Author Topic: Galactic warfare for the common man: Let's play Sins of a Solar Empire!  (Read 17624 times)

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Bozwevial

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Table of Contents

Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two

We've updated! Five months later!

Bozwevial

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Re: Galactic warfare for the common man: Let's play Sins of a Solar Empire!
« Reply #1 on: October 16, 2010, 07:28:50 PM »


So, uh, what exactly is this game?Advent? Vasari?So how will this work, exactly?Your writing is terrible.

Bozwevial

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Re: Galactic warfare for the common man: Let's play Sins of a Solar Empire!
« Reply #2 on: October 16, 2010, 07:29:00 PM »
on his face so much as it isAnkharI wonder what this tastes like?veryshebad timepicturesused boxis a nice room, though.

Agita

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Re: Galactic warfare for the common man: Let's play Sins of a Solar Empire!
« Reply #3 on: October 16, 2010, 08:32:28 PM »
Let’s pretend they’re all psychic lesbians.
Dammit, Boz. You have to tell me shit like that sooner. :p I suppose it's too late now to retract my vote? :P

Good old Nobody Gets Responsibility. I see three options.
a) Kostura becomes badass.
b) The AI (sorry, SIA) goes evil.
c) Both.

In any case, poor Kos.

Sucks that SoaSE doesn't have a campaign, though. I presume Space Cthulhu doesn't appear in the game either?
« Last Edit: October 16, 2010, 08:40:33 PM by Agita »
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Bozwevial

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Re: Galactic warfare for the common man: Let's play Sins of a Solar Empire!
« Reply #4 on: October 16, 2010, 08:55:38 PM »
Dammit, Boz. You have to tell me shit like that sooner. :p I suppose it's too late now to retract my vote? :P
After all the work I put into the prologue? Don't worry, I'll make sure there are Advent factions out there for maximum psychic lesbian potential.

Quote
Good old Nobody Gets Responsibility. I see three options.
a) Kostura becomes badass.
b) The AI (sorry, SIA) goes evil.
c) Both.

In any case, poor Kos.
Think I should let readers vote on the direction of the storyline?

Quote
Sucks that SoaSE doesn't have a campaign, though. I presume Space Cthulhu doesn't appear in the game either?
Not at all. Maybe if you're playing as the Vasari and you spend too much time screwing around? There has to be a mod for that...That said, Space Cthulhu might make an appearance here if I can figure out how to solve the Lovecraft conundrum.

Agita

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Re: Galactic warfare for the common man: Let's play Sins of a Solar Empire!
« Reply #5 on: January 03, 2011, 04:17:28 PM »
*poke*
Is this thing still alive? :P
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Bozwevial

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Re: Galactic warfare for the common man: Let's play Sins of a Solar Empire!
« Reply #6 on: January 03, 2011, 06:10:28 PM »
It will be now. :P I'll grab my defibrillator and set to work here--I think I set out to find a mod for the Eldritch Abomination that ate the Vasari fleet and forgot to update.

...for a couple months.

Agita

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It will be now. :P I'll grab my defibrillator and set to work here--I think I set out to find a mod for the Eldritch Abomination that ate the Vasari fleet and forgot to update.

...for a couple months.
I'm still waiting.  :pout
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Agita

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Re: Galactic warfare for the common man: Let's play Sins of a Solar Empire!
« Reply #10 on: March 17, 2011, 06:12:48 PM »
It lives!

So I guess the plan is to charge headlong through the red dot in our way? I like that plan.
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Bozwevial

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Re: Galactic warfare for the common man: Let's play Sins of a Solar Empire!
« Reply #11 on: March 17, 2011, 09:43:16 PM »
I figured punching out one Cthulhu was more feasible than punching out two hundred. :p

oslecamo

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Re: Galactic warfare for the common man: Let's play Sins of a Solar Empire!
« Reply #12 on: March 18, 2011, 10:09:26 PM »
I vote for researching giant drill breakers.

If that's not an available tech in this game, then conquer liberate the nearby planets to get extra resources to churn out a proper fleet.

Speaking of wich, what are the industrious capacities of our current planet again? Perhaps we should start simply by channeling resources from all the carnal pleasures installations to industrial factories and science labs.

Agita

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Re: Galactic warfare for the common man: Let's play Sins of a Solar Empire!
« Reply #13 on: March 18, 2011, 10:10:23 PM »
I vote for researching giant drill breakers.

If that's not an available tech in this game, then conquer liberate the nearby planets to get extra resources to churn out a proper fleet.

Speaking of wich, what are the industrious capacities of our current planet again? Perhaps we should start simply by channeling resources from all the carnal pleasures installations to industrial factories and science labs.
Now now, let's not be hasty. It should be sufficient to raise taxes.
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Bozwevial

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Re: Galactic warfare for the common man: Let's play Sins of a Solar Empire!
« Reply #14 on: March 19, 2011, 12:13:27 AM »
What I have so far isn't terribly crunchy, yeah, so next time we'll go over the mechanics, set our factories to work, and possibly even visit another planet. (That barely visible curve in the first screenshot is the planet's gravity well.)

