Let's Play: Ascendancy!

[The Glyphstone]

Guess what? I'm bored. Really bored. Really, really, really bored. Really, really, really.......anyways. Bored enough that I managed to hunt out and find both a DOS emulator and a copy of one of my most favorite strategy games of all time, the dated and yet still incredibly fun ASCENDANCY. I installed it, ran it, and then realized that shovelling massive heaps of stinking nostalgia out of the trash heaps of my brain will be much more fun with an audience to snark alongside and give me pointers for failure.


Ascendancy is a 1995 turn-based strategy game, similar to the Master of Orion series or the early Civ games (MoO came in 1993). Like MoO, it's a "4X" game (Explore, Expand, Exploit, Exterminate). In Ascendancy, I'll be taking the helm of one of 21 different alien races, each with their own unique appearance and special ability, and setting out to conquer the galaxy and/or kill all of my opposition, thus accomplish the conquering by means of leaving no one to conquer it. I start with a single planet, building up my infrastructure and researching the tech tree, and constructing spaceships to explore and travel to other star systems, planting my flag there to colonize and develop new worlds. There will be other AI-controlled races in the galaxy, who also want those star systems, which is where the extermination comes in. Since the game has no defined storyline, I'll need to make one up, and I've already got somewhat of a plan.


So, without further ado, I present...
http://i126.photobucket.com/albums/p116/ArcherYiZe/Ascendancy1.jpg

First up: Decide for me
1: Which race I'm playing, out of the 21 possibilities. If you've never played the game, the sole difference between the races (besides their asthetic appearance, both for their racial portrait and the shape of their ships) is the unique special ability each of them recieves - some are passive, some are active and require time-based recharging. Some are quite powerful, others are close to worthless. A list can be found here (http://consortium.ucoz.ru/index/0-38).

2. How many enemies I have to ruthlessly crush, ranging from 2 to 6.

3. The number of star systems in the galaxy that I will need to conquer as I pursue my goal:
-Vacuous (15 star systems)
-Sparse (25 star systems)
-Average (50 star systems)
-Dense (75 star systems)
-Very Dense (100 star systems)

I'm using the Antagonizer AI patch, so unfortunately the Difficulty setting will be my decision - but the more enemies you give me and the more space I have to play with, the better odds I choose Hostile (they all hate me, they get industry and research boosts) over Neutral (they mildly dislike me, they get industry boosts). I'll only choose Peaceful if I get saddled with the Arbryls, since that's effectively not having any racial specialty at all.

[Fri]

you might need to explain more about the game first, glyphstone

[The Glyphstone]

you might need to explain more about the game first, glyphstone

True, it is quite old. Consider it edited.

[Premier]

I would suggest playing the Chamachie, since their instant research ability, when timed well, can really quicken technological development.

But then, there are other good choices, as well...

[Ilena]

1 - Chamachie i would vote for too, or snovemdomas or GOVOROM

2 - 6

3 - Very Dense

my suggestions, i always love big games :P

[Smight]

1. any.
2. 6
3 Very Dense

[Johnny Blade]

1. Dubtaks
2. 6
3. Very Dense

(I don't know anything about Ascendancy, so I was reluctant to vote for the biggest possible game here. I mean, this is supposed to be finished at some point, right? :smallwink:)

[The Glyphstone]

Go ahead and vote for a large map - it's a turn-based game, but I won't be documenting every single year, only the ones where something interesting happens.

So far that's 2 votes for the six-legged science lizards, and 1 for the silver-eyed tech-thieving hairy manta rays.

[Johnny Blade]

Okay, vote changed.

[Aragehaor]

Personally i like The Minions, Though the Chamachies are good too.

6

Very Dense


(Why do i get the feeling that this lets play is going to make me want Ascendancy..?:smalltongue:)

[The Glyphstone]

If it does, I can point you in the right direction - it's abandonware at this point, and free to download.

Counting split votes as 1/2 or 1/3, thats:

Chamachies: 1.8
Dubtaks: 1
Minions: 0.5
Snovemdomas: 0.3
Govorom: 0.3

Very Dense: 4

6 Enemies: 4

I'll give it another day or two, but it's definitely Chamachies in the lead...and good thing too, they're one of the best, I'll need that research spiking to keep up with the neighbors.

[factotum]

If it does, I can point you in the right direction - it's abandonware at this point, and free to download.


You realise that abandonware has no legal meaning, right? Copyright is copyright and it's as illegal to download a copy of Ascendancy today as it was the day it was released.

[The Glyphstone]

It's not a legal term, but the game is still impossible to purchase from any firsthand source. Still, said pointing will be done via PM as to not violate the board rules any further.

Want to make a vote for what horrifically useless race I should get saddled with? It's almost certainly a 7-player Very Dense galaxy at this point, but the power to cement the Chamachies in their victory or upset them for the Dubtaks is in your hands...

[Smight]

is there any way to retrofit ships, or once you use up your colony pod you have to abandon the ship and build new one?

[Premier]

No, it's possible to retrofit at any shipyard.

[Smight]

No, it's possible to retrofit at any shipyard.

How? I didn't manage to find that option.

[The Glyphstone]

If your planet has an Orbital Docks - different than a Shipyard, you can Refit any ship currently in orbit as if it were a new construction, with a much shorter build time. The only tricky part is that it's an option for the ship itself (like Abandon and Leave Orbit), not something in the build menu,


And it looks like the votes are in - Chamachies, 6 Players, Very Dense, No Items, Final Destination! I'll compose the first update this afternoon.

[The Glyphstone]

Fellow scientists, historians, and intellectuals of our great empire, I bid you greetings. As those who have already spoken, I come before you to speak in honor of the thousand-year anniversary of the Reunion that marked the birth of our Empire. My offering, however, will not be a writing or depiction of the Reunion, but a presentation of the years immediately preceding it, based greatly on a record I unearthed from that very era, the personal diary of sorts of a lowly lab assistant to the legendary Dr. Gandalian, the man who pioneered so many brilliant discoveries that facilitated the Reunion. All examinations pronounce it to be authentic, and so I present it to you unedited – ignoring certain segments that are undoubtedly teenage hubris and not an intentional smear on the reputation of the late Doctor, it is an unprecedented insight into our ancient heritage. Now, without further delay, I present to you the recordings of Sahs’tak’tith Amberscales Ironclutch, or as he apparently dubs himself, ‘Tak’…

http://i126.photobucket.com/albums/p116/ArcherYiZe/Ascendancy0.jpg

Day 1:
Hello? Hello? Is this thing on? I swear, if this turns out to be another dud, I’m going to go down to the techshop and slap that salesman upside the snout...Huh. Guess it works after all – I never would have thought they’d get actual brain-to-chip recording tech out on the open market so fast. Well, it’s no hover-skimmer, but it’ll do for a twelfth-hatching gift. Who knows, maybe I’ll end up rich and famous, and some writer will want to know what my childhood was like. Anyways, I’m Tak, or if you want to be stuffy about it, Shas’tak’tith Amberscales, twenty-four years old from the Ironclutch hatcheries. I’m officially an adult now, and I’m obligated to find some way to be productive for society. Unfortunately for society, I’d rather have fun, but since the truant officers get twitchy if they catch you unemployed, I think I’ve landed the perfect gig. There’s this doddering old fool at the university, dude called Gandalian, who’s been asking the school for a lab helper and research assistant, and I managed to snag the spot before anyone who might actually want to work there did. I start tomorrow, we’ll see what he’s like then.

http://i126.photobucket.com/albums/p116/ArcherYiZe/Ascendancy2.jpghttp://i126.photobucket.com/albums/p116/ArcherYiZe/Ascendancy3.jpg

[Johnny Blade]

Interesting - I assume we're going to follow this from the point of view of someone who will not have any part in (most) important decisions then?


Oh, and the screenshots aren't telling me much, although I guess you'll provide some exposition soon enough. :smallwink:

[chiasaur11]

Could be quite good, could be merely meh. Could end prematurely. So far, though?

I'm optimistic.

Well, whatever happens I'll keep an eye on it. Good luck.

[The Glyphstone]

Interesting - I assume we're going to follow this from the point of view of someone who will not have any part in (most) important decisions then?

Heh heh. Maaaaaaaybe....

The screenshots are of the galaxy map and my home planet at Day 0 - note the Xeno Ruins two tiles NE of the colony base, I had to remake the map more than a dozen times before I got one of those...

[Aragehaor]

Sounds good so far interesting Point of view your giving us, Cant wait to see what happens next.

