Breakaway Civilization Quest

[We Just Write]

Z: Clarification on the priority system for industrial votes:
[xxx]: High Priority
[xx]: Mid Priority
[x]: Low Priority

 

[TCGM]

OOooohhhhh yes. Time to inject some of my signature chaos~

Industrial Capacity
[X] 50% (Final Industrial Capacity: 2098, Output Invested: 3734)

Civilian Construction

[XXX] Additional Habitats (default pop density 600/km^2)(select type)
-[XXX] Basic Habitats (800 km^2 per invest, fragile, Penalizes Cohesion)

[X] Wormhole Production (1 cm^2 annually per invest; requires 100,000 pops to work it)

[X] Civilian ships (select type)
-[X] Construction Ship (Needs 1 cm^2 wormhole area, 127 invest, 2 million crew; has 5 Industrial Capacity)
-[X] Construction Ship (Needs 1 cm^2 wormhole area, 127 invest, 2 million crew; has 5 Industrial Capacity)
-[X] Explorer (Needs 1 cm^2 wormhole area, 11 invest, 1 million crew; has 1 Industrial Capacity)
-[X] Explorer (Needs 1 cm^2 wormhole area, 11 invest, 1 million crew; has 1 Industrial Capacity)
-[X] Explorer (Needs 1 cm^2 wormhole area, 11 invest, 1 million crew; has 1 Industrial Capacity)

[X] Colonize a new star system! (Requires construction ships)
-[X] Specify general details (Must be in the same galactic region)

Wrele

		Star Data	Type M2 V Red Dwarf Radius 2.87 x 105​ km (0.41 x sol) Mass 6.53 x 1029​ kg (0.33 x sol) Temperature 3100 K Luminosity 5.41 x 1024​ W (0.01 x sol)
		I	Type Terrestrial World Orbital Radius 1.94 x 107​ km (0.13 AU) Period 7.12 x 102​ hours (0.08 earth years) Physics Standard iron/silicate Radius 5993.13 km (0.94 x earth) Gravity 9.34 m/s2​ (0.96 x earth) Hydrosphere 59 % water, 37 % ice Atmosphere Dense reducing Special Electromagnetic storms
		II	Type Rock Planet Orbital Radius 4.59 x 107​ km (0.31 AU) Period 2.59 x 103​ hours (0.30 earth years) Radius 5032.88 km (0.79 x earth) Gravity 8.09 m/s2​ (0.83 x earth) Special Heavy volcanism, wreckage of a crashed starship
		III	Type Asteroid Belt Orbital Radius 6.47 x 107​ km (0.43 AU) Period 4.34 x 103​ hours (0.50 earth years)
		IV	Type Ice Planet Orbital Radius 1.06 x 108​ km (0.71 AU) Period 9.14 x 103​ hours (1.05 earth years) Radius 13090.29 km (2.05 x earth) Gravity 7.49 m/s2​ (0.77 x earth)

Military Construction
[X] Warships (Select Type)
-[X] Half Carrier (Requires 1 cm^2 wormhole area, 21 invest, 10 million crew)
-[X] Half Carrier (Requires 1 cm^2 wormhole area, 21 invest, 10 million crew)
-[X] Half Carrier (Requires 1 cm^2 wormhole area, 21 invest, 10 million crew)
-[X] Carrier (Requires 2 cm^2 wormhole area, 153 invest, 30 million crew)
-[X] Carrier (Requires 2 cm^2 wormhole area, 153 invest, 30 million crew)
-[X] Armed Logistics Cruiser (Requires 1 cm^2 wormhole area, 79 invest, 3 million crew)

The plan is to send these out either with future exploration missions or to tackle whatever totally nonexistent negative consequences would come from not exploring.

Exploration
[X] Just the enterprise again.

Service Crunch Crisis
[XXX] Automate Vital Services
Adequate for routine troubles, but for anything complex you really want a person.

 

[DoubleThought]

[x] 25% (Final Industrial Capacity: 1576, Output Invested: 4946)
We need more industrial capacity before we can get habitats that don't penalise Cohesion

[xxx] Additional Habitats (default pop density 600/km^2)(select type)
-[xxx] Basic Habitats (800 km^2 per invest, fragile, Penalizes Cohesion)
But in the meanwhile, we do need to increase the amount of pop space we have so we have enough services

[x] Just the Enterprise again.
I think putting exploration on the back burner isn't unreasonable. We haven't seen anything particularly dangerous, only weird. Keeping an eye out for dangerous stuff is important, but we haven't spotted anything yet.

[x] Automate Vital Services
We've got Mad Science! That should make automation better than usual.

I'll disagree with the idea we should colonise a new star system. We should get our industry and service balanced before more people are sent out into the void to form a new colony.

Considering the ridiculously low cost of expanding (apparently it's just one construction ship), I think we should. Thus:

[x] Expand to a new star system (TCGM's plan)

 

[january1may]

For possible clarification, I've added a bunch of parenthetical comments to my (preliminary at this point) vote, including (in the industrial agenda) comments for options I didn't vote for...

(Note that the single vote for Explorer in particular should not necessarily be taken to mean that we only need one Explorer. Also note that the single-X options are anywhere between "low priority, but this would be very convenient to have" and "this would be useful but maybe not right now", and some of the latter maybe shouldn't have any X at all.)



First up, how much of your industrial base should be dedicated to growth?
(Note: Safely operating one unit of Industrial Capacity requires 300,000 population.)
(Industrial Labor Population: 349.2 mil/653.76 mil)

[X] 25% (Final Industrial Capacity: 1576, Output Invested: 4946)
(Hopefully we manage to get enough people to offset that. We might need that industry.)


Next on the agenda, what do you want to build with your industrial surplus during the next five years?

Civilian Construction
[XXX] Additional Habitats (default pop density 600/km^2)(select type)
-[XXX] Basic Habitats (800 km^2 per invest, fragile, Penalizes Cohesion)
(We need to do this urgently or things get really bad. I mean, they would still be bad, but without this they would be worse.)

[XX] Wormhole Production (1 cm^2 annually per invest; requires 100,000 pops to work it)
(Not as urgent, but extremely useful in the medium term.)

[XX] Civilian ships (select type)
-[] Freighter (Needs 1 cm^2 wormhole area, 113 invest, negligible crew)
(We probably don't need long-distance cargo hauling at this scale at the moment. Is there an option for big Skimmers?)
-[X] Liner (Needs 1 cm^2 wormhole area, 44 invest, 0.5 million crew)
(Useful but not urgent. As long as we only have one system, we can probably get away with Skimmers.)
-[X] Construction Ship (Needs 1 cm^2 wormhole area, 127 invest, 2 million crew; has 5 Industrial Capacity)
(For constructing... well, all those habs, for starters.)
-[XX] Explorer (Needs 1 cm^2 wormhole area, 11 invest, 1 million crew; has 1 Industrial Capacity)
(There's something incredibly weird going on in this galaxy and we want to know exactly what it is.)

[X] Subsidized Wormhole (Find a natural black hole close to home, entangle it with a tiny one, send the light end elsewhere and pop it open, requires ship time)
(Useful but not urgent.)
[Note: I'm not actually sure if we need one at this point. What is that thing for again?]

[] Colonize a new star system! (Requires construction ships)
-[] Specify general details (Must be in the same galactic region)
(We don't really need any more colonization at this moment. Let's establish ourselves within this system first.)

Military Construction
[XX] Defense Skimmers (720 per invest)
(For defending the one star system we have. If anything too big to be fought off with Skimmers shows up, chances are we lose anyway.)

[X] Space Pocket Munitions Factory (unlocks Artillery Ships, unlocks Warp Torpedoes, needs: 10,000 cm^2 wormhole area, 80 invest, 2 million workers)
(We don't really need it right now, but it's useful to have for the future. Depends on what the exploration teams find.)

[X] Warships (Select Type)
-[] Battleship (Requires 1 cm^2 wormhole area, 7 invest, 4 million crew)
A solid brick of pure murder, a battleship sacrifices everything for the sake of combat capabilities. However, this comes at the cost of needing constant resupply.
(We aren't invading anyone at this time. And it's not very convenient in any other context.)

-[] Battlecruiser (Requires 1 cm^2 wormhole area, 10 invest, 5 million crew)
While close to a battleship in terms of combat capability, a battlecruiser has some minor compromises for the sake of logistical sustainability.
(We already have one. We don't need any more at the moment.)

