Breakaway Civilization Quest

[We Just Write]

Transhuman civilization is flourishing. Octillions of people are living their lives across civilized space, from the full-fledged dyson swarms of the Old Core to the scattered settlements of the Expansion Front nine thousand light years from Sol, societies live on.

Still, when people are packed in that tight, sometimes it just really gets to you. In such cases, it's fairly common for a few million-billion people to get together, buy a small fleet of Voidskippers, and set off to make their own way elsewhere in the universe. That's you, by the way.

Fortunately Voidskippers are much, much faster when traveling outside the galactic disk, meaning that breakaway groups such as yourselves can go quite a long way from the Milky Way. You fully intend to, with a destination picked out well over a billion light years from Sol.

Anyway, tell us a bit about yourselves, why don't you?

First off, why are you all sticking together, instead of going your separate ways in your separate ships?
(-size will move you one slot down the size vote, +size vice versa)
(+Budget multiplies budget by 1.5, -Budget multiplies by 0.75. Multipliers applied after all +/- pairs canceled)
(Cohesion dictated purely by other decisions; More Cohesion is Good)

[] Charismatic Leader: (-Size, ~Cohesion, ~Budget)
All hail the supreme leader! Long may xe reign!

[] Shared Dream: (~Size, +Cohesion, ~Budget)
Together we shall build our Utopia! Onwards into the glorious future!

[] Shared Grievance: (~Size, +Cohesion, -Budget)
Fuck you guys, we're leaving. You've been nothing but mean to us and we're not putting up with it.

[] Safety In Numbers: (+Size, -Cohesion, +Budget)
Look, I know we don't have much in common, but it's dangerous to go alone!

Alright, now, how big is your group? (Rungs marked with >< only accessible through modifiers)

>< Mid billions: (Budget x100, Pops x100, --Cohesion)
A raucous mob of competing interests, it's unlikely that you'll remain unified.

[] Low billions: (Budget x10, Pops x10, -Cohesion)
Large, but there's still a reasonable chance of sticking together.

[] High millions: (Budget x1, Pops x1, ~Cohesion)
Fairly typical in both scope and odds of success.

[] Mid millions: (Budget x0.1, Pops x 0.1, +Cohesion)
A small fleet of a few ships; far from the worst start, but far from the best.

>< Low millions: (Budget: One Ship, Pops x0.01, +Cohesion)
Barely a city state, it remains to be seen how you'll do.

Any particular details that were left out? (Pick two Sub-Options, sub-options count toward the same root option)

[] Strong Ideology (+Cohesion, locks certain actions)

-[] Stability (An emphasis on long-term planning and risk mitigation)
Always rushing forwards without taking the time to think is the province of fools.

-[] Prosperity (Emphasizes resource acquisition and rapid growth)
Gotta grab all those resources before someone else does, right?

-[] No Soph Left Behind (Emphasizes social responsibility and trust, +Cohesion)
Societies are supposed to take care of their people, that's the entire POINT!

[] Mad Scientists (Increases tech advancement in field, Possible Diplomatic Consequences)

-[] Bio/Nanotech (Nanoweapons, Biomorphs, Exotic Chemical Syntheses, Precision Manufacturing)
The life sciences have long since moved from simply observing and studying.

-[] Cognitive/Computer Science (Brainware, Malware, Cyberwar, Custom Minds)
Doing lots of math quickly and efficiently truly is a wonderous feat.

-[] Engineering (Biggatons, Synthmorphs, Ship Design, Habitat Construction)
If you want to throw absurd amounts of energy around, conventional machinery remains undefeated.

[] Backers (+Budget, obligations, possibly backup)

-[] Extragalactic Mining Concern (Key Item: Potentiated Subsidized Wormhole; Can be opened to make a stable wormhole capable of shifting twenty solar masses back to the Milky Way; largely one-way until sufficient materials sent)
(Obligation: Strip-mine several solar masses worth of material and send them back through the wormhole)
Profits are up this quarter.

-[] Penal Colony (Key Item: Dissident Immigrants, delivered via wormhole. +Cohesion with Shared Grievance background, -Cohesion with any other background)
(Boons: Security Expertise; wormhole comms with Milky Way)
(Obligation: Keep anyone your backers want imprisoned, no questions asked.)
Take the rest of our criminal scum with you when you leave!