[The Glyphstone]

Day 2:
Well, my first day of work’s over. Pretty much what I expected, really, an old geezer limping around and shouting things at me like I’m the one whose hearing stopped working twenty hatchings ago. He set me digging through old research files – some of them are actually written on paper, can you believe it? – looking for the notes of some ancient scientist named Tonklin. Supposedly the guy was fairly smart, but had the bad luck to be smart in the middle of one of the old tribal wars, so his ideas never got any practice, and he ended up as somebody’s spear target. At least it didn’t take long, I just went to the very bottom of the archives and worked my way up. I can’t make head or tails of the drawings and scribbled instructions, but Gandalian’s awfully pleased. He’s locked himself away in the lab, and now I’ve got to start wading though the bureaucratic red tape involved in getting him a meeting with the university bigcrests. I wonder what for?

Day 10:
Still in the dark as to what happened in that meeting, but the doctor came out looking incredibly happy…and for some reason, so did the army colonel. Why would an army brass be meeting with an old scientist and the university bean-counters? Search me.

Back in the lab…more paperwork. Now I’m filing a patent on Gandalian’s behalf, something called the Gandal Motor. Looks like some sort of big engine, though it’s way too big to put on a hovercraft, maybe some sort of suborbital plane – but we’ve already got orbital construction, and who needs a plane to fly stuff up to the satellite yards when you can just use the elevator? Those schematics look awfully familiar for some reason…ah, never mind. I’m starting to actually care about this job, can’t have that now, can we?

Day 35:
So apparently the latest buzz to hit the government is a push for space exploration. The talking heads on the HD are all going on about some revolutionary new drive that’ll allow effective manned exploration of the other planets in our solar system, something called the…Grendel Motor? Waaaaaait a minute? That shriveled up fool I’m filing paperwork for kickstarted our space program? It’d certainly explain where he got the funding to go on this expedition to some stupid old ruins in the mountains. I wonder if it’s too late for me to come down with a 24-hour scale rot?


http://i126.photobucket.com/albums/p116/ArcherYiZe/Ascendancy4.jpg http://i126.photobucket.com/albums/p116/ArcherYiZe/Ascendancy5.jpg
(I don't have much to take pictures of right now, so you're getting shiny shots of my starting territory and the development of my planet.)

[The Glyphstone]

Day 50:
Bored. Bored and wet. Bored and wet and miserable. We've been at these stupid ruins for more than a week now, found nothing of interest, and it hasn't stopped raining for days. My sleeping pod is completely soaked through, but Gandalian doesn't care a bit - I think he's like a prune, all dried up and doesn't notice if there's water around or not. Me? I can't take this anymore, day after day of digging through and sifting mud looking for who knows what. The old frog's asleep right now, I think I'll take the chance to sneak off and go exploring on my own, maybe find a dry spot to curl up in.


Day 65:
This is ridiculous. How am I supposed to watch my favorite shows when every single channel is blathering on non-stop about Dr. Gandawonderful and his latest, greatest discovery? Chamac to reality, people, wake up! The First Hatchling is a myth, a fairy tale, something you tell newhatched to keep them quiet during monthly services. I don't care if you found a drawing of what everyone says is the First Hatchling next to some sort of star chart (just like you don't care about the research assistant who nearly broke his neck falling through the roof into the room where you found it). It doesn't exist - but does anyone listen to me? No, they go crazy and start spending tons of money on a massive space initiative, instead of something useful like upgraded servers for NightHaunter.

And did Gandalian the Great say anything to me for getting him yet another mention in the news? No, he yelled at me (again) for 'breaking' his prototype motor-thing. I didn't break anything...I think I fixed it...there was that other carving on the wall near the charts that looked like a motor, like the 'Gandal Motor', but a bunch of the cables were in the wrong place. So I moved them, was that so bad? Apparently so. I'm taking the afternoon off, going to go watch them build that new factory on the edge of town, something related to subatomic ram-jets or something equally stupid.


http://i126.photobucket.com/albums/p116/ArcherYiZe/Ascendancy7.jpghttp://i126.photobucket.com/albums/p116/ArcherYiZe/Ascendancy6.jpg

[Johnny Blade]

Heh heh. Maaaaaaaybe....
Ah, I see...now...maybe. :smallamused:

[The Glyphstone]

And I haven't even begun to make this poor guy's life miserable yet, trust me.:smallbiggrin:

In other news, I finally got Star Drive tech, so the next update should have pictures of something other than my homeworld (namely, the three colonies I'm about to seed in my home system, but meh).

[The Glyphstone]

Day 110:
Still no sign of this First Hatchling craze dying down - if anything it's building up strength. You can't go more than a block without tripping over a dozen self-endorsed street preachers extolling the messages of this passage or that from the Book of the Nestmother. Me, I'm more interested in following the footage of the colony ship that launched last week, the Golden Egg. It's..well, it was...a tiny little thing, only a kilometer or so long, stuffed with enough supplies to settle three independent colonies long enough for us to establish reliable intersystem transit. After it planted the colony crews, it was supposed to venture to the outersystem and survey what the techies are pretty sure are a couple of wormhole lanes leading to other star systems, but a few hours after it left Fomahault IV orbit, all transmissions stopped. The official line is a freak micrometeorite collision inflicting critical damage on the reactor, but if the bootleg footage I've seen bouncing all over the nets is accurate, the last thing anyone said on that ship was "So what does this button do?..."

Clearly it doesn't take a genius to fly a spaceship...maybe I should have applied for that instead. It couldn't be any worse than working for Geezerdalian; those military research contracts have gone completely to his head, he's had me working for two weeks on finding a way to weaponize miniature black holes! Moron.

Day 180:
ALIENS! Real, live, ALIENS! This is crazy! It's all over the news, and people are even more whacked out than they were from that star chart. It makes sense though - ancient ruins are one thing (boring), an actual extraterrestial ship popping out of a wormhole and saying hello is another (awesome!). From all the imagery, they're awfully freaky-looking things, some sort of sentient liquid blobs flying around in big bubble ships, but unfortunately we couldn't understand a word they were saying. On the bright side, they weren't too chatty either, cruising around the system for a few days then disappearing. They creeped me out, honestly, hope they don't come back soon.


http://i126.photobucket.com/albums/p116/ArcherYiZe/Ascendancy9.jpghttp://i126.photobucket.com/albums/p116/ArcherYiZe/Ascendancy8.jpg

[Aragehaor]

:smallbiggrin: at the risk of starting the trend to become a broken record... I love it, its awesome and the only thing i could complain about is wanting more screen shots. (But im not going to, yay.)



Oh wait, heres one you still havent really given me anything to see what the actual gameplays like! Graaah! :smallfurious: :smalltongue: (Though, i still want to play it now more then anything, Curse you Glyphstone!)








though ill gladly take the curse back if you send me that pm.:smalltongue:

[The Glyphstone]

The only problem is that screenshots of the game are kinda boring to look at, since it's 100% turn-based gameplay. I take pics of interesting stuff, and to keep a visual status report on the size of my empire, but aside from that, not much to show.

As for the gameplay, it's also kinda hard to relate secondhand if you've never played a empire-management game like Civilization or Masters of Orion. I give my various planets build orders to put structure on certain tiles (visible in the planet screenshots), research technologies from the tech tree, build ships that I can outfit with different sorts of motors, power generators, weapons, shields, scanners, and assorted doohickies, then send them exploring from system to system planting colonies - and once I start getting crowded and the PvAI aspect kicks off, taking over other people's colonies.



To other people in general - is anyone else out there reading this, and is it working? I'm trying to write a plot and story into a game completely devoid of anything resembling one, and doing it with a turn-based game to boot. Is it my writing that keeps people from commenting? Or just the general boredom of following a TBS?

[Starbuck_II]

The story isn't bad. I kind of like it so far. It has my interest at least for now.

[The Glyphstone]

Day 200:
Apparently I’m not the only one who got the heeby-jeebies from looking at those ET’s – or maybe our government just decides what to spend the planetary budget on by throwing darts at a board on the wall. We’ve launched another colony ship called the Iron Egg, this one with a crew who can at least tie their own shoes, and sent it off into one of the other wormholes to see what’s on the other side, but now the people in charge have decided to outfit Chamach and all three of our newly formed colonies with a big, hideously expensive network of orbital force field generators and some honest-to-Nestmother gravity-slung missile launcher platforms! Talk about paranoia, sheesh.

