the exception of extreme pressure, low gravity, and high gravity. Combined those are probably my least favorite technologies to research.
• Logistics:

  • Salvage Module only. I seem to be keeping with my usual Very Bad Luck in logistics researchers. And this is the best it’s been in a while.

    

• Power and Propulsion:
  • All of the necessary techs for jump drives
• Sensors and Control Systems:
  • The grav and geo sensors plus the science department.

I’ve well exceeded the instant research points by this point, but eh.

Hopefully my researchers get better soon. Sensors and Defenses are especially painful.

In any case, I SM in some parts and hack together a few quick (and crappy designs)

There’s also some freighters, a troop transport, and two stabilization ships. That, together with SM-ing my initial ground forces in order (which hopefully shouldn’t bankrupt me) should find us ready to go.

These are all the places in Sol that meet our requirements. Let’s get our orders queued up and ready to go! I should be able to post stuff beyond just setup next time.

[Samara]

The first two years have been eventful, if a bit boring. All of the tracking stations have been placed and a (small) number of people are settled on each body. Sol is completely gravsurveyed and mostly geosurveyed, and we’re starting to overhaul our survey ships before sending the out into other star systems while also making good progress on LP stabilization. Rhea does actually have a fair bit of Corrundium at 0.9 accessibility so I dumped a bunch of minerals there and am using civilians to ship over some factories. They’ll build a bunch of infrastructure first before shifting over to building mines. Luna is already starting the terraforming process and there’s been a considerable amount of combat off screen, which is making me delightfully nervous. With any luck I’ll be able to mass-produce our crappy little destroyer design and we’ll be somewhat safe for a little bit. For now I’ll be content with six (plus the two missile platforms), but the more aggressively we expand the better.

You know what, maybe I was a bit too ambitious with wanting to name every single significant body in each system. I’m not going to come up with over 50 names just for one system, that’s crazy.

Interestingly enough I don’t think I’ve ever gotten Alpha Centauri and Proxima Centauri so close to each other in a game before. It might be due to how few systems there are?

Huh. Now that I wasn’t expecting. Well that makes all four of our local connections officially discovered. I still have a lot of instant build points left so I think I’m going to redirect one of my stabilization ships over to the connection and send over an instant-build salvage ship to see what I can find. I’ll also insta-build another stabilization ship or two, I think, given that I’m think the next system I move in to is going to be Alpha Centauri.

We also discover Sirius, which unfortunately has nothing we can settle. We’re discovering our local systems at a pretty good clip, mainly because I can’t help but poke my head into jump points as we discover them.

If nothing else at least there’s lots of places to settle, even if most of them aren’t particularly good. I did, however, find a ruined outpost in Alpha Centauri and now I have an excuse to bring a few science brigades there.

In the meantime, after quite a while of traveling we were able to snag some good loot from the wrecks. Once I get it all stored away on Earth I’ll disassemble it immediately and call it quits for this session.

In the meantime while I wait for our salvager to trundle along back home, we discovered a very interesting system. Shockingly, nobody lives there, but there are ruins and an ancient construct.

The oxygen level is very high, but it should be very easy to terraform, just slow due to its size. I’ll need to take a bit of time to think about what to do next.

Our loot will speed up research by years.

10 out of 35 systems known and not a single neighbor so far. Lots to think about.

[kyonkun]

Maximum Number of Systems doesn’t affect Known Stars games so you will be in for a fun surprise when you explore your 35th JP.

[Samara]

Wait, seriously? How did I miss that?

[paolot]

We know this.
But… where is it written? I cannot find it in the patches notes.

[nuclearslurpee]

I think it long predates the patch notes. It is an intrinsic feature of how real stars generation works, since random stars uses a limited range of system ID numbers but real stars does not.

[Samara]

In that case in all honesty I’m probably just going to restart the campaign, as functionally unlimited systems goes completely against the “knife fight in a phone booth” type of game I’ve really been wanting to play. I’ll probably just keep on with the same thread in order to reduce clutter, though.

[kyonkun]

The bottom of the Game Information window.

[AuroraSteve]

It’s in the text information on the game window when you mouse over the setting.

[Samara]

Right, after that big setup mistake (which we’re going to pretend didn’t happen) I’m starting a new game. Setup is exactly the same except that Real Stars is turned off.

I’ve also broken my logistics research curse this time and pulled a guy who’s not terrible!

Terrible luck on military shipyards, though. Was not expecting that.

I’m able to get back to where I was pretty quick, but interestingly enough I do manage to pull some ruins on Mars. I always knew the little green men were real. Once my troop transport finishes its garrison drop-off circuit I’ll have it ship my xenoscience brigade on over.

Our first jump point is also uncomfortably close to our planets.

Nothing very interesting in that system though, I’m afraid. A bit of Sorium, not very much.

This, however, is very interesting. Hopefully they want to talk to us. That speed is worrying. The presence of active sensors in confirmed.

I don’t feel comfortable with this, and set them to hostile. 4,000 civilians are killed and one Anti-ship STO gun in the ensuring shootout with very little gained.

