2428-2432: The War Finally Ends
2429.11.24 -- I lost a couple of things from the writeup here, but this was the date when the war ended. Basically we just took a couple more systems and eventually they got the message. A month or two earlier, Society finished it's research, and began a new project which will increase our leader capacity by 1. We can always use new administrators. The new task is called Sentient Resource Management.
We cut a swath through Bhenn'Thell territory here and the Perj Sector was the closest one so they absorbed the new holdings. They are also gradually losing against the Uri. We've got a lot of consolidating work to do and it'll be years before
Dr. Deacon Palmieri III has waded through the debris work. It'd be longer if it wasn't for the 5-year statute of limitations on those studies, which we've already lost a number of them to and will lose more. Also, one of many lessons learned in the war is that with our new drives there really isn't any need for having 'border guard' task forces anymore; we can split of ships and get them anywhere they are needed before serious damage can be done. All combat vessels head back to Impal Tov to regroup.
The usual plan is in place for the post-war period:
** Army recruitment will be shifted to supply our new territory. The outer arm will need more troops eventually; we've supplied about half of our systems there so far. These new systems are at more risk though, so they'll receive priority attention.
** Ship construction is suspended until we get the entire Fist of Boojie consolidated and have a handle on how the economy will look. We should definitely be able to expand the navy considerably with the new resources though.
** Spaceport construction on all of the acquired worlds will be prioritized over other spending.
** Debris work first, then we'll have a lot of surveying and almost certainly at least some colonizing and possibly station construction to do in our newly expanded borders.
2430.06.05 -- Fleet repairs have been finished. We have 68 battleships at the moment, which puts us at 544 out of the 1k maximum in fleet capacity. Still lots of room to grow. At the moment there are insane surpluses of about 500(!) energy and over 1.4k(!!) minerals. Put another way, it now only takes us just over a year to go from empty to full in the mineral reserve, and just 10 months in energy.
We'll make sure to keep enough in the reserve for our annual army and spaceport investments, but there's no reason not to keep shipbuilding right on trucking and enlarge the fleet to a truly ridiculous size. I also checked in with our design specs; there is one upgrade to do, involving replacing our Arc Emitters with the new Focused Arc Emitters, which do even more damage. We don't even know of any weapon right now which could improve on this arrangement. As always, we had to take out a system on each class to add a new power plant to satisfy the demands, but it seems to be well worth it, along with the slight increase in expense.
For now, we'll have Humboldt and Bakangi pump out new battleships, and may expand that again to three or even more spaceports depending on how things go the next year or two. Bottom line here is it's full steam ahead on re-arming the Collective. The Patriarch's wish is to bring Boojie's justice to the potential threat from the rising
Uri Hegemony, and every effort is to be made to prepare for that ASAP.
Meanwhile, with energy maxed, this is always a good time for more colonizing. Two planets per year are authorized, so as not to completely overrun the efforts of our research teams to keep up. VIR makes a routine database query(aka, I went around to our entire freaking empire and looked) to ascertain the whereabouts of all habitable worlds of decent size(15+, below that they can't be fully developed). Even the automated beauracratic intelligence was surprised to discover that there were 13, headlined by a recent available size-22 tropical on the Buhavilaa border. There are a couple that we can't colonize due to primitive life overrunning them, but most are available. We do finally have a minor species that likes Continental worlds, the weird-looking Shabtak.
Several continentals are available and rather than go through the time of terraforming them, we'll send these 'assistants' out to ensure the wealth of these locations comes under the dominion of the Collective. As good miners, they will make profitable slaves. Well, they already do, but now in greater numbers. We also have developed the ability to colonize so-called 'tomb' worlds, and have a couple of big ones available, but will save those for last; even with our best available tools, they could be problematic and would not be expected to produce much(habitability is only starting at 10%).
2432.03.05 -- It seems the Uri and we are of one mind on where the future leads, as they finally have declared us rivals now. It also appears they have finally won the war against the Imperium ...
05.02 -- Both Sentient Resource Management and Gravitional Analysis II are finished.