Day 230:
Good news, I guess…we’ve heard back from the second colony ship – or, more accurately, the colony that it founded in the star system on the other end of the wormhole. They named it Icarus, after the old emperor, but whether he was the Fourth or the Ninth I can’t remember, having failed history three times and all that. It’s an excuse to declare a national holiday at least, so I don’t need to go to work and deal with Gandalian again.

Day 279:
Another day, another imperial decree. Apparently finding out that we now have stable colonies in three star systems is enough to qualify us as the “Chamachie Star Empire”. Whoop-de-doo.


http://i126.photobucket.com/albums/p116/ArcherYiZe/Ascendancy10.jpg


Day 285: Another reported encounter with the living liquid aliens, just a pass-by between one of their ships and the Iron Egg as it surveyed and moved on through a desolate system sporting one miserable lump of airless rock. They warbled at us, and the Egg’s crew recorded it and sent the footage back home on a drone for the linguists to wrestle with. I don’t know if they’re doing it right or not…they seem pretty certain that this bunch calls themselves ‘Fludentri’ (weird name, btw), but as for the rest of their translation – I went and checked my hovercraft, and whatever eels are, it’s completely empty of them.

http://i126.photobucket.com/albums/p116/ArcherYiZe/Ascendancy13.jpg

[The Glyphstone]

Day 312:
The Iron Egg’s sent back reports of seeding three more planets for colonization – robot drones only this time, but when our settler ships get there, they’ll have everything nice and comfy waiting for them. I can only imagine what it must be like to go live on an alien planet so far away from home…cut away from all the comforts of civilization…okay, who am I kidding? I’d go crazy after a month without playing NightHaunter; and for that matter, if I had the cash to buy myself a slot in a colony ship, I wouldn’t be here working the night shift in Gandalian’s lab, correcting his grammar on the plans for a new sort of energy shield he’s going to pitch to the military. Correcting his power requirement numbers and the angle of deflection for some of the accentuator focus crystals while I’m at it, but I doubt he’ll even notice, let alone give me credit. Then again, that’s why he doesn’t pay me the big bucks…grumble...

http://i126.photobucket.com/albums/p116/ArcherYiZe/Ascendancy11.jpg

Day 340:
First report from the Steel Egg, our second scout/colony ship…and it’s MORE ALIENS! Bit of a reverse with the Fludentri, this time we wandered into a star system to find these guys already camped out there, nice planet all sealed away inside some pretty nasty-looking orbital defenses. On the bright side, at least they’ve got a regular Chamachoid body shape, though how they manage to stand up with only two legs is beyond me, and I can’t imagine what the point of having three worms living in your mouth all day is. The Egg transmitted a greeting, got some meaningless gibberish back, sent a record drone to us, and hightailed it out of there, keeping well away from those satellite cannons. They said they’re about to enter some sort of oddly turbulent wormhole, so who knows when we’ll hear from them.

http://i126.photobucket.com/albums/p116/ArcherYiZe/Ascendancy12a.jpg

[Aragehaor]

http://i126.photobucket.com/albums/p116/ArcherYiZe/Ascendancy12a.jpg


Oh Ye Gods.. :smallsigh:

[Starbuck_II]

Do the worms digest their food for them?
Maybe they have no microbes (like E. Coli) in their gut insteads they have mouth-worms.

[The Glyphstone]

In case it's not clear from the picture, the Balifids are three-tongued rodent people. I guess the Chamachies don't have tongues. :)


Day 383:
Working late again. Big G’s left me here cleaning up his paperwork while he does something big and interesting. Left some of his personal files on the desk though, maybe I’ll take a peek, couldn’t hurt. Budget forms, boring….grant requests, boring…classified memo from Military Central Space Command? Not Boring. Let’s see…woah. I guess we managed to crack the translation code with the Fludentri, but there must have been a real bozo on our end when we sent our first translation, or maybe they’re just really touchy about their privacy, because their immediate response was a flatly worded declaration of intent to ‘disperse us all and scatter our component atoms across the infinite multitude of stars’. Soooo, we’re at war then? I wonder when they're going to tell the civilians, though it explains the sudden ramping up of defensive production, and why G’s had me doing so much work on different ways of blowing **** up. We’re still not sure how to kill a sentient slushy drink, but it looks like the current plan is to build enough nasty ships with enough nasty guns to blow up their ships and let vacuum figure out how to finish them off. It’s going to be a tough fight at the least…according to the attached intelligence estimate (how did we get this, anyways?) their military component outnumbers us by at least two to one, though our tech base is quite a bit stronger than theirs. Sounds to be like a bunch of eggheads talking out of their collective cloaca to me, since they’re the ones who flew an interstellar vessel into our home system and not the other way round.

http://i126.photobucket.com/albums/p116/ArcherYiZe/Ascendancy14.jpg




I am truly unsurprised. I'm playing the game on Hostile, the ANTAG patch increases AI hostility, and the Fludentri are probably one of the top three most hostile races even without the patch (others being the Marmosians and the Shevar).

But more importantly, my loyal readers, comes the first post-introduction interactive part of this epic story - not much, but it's here. Should I fight this war conservatively, holing up around my existing clutch of colonies and using my tech acceleration advantage to quickly build impenetrable defenses, or be aggressive, turning my fledgling industry towards battleships and taking the fight to the mean ol' Fludentri, playing up that same tech advantage to have the latest and greatest guns n' hulls?

[Aragehaor]

http://i126.photobucket.com/albums/p116/ArcherYiZe/Ascendancy14.jpg

I am truly unsurprised. I'm playing the game on Hostile, the ANTAG patch increases AI hostility, and the Fludentri are probably one of the top three most hostile races even without the patch (others being the Marmosians and the Shevar).

But more importantly, my loyal readers, comes the first post-introduction interactive part of this epic story - not much, but it's here. Should I fight this war conservatively, holing up around my existing clutch of colonies and using my tech acceleration advantage to quickly build impenetrable defenses, or be aggressive, turning my fledgling industry towards battleships and taking the fight to the mean ol' Fludentri?


Well, if that little scoreboard up there is telling the truth, Were pretty close to screwed.

So! in the Interest of Screwing us over Ensuring our Superiority i say we make a charge into their territory as soon as possible leaving our planets nearly undefended! :smallwink:

[Johnny Blade]

I'd hole up, just in case another species joins the party. Not that I'd know how likely that is, but overextending doesn't seem to be the way to go when everyone is out to get you.

[Aragehaor]

I'd hole up, just in case another species joins the party. Not that I'd know how likely that is, but overextending doesn't seem to be the way to go when everyone is out to get you.

Well if were going to be Safe about it... we better just make our systems ultimate fortresses of doom and only exit them to commit our raids upon the unsuspecting (or suspecting!) Populous of our foes!

[Starbuck_II]

I say go for the Gibbler. Tell them, "Who the Hell do you think we are?" And blast them to smitherines.

Send in a fleet to attack one of their colonies while building defenses at home.

[The Glyphstone]

Day 400: Not so much as a peep out of the muckety-mucks about the fact that we're AT FREAKING WAR with a merciless extraterrestial empire that wants to KILL US ALL. Nope, it's parlimentary election season, and you know what that means...nothing in the news that could potentially upset any fat, happy, stupid voters. I've posted a warning on the chat sites I hang around, but no one's taking it seriously. Sheep.

Well, if I'm the only one paying any attention, I might as well amuse myself. I've pulled a copy of the latest stardrive plans onto my personal comp unit and loaded it into a commercial drafting software. Pretty fun in a dorky sort of way, pulling and prodding at different spots, adding and removing parts.

Day 415:
Voting is next week. I've already picked out my candidates - hardline militarists all of them, but I'd take anyone aside from the current bunch. According to the official media, it's the anniversary of something I couldn't care less about, because they decided to do an honorary test-firing of the orbital missile platforms. At empty space, or maybe an asteroid, or a target dummy. Definitely not at a Fludentri cruiser heading for our orbital ring, of course not. That bootleg sensor footage running the rounds on the chat sites has to be faked, because the government wouldn't do anything as gauche as lie to us so we don't get upset, would it?

The totally-not-real footage did show it breaking off and retreating after that first hit though, so I guess we dodged the proverbial bullet for now.


http://i126.photobucket.com/albums/p116/ArcherYiZe/Ascendancy15.jpg

[Aragehaor]

Day 400: Not so much as a peep out of the muckety-mucks about the fact that we're AT FREAKING WAR with a merciless extraterrestial empire that wants to KILL US ALL. Nope, it's parlimentary election season, and you know what that means...nothing in the news that could potentially upset any fat, happy, stupid voters. I've posted a warning on the chat sites I hang around, but no one's taking it seriously. Sheep.