-[] Intelligence Agency (Key Item: Retrocaster Array; information-only time machine used to assemble a statistical model of probable futures. Works by firing capsules full of data back in time. You get very limited time on it though.)
(Boons: Wormhole comms with Milky Way)
(Obligation: Process your backer's news pods back in time for them, maintain the retrocaster array. No peeking.)
Everyone wants a lens into what the future may hold.

Up Next: Migration Fleet Design, Equipment Selection

 

[We Just Write]

Civilization Name: Wayfarers
Culture: Utopian Psychologists (Shared Dream, No Soph Left Behind, Mad Cognitive Science)
Cohesion: +3

Population: 1.84 Billion

Systems: Two

Spoiler: Journeyman's Lantern

Primary: Orange Dwarf
Metallicity: Rich
Total exploitable mass: 0.86 M☉
Mass Accessible W/O Starlifting: 0.0008 M☉
Mass Exploited: Negligible

Industrial Capacity: 1576
Wormhole Production: 1776 cm^2 annually, NOW capable.
Basic Habitat Area: 3,068,000 km^2
Population: 1,840,800,000

Employment
-Industrial: 472,800,000 (26%)
--Wormhole: 177,600,000 (10%)
-Military: 210,936,000 (11%)
-Logistics: 41,500,000 ( 2% )
-Service Sector: 753,964,000 (41%)
-Non-Working: ~184,000,000 (10%)

Defensive Skimmers: 993,600
-1% Gobblers
-39% Fighters
-60% TCS nodes

Political Status: Fully Integrated
Unique Asset: Arrival Museum: Will Provide a +Cohesion bonus when population exceeds 43 Billion

Spoiler: Wrele

Primary: Red Dwarf
Metallicity: Rich
Total Exploitable Mass: 0.33 M☉
Mass accessible without starlifting: 0.0005 M☉

Industrial Capacity: 1
Wormhole Production: 0
Basic Habitat Area: 800 km^2
Population: 480,000

Employment
Labor Pool: 432,000
Industrial: 300,000 (62.5%)
Service Sector: 132,000 (27.5%)(minor service sector crunch)

Political Status: Under development

Assets
Standard Industrial Capacity: 1777 (not counting construction ships)
Wormhole Fabrication Capacity: 1205 cm^2 of wormhole area annually, NOW capable.

1x Potentiated Subsidized Wormhole

Civilian Ships
-Freighter: 2 (1 exploring)
-Liner: 3
-Construction Ship: 3
-Explorers: 34
-Mobile Wormhole Foundry: 0

Warships
-Battleship: 0
-Battlecruiser: 1
-Half-Carrier: 19
-Carrier: 0
-Artillery Ship: 0
-Minelayer: 0
-Armed Logistics Cruiser: 2[/spoiler]

 

[DoubleThought]

[x] Plan: Industrial Giant
[x] Safety in Numbers: (+Size, -Cohesion, +Budget)
[x] Mid billions: (Budget x100, Pops x100, --Cohesion)

Two sub-options:
[x] Strong Ideology (+Cohesion, locks certain actions)
-[x] No Soph Left Behind (Emphasizes social responsibility and trust, +Cohesion)
[x] Mad Scientists (Increases tech advancement in field, Possible Diplomatic Consequences)
-[x] Engineering (Biggatons, Synthmorphs, Ship Design, Habitat Construction)

Result: -Cohesion, +Budget x100, Engineering.

 

[We Just Write]

Z: Well, that's certainly an interesting build. The Cohesion would be a bit troublesome, but you did about as good a job mitigating that as you could manage.

 

[hellbolo]

[X] Safety In Numbers: (+Size, -Cohesion, +Budget)
Look, I know we don't have much in common, but it's dangerous to go alone!

pretty much all we can think of

 

[DoubleThought]

I'm thinking that with a strong enough economy and a proper set of morals, a lack of cohesion can be overcome. I think the huge increase to our production will be worth the hit to cohesion, though it's not yet clear how that mechanic works yet.