-[X] Half Carrier (Requires 1 cm^2 wormhole area, 21 invest, 10 million crew)
A versatile warship that brings a bit of everything to the table, Half-Carriers are well suited to independent operations patrolling the deep space between stars. However, they're much less useful in a major fleet engagement.
(For defending the immediate vicinity of the one star system we have, supplementing the Defence Skimmers.)

-[] Carrier (Requires 2 cm^2 wormhole area, 153 invest, 30 million crew)
Purpose built to carry thousands of Skimmers into a combat theater, Carriers tend to hang back from the immediate line of combat if at all possible.
(We aren't invading anyone at this time. Any significant combat we're even remotely likely to have would happen, if at all, in our very own system. Or possibly in the exploration mission, which doesn't have any military capabilities anyway.)

-[] Armed Logistics Cruiser (Requires 1 cm^2 wormhole area, 79 invest, 3 million crew)
An armed and armored freighter, ALCs are built to be the supply arm of a fleet, but retain the ability to defend themselves if needed. In addition, they also make great invasion ships when loaded with landing Skimmers.
(We aren't invading anyone at this time. Nor are we building any ships that would need a supply arm.)

-[] Minelayer (Requires 1 cm^2 wormhole area, 10 invest, 5 million crew)
Accelerating shrapnel shells to 0.2 c using an ergogun, the shots fired by a Minelayer are an excellent area denial tool.
(We aren't invading anyone at this time. And even if we were, we do not currently need area denial.)

-[] Irregular (Requires 1 cm^2 wormhole area, 120 invest, 2 million crew)
Also known as a pirate ship when in less savory hands, the only feature to recommend an Irregular is its ability to pass for a civilian ship at first glance.
(We aren't invading anyone at this time. And even if we were, we probably won't be invading anyone who knows what civilian ships look like.)


Aside from your industrial planning, there's the matter of exploration. The Enterprise came home for a resupply recently, but the question of where else to explore (and what to send) is both still open and really quite important. After all, there's something incredibly weird going on in this galaxy and you want to know exactly what it is.

To that end, what ships will be sent exploring?

[X] Just the enterprise again.
Second score, same as before.
(There's something incredibly weird going on in this galaxy and we want to know exactly what it is. OTOH, we might need those liners for emergency population capacity.)
[Note: if the population capacity is no longer relevant, then obviously send the liners too.]


The last issue on the agenda is what to do about the service sector crunch in the short term; your industrial growth has been amazing, but it's come with some serious troubles due to too much of your population being in industrial jobs at the moment. The long-term solution is of course to get more people and more room for said people, but the question remains of what to do in the meantime.

[X] Automate Vital Services
Adequate for routine troubles, but for anything complex you really want a person.
(All the other choices are clearly even worse. Also, as correctly pointed out, we're good at that sort of thing.)

[] Write-In
(Open for good write-ins.)

 

[We Just Write]

Industrial Plan

Growth
-0%: x
-25%: xx
-50%: xx
Averaging to 25%

Stuff To Build
Civilian
-Habitats: xxxxxxxxxxxxx (13)
-Wormhole Production: xxx (3)
-Civilian Ships: xxxx (4)
--Liner: x
--Freighter: xxx
--Explorer: xxxxxx
--Construction Ship: xxxxx
-Subsidized Wormhole: xx (Not A Budget Demand)

Military
-Warships: xxx (3)

--Carrier: xxx (3)
--Half-Carrier: xxxxxx (6)
--Armed Logistics Cruiser: xxxx (4)

-Defense Skimmer: xx (2)
-Space Pocket Munitions Factory: x (1)

Production Results

Total: 4946
-Habitats: 13/26 (2473 output)(+1,978,400 square km of habitat)(+1,187,040,000 pops)
-Wormhole Production: 3/26 (571 output)
-Civilian Ships: 4/26 (791 output)
--Liners (1/15)(52/44 invest, one ship completed, excess tasked to highest priority)
--Freighters (3/15)(158/113 invest, one ship completed, excess tasked to highest priority)
--Explorers (6/15)(379/11 invest, 34 ships completed)
--Construction Ships (5/15)(264/127 invest, two ships completed, excess tasked to highest priority)

-Warships: 3/26 (571 output)
--(3/13) Carriers (131/153 invest, zero ships completed, production re-tasked)
--(6/13) Half-Carriers (414/21 invest, 19 ships completed)
--(4/13) ALCs (177/79 invest, two ships completed, excess re-routed)
-Defense Skimmers 2/26 (380 output)(+273,600 defense Skimmers of varying types)
-Space Pocket Munitions Factory 1/26 (190 output)(Munitions Factory structurally complete but nonfunctional; bottlenecked by wormhole production [1146/10000] )

How it works: Industrial investment allocated proportionately to number of votes for the root-level option. For things like ships or habitats, the allocated budget is then divvied up within the category to decide how much of each type gets built.

Colonization: Wrele
Yes: xxx
Nah: xx

Exploration
-Just the Enterprise: xxxxx

Population Crunch
-Automation: xxxxxx
[dice]29054[/dice]
[dice]29055[/dice]

 

[Just Some Guy]

Huh a civ quest, hopefully this woud last for a long time.

 

[We Just Write]

Civ sheet updated

Your industrial buildup has had to slow down a bit so that your population can expand to match, but that's just a case of straightforward necessity. Churning out space habitats en masse has lead to your population more than doubling over the last five customary years.

Aside from that matter of extreme necessity, some industrial power was tasked to other matters. One of these matters was a respectable ship-building program for both the civilian and military sectors. As a result you now have access to a worthwhile trade, exploration, and combat fleet.

Other things that happened in the building things regard included the creation of a potentiated subsidized wormhole. You found a suitable black hole less than 500 light years from Journeyman's Lantern, entangled a feedstock singularity to it, and now you've got a wormhole you could open to anywhere you can send a ship.

The last buildy thing of note was sending your extant construction ship to establish a colony in a nearby star system named Wrele. There's a bit of a service sector crunch over there at the moment, but it's nowhere near as bad as it got in Journeyman's Lantern a while ago.

Speaking of the service sector crunch, it's... not really big news anymore. Reason being that about a year into the new industrial plan, an unidentified spacecraft about one and a half kilometers in length was spotted skulking around the outskirts of Journeyman's Lantern. A squadron of Skimmers was duly dispatched to investigate, approaching at 0.5c to make sure the new arrival could see them coming.

This apparently resulted in them being spooked quite badly, making hard burns with a reaction drive of unknown variety (???), transmitting garbled messages you still haven't made sense of before simply vanishing in a fuzz of radio static. Even stranger, the crew aboard the intercepting Skimmers are damn sure that those aboard the unidentified spacecraft weren't hostile, though they don't have any evidence to base that on.

Subsequent malware sweeps indicate that it was the analog parts of their cognition acting up in downright anomalous ways. The results are pretty clear: this universe has an unknown vector for information transmission, and it has something to do with analog computation. This represents a major security risk, and your scientists are currently trying to figure out how it works.

Anyway, continuing to talk about the elephant in the room, it's been four years since that first unidentified spacecraft appeared. Now a small fleet of about a hundred ships ranging in size from 500 meters to four kilometers has turned up a couple light hours out, and they're transmitting in radio (though you have no idea what the fuck their transmission standard is; if you had to guess it's designed to be partially based on those anomalous phenomena you don't know how to work with yet).

You still have no clue what they're actually saying and all the people doing direct talking are fully digital to avoid being a malware vector for the as of yet unknown phenomena involved in comms, but at the very least they seem talkative.

So, you've got yourselves a non-hostile first contact situation. First on the agenda, how do you want to deal with the fact that the new arrivals are four light hours out? There's a few different options here.

[] Let them come to you when they're comfy with it. Either that or they'll screw off when they get tired of the standoff.
[] Send a Skimmer with a comm hole to go talk to them; they've already seen you do this, so they should be a lot less likely to spook this time.
[] But what if you want to be scary? Skip a couple warships up next to them as a show of force.
[] Write-In

Secondly, there's the matter of actually talking to them. You still have no idea how to interpret their transmission standards (and you're guessing them likewise), so this has the potential to be quite troublesome.

[] flash prime numbers at the- This is stupid.

[] Try and establish a common transmission standard pidgin-style.
All of the unknowns' signal traffic so far has been analog, with no sign of digital infosystems.

[] Give them a package containing television receivers, cameras, and transmitters that work on a standard you know how to use (thoroughly sterilized of course). Then talk through that to figure each other out.
-[] Analog
-[] Digital
All of the unknowns' signal traffic so far has been analog, with no sign of digital infosystems.

