Chapter III: The First War Begins
Actually the Orion Sector is just a part of the galaxy, but I donīt want to nitpick.
Cerva? What is a Cerva? This will not do. Renaming will commence in 1... 2...
Here we have the Mordanth System, after the fall of Meklon new centre of the Meklar race. Or so they think...
Now letīs take a look on our starting world. Well... astonishingly, Mordanth even
looks like it is some refuge at the ass end of the universe.
Where are we, anyway?
Oh. Here are we. The outer frontier of the Orion Sector.
Finally, after a long wait in hiding, the Imperial Parliament of Mordanth decided to claim back space. Normally, that would pose an extremely annoying problem, since the people of the Imperium had decided upon their arrival to voluntarily erase the memories of the advanced technologies the Meklar had used before, to minimize the chance that their civilisation may be detected by their enemies before the time was right. But in the first Galactic Cycle after the Imperial Parliament instated a Monarch called the Imperator as a military leader and figurehead of the Imperium, the legacy of the legendary Meklar scientist BONEBREAKER was found in its resting place of the first Imperator of the Mordanth Imperium, the Mechanical Monument. The legacy consisted of detailed plans and descriptions on the principles of FTL-Travel -it freed the scientists of the young Imperium from the arduous task of relearning something that had originally taken literally hundreds of cycles to be discovered.
Now the new Imperator A1414-IH9-L120OR was tasked with the enormous duty of commanding the imperial fleets to victory. Even with all other races still in the process of freeing themselves from the chains the New Orions had bound them with, the task of destroying the Orion Senate and replacing it with the Mordanth Imperium will take a very long time...
Luckily, we donīt have to build everything from scratch: In about half a cycle the Imperium converted a sublight ore-trailer and an old sublight transport ship to prototypes of an interstellar colony and an interstellar outpost ship. After a few considerations, the Imperator commanded the conversion of two old system survey ships into FTL-Reconnaissance ships.
Immediately, the Imperator commanded the ships through the three star lanes of the Mordanth System to explore the neighbouring stars. But in the last moment, the Imperial Parliament overrode this first imperial decision partly: The colony ship should instead of leaving the system be used in colonising the other two usable planets of the Mordanth System. Until now, nothing could have been done about them, because the danger of detecting the spreading population had been considered to high. Furious about the loss of the FTL-Drive onboard the colony ship, the Imperator commanded the home world to commence building a small sublight ship for system colonization, to prevent further intrusions upon its command. In the name of BONEBREAKER the first ships then finally left the system, and the colony ship landed on one of the unclaimed worlds of the Mordanth System.
Now we will soon have three instead of one starting world -a great help if you plan to take on eight enemies simultaneously later in the game.
A few other things need planning, to reduce the chance of hideous humiliation. For example, after starting, I changed the government from old-style monarchy to constitutional monarchy and dialled the oppressometer back down. The oppressometer influences how your empire deals with its population: Between the far right (George Orwellīs 1984) and the far left (the government lets you do anything outside of outright breaking the laws) everything is possible. Except for the triangle-borders you can see above. These triangles change position regarding how your race feels. If you took to many choices during your species adjustment that increase unrest, these borders will wander to the left, if you reduced unrest enough, the border will wander to the right, allowing more oppression without the punishment the population normally will mete out against every emperor foolish enough to adjust the slider to far outside these borders. Long story short: The more you place the cursor left, the more happy your people will be, the more right, the better you can capture enemy spies. But civil unrest will increase dramatically, too.
Development plans will come in handy, sooner or later, too. If you forget a few of your planets later on, a few logically structured development plans will aid the AI in controlling those lost worlds, thus minimizing the damage of your idiotic underlings.
Finances are solely the domain of the Imperial Parliament, at least for now. Seriously, as long as there is no war or everything works, you should leave your finances alone. Playing around with taxation in this game can have grave consequences -there are many similarities to how a real-life government works, so you can dive into the red sea of debt, if you want. A financial collapse during a war will of course severely hampering your options, e. g. border worlds will be forced to strip down their defence, what with no money to maintain them and all. And there will be unrest, upheaval and outright rebellions, if you are stubborn enough at spending more then you earn. So, as I said, I will do nothing at this point.
Now to the research output of the Imperium: We will be breezing through the first levels of our tech tree, thanks to our superior research and creativity, so we will plan for the future here: Biology, Social, and Economic Sciences will getting the shaft -but there arenīt
that many technologies for conquest in there. Everything useful will come sooner or later -but especially Physics contains many needed ship technologies, so the most reseach will go in here.
During the first few cycles, the Mordanth Imperium successfully explored the Gion and Xenon Systems -and even found a few useful worlds. The Survey Ships finished their work and immediately set course on to the next star lanes.
A green world. Even more than useful. Mineral abundance only average could hurt a bit during the early game, though.
Xenon IV seems a good place for either a production centre or a research world. Mineral abundance poor is of course bad for mining. Maybe I will set a few agrarian DEAs here, to get a agricultural surplus.
A new star lane appeared.
Between two stars I never even heard about. Well, not my problem.
An unknown ship appears! Wow, that was fast. Normally, you donīt find enemies after several dozen rounds.
Time for a new scout force, me thinks. A small, almost unarmed frigate will now start to explore new star lanes. It is also the sole member of the proud Task Force 1st Imperial Exploration Force.
With the advent of the 15th Cycle after reclaiming Space, an alien spaceship was sighted in the Inari System, only two star lanes distant from Mordanth. The ship was of unknown design and the Imperator immediately send a new scout to investigate.
In the meantime, letīs build star ships! In truth, mostly our home world churns out only one thing: New colony ships, alternating with a few new scout ships. Other designs arenīt needed before the first
real enemy shows up anyway.
The longer we wait, the more powerful our first real warships will be.
Next time: TEH ENEMY reveals himself!