 

[meloa789]

[X] Plan Outer Heaven
[X] Shared Dream: (~Size, +Cohesion, ~Budget)
Together we shall build our Utopia! Onwards into the glorious future!
[X] Mid millions: (Budget x0.1, Pops x 0.1, +Cohesion)
A small fleet of a few ships; far from the worst start, but far from the best.
[X] Mad Scientists (Increases tech advancement in field, Possible Diplomatic Consequences)
-[X] Cognitive/Computer Science (Brainware, Malware, Cyberwar, Custom Minds)
Doing lots of math quickly and efficiently truly is a wonderous feat.
[X] Backers (+Budget, obligations, possibly backup)
-[X] Intelligence Agency (Key Item: Retrocaster Array; information-only time machine used to assemble a statistical model of probable futures. Works by firing capsules full of data back in time. You get very limited time on it though.)
(Boons: Wormhole comms with Milky Way)
(Obligation: Process your backer's news pods back in time for them, maintain the retrocaster array. No peeking.)
Everyone wants a lens into what the future may hold.

 

[DoubleThought]

[X] Mid billions: (Budget x0.1, Pops x 0.1, +Cohesion)

Click to shrink...

Don't you mean "Mid millions"?

Interesting build.

 

[meloa789]

Don't you mean "Mid millions"?

Interesting build.

Click to shrink...

I thought that one was a typo, so I corrected it.

 

[DoubleThought]

I thought that one was a typo, so I corrected it.

Click to shrink...

There's already a mid billions, for 100x population and budget. Mid millions being 0.1x population and budget is consistent with that.

 

[meloa789]

There's already a mid billions, for 100x population and budget. Mid millions being 0.1x population and budget is consistent with that.

Click to shrink...

Fair enough.

 

[We Just Write]

C: Hoping to get one, maybe two more people to chip in before continuing.

 

[january1may]

Might as well try to come up with a half-decent build...

[X] Plan: Transsophonity
[X] Shared Dream: (~Size, +Cohesion, ~Budget)
Together we shall build our Utopia! Onwards into the glorious future!
[X] High millions: (Budget x1, Pops x1, ~Cohesion)
Fairly typical in both scope and odds of success.
[X] Strong Ideology (+Cohesion, locks certain actions)
-[X] No Soph Left Behind (Emphasizes social responsibility and trust, +Cohesion)
Societies are supposed to take care of their people, that's the entire POINT!
[X] Mad Scientists (Increases tech advancement in field, Possible Diplomatic Consequences
-[X] Cognitive/Computer Science (Brainware, Malware, Cyberwar, Custom Minds)
Doing lots of math quickly and efficiently truly is a wonderous feat.

Not sure how well we did. I thought that the interplay of the last two options was intriguing, though.

 

[We Just Write]

C: Going to call the vote in half an hour or so if no-one else chimes in.

 

[We Just Write]

Origin
-Safety In Numbers: xx
-Shared Dream: xx
Tiebreaker initiated: Shared Dream

Size:
-Mid low billions: x
-High millions: x
-Mid millions: x
Tiebreaker initiated: Averaging to High millions

Details
Mad Science: xxx
-Cognitive/Compsci: xx
-Engineering: x
Ideology: xx
-No Soph Left Behind: xx
Backers: x
-Intelligence Agency: x

Final Build
-Shared Dream
-High Millions
-Ideology (No Soph Left Behind)
-Mad Science (Cognitive/Compsci)

Resulting Stats:
Coherency: +3
Initial Population: 430 M
Budget: 30$

Proceeding to migration fleet design, but you might as well get started on naming your civ first.

 

[We Just Write]

Now that we know who you are, there are only a few questions left. The most pertinent being what sort of fleet you purchased to reach your destination. After all, while Voidskippers are very large spaceships, the idea of cramming four hundred and thirty million people aboard a single ship is frankly ridiculous; people want more space than that. Now, let's see what sort of ships you want to purchase.

Your budget: 30$
Your population: 430 million
You cannot exceed the budget. Your passenger capacity must accommodate your entire population.
Fleet design will be done as approval voting by plan.
When selecting individual ships, put a number in the brackets [1],[3], etc. to indicate how many of that type you want.