[] Send a small shuttle full of negotiators to the fleet and try to "ask" permission to come aboard one of their ships.

[] Write-In (Hostile actions are not on the table at this time)

Anyway, once you've figured out how to talk to them, what are the top priority things you want to talk about?
This section uses priority voting; mark all boxes of interest, [xxx] = high priority, [xx] = medium priority, [x] = low priority
[] Their origins
[] Your origins
[] Anomalous signals
[] Technological differences
[] What they want
[] Territorial claims
[] Culture
[] Other known civilizations
[] Write-In

 

[january1may]

I suspect that if I knew how the votes were counted I might have worked them out differently. I also didn't expect first contact to happen until at least a few more turns later.


So, you've got yourselves a non-hostile first contact situation. First on the agenda, how do you want to deal with the fact that the new arrivals are four light hours out? There's a few different options here.

[] Let them come to you when they're comfy with it. Either that or they'll screw off when they get tired of the standoff.
(If they're not arriving yet they're probably observing and might never show up.)
[X] Send a Skimmer with a comm hole to go talk to them; they've already seen you do this, so they should be a lot less likely to spook this time.
(Hopefully this works.)
[] But what if you want to be scary? Skip a couple warships up next to them as a show of force.
(Nope. Definitely nope.)
[] Write-In
(Open to good write-ins.)

[Second piece of the vote is on hold for now because I can't think of anything good, might add it later.]

Anyway, once you've figured out how to talk to them, what are the top priority things you want to talk about?
This section uses priority voting; mark all boxes of interest, [xxx] = high priority, [xx] = medium priority, [x] = low priority
[xx] Their origins
(Depends on what that means really. "Where's their home system" is far higher priority than foundation myths.)
[] Your origins
(Why would you?)
[x] Anomalous signals
(Be careful: you might be revealing too much by explaining why the signals look anomalous.)
[] Technological differences
(Do you want them to get access to your tech?)
[xxx] What they want
(Priority one. Why are they here?)
[xx] Territorial claims
(In particular, do the claims include you?)
[x] Culture
(Interstellar small talk.)
[xx] Other known civilizations
(Mostly to the effect of "do they know any?")
[xx] Write-In: Their space travel method
(How the triangular heck did they get here?)
[] Write-In
(Open to other good write-in suggestions.)


...huh. That's some escalation. Hopefully we survive.

(Not doing the second bit of the vote at this point because I can't think of a good choice offhand. Maybe later.)

 

[Singularity.]

..huh. That's some escalation. Hopefully we survive.

Click to shrink...

To be honest, I'm not too worried. their biggest ship is about 4 km in size, our battlecruiser is 4.5 km in diameter and 25! Km in length. I wouldn't be surprised if they mistaken it for a small station insted of the ship it is.

 

[DoubleThought]

Who do we send to establish communication?

[x] Send a Skimmer with a comm hole to go talk to them; they've already seen you do this, so they should be a lot less likely to spook this time.
Let's go out to meet them. No need to invite them any closer, and let's not scare them by moving the Battlecruiser nearer. In fact, let's just keep the Battlecruiser stationary.


How do we establish communication?

[x] Write-In: Use analogue to establish communication, then attempt to transmit a digital encoding format to allow for faster and more lossless data transfer. If they can't use digital, we can stick with analogue TV

Analogue TV is a very simple format. It shouldn't be too hard to establish communication using that, and it shouldn't be too hard to decode it either. Let's stick with greyscale analogue TV at 30Hz, and AM radio for sound.


What do we discuss?

[xxx] Culture
First and foremost, we need to establish a baseline of culture first and foremost, to avoid shoving our foot in our mouth, or worse, stumbling across a taboo.

[xxx] What they want
After making sure we don't accidentally declare war by having digital minds among us, we can start talking shop.

[xx] Other known civilizations
Let's avoid stepping into any interstellar wars, if at all possible. And it's probably a good idea to know what they think of the other civilisations, and what they claim other civilisations think of them.

[xx] Territorial claims
We ask what their territorial claims are. If they claim the system we're in, tell them "tough luck", because we live here now.

[x] Anomalous signals
Let's not go too deep into why they're anomalous, but just note that they aren't there in the galaxy we come from. Oh, did we mention we come from a different galaxy?

[x] Technological differences
Why do they use analogue signals? Perhaps we can share the wonders of digital radio.

[] Their origins
We don't really need to talk about where they come from. We're already getting a map of the territory, after all.

[x] Your origins
We don't need to tell them where we came from, really.

 

[We Just Write]

Z: Hmmm... Had been hoping this section would get more engagement. Should we just get on with it, or should we wait for more people to chime in?

 

[january1may]

Should we just get on with it, or should we wait for more people to chime in?

Click to shrink...

I'd say wait for a few days; I still can't think of a good answer to the second question (and it's a very important one), and the only other vote is a write-in, so... yeah.

 

[Singularity.]

[x] Send a Skimmer with a comm hole to go talk to them; they've already seen you do this, so they should be a lot less likely to spook this time.
Let's go out to meet them. No need to invite them any closer, and let's not scare them by moving the Battlecruiser nearer. In fact, let's just keep the Battlecruiser stationary.

[x] Write-In: Use analogue to establish communication, then attempt to transmit a digital encoding format to allow for faster and more lossless data transfer. If they can't use digital, we can stick with analogue TV


[xxx] Culture

[xxx] What they want

[xx] Other known civilizations

[xx] Territorial claims

[x] Anomalous signals

[x] Technological differences

[x] Your origins

 

[We Just Write]

How to reach them?
Send a Skimmer: xxx

How to talk to them?
Write-In: Analog TV: xx

What to talk about?
Their origins: xx
Your origins: xx
Anomalous signals: xxx
Technological differences: xx
What they want: xxxxxxxxx
Territorial claims: xxxxxx
Culture: xxxxxxx
Other known civilizations: xxxx
Write-In: Their Space Travel Method: xx

Priority List:
1: What They Want
2: Culture
3: Territorial Claims
4: Other Known Civs
5: Tech/space travel/anomalous signals
6: Origins

 

[TCGM]

Been too sick to vote properly but all I really feel the need to mention is that the culture transmission must start with Rick Astley dancing.

 

[We Just Write]

It takes approximately eight hours for your interface Skimmer to reach the alien fleet. They shift into what's clearly a defensive formation during the approach, but they notably do not either flee or open fire. Similarly, their radiators remain at the dull infrared glow indicative of a power plant operating at a fraction of its normal output. They start to maneuver a bit when the Skimmer comes within a few light minutes, but they largely stop once your Skimmer comes to a halt about a light second out.

After that, you immediately get to broadcasting an extremely rudimentary transmission standard: monochrome analog TV, 30 Hz frame rate, 600 scan lines of image; AM radio broadcasting at 1.5 MHz for audio.

What follows is several hours of incomprehensible signals traffic between the alien ships, before finally they transmit their own analog television signal back, though theirs has a 90 Hz framerate, 1000 scan lines of image, and tetrachromat color. Figuring that it would be vastly more convenient to use a standard they evidently already have equipment for you simply switch over to their standard.

What greets you is a (heavily color-distorted no doubt) image of approximately four aliens crowding around a desk. Rapidly adjusting the color encoding using physics extrapolated from the lighting in the room, you resolve the picture more clearly. They're covered in fur ranging in color from a dark brown to a light tan, each with four eyes and a pair of evidently prehensile tails.

On your part you make no attempt to hide your diversity; the room where you've got your front-line negotiators are in has one blatant robospider synthmorph, a kitsunoid, a dragon-morph, and an avian. All currently using entirely digital brains at the moment of course.

On the part of the aliens, they seem to startle when they learn just how fast you swapped to their transmission standard. Which is very interesting, as it seems to imply they aren't quite used to this sort of rapid general-purpose computational capability.

What follows is several hours of charades and attempting to talk with each other as you try and assemble a common language. There are several missteps along the way, and if anything the sheer speed at which you're picking up how to talk to them is unnerving them more. But you want to get this part over with and they're already a bit spooked, so the massive supercomputer array crunching all this stuff in the background it is.

Anyway, once you've figured out how to talk to each other, it's time for the mutual barrage of questions about culture, what each of you want, and several other topics.

The Omu are a sophont species native to the Quahelid galaxy, with their homeworld located at approximately 67 degrees, 3700 lightyears from core (for reference, Journeyman's Lantern is at 0 degrees, 6540 light years from core).