Well, if I'm the only one paying any attention, I might as well amuse myself. I've pulled a copy of the latest stardrive plans onto my personal comp unit and loaded it into a commercial drafting software. Pretty fun in a dorky sort of way, pulling and prodding at different spots, adding and removing parts.

Day 415:
Voting is next week. I've already picked out my candidates - hardline militarists all of them, but I'd take anyone aside from the current bunch. According to the official media, it's the anniversary of something I couldn't care less about, because they decided to do an honorary test-firing of the orbital missile platforms. At empty space, or maybe an asteroid, or a target dummy. Definitely not at a Fludentri cruiser heading for our orbital ring, of course not. That bootleg sensor footage running the rounds on the chat sites has to be faked, because the government wouldn't do anything as gauche as lie to us so we don't get upset, would it?

The totally-not-real footage did show it breaking off and retreating after that first hit though, so I guess we dodged the proverbial bullet for now.


http://i126.photobucket.com/albums/p116/ArcherYiZe/Ascendancy15.jpg

I see were going with "Hold up in the ol'Fortress of doom And raid the enemy's weakest colonys every now and again" :smallwink:

[The Glyphstone]

Depends on how the election goes, doesn't it? :)

[Aragehaor]

Depends on how the election goes, doesn't it? :)

(Hopes the Pacifists dont win.) :smalltongue:




Also, Not that this matters to anyone but me, but what factions are running for... whatever the grand leader position is called?

[The Glyphstone]

Day 422:
The final ballots are coming in, and it's looking like the Expansionists are going to win by a landslide - might even get a supermajority of the seats, if the trend stays strong. They were getting hammered in the first few days of voting, but I guess something in their platform resonated with the average Chamachie, especially after that anonymous package was sent to all our major reporting studios with military sensor footage of our orbital weaponry engaging a Fludentri warship, and some extremely classified memos regarding their genocidal intentions. Quite mysterious how that happened, really, but after that the Preservationists didn't stand a chance - 'Kill them' sounds a lot better on posters than 'Ask them not to kill us'. The 4Chams barely even got on the tallies, but that's to be expected from a bunch whose platform every single election is based solely on something called 'lulz'. The Emperor's a Preservationist, but even he has to bow to public opinion on the big things, so I'd say the odds are good we're going on the offensive. On the downside, it means I have to put up with stupid posters all over downtown:

http://i126.photobucket.com/albums/p116/ArcherYiZe/chamachie_wants_you.jpg

Hypocrite. Politician. Is there a difference, really?

In other news, still working on that redesigned star drive...thinking I might be on to something here.



Day 423:
Well, that clinched it. Right as the final votes were being tallied, a breaking news report came in from the orbital sensor relays, a frantic burst transmission from our first (well, second) colony ship, the Iron Egg. Apparently they wandered into an unsurveyed system all fat and happy, and found themselves locked up by more alien targeting systems than they could count, all coming off one huge planet covered in odd-colored water. They hightailed it back into the wormhole, then launched us a report drone...call me crazy, but I think they've walked right into the Fludenti home system - and more importantly, they didn't see any sign of passive defenses, only weaponry. For bloodthirsty warmongers, they're not exactly on the ball about their own protection, and we might just have to take advantage of that.

http://i126.photobucket.com/albums/p116/ArcherYiZe/Ascendancy16.jpg

Next Update: The galaxy gets a little more crowded.

[The Glyphstone]

Day 440:
So we’ve finally heard back from the Steel Egg, which is a relief. According to some top-secret memos that I haven’t seen, it had been incommunicado for so long that most people thought it was lost. Turns out it was just a really long wormhole, and they couldn’t launch drones while in transit. But not only did they get out alive, they met another alien scout on the other side.

http://i126.photobucket.com/albums/p116/ArcherYiZe/Ascendancy17.jpg

From the recordings of first contact, this bunch calls themselves the Capelons, if our steadily improving translation software’s accurate. They’re bunches of flowing fiber masses who can reshape themselves into whatever they want, though it looks like they prefer looking like clumps of tree branches plus eyes; probably jungle worlders. Bit standoffish, but at least they didn’t declare war on sight, just passed on into the wormhole. I’ll bet we see them at home in person soon.

http://i126.photobucket.com/albums/p116/ArcherYiZe/Ascendancy18.jpg

[Johnny Blade]

So, a potential ally?

[Aragehaor]

Day 422:
The final ballots are coming in, and it's looking like the Expansionists are going to win by a landslide - might even get a supermajority of the seats, if the trend stays strong. They were getting hammered in the first few days of voting, but I guess something in their platform resonated with the average Chamachie, especially after that anonymous package was sent to all our major reporting studios with military sensor footage of our orbital weaponry engaging a Fludentri warship, and some extremely classified memos regarding their genocidal intentions. Quite mysterious how that happened, really, but after that the Preservationists didn't stand a chance - 'Kill them' sounds a lot better on posters than 'Ask them not to kill us'. The 4Chams barely even got on the tallies, but that's to be expected from a bunch whose platform every single election is based solely on something called 'lulz'. The Emperor's a Preservationist, but even he has to bow to public opinion on the big things, so I'd say the odds are good we're going on the offensive. On the downside, it means I have to put up with stupid posters all over downtown:

http://i126.photobucket.com/albums/p116/ArcherYiZe/chamachie_wants_you.jpg

Hypocrite. Politician. Is there a difference, really?

In other news, still working on that redesigned star drive...thinking I might be on to something here.



Day 423:
Well, that clinched it. Right as the final votes were being tallied, a breaking news report came in from the orbital sensor relays, a frantic burst transmission from our first (well, second) colony ship, the Iron Egg. Apparently they wandered into an unsurveyed system all fat and happy, and found themselves locked up by more alien targeting systems than they could count, all coming off one huge planet covered in odd-colored water. They hightailed it back into the wormhole, then launched us a report drone...call me crazy, but I think they've walked right into the Fludenti home system - and more importantly, they didn't see any sign of passive defenses, only weaponry. For bloodthirsty warmongers, they're not exactly on the ball about their own protection, and we might just have to take advantage of that.

http://i126.photobucket.com/albums/p116/ArcherYiZe/Ascendancy16.jpg

Next Update: The galaxy gets a little more crowded.
Telling me whos running in the form of a update eh?! why you not-so-sneaky sneaky...



Day 440:
So we’ve finally heard back from the Steel Egg, which is a relief. According to some top-secret memos that I haven’t seen, it had been incommunicado for so long that most people thought it was lost. Turns out it was just a really long wormhole, and they couldn’t launch drones while in transit. But not only did they get out alive, they met another alien scout on the other side.

http://i126.photobucket.com/albums/p116/ArcherYiZe/Ascendancy17.jpg

From the recordings of first contact, this bunch calls themselves the Capelons, if our steadily improving translation software’s accurate. They’re bunches of flowing fiber masses who can reshape themselves into whatever they want, though it looks like they prefer looking like clumps of tree branches plus eyes; probably jungle worlders. Bit standoffish, but at least they didn’t declare war on sight, just passed on into the wormhole. I’ll bet we see them at home in person soon.

http://i126.photobucket.com/albums/p116/ArcherYiZe/Ascendancy18.jpg



apparently the Fludenti go around telling everyone in earshot that they declared war on the Chamachie, along with propaganda against us as well! (That, or the mouse race got wind of it and shouted it to every race they saw, Evil little gossipers.)

[Johnny Blade]

(That, or the mouse race got wind of it and shouted it to every race they saw, Evil little gossipers.)
There is a rat among us. :smallannoyed:

[Aragehaor]

So, a potential ally?

With a friend like that who needs enemys...



There is a rat among us. :smallannoyed:

:smalltongue:

[Johnny Blade]

With a friend like that who needs enemys...
Well, my logic was that between the bloodthirsty blobs and the two-faced, triple-tongued rodents, those guys are our best bet so far.

[The Glyphstone]

Well, my logic was that between the bloodthirsty blobs and the two-faced, triple-tongued rodents, those guys are our best bet so far.

The irony in this statement is staggering...