This Turn Only Mechanic: Supplies
Long-haul intergalactic travel is quite expensive in terms of fuel and spare parts. This will be rudimentarily represented via the Supplies system.
-There will be four legs of the journey, each roughly corresponding to 400 million light years of travel.
-Each leg, each ship consumes one point of supplies. If a ship runs out, but there's some extra supplies aboard other ships they get transferred around and the fleet keeps going without a prolonged stopover.
-If the entire fleet runs out of supplies and there's no ISRU capable ships, BAD END.
-If the entire fleet runs out of supplies and there are ISRU capable ships, a stopover occurs, with varying effects depending on the proportion of ISRU capable ships. No matter what, all supplies will be replenished during a stopover.
--If more than 50% of the fleet is ISRU-capable, no penalties.
--If more than 25% but less than 50% of the fleet is ISRU capable, -Cohesion at each stopover.
--If less than 25% of the fleet is ISRU capable, --Cohesion at each stopover.
--Reaching -5 Cohesion before the final stop results in the fleet disintegrating.
Normal Ships

[] Freighter
Cost: $$$
Warp Drives: 1
Hull Length: 40 km
Hull Diameter: 12 km
Armor: 30 meters
Maneuverability: Bad
Passenger Capacity: Negligible
Supplies Carried: 10
Never underestimate the usefulness of a good cargo hauler.

[] Liner
Cost: $$$$
Warp Drives: 1
Hull Length: 35 km
Hull Diameter: 8 km
Armor: 30 meters
Maneuverability: Bad
Passenger Capacity: 120 million
Supplies Carried: 1
A simple vessel fitted for moving people from place to place.

[] Construction Ship
Cost: $$$$
Warp Drives: 1
Hull Length: 45 km
Hull Diameter: 12 km
Armor: 30 meters
Maneuverability: Bad
Passenger Capacity: 40 million
Industrial Capacity: 5
Supplies Carried: 4
Skimmers Carried: 200 (140 miners/builders, 60 freight)
ISRU Capable
Can we build it? Yes we can!

[] Mobile Wormhole Foundry
Cost: $$$$$$
Warp Drives: 1
Hull Length: 45 km
Hull Diameter: 12 km
Armor: 30 meters
Maneuverability: Bad
Passenger Capacity: 45 million
Industrial Capacity: 3
Supplies Carried: 3
Skimmers Carried: 30 (20 miners/builders, 10 freight)
ISRU Capable
Can produce NOWs and Comm. Holes
The equipment to make shortcuts in spacetime is highly specialized, and highly expensive.

[] Nomad Skipper
Cost: $x10
Warp Drives: 1
Hull Length: 50 km
Hull Diameter: 15 km
Armor: 30 meters
Maneuverability: Bad
Passenger Capacity: 150 million
Industrial Capacity: 2
Supplies Carried: 6
ISRU Capable
Can produce NOWs and Comm. Holes
Fitted for the permanent nomadic lifestyle, if you so choose.

Armed Voidskippers
(NOTE: There are more types of armed ships around, just not ones available for purchase at the moment.)

[] Battlecruiser
Cost: $$$$$
Warp Drives: 3
Hull Length: 25 km
Hull Diameter: 4.5 km
Armor: 150 meters
Maneuverability: Excellent
Sustained Beam Power: 3 EW
Passenger Capacity: 2 million
Supplies Carried: 4
ISRU Capable
A front-line combatant that was built with endurance in mind, a Battlecruiser's role is to get in close and beat the enemy to death with beamfire.

[] Half-Carrier
Cost: $$$$$$$
Warp Drives: 2
Hull Length: 30 km
Hull Diameter: 6 km
Armor: 90 meters
Maneuverability: Good
Sustained Beam Power: 1.5 EW
Passenger Capacity: 3 million
Skimmers: 80 (30 fighters, 45 Temporal Control nodes, 5 Gobblers)
Supplies Carried: 3
ISRU Capable
A versatile warship that brings a bit of everything to the table.

[] Pirate Ship
Cost: $$$
Warp Drives: 1
Hull Length: 40 km
Hull Diameter: 12 km
Armor: 30 meters
Maneuverability: Mediocre
Sustained Beam Power: 500 PW
Passenger Capacity: 12 million
Skimmers: 10 (6 fighters, 4 Temporal Control nodes)
Supplies Carried: 1
Though of incredibly dubious providence, this up-gunned and otherwise illegally modified freighter could prove rather useful, especially due to outwardly looking like a civilian ship.

Spoiler: Glossary

Game Notes
-1 point Industrial Capacity allows for production of ~40 cubic kilometers of Stuff per customary year. Each point of Industrial Capacity requires 240 cubic kilometers.

Tech
NOW: Non-Orientable Wormhole; has the interesting property that any matter put through one end comes out the other end as antimatter. Necessary component of Voidskipper power plants. Very expensive and tricky to make.