Biologically, the Omu are most reminiscent of a monotreme mammal; they lay eggs containing their young, but do nurse them with a milky secretion (produced by either sex). Their approximate height when standing upright ranges between 140 cm to 180 cm, and their limbs are well-suited to climbing, including a pair of prehensile tails.

Medically speaking, the unaugmented lifespan of an Omu is 2-4 Gigaseconds with females tending towards the higher end of the range and males the lower. However, with proper medical care their lifespan can be extended indefinitely. Omu are highly resilient to injury by the standards of naturally evolved lifeforms, and have been known to stagger back to civilization with multiple limbs broken and recover fully with minimal treatment.

Initial psychological reports are somewhat tinged by the culture of the Valindir Republic, but from what can be told the Omu are highly protective of those they consider kin. That said, they are considerably less likely to panic in a threatening situation than a baseline human, instead tending to assess the situation at a safe distance before deciding on a course of action.
Though most of the more detailed information about their biology is still unknown, it is confirmed that Omu breathe a Nitrogen-Oxygen atmosphere and are based on conventional organic chemistry.

Click to shrink...

Our first point of contact with the wider galaxy, the Valindir Republic is a nation claiming four earthlike planets around five stars. They are surrounded on four sides by countries with vastly more resources than them and a severe ideological mismatch. As a result the Valindir have spent the last six Gigaseconds playing their neighbors off against each other with a great deal of success, using such methods as strategically hiring their forces out as mercenaries for exorbitant fees. In addition they have heavily fortified their claimed stars (by local standards, at least; it would be considered barely adequate back in the Milky Way) to raise the cost of invasion sufficiently to make it unpalatable.

Still, this leaves the Valindir Republic in an awkward strategic position, needing to carefully balance not antagonizing any of their neighbors to the point of invasion while also not rolling over for anyone. This has lead to a cultural emphasis on caution and logical assessment of situations, even beyond the apparent Omu baseline. Another consequence is a highly competent intelligence apparatus used to keep tabs on possible threats.

Indeed, the first ship to arrive was in fact a scout from their intelligence service coming to assess the situation. They have outright refused to explain how they knew something was happening here to inspect in the first place, citing national security. Their primary intentions for making contact can be roughly summarized as assessing the level of threat we pose to them, with a possibility of diplomatic relations.

The government of the Valindir Republic is a federalized parliamentary system elected via sortition, with a reshuffle approximately every ~159 Megaseconds. They have universal healthcare, education, and housing along with a bunch of other social benefit programs. They don't have any particularly strong ideological foundations aside from taking care of their people and heading off the possibility of an invasion, mostly due to the problems with their massively more powerful neighbors.

The Valindir Republic are at this time the only other nation to know of us; they are located at six degrees, 4880 light years from core.

Click to shrink...

There are several things that the party from the Valindir Republic informed us of not directly related to them. These include the generalities of the galactic situation at large, a rough guess as to the number of sophont species acting in the galaxy (~70), and some nations they border.

First off, the general astropolitical situation. The extreme prevalence of earthlike planets in the Quahelid galaxy has lead to most nations pursuing a strategy known in video game parlance as "going wide", since habitable area can simply be found instead of built. As a result most of the galaxy is industrially underdeveloped, and despite the fierce land grab politics at play there are still major gaps of unclaimed space where there's a dearth of habitable planets, due to the major galactic players taking the path of least resistance for colonization.

More pertinently, they included basic information on their immediate neighbors:

Gantare Empire: A constitutional monarchy with a colonialist bent, the Gantare Empire has a self-imposed revanchist mission to "civilize" the galaxy, and is quite happy to substitute military force for an answer of "no". Though they do guarantee a number of rights to their citizens, they come together to produce an extremely hierarchical social structure with social mobility bordering on a caste system. Of the Valindir's neighbors, the Gantare seem to be the biggest threat.

Unified Chorus Spur: A representative democracy operating on the Presidential system, the UCS doesn't have an ideological push to colonize. However they do border the Gantare, and not wanting to be crushed by the Empire requires them to expand in much the same manner. The UCS is multicultural and relatively egalitarian, but again is willing to substitute military force for refusal to join.

Pozzoo: An oligarchic republic run by a board of major corporations, Pozzoo is... honestly a complete mess. They've effectively devolved into a single corporate hierarchy where your position in society is entirely dictated by your usefulness to the companies... except "usefulness to the companies" is largely synonymous with "willingness to be exploited". Most of their citizens are in de facto indentured servitude, and since any open labor action simply results in the entire union getting gunned down, the entire country is in one big permanent work-to-rule strike.

Glorious People's Democratic Republic Of Werta (AKA Gwerta): A totalitarian shithole sustained entirely by oppression and various atrocities. Gwerta is an oligarchic dictatorship known for information control, a vastly oversized but somewhat incompetent military due to "dangerous" officers being regularly purged, and absolutely obnoxious propaganda claiming to be a beacon of liberty (that exactly no-one believes).

Click to shrink...

Though the Valindir delegation were frustratingly vague about the exact details, they did admit to some of the generalities surrounding their FTL method and the anomalous signals.

Firstly, their method of superluminal travel involves an extradimensional shortcut, called hyperspace for lack of a better term. Its precise nature still confounds our physicists, but it's not a branch timeline, it's not an entirely new universe, it's not just a modifier for physical space, and it apparently has its own sort of astrography. They call their means of hyperspace propulsion a "Hypermotor", which is apparently also their primary reaction drive in normal space. They refused to elaborate on the operating principles of the Hypermotor.

Another phenomenon they noted was something we're grudgingly calling psionics. Apparently hyperspace is heavily responsive to "thought", though our experiences with digital cognition show this interaction is limited to analog systems. Known applications of psionics include information transmission, and hyperspace access/navigation. There are presumably other applications, but the Valindir delegation refused to elaborate further.

Click to shrink...

Though the information provided was highly limited, we can make several reasonably reliable conclusions about the local technology base.

First off, we can reasonably state that compared to us, their bioengineering and computing technology are highly deficient. They have a very good understanding of analog computation and a workable academic understanding of biotech, but they seem to have missed digital computing (probably due to its lack of interaction with psionics), which crippled their biotech development. As a direct corollary, their materials science has by-and-large missed advanced nanomaterials.

Similarly, everything related to metric engineering seems to have been missed; they have no warp drives of any variety, no wormholes, especially no non-orientable wormholes, no contracted space pockets, and no on-demand heavy element transmutation/black hole production.

That said, hyperspace technologies do provide the locals with a number of advantages. First and most obviously, the minimum size for a ship capable of hyperspace navigation is vastly smaller than a Voidskipper. Secondly, the energy levels observed in hypermotor drive plumes are firmly in the hundreds of Terawatts even for the smaller Valindir ships, indicating that they have similar power density available. Given that the drive structures they use are solid instead of the open cage power plants seen on our own combat skimmers, and the fact that they aren't venting massive amounts of coolant into space, this also indicates vastly superior cooling technology.

Another inference is that hyperspace and psionic technologies probably allow for an approximation of artificial gravity, as ships were observed accelerating at rates in excess of 360 m/s^2. Given that this would have almost certainly crushed any crew not specifically g-hardened (and that they evidently lack the technology to do such), they must have some sort of technology capable of compensating for the extreme acceleration forces.

In addition, it seems vaguely plausible that psionic phenomena have allowed for the local analog computing technology to reach levels of computational complexity and versatility that exceed the normal limitations for such devices.

At the moment we would have a major advantage in any normal space engagement due to the extreme mobility provided by warp drives. However, we have no way to pursue them into hyperspace at the present time, presenting a major risk.

Click to shrink...

The Valindir delegation were willing to provide basic information on a number of topics, but in exchange you needed to trade the following information:
-Warp Technology (Basic capabilities; didn't say that Skimming can go up to c but they probably figured it out)
-Digital Computation (Yes it exists, basic underlying principles)
-Brain Uploading/Mindcast (basic idea, yes you have it)
-Bio/Nanotech (Yes, you have it)
-Automated Manufacturing (Again, yes you do in fact have it; they were familiar with the basic concept already)
-Rotating Space Habitats (Basic idea)
-Megasystems (Basic Idea)
-Origin diverging from single species
-Extragalactic origins
-Linguistics Package
-Cultural Package
-That you don't actually know anything about psionics or hyperspace (they "subtly" quizzed you and you evidently failed)

They were not informed about anything to do with wormholes. Similarly, you did not inform them that you are capable of time travel.