Day 455:
Geez, this corner of the galaxy is really crowded. Since even Expansionists don't like wasting money, they decided against scrapping the last unarmed colony ship we were building in the spacedocks when they took over, instead just slapping some extra armor on the sides and calling it a day. Now it's phoning home, having reportedly stumbled into the Balifid home system - the furry big-toothed critters, if I hadn't mentioned it yet. We've been finetuning our translation software with them, since they're the only bunch of people we know who aren't shooting at us (yet). They're awful cowards from everything we can see, but not terribly threatening - their primary war strategy seems to be hiding and waiting for the enemy to forget what they were doing. Still, they didn't at all enjoy seeing us appearing in 'their' space, telling the Diamond Egg in no uncertain terms that this was private property. Pretty bold for a bunch of gutless rodents, if you ask me - but no one asks me, do they?

http://i126.photobucket.com/albums/p116/ArcherYiZe/Ascendancy19.jpg

I've put the finishing touches on my redesigned star drive, and it looks pretty good...I'll show it to Gandalian tomorrow and see what he thinks.




Day 456:
That two-faced, scale-rotting, Nestmother-damned, foul, pestilent, lying, thieving…Argh!

I went in last night and showed off a copy of my drive plans to Gandalian. He took one look at them, said it was worthless and overcomplicated, and threw it in a disposal bin. I haven’t had any real respect for him in a while anyways, but it still hurt a bit. But when I went back this morning, the bin was empty – very strange, since I’m the one who empties them. He sure can’t be bothered to get off his tail for anything as crude as menial labor. I had an ugly hunch, so I logged into the government patent listing site, and sure enough, there was a patent and plans registered last night for the “Gandal Mark II Advanced Hyperdrive”. The bastard stole my idea! And worse, before he submitted it, he altered the datestamp on the file so it looks like he wrote it three weeks ago…even if I thought I had a hope of disputing a patent claim with the most celebrated scientist of our time, the Patent Office would see that my datestamp is three weeks after his, and they look really hard for evidence of tampering on counterclaims, not so much original submissions. I’m skipping work today, let him clean out his own trash bins.

http://i126.photobucket.com/albums/p116/ArcherYiZe/Ascendancy20.jpg

As an out-of-character note, Advanced Exploration is what I call a milestone technology - Large ships are significantly tougher and have more component space than Mediums, Hyperdrives are far, far faster than ordinary Star Drives, and it's also a prerequisite to several very valuable later technologies.

[Johnny Blade]

Hehehe...saw it coming. :smallbiggrin:
And I guess you saw it coming that someone would write that he saw it coming.



The irony in this statement is staggering...
Well, when the only other options are either insane or useless...I'm prepared to see the wrong of my ways soon, though.

[The Glyphstone]

Day 460:

Skipped work again. No clue if Gandy's even figured out I'm gone yet, or that I put a tap on his netlink before I left. Now I can poke around in all his juicy classified military files without having to even visit the lab, and let me tell you, there's some real juice there. to start with, more aliens. This time it's a bunch of sentient gas clouds who call themselves Nimbuloids. I know I didn't pay much attention in biology lessons, but I'm pretty sure solid-based lifeforms are supposed to be the rule, not the exception. They act like gas clouds too, sorta passive and dismissive at the same time...hopefully they just stay out of the way while we beat down the Fludenti. And the Balifids.

http://i126.photobucket.com/albums/p116/ArcherYiZe/Ascendancy23.jpg


That's right, those skinny little rodents declared war on us. The only other race in the galaxy (so far) that shares their physical state of matter, and they decide we need to die! According to the diplomatic weenies, it was our appearance in their home system combined with a lot of pressure from the Fludentri that pushed them over the edge, though for once high command and I are agreeing on something...this was really, really stupid. They have barely any defenses or even a decent-sized fleet, and our primary shipyards are only a few spacejumps away from their homeworld...this will be a short and victorious war for certain.

http://i126.photobucket.com/albums/p116/ArcherYiZe/Ascendancy22.jpg

[Aragehaor]

(Chattering Of the Mice here)

Mice, Mice Calm your selfs! there is no reason to start a war over this!


Are you [B]Mad (Enter Name of Leadership position here.) dont you see what there doing?! there scouting out our systems to devise a plan of attack! its just like the Fludenti warned us!

Come now (Enter name of Influence position here, im going with chairman.) Chairman, Do you honestly think the Chamachie would want a war with us?

http://i126.photobucket.com/albums/p116/ArcherYiZe/Ascendancy12a.jpg

Yes! dont you see? were the prefect targets for them! they'll come to our systems and slaughter us all! then after were dead they will use our planets and systems to fuel there war on the rest of the galaxy!

(Uproar of agreement from the mice)

N-Now now! lets not b-

(Down with the Chamachie! Down with the Chamachie! Down with the Chamachie!)

[End Log from the point of view of Aragehaor]

:smalltongue:


this, of course makes out the leader to be a tad more sensible then the rest (and, prehaps the mice a tad less of cowards then they should be.)


But! i believe its accurate* enough! :smalltongue:





*Disclaimer, Account of events as told by Aragehaor may not be exact in detail, all events claimed to of happened here may or may not be truthful. Please view the Revised addition coming soon to a store near you for possible corrections.

[The Glyphstone]

...I like. You're now officially in charge of giving the Balifid point of view for all relevant events and encounters.

You other readers/lurkers (you're out there, I know it) - feel free to call dibs on the other races to narrate their counterthoughts, there's three more right now and two unknowns. Yay audience participation?:smallsmile:

[Johnny Blade]

I call dibs on the next one that you make contact with, then. Whatever that'll be.



Also, see? See? I was RIGHT! Vindication! The weird shapeshifting things really are the only ones worth making diplomatic contact with.
(For now. Tomorrow, they'll probably declare war.)

[Aragehaor]

...I like. You're now officially in charge of giving the Balifid point of view for all relevant events and encounters.

You other readers/lurkers (you're out there, I know it) - feel free to call dibs on the other races to narrate their counterthoughts, there's three more right now and two unknowns. Yay audience participation?:smallsmile:

what i wrote was rather horrible. but sure you can read more of the work in the Balifid point of view "Occuring sometime after each event!" which will be up for all to see for free! But! for just three easy payments of $59.99 you can read the first volume of Balifid history!

full of cowardice and paranoia as far as the eye can see! you'll also receive the bonus pages which detail the public opinion towards the Star empire on the first meeting! order now and you'll get the first volume in limited edition format! encased in Gold!* :smalltongue:



*Disclaimer, Gold may not be real.



... i am rather tempted to write a history of the balifid empire Species now,

[The Glyphstone]

Day 480: Well, the Fludentri sure are persistent at least - they've been sending a pretty constant stream of ships to attack us from their core worlds. They want the Chippendale system pretty badly, it seems, or maybe it's just the closest one they can reach, but they're still failing miserably. High Command fast-tracked all the resources we could muster to build up Chippendale's defenses, and now there's enough missile platforms and orbital lasers to hold off an armada. The puny little two-kilometer attack cruisers they're sending don't stand a chance, really.

http://i126.photobucket.com/albums/p116/ArcherYiZe/Ascendancy26.jpg


http://i126.photobucket.com/albums/p116/ArcherYiZe/Ascendancy27.jpg


http://i126.photobucket.com/albums/p116/ArcherYiZe/Ascendancy28.jpg

[chiasaur11]

Not much happening at the moment, really.

Well, may I suggest a flagship name? Scuttlebutt is a classic.

[Johnny Blade]

I'd suggest "The Hard-Boiled Egg" for some cruiser.

[The Glyphstone]

Sorry - stuff will happen/has happened, I just haven't written the updates yet. Hardboiled Egg and Scuttlebutt are perfectly acceptable names for warships once my core worlds really start churning them out. In particular, I hope Johnny likes seafood.

[Aragehaor]

I'd suggest "The Hard-Boiled Egg" for some cruiser.

"A Giant Hard boiled egg? those lizards sure know how to send a peace offering! tell them we accept, Tell everyone in the city to line up for there free meal! Mmm... i can hardly wait!" -General Of The Balifid Empire*




*Disclaimer, This event has not happened yet. Thus may not be 100% Accurate.





(Story events and better quotes will come at a later date.)

[Johnny Blade]

In particular, I hope Johnny likes seafood.
You mean like it enough to get in touch with my inner shrimp, I presume?

[Aragehaor]

I just noticed something...


The Balifids are cute little rodent-like organisms

:eek:

[Johnny Blade]

Well, they at least are the cutest, aren't they? :smallbiggrin:

[Aragehaor]

Well, they at least are the cutest, aren't they? :smallbiggrin:

Arguably!

