((Holy cow, a year takes a long time when you're screenshotting everything
))
2227 ADThe year kicked off pretty smoothly. A factory was bought on Earth, and another was planned. A unique building, called the Innovation Complex, was assigned to the research bonus square. The flagship was placed on auto-survey mode, the asteroid miner got to work, and the colony ship headed towards the revealed planets of the Iversonia system. A new colony ship was laid down, but purchasing was put on hold, as the purchase price would have knocked off about 1/3 of the current treasury.
The first research project was Artificial Gravity, as that would lead to the planetary improvements that everyone wanted.
Before January had even ended, our first colony was founded:
A lovely C14 planet, this world has both a manufacturing bonus tile (soon occupied by a factory), an influence boosting tile, and a research tile.
Soon, artificial gravity had been perfected:
Artificial Gravity is a technology that is the direct result of having immense amounts of energy on hand. The applications of artificial gravity are both obvious and subtle.
The obvious application is that ships can now travel for extended periods through space with native gravity levels without comprimising the ship design with fragile and unreliable physical motion devices (i.e. ships do not have to spin their hulls to maintain gravity).
The historical fleets of the Drengin Empire and the Arcean Empire in the pre-artificial gravity era are very obvious. Their hulls spin on a super conducting pivot powered by regulated micro bursts of thrust to keep the spinning consistent. Needless to say, these ships would not be reliable in battle.
The Drengin fleet that conquered the Torian home world in the pre-hyperdrive era were all without artificial gravity and relied on a stargate that resulted in travel time of nearly a year. Two of the troop carriers in that journey had a malfunction in their rotational axis control during the journey resulting in having over 25,000 Drengin shock troops having to live out their remaining lives in space.
Fortunately, the lives of those Drengin shock troops was short since they were soon converted into fuel. Another key use is that it can be used to channel gravity on planets which allows for more serious planetary improvements.
But very soon, the game was changed forever. An unidentified ship entered the Iversonia system and transmitted a message:
We could not understand their language, but a distinct sense of hostility was detected from these mechanical beings.
In what was widely considered a joke, the Innovation Complex was finished on April 1st. The complex was to be a place where the average citizen could explore the universe and maybe think up the next big thing.
While hunting anomalies, the flagship had discovered a new habitable world. The colony ship in construction was finished with the power of money, and a new world was founded:
It was relatively unremarkable, though it did contain an approval-boosting tile.
New propulsion techniques were discovered:
We've got Hyperdrive, the great contribution to the galaxy made by the Humans. But Hyperdrive is pretty basic stuff.
To go faster, we need to come up with other ways to go faster. There's basically two ways to increase how fast we travel.
The first way is to bend space more. That's basically all Hyperdrive does. Ships still cannot move very fast in normal space; so Hyperdrive used immense amounts of energy in order to slightly warp space to make a 10 million mile trip seem the same as taking a one light year trip.
The second way to make ships travel faster is to increase how fast they move in normal space. Bigger thrusters and what have you. We have some great ideas that, with some good research grants, will allow us to come up with much more advanced stuff.
The Innovation Complex paid off! A citizen had been able to solve a problem that our scientists had been struggling with, and Planetary Improvements were designed ahead of schedule!
Alien worlds provide new challenges to the industrial and farming trades. Different soils, climates and gravities all have their effect on what and how we build. With this new technology we are better able to face those challenges.
((Actually, this is due to the Terran's Creative racial ability, which will sometimes give you the tech that you are currently working on. I'm just RPing it as being a result of the Innovation Complex))
Xeno Economics soon followed:
Improving our economic well-being on our home planet is something we are pretty good at. Running an interstellar economy is a very different thing. We have begun looking at how other cultures do it, deciding which tactics work best and integrating those into our economic system.
A colony ship set to land on the planet Ymir I sent a transmission back to HQ, informing the council that indigenous sentients had been discovered. A quick emergency vote later, and it was decided to round up the natives and transfer them to an uninhabited continent, leaving the larger continent to the Terrans.
Ymir I was also a fairly unremarkable world:
Humanity's first starbase constructor was sent to mine a resource that improves weapons. It will likely prove useful if war ever erupts.
Soon, Ion drive was discovered:
Ion Drive is the next step up from Hyperdrive. It enables ships to travel slightly faster through normal space, and unlike other attempted propulsion technologies, remains stable when traveling through the warped space created by the Hyperdrive.
Another potentially hostile race was discovered, and also entered the Iversonia system:
The discovery of another race right on our doorstep led to the discovery of Interstellar Warfare:
Once we believed we were the only intelligent life out there. Or well, maybe not the only intelligent life but the only intelligent life we'd ever have to deal with. Then came the star gates, and while we knew there was intelligent life out there that could potentially be considered dangerous or be conquered by us, it wasn't really feasible.
Today at the international consortium, we have concluded the necessity of setting up a research center to start pondering what to do about hyperdrive. The next step is space militarization which will take us from theory to engineering.
Humanity built a second constructor, and used it to build an economic starbase in the Sol system. A third was used to upgrade the base.
The flagship entered a wormhole and got spit out halfway across the galaxy. Thankfully, it started heading home, but it uncovered troubling signs of advanced life.
Xeno Communications were perfected:
There's so much to understand, so much to ponder when dealing with alien beings. These sentient creatures may not be bipedal or even humanoid. This path of research will put us on the path of being able to understand them, negotiate with them, trade with them, and even entice them with our culture.
While flying home, another race was encountered by the flagship. Thankfully, this one is pretty far away from us:
With alien races popping out of the woodwork, the Universal Translator was given the go-ahead:
Different species have different modes of communication. The Universal Translator will translate the various blurps, beeps, and blunks into intelligent language for us to understand and so communicate back with them.
In the spirit of diplomacy, the first United Planets assembly was convened:
Honestly, we kinda brow-beat them. But we must show these "Drath" that we're not to be trifled with!
End of Turn 1