Click to shrink...

Anyway, re(ve)lations aside, that now brings to mind a few major considerations.

First off, hyperspace/psionics research. This is obviously an absolute must, but there are a few different possible angles to approach it from.

(A/N: All of these options have some possibility of working, but the odds vary)
[] Perspective: Metric Engineering (Try and figure out how to distort spacetime to access hyperspace)
Distorting spacetime is well-understood science, perhaps an extension of that could be used to access hyperspace?

[] Perspective: Computational (Figure out what computational operations generate psionic effects)
We already have some lead into the anomalous operations behind psionics; starting there makes sense.

[] Perspective: Physics (High-Energy Physics Experiments)
Our models of physics need revisions to account for hyperspace; time to break out the particle accelerators.

[] Perspective: Unfocused (Try all of the above, but with less resources for each)
Restricting our inquiries to only a single avenue seems foolish.

Another important question regards diplomatic contact with the Valindir Republic. You know where they are relative to you and they'd be fairly easy to reach. The catch is that blatantly driving a Voidskipper up onto their lawn would attract a large amount of attention that they'd probably not appreciate. So, how do you want to handle keeping in contact with them?

[] Let them come to you for now; they're doubtless going to do it eventually.
You'd rather not, to be honest.

[] They still haven't quite left yet; ask them to bring a comm hole back with them.
Though the most covert option for contact, this does divulge the existence of wormhole technology.

[] Park a half-carrier outside one of their systems and visit via Skimmer.
Yes it will draw comment, but less than blatantly arriving in a ship larger than some habs.
[] Fuck it, go drive a Voidskipper up on their front lawn, subtlety can die in a fire.
There is something to be said for a basic policy of openness.

[] Write-In

There's also the matter of the Valindir's neighbors, who... aren't great based on the descriptions you were told. Do you want to contact them at the present time?

[] No
Contacting these people is not in our interests at the present time

[] Covertly (Try and infiltrate them without cluing them in to your existence)
Some of these people seem horrible. If we could just set off a coup or revolution before talking to them...

[] Yes
-[] don't just cruise right up in a Voidskipper
-[] do just cruise right up in a Voidskipper
Look, they're going to find out eventually.

The last major note is the fate of the Enterprise; when initially fitted for exploration, she was simply the only ship available that was even remotely suitable for the job. However now you have an entire fleet of ships purpose-built for the task, leaving the Enterprise rather obsolete in this role. So, what should be the fate of the Enterprise?

[] Continue exploring
though the ship is unsuited for the role, Enterprise's crew is the most skilled batch of explorers you've got.

[] Send the Enterprise back in time (You aren't getting the ship back; crew can return via mindcast)
This galaxy is incredibly weird. Perhaps inspecting the past up close and personal would be in order?

All of the following options will transfer the name and crew (shipmind included) of Enterprise to a new Explorer hull.

[] Recycle the old freighter for parts (+50 industrial output this turn, NOW pair recovered)
Scrap, I tell ye

[] Return the hull to cargo service
Fundamentally, that's still a freighter hull under all the modifications

[] Preserve the Enterprise as a museum ship (???)
This ship is of great historical importance to the Wayfarers, both for her role during the migration, and for her subsequent exploration career.

[] Write-In

Oh, anything you want to do with that subsidized wormhole you made? You can open the light end of that thing to anywhere you want (after some shipping time) and use it to ship entire solar masses of materials back through.

[] Don't bother for now.
Waiting is a perfectly respectable course of action

[] Trade/Give it to the Valindir
But why though?

[] The galactic core
Close by, convenient, accessible if anything goes wrong

[] Another Galaxy
You know, a place to strip mine that isn't full of neighbors could be a neat opportunity

[] Another Timeline
The last word in "Don't fuck with my mining operations": putting them in a forked timeline

Industrial Plan

Anyway, it's time to decide on the plan for what to make during the next five customary years.

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%)

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)

First and foremost, you need to decide growth levels.

Journeyman's Lantern
[] 0% (Final Industrial Capacity: 1576, Invested Output: 7880)
[] 25% (Final Industrial Capacity: 2134, Invested Output: 6696)
[] 50% (Final Industrial Capacity: 2840, Invested Output: 5056)
[] 75% (Final Industrial Capacity: 3722, Invested Output: 2793)
[] 100% (Locked; insufficient pops for new jobs)

Wrele
(Error: only one Industrial Capacity!)

This section uses priority voting; mark all boxes of interest, [xxx] = high priority, [xx] = medium priority, [x] = low priority

Where should your Construction Ships be allocated?
[] Journeyman's Lantern
[] Wrele
[] New System (Write-In)

Civilian Construction

[] Additional Habitats (default pop density 600/km^2)(select type)
-[] Basic Habitats (800 km^2 per invest, fragile, Penalizes Cohesion)
-[] Continent-Class Habitats (40 km^2 per invest, minimum cost: 236,000 invest, minimum size: 9.44 mil km^2)
(Locked, insufficient industrial capacity)
-[] Planetary-Class Habitats (2 km^2 per invest, fortified, minimum cost: 118 mil invest, minimum size: 236 mil km^2)
(Locked, insufficient industrial capacity)

[] Prefabs (Prefabs are a 50/50 mix of Industrial Capacity and Basic Habs by investment, packed up for shipping and assembled on site for 5% the normal construction cost; this overrides any other production in the destination system. Prefabs are automatically produced in your most developed star systems and shipped to your least developed (limited by freight capacity). Prefabs do take one year to assemble after shipping, so you can't assemble literally infinite industrial prefabs.)

[] Wormhole Production (1 cm^2 annually per invest; requires 100,000 pops to work it)

[] Civilian ships (select type)
-[] Freighter (Needs 1 cm^2 wormhole area, 113 invest, negligible crew)
-[] Liner (Needs 1 cm^2 wormhole area, 44 invest, 0.5 million crew)
-[] Construction Ship (Needs 1 cm^2 wormhole area, 127 invest, 2 million crew; has 5 Industrial Capacity)
-[] Explorer (Needs 1 cm^2 wormhole area, 11 invest, 1 million crew; has 1 Industrial Capacity)

[] Subsidized Wormhole (Find a natural black hole close to home, entangle it with a tiny one, send the light end elsewhere and pop it open, requires ship time)(Locked, you still haven't decided what to do with the one you've got!)


Military Construction
[] Defense Skimmers (720 per invest)

[] Space Pocket Munitions Factory (unlocks Artillery Ships, unlocks Warp Torpedoes, needs: 10,000 cm^2 wormhole area, 80 invest, 2 million workers)

[] Warships (Select Type)
-[] Battleship (Requires 1 cm^2 wormhole area, 7 invest, 4 million crew)
--[] Include Warp Torpedoes (Locked, Requires Space Pocket Munitions Factory)
A solid brick of pure murder, a battleship sacrifices everything for the sake of combat capabilities. However, this comes at the cost of needing constant resupply.

-[] Battlecruiser (Requires 1 cm^2 wormhole area, 10 invest, 5 million crew)
--[] Include Warp Torpedoes (Locked, Requires Space Pocket Munitions Factory)
While close to a battleship in terms of combat capability, a battlecruiser has some minor compromises for the sake of logistical sustainability.

-[] Half Carrier (Requires 1 cm^2 wormhole area, 21 invest, 10 million crew)
--[] Include Warp Torpedoes (Locked, Requires Space Pocket Munitions Factory)
A versatile warship that brings a bit of everything to the table, Half-Carriers are well suited to independent operations patrolling the deep space between stars. However, they're much less useful in a major fleet engagement.

-[] Carrier (Requires 2 cm^2 wormhole area, 153 invest, 30 million crew)
--[] Include Warp Torpedoes (Locked, Requires Space Pocket Munitions Factory)
Purpose built to carry thousands of Skimmers into a combat theater, Carriers tend to hang back from the immediate line of combat if at all possible.

-[] Armed Logistics Cruiser (Requires 1 cm^2 wormhole area, 79 invest, 3 million crew)
An armed and armored freighter, ALCs are built to be the supply arm of a fleet, but retain the ability to defend themselves if needed. In addition, they also make great invasion ships when loaded with landing Skimmers.

-[] Minelayer (Requires 1 cm^2 wormhole area, 10 invest, 5 million crew)
Accelerating shrapnel shells to 0.2 c using an ergogun, the shots fired by a Minelayer are an excellent area denial tool.

