President's Log

Race: Human

Number of races in galaxy: 6 total

Hostile: Unknown

Date: Jan 1, 2225

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"The Earth is the cradle of humanity, but mankind cannot stay in the cradle forever."

-- Konstantin Tsiolkovsky

This day, Jan 1, 2225, will forever be known as the day humanity finally threw off their shackles and leaped for the stars. The first colony ship had already landed on Mars, but now was the time to leave the solar system and spread out into the universe. The nations of the world had all united together in order to effectively compete with the alien civilizations, into a political entity called the United Earth Directorate. Jay has been elected President for Life, and it's capital is located in New York. As I, President Jay, lead the human species to it's finest hour, I will leave my personal memoirs for your perusal, so that future generations can view our past achievements in awe.

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So, anyways, as leader of the United Earth Directorate, our plans to colonize the myraid worlds as quickly as possible have led our scientists to develop a much better alternative to the current colony ship that we designed to get to Mars. After a few months on the drawing board, and a few weeks of building, we finally built our primary colony ship:

The Armstrong Seeder (Yes, I know this is the second generation ship, but I made this AAR after the fact...). Equipped with 2 hyperdrives and long range life support systems, this ship is intended to "seed" the galaxy with human colonists on planets far, far away. It's living habitat is located in the ring structure (meaning that the bulk of the ship is really just a giant powerplant and engine), spins so that it can provide artificial gravity; according to my scientists it spins fast enough so that it can provide 0.5g. While not perfect, it is certainly good enough for long duration flights in interstellar space. It is truly a marvellous ship. It is designed to carry about 35 personnel, and 100 million fertilized embryos, to be thawed out and grown into an initial planetary colony.

As president, I approved for a fleet of 20 of these ships, to be marked for immediate departure to their new destinations throughout the galaxy.

But, of course, we need to find the planets first, before we go like crazy. To that end, the United Earth Space Agency, or UESA for short, had also designed a probe to seek out new planets:

This probe, known as the CosmoDrone (Again, second generation only, the first one was already obsolete by the time I wrote this AAR), is an unmanned probe designed to seek out new worlds and new civilizations, and to go where no man has gone before! It is a sensor ship, and as a result, is capable of seeing out half a sector in diameter. In other words, it can find those Earth-like planets before they even reach the star system, or indeed even reach the sector. And in the future, it can also serve as a spy satellite to keep tabs on our alien neighbors. I order out a bunch of these to aggresively explore the galaxy, and soon the map slowly, but surely reveals itself.

The first planet that we find would be just half a sector away from Earth, the planet would be known as Darwin:

A class 10 world (now class 12), it's surface had abundant riches that would not be found on Earth, ranging from Precursor ruins to rare resources that would speed up industrialization of the colony.

It was initially thought that most worlds out there would be between class 9-13, but it was not to be. Most of the worlds that we found were below class 9. Our next class 10 world was over 5 sectors away, near Altarian space. Because it had much research resources (including Precursor ruins), the colony would be named Einstein, which would be my main research world. But, nearby, we also found a virtual Garden of Eden:

This planet would be called Reach, as it was nearby Earth, and much better quality. At class 19, it would become both the Influential and Technological capital of the UED. Another good planet was also found near Einstein; it was a class 18 planet. We rushed out to get it (especially since it was near the other side of the galaxy). It would be named Gaia. Gaia had rich industrial resources, and it would eventually be the manufacturing capital of the United Earth Directorate.

In the end of the colony rush, the galactic map looked something like this:

The UED (in blue) was hugely successful in colonizing some of the best worlds, and colonized a lot of class 5-9 planets as well. The population of the human race would soon skyrocket on these 21 worlds, soaring to over 200 billion by the year 2232. So, not only does humanity have the largest empire, but also the largest population too.

Of course, having a large population means that you also have to have a pretty strong military to protect them all as well. So, during the days of small hulls and not so good logistics, we had to improvise. Here is an example one of our first generation fighters:

It is an Unmanned Space Vehicle, or USV for short. And it was a Berserker-class USV, so-called because it was equiped with and Ion-Drive and a missile turret. It was designed to go on the attack, to unload a pair of Ares-class missiles on the enemy. As well, it can also be retrofitted to carry nuclear and biological warheads. I also had other USV's for defense, though they were more like satellites than USV, since they stayed strictly in orbit. My weapons research would focus on missiles and railguns.

