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Cluster Wars (formerly Empyrean Challenge)
#40
Space Heroes Information Nexus: Special Report

All Corporate Space Hero "Focus"-class Scout Ships Recalled

Another outcome from the calamitous Corporate Food Collapse that came to light last quarter was that all of the newly commissioned Focus-class scout ships were dispatched with minimal quantities of food aboard. The new Chairman issued an executive order to recall all ships immediately to save as many of their respective crews as possible. None of them had yet conducted their assigned survey duties.

Even the first Corporate ship to conduct a hyperjump since the cluster collapsed in civil war -- the CS Junior -- was recalled and has now reached the outermost orbits of our home system. It did manage to collect one important piece of information before returning -- the existence of a large alien colony in that system.

The one exception to the fleet recall was the scout assigned to join CS Mutha and CS Feckless in their invasion of the alien outpost on planet 1. Although the crew of this ship is still vulnerable, they are now docked to the outpost along with the 2 older ships, and some arrangements will be made to pool their resources along with whatever gets pillaged from the outpost itself.

The cause of the food collapse was traced to a rogue trader in the Corporate Commodities and Futures Exchange office, who engaged in unapproved trades on soylent green and pork bellies and lost. With each successive trading week, he compounded his losses by trying to double down on them, and further complicated matters by engaging in an aggressive coverup. As a result, Corporate food supplies have been irrevocably committed to private markets for the next 3 quarters at least, putting all near-term space missions on ice.

The rogue trader in question has been Fired. Since the Company is the only entity still in existence that has the legal capacity to Hire anyone, this is tantamount to a life sentence in debtors prison, with "life" likely to be agonizingly short.


* * *

Tulane smiled at the boarding officer after he concluded his report to the command ship, and switched off the conn. "Congratulations, Captain Jenkins! You are now a real live Space Hero!"

Jenkins shuffled off this praise, but the glint in his eyes betrayed his pride. For the first time since final the final Corporate merger, there had been official non-counter-insurgency combat operations. He had led the 3-ship invasion. He planned out the attack with the full leadership chamber from his military attachment. And he took the risk to withhold all ship battery fire in an effort to preserve what treasures the outpost might hold.

His planning and forbearance had paid off in spades.

This colony had an armed contingent of renegade soldiers present, but in the face of overwhelming odds they immediately surrendered. SURRENDERED! The outpost had been captured intact! Not only did they have a few thousand potential new employees ready to assign, but they had some very advanced technological artifacts to reverse-engineer. These technologies hadn't seen widespread use since before the civil war! Today's action would save Corporate research billions in leveraged investments.

"Two Lane, you are too kind. Thank you for the sentiment, but I am only hoping to do my part for the Company. And since it looks like today was Good for the Company, I am a happy cappie." He sipped from the day's fifth martini. "Don't think I'll forget you come bonus time, either. Daddy's gonna have a little bag of somethin' somethin' to hand out next payday..."

Tulane took the rare step of pouring herself a celebratory martini upon hearing that.

* * *

More Big News this turn! Our invasion of the alien outpost went flawlessly -- we had a very high superiority in combat factors, so the enemy caved in. We have a batch of high-tech items ready to prototype, as outlined in the tutorials, and will likely start with Farm-2 and Transport-5. Then Sensors and Automation can wait, though they are still welcomed.

We're going to retool our Lab production line to Laboratory-5 this turn, so our initial batch of Lab-4s will be assembled and a new 4-turn run of Lab-5s will follow suit. I am basically thinking of splitting research between "Labs" and "everything else", so I'll probably accumulate enough research to bump labs from 5 to 7 (which will cost 11m research), over the next 4 turns, and apply the rest to mines, robot probes, and prototyping these alien goodies.

My orbital factories are back in full production. My earthly farms are fully-engaged. My consumer-good doubling is proceeding on schedule. I will likely end the Automation factory group since sometime soon I'll be leapfrogging to Automation-10 thanks to prototyping.

My space fleets will remain land-locked until my food supplies can catch up. I will start building Farm-2 asap now that I have prototypes -- this turn, probably. But that will take 5 turns to reach fruition, at which point my Farm-1s will have caught up. Still, I am planning a large production run of Farm-2 for my orbiter. I shall Never go Hungry Again.

Not much else to report. I am taking a risky option, here, by not cutting food rations and holding back space expansion. But I am thinking that whatever I will lose in home-planet overpopulation will balance out with the gains from not-starving my ship crews and colonists. I'll take the next few turns to build out a big fat in-system freighter to start shuttling people out to my other hab world -- I just won't begin the shuttling until 3-4 turns from now.

If anyone advises this to be a Dumb Idea, please let me know!
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RE: Cluster Wars (formerly Empyrean Challenge) - by ixnay - 08-05-2013, 07:52 PM

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