-[] Artillery Ship (Locked, Requires Space Pocket Munitions Factory)
A weapon that flies faster than time, the miniaturized skip gates aboard these ships can launch a truly devastating payload across the battlespace in an instant if not interdicted.

-[] Irregular (Requires 1 cm^2 wormhole area, 120 invest, 2 million crew)
Also known as a pirate ship when in less savory hands, the only feature to recommend an Irregular is its ability to pass for a civilian ship at first glance.

 

[DoubleThought]

[x] Perspective: Unfocused (Try all of the above, but with less resources for each)
-[x] Preferably with a bit of extra focus on computational perspective
We should explore all possibilities. Any one of the three options might work, and we don't want to over invest on the wrong one. But let's focus a bit on the computational perspective. We're pretty good at that, after all.

[x] Let them come to you for now; they're doubtless going to do it eventually.
All the other options use up valuable resources. I think our defensive force is probably currently sufficient, but giving up a half-carrier or a costly Voidskipper would be too expensive given our current lack of industrial output. And I do mean a lack of industrial output: we need to improve our industry until we can start making habitats that don't incur a cohesion cost.

[x] Covertly (Try and infiltrate them without cluing them in to your existence)
More intel is good.

[x] Preserve the Enterprise as a museum ship (???)
-[x] Write-in: Send some other ship back in time
I suspect this might give a cohesion bonus later on, which we'll need because our current habitats incur cohesion costs. We have only one Enterprise, but we have many ships, so we could send those back in time.

[x] Another Galaxy
Loads of mining, hopefully no hostile neighbours, and an escape route.


Growth levels:
Journeyman's Lantern
[x] 75% (Final Industrial Capacity: 3722, Invested Output: 2793)
Exponential growth is good.

Construction ship allocation:
[xxx] Wrele
[xx] Journeyman's Lantern

We need Wrele up and running. Exponential growth is good.

[xxx] Additional Habitats (default pop density 600/km^2)(select type)
-[xxx] Basic Habitats (800 km^2 per invest, fragile, Penalizes Cohesion)

More people means more minds to help control our industry.

[xx] Prefabs
Exponential growth is really good.

Honestly, we may have made a mistake colonising Wrele. We should focus on improving what we have (for exponential growth). In a Starcraft 2 analogy, we haven't saturated our mineral lines yet, so we shouldn't be considering making a second command centre.

[x] Space Pocket Munitions Factory (unlocks Artillery Ships, unlocks Warp Torpedoes, needs: 10,000 cm^2 wormhole area, 80 invest, 2 million workers)
Tech up. But this would take quite some time to complete, I think.

 

[TCGM]

Oh neat! Nice aliens have shown up!

They are surrounded on four sides by countries with vastly more resources than them and a severe ideological mismatch.​

...

Oh gods it gets even worse!

They don't have any particularly strong ideological foundations aside from taking care of their people​

AND THE NEIGHBORS HAVE IDEOLOGICAL DIFFERENCES TO THIS?!

reads the lowdown on the nearby nations


.....

GENERAL QUARTERS! RAISE THE MAINSAILS AND CONSTRUCT ADDITIONAL PYLONS AND CARRIERS! TIME TO GO FOR MASSIVE WAR SPIN-UP!

War footing, right now


Now on another topic before I vote, how do we get more industrial capacity to Wrele?

 

[DoubleThought]

Now on another topic before I vote, how do we get more industrial capacity to Wrele?

Click to shrink...

We can build more construction ships and send them to Wrele (+5 industrial capacity each), or we can build prefabs and send them to Wrele.

Also, I agree, we do need to get on war footing. Many of those aliens will not be friendly. Of course, we're assuming that these aliens are telling the truth about them, but that's what our independent verification (via infiltration) is for.

 

[We Just Write]

We can build more construction ships and send them to Wrele (+5 industrial capacity each), or we can build prefabs and send them to Wrele.

Also, I agree, we do need to get on war footing. Many of those aliens will not be friendly. Of course, we're assuming that these aliens are telling the truth about them, but that's what our independent verification (via infiltration) is for.

Click to shrink...

Z: Not to kibitz, but using construction ships to assemble prefabs is an option.

 

[TCGM]

Right so, I have plans. Let's get down to them.

Research Plan Hype Train
Instead of doing an unfocused research, we're gonna focus. On all three at the same time, but with different levels of ferocity!

[X] Perspective: Unfocused (Try all of the above, but with less resources for each)
Restricting our inquiries to only a single avenue seems foolish.
-[X] Perspective: Metric Engineering (Try and figure out how to distort spacetime to access hyperspace)
-[XX] Perspective: Computational (Figure out what computational operations generate psionic effects)
-[XXX] Perspective: Physics (High-Energy Physics Experiments)

Diplomacy Plan Snuggles
We must deploy strategic hug procedures at once! But not too close, these aliens don't know about the true power of hugs yet.
[X] Park a half-carrier outside one of their systems and visit via Skimmer.

Poking Plan Fuck It, Let's Do It Live
We have Alien Space Britain, Alien Space United States, Alien Space North Korea, and Alien Space China, all of whom are potential threats and may or may not know we exist yet.

Time to make them aware of that fact.

Do you want to contact them at the present time?
[X] Yes
-[X] do just cruise right up in a Voidskipper
Specifically, a whole fleet of them. Dispatch eight half-carriers north of the Galactic Disk. Each set of two makes another hop to a different cluster of nearby asteroid-bearing systems and tows some resource rich ones into their cargo holds. After that, another jump above the Disk, then each Half-Carrier should jump into the home systems of each of these four nations. Once they find out how far from the home planet of these nations they have to be to release the asteroids into a stable, non-decaying orbit, do that. Then proceed with hailing and diplomatic relations, saying that we thought we would bring some presents for our new neighbors! Just don't tell them where our houses are quite yet.

I want to demonstrate to these empires that we have undetectable forms of FTL, and the resource rich asteroids we've towed into orbit of their home planets for them to mine could very easily not be put into stable orbits. We don't want to scare the people of these nations. Just their leaders. Being unsubtle with our arrival and carrot offerings while keeping the threats non obvious accomplishes this.

Also, we need to spread word of the multiple FTL capable battleships we have above and below the Galactic Disk in dark mode which defend the whole galaxy from the things waiting out there. Best case they believe us and don't poke the galactic defender; worst case they don't believe that there's things but they do believe the battleships are waiting in case they do anything unwise to our systems.

Interior Plan Enterprise's D...esire To Be Admired
The Enterprise-A has served us well. We shall retire her with honors to be viewed and continue to inspire generations to come.

[X] Preserve the Enterprise as a museum ship (???)

[X] Write-In
-[X] Explore Everything. We have over thirty Explorers. Time to go where no human has gone before. Send 5 Explorers to every quadrant of our new Galaxy to map the stars.

As for the Wormhole we captured, I would support putting it in another timeline, but we don't know if the alien nations nearby us have any way to detect what we're doing and learn from it with their psionics and hyperspace bullshit. Until we know for sure they either already know about time travel and have written it off, or have no way to figure out how to do it from us, we aren't touching that except in the greatest of emergencies.

[X] Another Galaxy


Construction Plan Neumann
We need to split up our construction ships. We should have enough after the ones we built earlier, but just in case, I've listed construction ship allocation by priority.