Of course, such a vehicle would be inadequate to deal with the growing Korath threat. So, a little later, I would design the first generation Mass Driver gun:

This is the Tunguska class Mass Driver. Built with a medium sized hull, this behemoth is truely a formidable opponent. It is equipped with a massive railgun, (in actuality I gave it 2 mass drivers, but I want the railgun to be a little more realistic...), that can launch a 2000 ton Tungsten rod at 10% of the speed of light! As well, it is equipped with a SCUD-IV launcher for shorter range engagements, and as a backup weapon when the railgun is recharging and reloading. It is heavily shielded, to defend against the Korath laser weaponry. On the side of the muzzle are huge heat radiators to dispel the massive amounts of waste heat generated by the railgun and it's antimatter powerplant. Unlike the small ships, this Mass Driver is manned. On board is staff of about 20 personnel, in order to ensure smooth functioning of the weapon, and to initialize repairs as necessary. All of it's weapon systems are highly automated, and the command center is deep within the core of the ship, in order to protect it's human crew.

Other than that, there have been no wars against the UED thus far, although the relations with the Korath are quite hostile at this time. My main trading partners are the Altarians and the Drath, and the Altarians are at war with both the Yor Collective and the Korath at this time. To that effect, I placed a trade embargo on the Yor, ceasing all trade deals with them until they sign a peace treaty with the Altarians.

Well, that's it for the story so far. The above is just a basic summary of what went on between now and the beginning of the game. Stay tuned for more badass ship designs and epic wars...

Interesting start Berserker-shall be following this

like the ship designs.

Are you playing ToA? also how do you bring up the planet detail screen?

cheers

Alright, I'm back for more. Please note that, as I have other commitments (i.e. College), my story will be a bit...slow. However, I'm able to make a little bit of progress by the week.

Jan 5, 2230:

I ordered all the governers of the Major worlds, which are Earth, Reach, Gaia, Einstein, Darwin, and Terminus respectively, to start building the new Tunguska mass drivers. So far, the UED Galactic Command, or UEDGC for short, has determined that in order for our new Star Force to be effective, we will need on the order of 1200 ships. (OK, in practice, that is more like 30 ships. However, I am pretending that each ship on screen represents a fleet of 40 ships...). At the very least, that will give us a much larger fleet than the Korath, so that if they ever stupidly decide to attack us, we can hope to overwhelm them.

Needless to say, with a population in excess of 200 billion people (more than 3 times the size of the Korath population), it is unlikely that the Korath would ever be able to effectively occupy our worlds. But, as I tell my advisors, it is always a good idea to keep up with them militarily. My plan thus far has been to focus on allying with all friendly alien species, while keeping hostile aliens like the Korath at bay.

To that end, our engineers have also designed an invasion ship. It is named the Conquistador class Dropship, named after the conquistadors that conquered the Americas in the 16th century.

My military advisors bring up the ship design on my computer screen for my perusal:

The ship itself has no windows, in order to rid it of structural weaknesses and to protect the troops from deadly radiation emanating out of the vacuum of space. The giant pods dotted all over the ship carry all the crew and equipment, so that when the ship goes into orbit on the target planet, each of those pods will drop down all over the planet, so that the troops can emerge and commence the invasion. Planetary invasion is quite a dangerous thing, as the pods can land, quite literally, anywhere on the planet. As the pods drop down, it is designed to unleash parachutes to ensure a safe landing. Generally, there is no command center in this ship; as it is completely automated and controlled from afar. This is to ensure that it moves through the vacuum of space as secretly as possible. The ship is equipped with the Paro class missile launcher for basic defense, and has basic armor, to protect against micrometorites.

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Eager to try out my new military hardware, it has been decided that the planet Dark Yor will be the primary testing ground. Of course, in our democratic, enlightened civilization, such an action would be unthinkable to most. So, as the good politician I am, I decided to set oursevles up and find an excuse to invade and conquer their one and only world. Luckily, they traded heavily with the Yor Collective, who happen to be allied with the Korath. It was thus decided that in order to justify our war with the Dark Yor, we had to make some connection with the Korath. And so, our news outlets broadcasted to all of our worlds that the Dark Yor were secretly being paid by the Korath to sabatouge our worlds and our economy (in actuality, our economy is quite strong: about 600bc in revenue every week!)

And so, this rather flimsy justification was made in order to invade and conquer their world. Of course, I really did have reasons to conquer their world, other than trying out my new military hardware. For one, they controlled 2 military resources. And second, I just found them really annoying in general. Third, they occupied a class 15 world, and I wanted it. So, gathering up 1000 million troops, and a single Tunguska mass driver, we set out to conquer this planet and test our new military:

The military high command decided that it was best to send out radio broadcasts all over the planet, in the hopes that some of the Dark Yor would join our ranks and help us annex this world. Naturally, we won, but most of our troops (and virtually all of the Dark Yor turncoats) perished:

The mission was a success, and the UED-Dark Yor war came to an end in approximately 16 days. Even better, it turns out that we can save all of the planetary infrastructure, so that it saves us the costs of rebuilding.

--To Be Continued.