Voidskipper: FTL capable starship, requires power in excess of fifty Exawatts to exceed c with its warp drive. Only remains superluminal for fractions of a second, crossing several light years in an eyeblink. Skip range limited by mass in the way, resulting in explosive Skip Shock; Voidskippers are built very tough to handle this. No mass in the way means the only limitation is cooling down the power plant. Minimum practical length 20 km. Avg. travel speed in a galactic disk ~20,000 c. Avg. travel speed without impediments ~3.5 ly/s.

Skimmer: Warp capable spacecraft that cannot exceed c. Generally powered by fusion, minimum practical length 1 km.

Gobbler: A Skimmer carrying a small artificial black hole aboard, used for wormhole demolitions.

Lane: Corridor of space where all the debris and interstellar gas have been cleaned out of the way, allowing Voidskippers to work in the heat-limited operating regime.

Warp combat: Mobility-based combat doctrine based on use of barely sublight warp to pinball around the battlespace at (effectively) c. Facilitated by the fact that all warp drives can switch between full forwards and full reverse at a moment's notice. Means that smaller ships are better as battleships/battlecruisers, on account of higher maneuverability directly leading to higher survivability.

Warp Drive: Takes the form of a toroid around the ship some distance from the hull. Bigger ones are inherently more efficient. Warships tend to have multiple for redundancy.

Temporal Control: Means of screwing over unauthorized FTL. Uses wormholes with temporal offsets to make FTL through a given space in a given direction a causality violation, dumping the offender into a branch timeline.

 

[We Just Write]

C: Clarification: Proportion of the fleet with ISRU is determined by number of ships.

 

[GammaRailgun]

Alright, here's my bid for the fleet:
- 2x Liner (240 million population, 2 supplies)
- 1x Construction Ship (40 million population, 4 supplies)
- 1x Nomad Skimmer (150 million population, 6 supplies)
- 1x Battlecruiser (2 million population, 4 supplies)
- 1x Freighter (No population, 10 supplies)
Requires 430 million population and 24 (6 ships * 4 per ship) supplies

Manages to just BARELY squeeze in everyone (240 + 40 + 150 + 2 = 432 million (!!)), just BARELY squeeze in enough supplies (2 + 4 + 6 + 2 + 10 = 24 (!!!)), and STILL has room for every major utility on the board - a full 50% of ISRU, combat capability, industrial capacity, and wormhole creation. The only thing this lacks is Skimmers, but there aren't really any good ways to get these without compromising the wide benefits of the fleet, and I consider that an acceptable penalty, given that we don't expect to need a TCS (on account of going somewhere that, hopefully, no one else has before), we have non-Skimmer combat capability, and we have non-Skimmer ISRU capability.

 

[We Just Write]

C: Excellent work! My only comment is that you should probably add a plan name.

 

[january1may]

The only thing this lacks is Skimmers

Click to shrink...

Well, combat Skimmers, anyway; there's a lot of civilian ones.

As a side-note, the glossary doesn't explain ISRU - what is it? I'm guessing interstellar... something.

 

[We Just Write]

Well, combat Skimmers, anyway; there's a lot of civilian ones.

As a side-note, the glossary doesn't explain ISRU - what is it? I'm guessing interstellar... something.

Click to shrink...

Z: In-Situ Resource Utilization. Basically quick-and-dirty mining/refining to get fuel and spare parts. Fuel's easy since Voidskipper power plants can easily run on anything that won't clog the plumbing, but spare parts are a bit trickier.

 

[hellbolo]

Nagato: posting for a friend, who is a MAJOR Battletech fan. to be putting it *mildly* and a clanaboo. *blep*
their "bid":
Posting anonymously, our bid shall be as follows -
[2] Nomad Skipper - These provide ISRU capabilities, NOW manufacture and Comm. Hole manufacture, as well as being long-range.
[1] Liner - This provides us plenty of space to house sophs, though it is a vulnerable vessel.
[1] Construction Ship - This fills in the production holes left by the Nomad Skippers, allowing us to have a full repertoire of production.
[1] Pirate Ship - This converted vessel gives us the ability to protect the fleet while not attraction much suspicion, as long as it is correctly painted.

We think this is a full bid, however it is unclear.