[XXX] Journeyman's Lantern
-[XXX] Basic Habitats (800 km^2 per invest, fragile, Penalizes Cohesion)
-[XX] Prefabs

[XX] Wrele
-[XXX] Basic Habitats (800 km^2 per invest, fragile, Penalizes Cohesion)

[X] New System
- [X] Kroki

Spoiler: Kroki System

Kroki

		Star Data	Type K4 V Orange Main Sequence Radius 5.97 x 105​ km (0.86 x sol) Mass 1.38 x 1030​ kg (0.69 x sol) Temperature 4300 K Luminosity 8.67 x 1025​ W (0.23 x sol)
		I	Type Rock Planet Orbital Radius 5.33 x 107​ km (0.36 AU) Period 2.23 x 103​ hours (0.26 earth years) Radius 3398.26 km (0.53 x earth) Gravity 4.99 m/s2​ (0.51 x earth) Special Trace atmosphere
		Kroki II	Type Terrestrial World Orbital Radius 8.90 x 107​ km (0.60 AU) Period 4.82 x 103​ hours (0.55 earth years) Physics Large iron/silicate Radius 8750.80 km (1.37 x earth) Gravity 13.88 m/s2​ (1.42 x earth) Hydrosphere 52 % water, 51 % ice Atmosphere Standard breathable Biosphere Prokaryotic microbes Civilization Colony Special Planetary rings, ruins of an ancient civilization
		III	Type Rock Planet Orbital Radius 1.57 x 108​ km (1.05 AU) Period 1.13 x 104​ hours (1.30 earth years) Radius 8679.56 km (1.36 x earth) Gravity 13.39 m/s2​ (1.37 x earth) Special Advanced alien artifact
		IV	Type Rock Planet Orbital Radius 2.82 x 108​ km (1.88 AU) Period 2.71 x 104​ hours (3.10 earth years) Radius 8599.28 km (1.35 x earth) Gravity 12.29 m/s2​ (1.26 x earth)
		V	Type Ice Planet Orbital Radius 4.93 x 108​ km (3.30 AU) Period 6.29 x 104​ hours (7.20 earth years) Radius 29496.27 km (4.63 x earth) Gravity 17.26 m/s2​ (1.76 x earth) Special Wreckage of a crashed starship
		VI	Type Ice Planet Orbital Radius 8.72 x 108​ km (5.83 AU) Period 1.48 x 105​ hours (16.92 earth years) Radius 27865.09 km (4.37 x earth) Gravity 15.48 m/s2​ (1.58 x earth)
		VII	Type Ice Planet Orbital Radius 1.84 x 109​ km (12.28 AU) Period 4.52 x 105​ hours (51.73 earth years) Radius 13422.06 km (2.11 x earth) Gravity 6.04 m/s2​ (0.62 x earth) Special Large moon
		VIII	Type Ice Planet Orbital Radius 3.60 x 109​ km (24.04 AU) Period 1.24 x 106​ hours (141.68 earth years) Radius 9042.21 km (1.42 x earth) Gravity 4.98 m/s2​ (0.51 x earth)
		IX	Type Ice Planet Orbital Radius 6.96 x 109​ km (46.55 AU) Period 3.34 x 106​ hours (381.71 earth years) Radius 13660.81 km (2.14 x earth) Gravity 7.25 m/s2​ (0.74 x earth)
		X	Type Ice Planet Orbital Radius 1.41 x 1010​ km (94.31 AU) Period 9.62 x 106​ hours (1100.63 earth years) Radius 14143.76 km (2.22 x earth) Gravity 6.79 m/s2​ (0.69 x earth) Special Planetary rings
		XI	Type Ice Planet Orbital Radius 2.79 x 1010​ km (186.23 AU) Period 2.67 x 107​ hours (3054.03 earth years) Radius 14172.38 km (2.22 x earth) Gravity 7.80 m/s2​ (0.80 x earth) Special Electromagnetic storms
		Distant Companion	Type M5 V Red Dwarf Distance 9.83 x 1010​ km (657.40 AU) Radius 2.45 x 105​ km (0.35 x sol) Mass 4.06 x 1029​ kg (0.20 x sol) Temperature 2600 K Luminosity 1.95 x 1024​ W (0.01 x sol)

Industrial Plan Furry
Time for more expansion!

Journeyman's Lantern
[X] 75% (Final Industrial Capacity: 3722, Invested Output: 2793)

[X] Wormhole Production (1 cm^2 annually per invest; requires 100,000 pops to work it)
[XXX] Civilian ships (select type)
-[XXX] Construction Ship (Needs 1 cm^2 wormhole area, 127 invest, 2 million crew; has 5 Industrial Capacity)

Military Plan Escalation
We need to be on a war footing yesterday, as our new neighbors are supermajorly big fucking problems.

[X] Space Pocket Munitions Factory (unlocks Artillery Ships, unlocks Warp Torpedoes, needs: 10,000 cm^2 wormhole area, 80 invest, 2 million workers)
[X] Warships (Select Type)
-[XXX] Battleship (Requires 1 cm^2 wormhole area, 7 invest, 4 million crew)
-[XX] Half Carrier (Requires 1 cm^2 wormhole area, 21 invest, 10 million crew)
-[X] Battlecruiser (Requires 1 cm^2 wormhole area, 10 invest, 5 million crew)
-[X] Carrier (Requires 2 cm^2 wormhole area, 153 invest, 30 million crew)
-[X] Armed Logistics Cruiser (Requires 1 cm^2 wormhole area, 79 invest, 3 million crew)

So that we actually can put them in the dark space above and below the galaxy as we told the alien nations we already had in Fuck It, Let's Do It Live. Also we need a massive amount of military buildup in case one of the nations decides to do something stupid anyways.

 

[We Just Write]

Z: The only correction is that the way we handle it you don't specify the exact number of ships built for each type; civilian ships or warships (as categories) each get a chunk of the budget as appropriate for their priority level, then the expenditure is divvied up within those categories based on the priorities put on the sub-votes.

 

[We Just Write]

L: Hmmm. There's a tie.

 

[january1may]

L: Hmmm. There's a tie.

Click to shrink...

Tie for which option?

If there's still some time left I could try coming up with a plan...

 

[We Just Write]

Tie for which option?

If there's still some time left I could try coming up with a plan...

Click to shrink...

L: Basically everything except the Industrial Plan is tied up, and the only reason the Industrial Plan isn't tied is because the way the votes work on that doesn't allow ties to begin with.

 

[Singularity.]

[X] Perspective: Unfocused (Try all of the above, but with less resources for each)
[X] Park a half-carrier outside one of their systems and visit via Skimmer.
[X] Yes
-[X] do just cruise right up in a Voidskipper
[X] Preserve the Enterprise as a museum ship (???)
[X] Write-In
-[X] Explore Everything. We have over thirty Explorers. Time to go where no human has gone before. Send 5 Explorers to every quadrant of our new Galaxy to map the stars.

this should break the tie then.

 

[january1may]

Trying to come up with my own vote. Unfortunately my opinion for some of those options is somewhat uncertain, and for most of the rest it doesn't matter what my opinion is because the vote had swung in a different direction anyway.
(Next time I'll post some quick considerations quickly and then figure out the rest of the vote if I still have any time left.)



First off, hyperspace/psionics research. This is obviously an absolute must, but there are a few different possible angles to approach it from.

[X] Perspective: Unfocused (Try all of the above, but with less resources for each)
-[X] Preferably with a bit of extra focus on computational perspective
(Restricting our inquiries to only a single avenue seems foolish. But we're good at the computational thing and it will be interesting to find out where we can go from there.)

Another important question regards diplomatic contact with the Valindir Republic. You know where they are relative to you and they'd be fairly easy to reach. The catch is that blatantly driving a Voidskipper up onto their lawn would attract a large amount of attention that they'd probably not appreciate. So, how do you want to handle keeping in contact with them?

[X] Let them come to you for now; they're doubtless going to do it eventually.
You'd rather not, to be honest.
(Honestly, ask them how they want to do it. And if they don't answer and then don't show up for a few years, maybe do the half-carrier thing.)

[] They still haven't quite left yet; ask them to bring a comm hole back with them.
Though the most covert option for contact, this does divulge the existence of wormhole technology.
(Nnnnnope.)

[] Park a half-carrier outside one of their systems and visit via Skimmer.
Yes it will draw comment, but less than blatantly arriving in a ship larger than some habs.
(Backup option if they don't come back quickly. Not the immediate choice because there's a good chance that the big ship will be noticed anyway and things might get tricky.)

[] Fuck it, go drive a Voidskipper up on their front lawn, subtlety can die in a fire.
There is something to be said for a basic policy of openness.
(Definitely nope. We don't want their neighbours to start invading them.)

There's also the matter of the Valindir's neighbors, who... aren't great based on the descriptions you were told. Do you want to contact them at the present time?

[] Covertly (Try and infiltrate them without cluing them in to your existence)
Some of these people seem horrible. If we could just set off a coup or revolution before talking to them...
(How do you expect to infiltrate them - by radio? If you want to send in some agents, you need, at least, a Skimmer, and that would doubtlessly be noticed.)

[X] Yes
-[X] don't just cruise right up in a Voidskipper
(Well, kind of. Bring in a half-carrier or two per nation. Send some agents in on Skimmers. If things go right, you can start your infiltration mission; you're better than many on that sort of thing. If things go wrong, you can send the big ships closer in and start actually trying to fight.)
-[] do just cruise right up in a Voidskipper
Look, they're going to find out eventually.
(If you're careful, you can probably keep them thinking you're nice for a while while you're starting to infiltrate. This... probably won't be the case in this option.)