I say that a baby Chamachie would be cuter then a baby Balifid! :smalltongue:

[The Glyphstone]

Day 507:
The Iron Egg's just phoned in again, having run smack into what they think is the Capelon homeworld. Not entirely sure what clued them into this; it might have been that this was a huge jungle planet perfectly suited for a race of shapeshifting carnivorous arboreals, or maybe it was the huge fleet of Capelon ships and satellites in orbit, who knows. Here's to hoping this doesn't cause them to declare war on us too, it's getting real hard to be a friendly galactic neighbor with all the hostility going around. On the bright side, if they do decide we need to die, they're a long way off, and have to come through the entirety of Balifid space to get us. On the not-so-bright side, they'll be a nasty enemy, if the intel weenies are anywhere near accurate.

http://i126.photobucket.com/albums/p116/ArcherYiZe/Ascendancy29.jpg


http://i126.photobucket.com/albums/p116/ArcherYiZe/Ascendancy30.jpg


Day 530:
Hey, good news for once - the shipyard techs finally got off their tails and put the finishing touches on our first actual warship. There was some debate over what to name it at the top, but 'Hard-Boiled Egg' eventually won out over Orkin. Why a general would want to name a battlecruiser after a kind of bird I don't know, but Hard-Boiled Egg seems just as good for a pest-control problem solver. I suppose the bio-toxin bombs are just a little bit overkill, but the Balifids really need to learn that they can't get in the way of our grand destiny! Plus, they have planets we need, the population boom doesn't show any sign of ceasing.

http://i126.photobucket.com/albums/p116/ArcherYiZe/Ascendancy31.jpg


Day 535:
Interesting times, as they say...the Hard-Boiled Egg just made its first conquest, a dinky little Balifid colony right on the opposite end of the link to our home system. By itself, it's nothing to fight over, but after the ship bio-bombed those furry little ******** into goo knocked out the residents from orbit and herded them into humane POW camps (hey, gotta stick with the official story here, since I'm totally not tapped into secure military communications), the survey teams went out to explore while assault troops cleaned up the mess, and they found something really weird. There was this big cave on the opposite side of the planet from the Balifid encampment giving off an odd energy signature, and when they took a peek inside, they found some really old ruins built around some sort of power generator decorated with alien symbols.

The same symbols I saw on the walls of the ruins here on Chamach, right next to that star map which started this whole crazy thing off.

http://i126.photobucket.com/albums/p116/ArcherYiZe/Ascendancy32.jpg

[Johnny Blade]

Hard-Boiled Egg! :smallcool:

But no sea food yet...



Also, are the Capelons as strong as the screenshot suggests?

[The Glyphstone]

By the way the game calculates 'strength', yes. But it looks at # of hulls first, then # of planets owned, then technologies. Better tech and bigger ships is so much of an incredible advantage that it should be in reverse - while we're not strong enough to harm them, they'd have a devil of a time attacking us. Plus, one of the weird things they do is put no shields around their homeworld...when I get around to killing them, I can just send a ship and coast straight into orbit.

-----------------------------------

Day 560:
Hard-boiled Egg is being stalled by the need to protect the survey crews, there's a Balifid cruiser dancing in and out of the system playing hide and seek with our gun crews. But that's boring news. The exciting news is that the Steel Egg's found yet another bunch of aliens roaming around.This bunch calls themselves Marmosians, and I'll be dipped in honey sauce if they aren't one of the weirdest critters I've seen yet in this freaky galaxy. Something about those big armored shells with all those spiny legs flailing, and those clusters of little beady eyes, gives me the creeps. Plus, they're awfully cocky too, considering they look just big enough to come up to my forehip....I think I ate something in an oceanside diner on vacation once that looked like them.

At least they're a solid state organism.

http://i126.photobucket.com/albums/p116/ArcherYiZe/Ascendancy33.jpg


Day 561:
Remember what I said about cocky? The Marmosian ship had one last transmission before Steel Egg left the system. They figured it was a goodbye, or a request for directions, or something.

It was a war declaration. These pint-size crustaceans declared their intention to kill us all before we even finished first contact. I wonder if that's how they greet everyone they meet? "Hi there, welcome to the neighborhood. I'm going to kill you now, okay?" Sheesh.

http://i126.photobucket.com/albums/p116/ArcherYiZe/Ascendancy34.jpg

[starburst98]

are you sure the patch makes the computer smarter and not just angry at everyone?

[Belobog]

Is everyone else at war with the others, or is it just you they don't like?

[The Glyphstone]

It does make them mildly smarter -the computer players will now at least, for example, build Research Centers on research-boosting tiles, instead of building pretty much at random. All that really does is make the planets I end up capturing slightly less junky though.:smallbiggrin:

It's pretty much just me everyone hates...here's what the current status situation looks like. It's not as scary as it appears...the Capelons and Marmosians both have large fleets, but they need to get those fleets to me before they matter, and I've got an excellent chokepoint/fortress system that the Fludentri have probably lost two dozen ships beating on so far.

http://i126.photobucket.com/albums/p116/ArcherYiZe/Ascendancy47.jpg


Update inbound later today, hopefully.

[Johnny Blade]

Update inbound later today, hopefully.
I'ma get my crustacea going, then.

[Aragehaor]

Day 535:
Interesting times, as they say...the Hard-Boiled Egg just made its first conquest, a dinky little Balifid colony right on the opposite end of the link to our home system. By itself, it's nothing to fight over, but after the ship bio-bombed those furry little ******** into goo knocked out the residents from orbit and herded them into humane POW camps (hey, gotta stick with the official story here, since I'm totally not tapped into secure military communications), the survey teams went out to explore while assault troops cleaned up the mess, and they found something really weird. There was this big cave on the opposite side of the planet from the Balifid encampment giving off an odd energy signature, and when they took a peek inside, they found some really old ruins built around some sort of power generator decorated with alien symbols.

The same symbols I saw on the walls of the ruins here on Chamach, right next to that star map which started this whole crazy thing off.

http://i126.photobucket.com/albums/p116/ArcherYiZe/Ascendancy32.jpg
Day 536: The Day after the capture of (what i shall now name for Author purposes.) Nimbious 5.

"Gentlemice and Ladymice, I have called you here today to announce a dire event. Our colony Nimbious 5 has been taken by the Chamachie menace.

*Shocked Silence*

"But Fear not, for we have had word that any of your loved ones who were on Nimbious 5 have instead of being horribly killed, were placed inside humane POW camps!"

*Cheers Eurpt from the Balifids*


End Log.


The Lesson here? The Balifids believe in just anything Chamachie news tells them. (that, and they watch the Chamachie news. :smalltongue:)

[The Glyphstone]

Day 604:
Scientists can be such barbarians sometimes. A bunch of them were working with that cave relic on Bosporous, and one accidentally drilled too deep in a wall. He hit metal, so they did some scans...and Great Mother shoot me now if it didn't turn out they were sitting in the engine room of a gigantic spaceship - crashed, landed, or otherwise inserted into the planet's crust long enough ago to have a dozen meters of solid rock built up over it.

So did they call home for more help? No, they persuaded the captain of the Hard-Boiled Egg to turn his ship's cannons against the surface of the planet to unearth it, and shipped it home with them, tearing out the generator-thing for close study while the engineers go bananas over the rest of the wreck. I'd almost approve, except...guess which empire-renowned scientist is put in charge of examining it? And guess which completely ignored lab assistant is solely in charge of cleaning it?

Day 624:
I don't want to see a dirt scraper ever again for the rest of my life. At least now it's clean. Gandalian thinks it's an engine, and for once I'm (privately) agreeing with him. They've already started reverse-engineering it, and as long as we ignore that the math behind it breaks at least three laws of physics, it's going to revolutionize our fleet production. What we're learning about structural design from the rest of the hulk almost pales in comparison.


http://i126.photobucket.com/albums/p116/ArcherYiZe/Ascendancy35.jpg
Hooboy. Nanowave Space Benders, best engines in the game. One of these puppies can send a ship halfway across the average star system in a single move. I've been crazy lucky so far with Xeno Digs turning up engines far beyond my current tech level, and this looks like the cap on the trend. It's a happy coincidence that this came almost at the same time as:
http://i126.photobucket.com/albums/p116/ArcherYiZe/Ascendancy37.jpg
Enormous-Class ship hulls. 25 delicious slots to fill with enemy-stomping goodness. Now the real fun starts, especially since I've yet to see the AI field anything above a 10-slot Medium. Chamachie tech boosting is the best.