- C., WiE

 

[We Just Write]

Nagato: posting for a friend, who is a MAJOR Battletech fan. to be putting it *mildly* and a clanaboo. *blep*
their "bid":
Posting anonymously, our bid shall be as follows -
[2] Nomad Skipper - These provide ISRU capabilities, NOW manufacture and Comm. Hole manufacture, as well as being long-range.
[1] Liner - This provides us plenty of space to house sophs, though it is a vulnerable vessel.
[1] Construction Ship - This fills in the production holes left by the Nomad Skippers, allowing us to have a full repertoire of production.
[1] Pirate Ship - This converted vessel gives us the ability to protect the fleet while not attraction much suspicion, as long as it is correctly painted.

We think this is a full bid, however it is unclear.

- C., WiE

Click to shrink...

Z: On closer inspection, this plan exceeds the budget limit by one.

 

[hellbolo]

Z: On closer inspection, this plan exceeds the budget limit by one.

Click to shrink...

and here is their UPDATED BID!:

[2] Mobile Wormhole Foundry
[3] Liner
[1] Battlecruiser
FUCK THE GREEN PIDGEONS!

 

[DoubleThought]

Alright, here's my bid for the fleet:
- 2x Liner (240 million population, 2 supplies)
- 1x Construction Ship (40 million population, 4 supplies)
- 1x Nomad Skimmer (150 million population, 6 supplies)
- 1x Battlecruiser (2 million population, 4 supplies)
- 1x Freighter (No population, 10 supplies)
Requires 430 million population and 24 (6 ships * 4 per ship) supplies

Manages to just BARELY squeeze in everyone (240 + 40 + 150 + 2 = 432 million (!!)), just BARELY squeeze in enough supplies (2 + 4 + 6 + 2 + 10 = 24 (!!!)), and STILL has room for every major utility on the board - a full 50% of ISRU, combat capability, industrial capacity, and wormhole creation. The only thing this lacks is Skimmers, but there aren't really any good ways to get these without compromising the wide benefits of the fleet, and I consider that an acceptable penalty, given that we don't expect to need a TCS (on account of going somewhere that, hopefully, no one else has before), we have non-Skimmer combat capability, and we have non-Skimmer ISRU capability.

Click to shrink...

Total cost:
2x Liners (8x$)
1x Construction Ship (4x$)
1x Nomad Skimmer (10x$)
1x Battlecruiser (5x$)
1x Freighter (3x$)
For a total of 30x$ exactly.

I'm going to voice my support for this plan. Having a capital ship in our flotilla will render us too dangerous for most pirates. Furthermore, it looks like this will give us enough to start up at least a small industrial base (industrial capacity of 7), with the construction ship and the nomad skimmer.

I wonder how we'd synergise the CompSci/Neuroscience bonus with the fleet.

Our civilisation name...

Just to get the ball rolling, we're

[x] Wayfarers

We're Wayfarers, in search of a new home. It's not a unique name. If you asked anyone in the flotilla, they'd be able to name any number of other flotillas called "Wayfarer", "Pioneer", or "Explorer". But really, what we call ourselves is less important than what we do, once we establish our new home in a new galaxy.

 

[We Just Write]

Z: Gonna call it in half an hour if no-one chimes in.

 

[We Just Write]

Gamma's Plan: xx
-2x Liner
-1x Nomad Skipper
-1x Construction Ship
-1x Freighter
-1x Battlecruiser
(Supplies Carried: 24/24. No stops needed, 50% ISRU, 7 Industrial Capacity, Wormhole Production)

The Revised Bid: x
-2x Mobile Wormhole Foundry
-3x Liner
-1x Battlecruiser
(Supplies Carried: 13/24. Will need to make one stopover. 50% ISRU, 6 Industrial Capacity, Wormhole Production)

Final fleet composition:
2x Liner
1x Nomad Skipper
1x Construction Ship
1x Freighter
1x Battlecruiser

 

[We Just Write]

It's been slightly more than an old Earth decade since your group of Wayfarers set out from the Milky Way. You planned out the trip well, and managed to make the 1.2 billion light year voyage without needing any significant stopovers, though you did need to shift supplies around fairly often to make sure your liners stayed provisioned.

All in all, things look to be shaping up for a nice predictable founding. You're coming in 45 degrees off the galactic plane of a nice looking dwarf spiral galaxy approximately 15,000 light years across, and people are already getting excited about where you should set up shop.