The last major note is the fate of the Enterprise; when initially fitted for exploration, she was simply the only ship available that was even remotely suitable for the job. However now you have an entire fleet of ships purpose-built for the task, leaving the Enterprise rather obsolete in this role. So, what should be the fate of the Enterprise?

[] Continue exploring
though the ship is unsuited for the role, Enterprise's crew is the most skilled batch of explorers you've got.
(On one hand, yes. On the other hand, she's probably of better use as a museum, and the crew can probably adjust to another ship.}

[] Send the Enterprise back in time (You aren't getting the ship back; crew can return via mindcast)
This galaxy is incredibly weird. Perhaps inspecting the past up close and personal would be in order?
(Yes, but you don't need to send the Enterprise there, you have over thirty Explorers.)

All of the following options will transfer the name and crew (shipmind included) of Enterprise to a new Explorer hull.

[] Recycle the old freighter for parts (+50 industrial output this turn, NOW pair recovered)
Scrap, I tell ye
(Definitely nope.)

[] Return the hull to cargo service
Fundamentally, that's still a freighter hull under all the modifications
(No. But you are short on freighters and you might as well build a few more.)

[X] Preserve the Enterprise as a museum ship (???)
This ship is of great historical importance to the Wayfarers, both for her role during the migration, and for her subsequent exploration career.
(You've already got the tradition.)

[X] Write-In
-[X] Send one of the Explorers back in time instead
(This galaxy is incredibly weird. Perhaps inspecting the past up close and personal would be in order?)
(Your choice on whether it would be the one with Enterprise's old crew or one of the others. Can be either. Now that I think about it, sending the new Explorer!Enterprise on that mission probably works best overall.)

Oh, anything you want to do with that subsidized wormhole you made? You can open the light end of that thing to anywhere you want (after some shipping time) and use it to ship entire solar masses of materials back through.

[] Don't bother for now.
Waiting is a perfectly respectable course of action
(You can probably ship it somewhere else if it becomes relevant.)

[] Trade/Give it to the Valindir
But why though?
(Yeah, no good reason.)

[] The galactic core
Close by, convenient, accessible if anything goes wrong
(Do you want to find out what kind of dangers lurk around the core? ...I mean, you do, but that's what Explorers are for.)

[X] Another Galaxy
You know, a place to strip mine that isn't full of neighbors could be a neat opportunity
(Make sure it isn't full of neighbours... but yes.)

[] Another Timeline
The last word in "Don't fuck with my mining operations": putting them in a forked timeline
(You want to be able to ship it somewhere else if it becomes relevant.)

Industrial Plan

First and foremost, you need to decide growth levels.

Journeyman's Lantern
[X] 75% (Final Industrial Capacity: 3722, Invested Output: 2793)
(You need more industry if you want to be able to make better habs anytime soon)

Where should your Construction Ships be allocated?
[XX] Journeyman's Lantern
(Lots of construction to be done here.)
[XXX] Wrele
(For the prefabs, mostly.)
[X] New System (Write-In)
-[X] Orange Dwarf
(Might as well do some more colonizing. An orange dwarf is nice, though we should probably look for one without any weird stuff going on.)

Civilian Construction

[XXX] Additional Habitats (default pop density 600/km^2)(select type)
-[XXX] Basic Habitats (800 km^2 per invest, fragile, Penalizes Cohesion)
(We don't need them as urgently as before, but we do still need some more to house all the workers servicing the crews of our new ships. And for that matter for safely ramping up our industry.)

[XXX] Prefabs (Prefabs are a 50/50 mix of Industrial Capacity and Basic Habs by investment, packed up for shipping and assembled on site for 5% the normal construction cost; this overrides any other production in the destination system. Prefabs are automatically produced in your most developed star systems and shipped to your least developed (limited by freight capacity). Prefabs do take one year to assemble after shipping, so you can't assemble literally infinite industrial prefabs.)

[X] Wormhole Production (1 cm^2 annually per invest; requires 100,000 pops to work it)

[XXX] Civilian ships (select type)
-[XX] Freighter (Needs 1 cm^2 wormhole area, 113 invest, negligible crew)
(To replace the Enterprise, and to help the ramp-up at Wrede.)
-[] Liner (Needs 1 cm^2 wormhole area, 44 invest, 0.5 million crew)
(We already have a bunch of those at the moment, and we don't really need any more.)
-[XXX] Construction Ship (Needs 1 cm^2 wormhole area, 127 invest, 2 million crew; has 5 Industrial Capacity)
(We're going to have a lot of construction. Especially at Wrede.)
-[] Explorer (Needs 1 cm^2 wormhole area, 11 invest, 1 million crew; has 1 Industrial Capacity)
(We don't really need any more Explorers at the moment. Maybe later.)



Military Construction
[] Defense Skimmers (720 per invest)
(We've got more of the darn things that we know what to do with.)

[X] Space Pocket Munitions Factory (unlocks Artillery Ships, unlocks Warp Torpedoes, needs: 10,000 cm^2 wormhole area, 80 invest, 2 million workers)
(Low priority, but could be useful in the future.)

[XX] Warships (Select Type)
-[] Battleship (Requires 1 cm^2 wormhole area, 7 invest, 4 million crew)
A solid brick of pure murder, a battleship sacrifices everything for the sake of combat capabilities. However, this comes at the cost of needing constant resupply.
(You don't currently need to sacrifice anything for the sake of combat capabilities. You hope.)

-[XX] Battlecruiser (Requires 1 cm^2 wormhole area, 10 invest, 5 million crew)
While close to a battleship in terms of combat capability, a battlecruiser has some minor compromises for the sake of logistical sustainability.
(If you ever want to break something, a battlecruiser is the way to go.)

-[X] Half Carrier (Requires 1 cm^2 wormhole area, 21 invest, 10 million crew)
A versatile warship that brings a bit of everything to the table, Half-Carriers are well suited to independent operations patrolling the deep space between stars. However, they're much less useful in a major fleet engagement.
(They are, however, quite useful if your enemies don't have a major fleet. And you'd need to do a lot of patrolling now that you have multiple systems.)

-[] Carrier (Requires 2 cm^2 wormhole area, 153 invest, 30 million crew)
Purpose built to carry thousands of Skimmers into a combat theater, Carriers tend to hang back from the immediate line of combat if at all possible.
(You don't currently need to carry thousands of Skimmers into a combat theater. You hope.)

-[XX] Armed Logistics Cruiser (Requires 1 cm^2 wormhole area, 79 invest, 3 million crew)
An armed and armored freighter, ALCs are built to be the supply arm of a fleet, but retain the ability to defend themselves if needed. In addition, they also make great invasion ships when loaded with landing Skimmers.
(The up-and-coming alternative to the half-carrier for fighting any pesky neighbours. Or, if it ever comes up, for sending supplies to the Valindir.)

-[] Minelayer (Requires 1 cm^2 wormhole area, 10 invest, 5 million crew)
Accelerating shrapnel shells to 0.2 c using an ergogun, the shots fired by a Minelayer are an excellent area denial tool.
(You don't currently need an area denial tool. You hope.)

-[] Artillery Ship (Locked, Requires Space Pocket Munitions Factory)
A weapon that flies faster than time, the miniaturized skip gates aboard these ships can launch a truly devastating payload across the battlespace in an instant if not interdicted.
(You don't really have the industry for this at the moment. An option to consider for the future.)

-[] Irregular (Requires 1 cm^2 wormhole area, 120 invest, 2 million crew)
Also known as a pirate ship when in less savory hands, the only feature to recommend an Irregular is its ability to pass for a civilian ship at first glance.
(As far as you know, nobody else in the area knows what a civilian Voidskipper looks like. Yet. This might change eventually, but probably not soon.)



Some TL/DR summary of the non-industrial bits...

- study everything, but especially the computational parts
- don't do anything to the Valindir themselves for now, but if they don't visit very soon, send a half-carrier to their vicinity and visit by Skimmer
- send a half-carrier (or two) to the vicinity of each of the Valindir's neighbours and visit them by Skimmer; convenient for infiltration if things go well, or invasion if things go badly
- save the old Enterprise as a museum, send the new Enterprise on a mission to explore the past (or maybe send another Explorer here, but the new Enterprise is a good candidate)
- send the subsidized wormhole to another galaxy - far enough that the locals hopefully won't interfere, close enough that you can send it back if you urgently need it