They did, however, get too close on their second pass at the cost of another 20,000 civilians dead. Let’s pick of those lifepods and get some info from them. In the meantime I’ll use some of my remaining instabuild points to make a scrapper.

May as well call it a destroyer.

hmmmmmmm. Hopefully this isn’t a full invasion. I’ll toss out a slow but very long-ranged minelayer out as soon as I’m able. Nothing serious, just something able to observe and cause a bit of friction to smaller forces.

While they pop their head in and out of Sol, we discover a new system.

Maybe they’ll want to talk?

They did not want to talk, and don’t even collect the lifepods. I feel sorry for the crew more than anything else, and use the last of my naval instabuild points making a replacement.

The system we discover, though, does have some potential for long-term settlement. Especially since we now know that there’s one way out of Sol: through the guys we just pissed off.

I figure this is as good a stopping place as any, and it’s quite late in my time zone. Will continue eventually!

[Samara]

So now we have some interesting problems. The only system adjacent to us has virtually nothing, and the only system beyond that has a not insignificant number of hostiles that we’re unable to communicate with and who keep popping their head in and out of Sol. Moreover, given how small the map is it’s extremely likely that new connections into Sol can open at any time and in any place. We need defenses, and they need to be dispersed. A handful of destroyers guarding Sol and our current JP connection aren’t going to cut it.

It’s not perfect by any means, but this self-propelling missile base design should be able to, at the very least, give us a bit more wiggle room in the case of planetary raids, and be able to return to Earth for re-arming as needed and with a minimum of micro. We’re not going to be able to build tugs for a good long while yet so I feel like this is a good middle ground. I’ll plan on putting one around every planet and gas giant complex, which shouldn’t strain our logistics too much, and I’ll queue up a supply ship design to make regular yearly runs. Our only available shipyard should finish building its current slipway next year so I’ll get started building these as soon as I’m able and focus on getting our maintenance facilities in place. Given how little combat I’m expecting these to see I likely won’t even bother training them (although that might change at any time).

We might, however, have a better way out of this situation. At the very least the central planet might have some use as a long-term pit stop rather than as a temporary fuel refinery.

Jackpot. We’ll survey SL 8 and 2 on our way to see whether or not anybody’s living on Latobius. I’ll also send a stablization ship into the system to get the travel routes set up for our salvager. This is actually crazy.

I, ahhhh. Huh. Well then. Maybe I should reconsider that stablization ship. Whoever’s fighting over there is also picking up the lifepods, and using missiles.

In the meantime, it seems like I have made an error in designing my mines.

Looks like I accidentally set the second stage seperation range to 0km? Well, better luck next time I suppose. We’ll have to see what they do once they enter Sol again.

We also meet our new neighbors. Let’s…let’s take this one a bit more peacefully this time.

I, uhhhh. Apparently accidentally went along the same route they were. We do seem to scare them off, though, and continue along our way.

BUT IN A FEW MORE DAYS ALONG THE SAME ROUTE WE MAKE CONTACT ARE NO LONGER CONSIDERED HOSTILE!!! It’s a minor miracle. Still gonna set down those new mines, though, in as many places as I can get away with.

We also make contact with the newer aliens the very next day who for some reason also have the same flag. Maybe they’re in some sort of federation? I’m going to pop my head through the nearby jump gate to see who they’re fighting and then survey the rest of the system. They don’t really want hanging around, which is understandable.

Also this is very scary.

Looks like they’ve been going at it for a minute. Zero chance Carmine Cove isn’t their homeworld. Please don’t kill me?

>

Those are some big guns for this early, though. We’ll have to find alternate routes, but it looks like Victory might end up being our only real place to expand into. Painful. The Varaldur also send a diplomatic ship into our system to smooth things over. Can’t really complain too much about that. I’ll reduce our protect level slightly. Is there any real way to reduce protection level on an empire-by-empire basis? I honestly can’t remember.

In any case…I am very much debating snagging those wrecks. It would be fantastic intel but with the diplomatic risk…

I think what I’ll probably do is tack a jump drive on to our preexisting salvager design so we won’t open ourselves up to significant invasion risk, just in case. Luckily I have a commercial shipyard very near to this size already (two really, but I’m saving the other for when we start making self-mobile stations).

I also name the new system we discover after an easier-to-pronounce version of the primary Varaldur diplomat in hopes of buttering him up further. We may end up being able to settle this place, although it would be very easy to cut off and we’re only able to reach it though Lurgatan territory. We’ll just have to wait and see. I very much want those salvage ships, and soon…but only just now realized that I forgot to actually research the prototype jump drive which will take a year and a half.

We discover another system leading from Victory. I’ll Rose Isle and the other planets only and call it a day with this update. It’s about five years in now and our survey ships are slowly returning for their first overhaul.

The girls have been fighting, and the Varaldur have claimed as theirs our only hope of expansion. There will be war over this.

As a side note, does anyone know how to SM-in a fantastic relationship between two NPRs? I want to lean into the trade federation idea for the Varaldur and Lurgatan since they share a flag.