Echoes

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Re: Galactic warfare for the common man: Let's play Sins of a Solar Empire!
« Reply #15 on: March 19, 2011, 08:48:05 AM »
This is relevant to my interest, and I would like to subscribe to your newsletter.

Oh, and in case anyone bitches, your writing rocks. Just the right combination of snark and fourth-wall-leaning sarcasm to make it truly funny. Keep up the good work! :clap

BrokeAndDrive speaks the Truth (linked for great justice and signature limits)

Quotes I Found Entertaining:

Huge amounts of people are fuckwits. That doesn't mean that fuckwit is a valid lifestyle.

As a general rule, murdering people and taking their stuff is pretty much superior to breaking their stuff, murdering them, then not having any stuff to take.

Out of Context Theater
[spoiler]
Oh I'll make a party. I'll make a party so hard... I'll make a party that makes you feel so awkward downstairs.

You'll see the party and only be able to respond, "Oh yeah baby."
[/spoiler]

Bozwevial

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Re: Galactic warfare for the common man: Let's play Sins of a Solar Empire!
« Reply #16 on: August 22, 2011, 04:01:26 PM »
“Listen.” We are well beyond a hint of exasperation by now. Exasperation is through pussyfooting around and creeping into her voice. It has stormed in, kicked its boots off, and flung itself down into an armchair. “While I anticipated your need for an explanation and set aside some time for it, we have wasted nearly all of it talking about the relative merits of green. Not ecologically friendly colonization methods, either. Green the color.”

“I still think it looks silly on the ships.” Kostura is unwilling to yield on this point. He lifts his chin as an afterthought. This is what emperors do. He experiments with the angle for a bit before settling on firm, yet patriarchal.

She waits for him to finish. It’s not like this is any less productive than what they were doing.

“Look,” he finally says, “I know we need to start as soon as possible, but I still don’t understand anything. Yesterday I worried about mops and dust. That was my job. I moved dust from one place to the other. Now I’m in charge of a planet.”

“An explanation is needed, but the time spent on the exchange prevents productivity,” she muses. By this point, Kostura is expecting the conversation to take a turn down Just-Shoot-Me Boulevard. He’s passing the time by experimenting with a magisterial way of burying his face in his hands.

“Oh, you’ve thought of the same thing! Wonderful. Do hold still.” The glee in her voice isn’t even bothering to put on a fake mustache. The objection coming to his throat is interrupted by an expletive as a high-pitched whine blends with the sensation that someone has just taken a sharp piece of the sun and shoved it into the back of his head. He manages a gurgle instead. Give him some credit, though. As gurgles go, it’s pretty regal.

The pain switches off. The room switches off. There is a disconcerting sense of the infinite on every side, rushing in if he so much as thinks about it. His thoughts flail around for something familiar and utterly fail to find it. Even the passage of time, one of his oldest friends, has turned on him. He thinks, “one Mississippi,” and it stretches off into the distance until he can see the end of it a foreverlength away.

YOU’RE DOING VERY WELL.

He doesn’t hear the words so much as have them emblazoned on his consciousness. Every sense lights up at once to hand him the message.

OOPS. TRY NOT TO THINK WHILE I Fix this.”

Reality stops fooling around and gets back to work in time to slap the closing quotation marks on the end of her sentence. The agony pokes its head around the door briefly before relenting and sitting down a safe distance away. Somehow he’s sitting up, staring at the screen and the two ships that are hanging in space.



Green is still a really terrible color.

“And that’s that! How do you feel?” she asks brightly.

“Please tell me that wasn’t brain surgery.” He has to think it; his tongue shows no sign of moving.

“Are you giving me permission to lie to you?”

He tries to stare at her, but his eyes are nonresponsive, choosing to remain fixed on the ugly pair of ships.

“You’re simply thinking as quickly as I do now. Your body can’t keep up, of course, but you’ll get used to it. Let me show you where the toggle is.”

He spasms as all the delayed reactions catch up, falling out of the chair.

“And just do it again to converse at my speed.”

He spends a while playing with the trigger. Eventually, he manages to get into the chair without incident.

“Okay, so let’s move past the invasive brain surgery.”

“Just think of yourself as a better person, inside and out.” There’s a brief pause, a few microseconds in duration, during which she regrets saying this heartily. It was that terrible.

“What are these?” he asks, trying to sound interested rather than violated.

“Fabricator ships. Small drones that bear the bulk of construction work in the planet’s gravity well.”

He tries thinking a command at them, straining mightily. She waits patiently for him to give up before saying, “They’re automated.”