It's only when you get within 20,000 light years of the galactic core that the anomalies get noticed. Nothing outright harmful, but analog computing is behaving ever so slightly differently than what you're used to. You obviously tear through it looking for any possible hint of malware and a significant portion of your population ports themselves to purely digital cognition just in case, but after as much investigation as you can do before arriving it doesn't seem to be inherently malicious.

Anyway, oddities aside there's the matter of where to settle to consider. Both where in the galaxy, and which sort of star to shack up around at the start. Then it's simply a question of what the first things you'll build will be. You aren't counting on finding any habitable planets, but you really don't need them.

Galactic Region
[] Core (Lots of young blue stars, remnants thereof, and the supernovae lying betwixt, contains supermassive black hole)
The bustling center, easy to get swept away in if you're not careful.

[] Globular Cluster (Entirely composed of *very* old stars, little happens here. Outside galactic disk, increasing strategic mobility.)
A retirement home for old stars, away from the volatile young whippersnappers.

[] Star-Forming Region (Again, lots of young blue stars, but also some nice smaller ones.)
A nursery for natural nuclear power plants.

[] Disk (An even mix of star types, relatively few supernovae, plenty of resources)
The generic suburban sprawl making up much of the galaxy.

[] Disk Outskirts (Mostly smaller, redder stars. Negligible supernova risk.)
A quiet backwater, far from the chaos and noise of the metropole.

[] Galactic Halo (Low stellar density, mostly lighter stars. Outside galactic disk, increasing strategic mobility.)
Barely qualifying as in the galaxy at all, this loose scattering of stars could still prove a bountiful home.

Star Type (NOTE: Only the system primary is being considered; binary arrangements are complicated. We're assuming a high-metallicity star is being selected where applicable.)
(NOTE2: If the star type doesn't match the galactic region, it will be adjusted to fit. You will not be getting a blue giant in a globular cluster, for example)

[] Rogue Planet (No power output, no activity, low resources, sneeki)
If you wanted to try Steading you would have stayed in the Milky Way.

[] Red Dwarf (Long lifespan, Low power, High Activity, Starlifting Feasible)
Favorite star of long-term thinkers.

[] Yellow Dwarf (Medium lifespan, Medium power, Starlifting Feasible)
A respectable choice in any scenario.

[] Blue Giant (Short lifespan, High power, Starlifting Easy)
A supernova waiting to happen, but in the meantime there's much energy to be had.

[] Red Giant (Dying Star, High Power, Starlifting Kinda Iffy)
Though a comparatively brief stage in a star's life, for many this is their apex of power.

[] White Dwarf (Stellar Remnant, Calm, Minimal Power, Starlifting Infeasible)
A sedate and reliable ember, but with some of the old fire still lurking past the chandrasekhar limit.

[] Neutron Star (Stellar Remnant, El Bonkers Magnetic Field, Starlifting Infeasible)
The shambling revenant of a dead star, screaming its demise to the universe.

[] Black Hole (Azathoth wants munchies Stellar Remnant, Starlifting Impossible, Special Megastructures: Ergosphere power plant, Quasar power plant, Subsidized Wormhole)
A gaping wound in time and space, both useful and ravenous.

 

[GammaRailgun]

My vote's for a black hole in a globular supercluster. Going for a globular supercluster gives mobility, which means we can maximize the use of that battlecruiser if it comes to it, and we get opportunities for expansion downwards, plus an interesting strategic position. And if we're going for one of those, we're getting old stars already, may as well not have to worry about dealing with stellar death by picking something already dead. And that has the convenient bonus of adding opportunities for expansion into a megastructure right off the bat!

 

[DoubleThought]

I think a yellow dwarf would be better. Certainly, it's a few billion years away from death (so we won't need to worry about that until we're in a position to colonise more star systems anyways), and it both has a good amount of energy and is possible to perform starlifting.

Furthermore, taking the disk outskirts both means we are safe from supernovae, which are the one disaster that could kill us without hope for recovery, and it means that we're close enough to the galactic disk that expanding won't be too difficult.

Thus, my vote is this:
[x] Disk Outskirts (Mostly smaller, redder stars. Negligible supernova risk.)
[x] Yellow Dwarf (Medium lifespan, Medium power, Starlifting Feasible)