Day 717:
They're not wasting any time putting this stuff into production, either. There's almost a new moon in the sky at night now, the absurdly large scaffold that they made to assemble the first of these Behemoth-class warships. The first one's being named after the old General Scuttlebutt, though whether it's in honor of his undefeated military record or his prodigious waistline I'm not going to speculate on. I did get a copy of the schematics though, and I've gotta feel sorry for anyone who gets in the Scuttlebutt's way.

http://i126.photobucket.com/albums/p116/ArcherYiZe/Ascendancy38.jpg


Day 730:
Of course, you just can't have a silver lining without a storm cloud underneath, can you? The Capelons must have heard about our capture of Bosporous, and decided that a war halfway across the galaxy they weren't involved in was somehow dangerous. Well, it's dangerous now that they've declared war on us. Is the joke about two-faced shapeshifters too obvious to make?

http://i126.photobucket.com/albums/p116/ArcherYiZe/Ascendancy36.jpg


In other news, after months of playing hide-and-seek, the Hard-Boiled Egg finally pinned down and wiped out the Balifid raider that'd been harassing Bosporous. That, combined with the completed excavation, meant the planet was no longer of any use to us whatsoever. So, it moved on to our real target...Binomer, the Balifid capital system.

They didn't even have any orbital defenses up. Maybe they were expecting the Fludentri to step in and save them at the last minute? Considering those blobby ******** are probably the ones who dragged the rats into a war in the first place, it's a reasonabl hope. Unfortunately, they seem to have forgotten that any Fludentri 'reinforcements' would have to pass through our entire section of space to get here. Anyways, the Hard-Boiled Egg coasted happily into orbit, and according to the captain's after-action report, respectfully and peacefully demanded that they surrender. The rats refused.

So we bio-bombed them again. Good riddance.

http://i126.photobucket.com/albums/p116/ArcherYiZe/Ascendancy41.jpg
http://i126.photobucket.com/albums/p116/ArcherYiZe/Ascendancy39.jpg
http://i126.photobucket.com/albums/p116/ArcherYiZe/Ascendancy40.jpg




COMING SOON:
Inhaling gas can be bad for your health. Gaseous lifeforms, on the other hand, not so much. Also, we no longer have to worry about who we are and aren't at war with.

[Miklus]

Wow, I remember playing this looong ago. It really was very advanced for its time. well, newer games are not much better than this actually.

Keep the updates comming.

[The Glyphstone]

Yeah, but the AI was nonexistent. Even this ANTAG patch isn't doing a whole lot, though at least it's something.
-------------------------------------


Day 751:

I'm lucky to be alive. Way too many people can't say the same.

I got woken up out of a happy dream this morning by my crack into the system surveillance network, warbling an alien intrusion. It wasn't the Fludentri, though, so I got up to take a look. Turns out the Nimbuloids decided to pay us a visit, spitting out transmissions about wanting to talk. Since we weren't shooting at them (yet), System Defense let them into the outer ring. Thankfully, they didn't let them through the shields, which is why I'm sitting here now.

Command is still trying to piece together what happened, so I'm in the dark as well, but it looks like our campaign against the Balifids is starting to make its way back to the other races. Apparently the Nimbuloids didn't bite the official line, and came looking for reassurances that we didn't have any designs in their direction. Whatever we told them wasn't good enough, because they started trying to pull out without getting traffic clearance - naturally, Defense locked them up with fire control and ordered them to stop movement.

Next thing anyone knew, our planetary shields were cracked like a year-old egg, two-thirds of our missile platforms were molten slag, and two million residents of the capital city dead. Who'd have thought a race whose construction techniques were built around transforming solids into gas and back could do the same thing with matter and energy? Not me, but if they were trying to avoid a war and not get a sneak attack in, that was the stupidest possible way to go about it.

http://i126.photobucket.com/albums/p116/ArcherYiZe/Ascendancy42.jpg


--------------------------
Story-heavy update, screenshot-light. Sorry.
Next week on As The Galaxy Turns: The old becomes new, and the new gets the tar kicked out of it.

[Winterwind]

Pretty amusing so far. Keep up the good work. :smallbiggrin:


Yeah, but the AI was nonexistent. Even this ANTAG patch isn't doing a whole lot, though at least it's something.The problem is that while the ANTAG patch at least teaches the AI to manage colonies moderately competently, it still is not nearly expansionist enough. A human player can beat it simply by virtue of having manifold as many colonies.
That, and I feel if one wants a reasonable challenge, one has to ban oneself from using Xenoarchelogical Digs. Because sooner or later, one of those will spit out something totally gamebreaking.

[The Glyphstone]

Day 789:

Wow...it's been three years since I bought this recorder, and I'm glad I did - just look at all the things that have happened.We've had one of our most ancient creation myths reaffirmed (which I'm still leery about, but hey), expanded our species into space, met a whole assortment of aliens (most of which lack solid bodies and want to kill us), and showed almost all of those aliens that we're a much tougher egg to crack than they expected. I've learned how to hack secure military databases, had my inventions plagarized by a world-famous scientist, and survived an attempting conversion bombing of our capital city by one of the aformentioned alien races.

All-over, a pretty exciting three years, and it's almost fitting how much is happening, almost like coincidental celebration. The behemoth Scuttlebutt is due to perform acceptance trials next month, after which it's charted to head out and introduce the Fludenti to the dual concepts of orifices and tearing, since they don't seem to have either. Those shipyard techs get a day or two of rest, then it's back to work...the Iron Egg's finally returned home, and Command decided that the flying scrap should be recommissioned as a warship instead of a museum piece; it's going to be flying escort on the Scuttlebutt as they pacify the Fludentri.

http://i126.photobucket.com/albums/p116/ArcherYiZe/Ascendancy44.jpg


http://i126.photobucket.com/albums/p116/ArcherYiZe/Ascendancy43.jpg


Day 795:
And if the shipyards didn't have enough work...the Hard-Boiled Egg limped into the system this morning, completely shot to pieces and barely keeping frame integrity. According to the third assistant engineer, the highest-ranking officer still alive onboard, the captain decided that being responsible for the capture of the Balifid homeworld wasn't prestigious enough, and ordered the ship to go after the rats' last stronghold in this sector, the Trovicaron system. The rats were waiting, and they didn't go down easy; we won, in the sense that the Balifids don't own the system anymore, but I think that's because falling pieces of our ship crushed them all...

The bright side of the situation is that we own the place now, and anyone except the Fludentri looking to pick a fight with us have to get through the chokepoint we're setting up.

http://i126.photobucket.com/albums/p116/ArcherYiZe/Ascendancy46.jpg

[Aragehaor]

Day 789:

Wow...it's been three years since I bought this recorder, and I'm glad I did - just look at all the things that have happened.We've had one of our most ancient creation myths reaffirmed (which I'm still leery about, but hey), expanded our species into space, met a whole assortment of aliens (most of which lack solid bodies and want to kill us), and showed almost all of those aliens that we're a much tougher egg to crack than they expected. I've learned how to hack secure military databases, had my inventions plagarized by a world-famous scientist, and survived an attempting conversion bombing of our capital city by one of the aformentioned alien races.

All-over, a pretty exciting three years, and it's almost fitting how much is happening, almost like coincidental celebration. The behemoth Scuttlebutt is due to perform acceptance trials next month, after which it's charted to head out and introduce the Fludenti to the dual concepts of orifices and tearing, since they don't seem to have either. Those shipyard techs get a day or two of rest, then it's back to work...the Iron Egg's finally returned home, and Command decided that the flying scrap should be recommissioned as a warship instead of a museum piece; it's going to be flying escort on the Scuttlebutt as they pacify the Fludentri.

http://i126.photobucket.com/albums/p116/ArcherYiZe/Ascendancy44.jpg


http://i126.photobucket.com/albums/p116/ArcherYiZe/Ascendancy43.jpg


Day 795:
And if the shipyards didn't have enough work...the Hard-Boiled Egg limped into the system this morning, completely shot to pieces and barely keeping frame integrity. According to the third assistant engineer, the highest-ranking officer still alive onboard, the captain decided that being responsible for the capture of the Balifid homeworld wasn't prestigious enough, and ordered the ship to go after the rats' last stronghold in this sector, the Trovicaron system. The rats were waiting, and they didn't go down easy; we won, in the sense that the Balifids don't own the system anymore, but I think that's because falling pieces of our ship crushed them all...