“Okay, then how—“

“Later. We need to go over more before we start on this.”



The screen shifts to something that looks like—something that vaguely resembles—okay, fine, it’s a giant ribcage floating in space. With spikes.

“This,” she says, one hand elegantly cupping the image, “is a factory. With raw materials and funds, we can produce a wide variety of cruisers and frigates here.” A thought extends in her direction. “Frigates are the small ones.” The thought slinks away.

“At the moment, our options are somewhat limited. We can construct a colony ship, a scout ship, or a skirmisher, all of which are frigates. Cruisers, meanwhile, are out of the question unless we design one. And I’m very glad you asked about our technology,” she adds coaxingly.

Kostura recognizes his cue. “Why don’t we have that information already?” In fairness, he was wondering something along these lines.

“Your predecessor never thought it worth the time or money to connect Adelheid to any of the major repositories of knowledge available to him. He convinced the entire planet that star blizzards made it impossible to establish a connection.” She already sees where this is going and cuts it off quickly. “Star blizzards aren’t a real thing, no.”

“Okay, can’t you just…invent new things?” He’s really hoping it doesn’t become his job somehow.

“Not on the scale we need. I would need to devote all my efforts toward the task, and I’m afraid you wouldn’t be a suitable replacement for me.” By now he’s too accustomed to this sort of casual abuse to pay attention to it. “We need laboratories, and they need to be specialized if we want results quickly.”

“So weapons facilities and then some focused on the wellbeing of the empire?” He hazards a guess and thrills over the nod he receives. Yessss.

“Of course, research costs money and materials too. And where do we get those?” She waits for a fraction of a second before plowing onward. “Money, of course, comes from taxing our subjects. We do have to spend it on upkeep for our ships, but infrastructure has a sweet spot where it essentially pays for itself. I won’t bore you with the financial details, but if we colonize another planet we’ll have to develop it to that point to stop it draining our funds. Materials, on the other hand, are extracted from asteroids. For all intents and purposes, we only have to worry about two kinds: Metal and crystal. As you can see, we have two of the former and one of the latter here.” Kostura offers a mental nod, wishing he had, you know, a pen or something. “Those aren’t being mined at all right now, so we’ll have to rectify that.”

“You said we needed to pay upkeep for the ships we build?”

“Yes, for expendables such as fuel. Even if we have the funds, we’re still limited to what our planetary base will support. Research will let us maintain a more sizable fleet, but that will of course cost more. Logistics also limits what we can build in orbit around Adelheid and other planets. We’ll need to construct on the planet below in order to sustain structures.” Kostura wonders vaguely whether his eyes will glaze over when he snaps back to real-time.

“If we need credits or minerals quickly, I’ve established a link to black market traders who will sell us materials at the going rate or buy them cheaply. We can also place metal or crystal on the market and sell it through slower channels, but we are in something of a hurry, after all.” She shrugs apologetically, as if to say, I’m sorry I was only able to tap the resources of a vast criminal network in an effort to save your people. He nods sympathetically. Well, he tries.

“I believe that is all for the time being. You should start by setting up extractors on our asteroids and ordering the production of a few scout frigates. Knowledge of what lies nearby is crucial. In the meantime, I will be micromanaging something a good deal more taxing.” She pauses to lament the second terrible pun of the day before determinedly ignoring it. “Let me know if you need any help.” The light making up her form abruptly ceases to be. Kostura flips the switch in his head and immediately slams his chin into his own chest. A quiet giggle leaks out of one of the room’s speakers before she mutes it.

Stupid sympathetic nods.

[spoiler]Okay, so there goes a big mechanic dump. Here's the shortened version.

Resources are credits, metal, and crystal. Credits come from planets; you get more from having more citizens to tax and get less for ship upkeep and underdeveloped planets. Metal and crystal are harvested from asteroids. Generally, crystal is the rarer of the two. We can buy them at high prices from the black market if we need them quickly.

The number of ships we can have at once is limited by our supply. Right now it stands at 100 points. Research lets us increase our supply at the cost of a portion of incoming tax money. Likewise, structures we build in orbit around a planet are limited by our tactical and logistics slots, which we can upgrade with money and materials.

Researching technologies requires labs, which we build in orbit around planets. Each technology requires a certain number of labs, either military or imperial, before we can research it. Even then, it takes money, materials, and time.

We need to research most ship designs before we can build them. Right now we have a grand total of three: A scout ship, a light battle frigate, and a colony ship.

At the moment I've done exactly what Kostura's done. There are two scout ships in production and three extractors being built on our asteroids. Nothing more, nothing less.

Next update (hopefully a lot sooner!), I'll build a lab or two so we can talk technology. A scout ship should be done by then, so we can learn about space travel as well.

Edit: Resized the screenshots so they don't stretch the screen.[/spoiler]