The bright side of the situation is that we own the place now, and anyone except the Fludentri looking to pick a fight with us have to get through the chokepoint we're setting up.

http://i126.photobucket.com/albums/p116/ArcherYiZe/Ascendancy46.jpg
Thats just Sad. im writing for a race cant even stop one ship from destroying there last stronghold with what i assume is most of there ships there?
:smalltongue:



Another question! are there even any balifids left?:smallconfused:

[The Glyphstone]

They still have 4 systems. I've just taken the only one they had on this end of the red link (super-long star lane) bottlenecking this portion of the galaxy. here's the best shot I could get of the areas I've explored...the Balifids are the Purple systems down near the bottom of the map. We're Green, and Trovicaron is the one in the rough center.

The system was just a single planet, but it had a lot of orbital defenses that outranged the Hard-Boiled Egg's guns.

http://i126.photobucket.com/albums/p116/ArcherYiZe/Ascendancy48.jpg

[The Glyphstone]

(I'm back! Sorry for the text dump...big chunk of plot, not much screenshotting. Cool stuff happens soon though.)

Day 830:
I found something interesting browing through the military datanet today. Someone I knew on the civilian chat boards was convinced that nothing we had could stand up to the sort of frame stress a Behemoth-class ship would be putting on itself, and the existence of the Scuttlebutt meant that the Navy had invented a super-strong alloy that they were keeping to themselves and not putting on the market. So he asked me to get him the Scuttlebutt's tonnage numbers off its design schematics in the secure network - it's nice to be owed a favor, so I said yes.

In the middle of looking for the stats, though, I ran across something odd in a file block that should have been deleted years ago - a directory called 'Project Nest Egg'. Nasty security blocks, but I had a code worm one of my other contacts had written in exchange for some classified vidpics, and I got in pretty easy. Didn't expect to find what I did though. Remember all that claptrap about the First Hatchling, and the star chart poor little me found in that disgusting dirty cave? Turns out in the middle of the hubbub, the Covert Research Division that I didn't know existed was actually taking it seriously - the disastrous Golden Egg was a coverup for the real exploration vessel, a dinky little pod loaded up with some life support, a really primitive stardrive, and some sort of hyperspace-based transmitter that could send messages without relying on recorder drones. They were sent off to find the system on that chart, and about a month ago, it looks like they did. A deserted system with two barren, uninhabitable planets and a couple of very suspicious looking asteroid belts. The two surviving planets were covered in ruins, which they had promptly set to excavating.

Now here's where it gets weird. Some of the ruins had writing on them that looked like a primitive form of Chamachie, mixed with the strange symbology from the ruins on Chamach. With allowance for misspellings, our linguists were able to decode it enough to read the script. Apparently, the slagged lumps of rock in that system had once been the capital of an ancient, galaxy-spanning empire, which had centered its worship and society around 'The Holy Scaled One', with a description word-for-word matching the First Hatchling in the Book of the Nestmother. But another bunch of aliens with their own empire attacked them and wiped them out, stealing the Holy Scaled One for themselves before vaporizing every last trace of its former owners. The writer didn't know what happened to the refugee ships that fled the system, but assumed they had been caught and killed. Nothing much after that, they must have died - slowly though, since they had the time to write 'Aaaarrrrgghhh.." at the end.

Are we the descendants of survivors from a prehistoric genocidal war over some sort of religious idol? Sounds like the plot of a bad sci-fi novel, really. On the bright side, we found some more tech relics to back-engineer, though no one in R&D has a clue what to do with them.

Found a system with two Xeno Digs, incredibly rare. Unfortunately, both of them gave me junk for advancements - a lame secondary system that does damage to an enemy based on how complicated their ship equipment is, and the mildly useful Magnetron, which lets me fling the equipped ship through one starlane instantly. I'd rather put an extra Hyperdrive and save more time overall.
http://i126.photobucket.com/albums/p116/ArcherYiZe/Ascendancy49.jpg

[chiasaur11]

Wait.

Huge wars over a reptillian religious artifact?

The plot thickens!

[The Glyphstone]

Day 877:

I almost can't believe it. The Fludentri are gone.

The first sentient extraterrestial race we met after our enlightenment, and we've just exterminated the last of their kind. They didn't go quietly - Scuttlebutt and Iron Egg fought a hard system-by-system battle, taking their colonies one by one. The last stand was in the Yorbins system, just two jumps away from their homeworld, and they threw everything they had at us. It was brave, I guess, or stupid depending on who you sympathize with - four powerful, but woefully outdated Fludentri cruisers against our champion battleship and its own cruiser escort. They had desperation, but we had better guns and way better engines. Only one of them even made it into firing range before the Scuttlebutt's plasmatron banks blew it into vapor, and the single salvo they got off barely scratched its paint.

After that, there was nothing left to stop us, and our 'fleet' steamrolled its way through the rest of their territory, razing everything in its path. Eventually, they got to Flud. Its orbital defenses were extensive, but like the makeshift fleet they had thrown in our path, we had range - and unlike that fleet, the planet couldn't close the distance. When everything was rubble, both ships moved in close, and began to cook. It took two days for Scuttlebutt to boil every drop of water and Fludentri on the planet, while the Egg kept an eye out for any potential escapees. Now it's a waterless, airless, lifeless rock, fit only for the xenoarchaeologists who are already chomping at the bit to examine what they left behind, particularly some suspicious ruins that look like more Precursor relics. Pity the Fludentri didn't excavate the place themselves and use whatever's hidden there against us, they might have stood a chance.

Another war appropriations bill was passed yesterday. I think it's the single largest sector of our economy at the moment.

http://i126.photobucket.com/albums/p116/ArcherYiZe/Ascendancy51.jpg

[The Glyphstone]

Day 920:

Whoever incubated the eggs of our orbital building crews must have gotten bored at some point and wandered off without checking the temperature gauges, because those people have got to be the stupidest excuses for Chamachie that I've ever heard of. The Scuttlebutt's success, and that massive new military funding bill, guaranteed the continuation of the Behemoth-class, laying down two new hulls the day after we recieved reports of our completed xenocide. Somewhere along the line, though, the debate over which overweight and oversuccessful military leader to name them after got sidetracked, and the clerk in charge of the project entered 'Placeholder' for the ships' names while the suits wrangled. Before they finished wrangling, the first one was finished...and the building crews promptly painted the assigned 'name' onto it. Talk about brain-dead.

http://i126.photobucket.com/albums/p116/ArcherYiZe/Ascendancy52.jpg


Day 940:
Remember how I was complaining about the orbital construction workers being the stupidest Chamachie in existence? I was wrong, that's the Navy R+D department. Bored out of my mind last week (and more than a little bit drunk, but hey), I found my way into the tech servers and decided to have a bit of fun with their prototype design software. Creativity and alcohol aren't exactly on speaking terms in my presence, so what I came up with was basically a couple dozen plasmatron cannons strapped together inside an armored shell with some stabilizing boosters. Calling it the 'Orbital Mega Whopper' seemed like the most awesome name ever at the time, I guess. Somewhere along the line, it got saved into the records, and I passed out hoping I had remembered to cover my tracks.

Imagine my surprise when I go poking into the tech testing queue for some tidbits to share with my online contacts...and find the Mark I Mega Whopper Orbital Defense Cannon marked for 'expedited deployment'? They didn't even change the name, for Nestmother's sake. Then again, the latest original brainstorm they had outside of reverse-engineering Precursor tech ended up with the moniker 'Uberlaser', so I shouldn't really be surprised.

http://i126.photobucket.com/albums/p116/ArcherYiZe/Ascendancy53.jpg


Next up: Operation Three-Tongued Rat Poison begins.

[chiasaur11]

Reminds me of the DC war story "Drop An Inch".

You see, Robert Kanigher wrote tons of DC war stories. They handed him a title, he handed back a script, artist draws it, onto the next one.

Simple system, but it worked well enough. Got us The War Time Forgot, Sgt. Rock, good stuff.

Thing is, a memo got misfiled from the editing department. Its real purpose? Editing the header. But, well, it got to old Bob Kanigher. And no-one can say the man was anything less than a dedicated professional on that front.

Drop An Inch was the cover story for GI combat issue 62. Man wrote it on a lunch break.

[The Glyphstone]

It was also a non-so-subtle hint that I have a ship open for suggested names...:smallcool:
Gotta get my audience participation in where I can.

[Iruka]

'The Scrambled Egg' just doesn't have that ring to it, does it?

Also, I just wanted to say that I really like your writing. Please keep them coming.:smallsmile: