A/N: It has been a good long while since I've published anything, done a bit of streaming, bit of gaming, bit of working out, bit of going to school. But that's not an excuse, I've just been really lazy. I have another chapter that I'll release later this week maybe. Maybe not.
Anyhow, this story is going to be cautiously labeled as a Stellaris fanfic because the MC makes slightly realistic deductions. Also because it helps me with the early part of the story. It will very quickly become something else.
Hope you enjoy, all feedback is welcome!
Prologue: Storage Squared
Awaking as a disembodied spirit was not what I expected to happen when I went to sleep last night. Nothing special had happened that night, I always go to sleep at a reasonable time... if you consider 4AM as a reasonable time. Yet, no matter how little sleep my deprived self had gotten, there's no way my disillusionment could've gotten so bad to the point of experiencing a literal out-of-body experience. Truly, the (read; my) human mind was on some seriously fucked up hallucinogenic drug.
However, the internal ramblings of a totally sane mind didn't exactly help the situation, so, with the mental fortitude of a teenager, I forced myself to take a metaphorical chill pill, and analyze my predicament.
Upon looking around; I noticed immediately that I was in space. I seemed to be at the perfect angle to see the entire galaxy, which seemed to have an innumerable number of stars, so many I'm sure I'd go insane trying to count them all. However, I knew it looked similar to the Milky Way Galaxy in the fact that it was spiraled with four arms.
I could also see uniform colors encompassing star systems. They even had names! On top of that, there were also different icons around the galaxy focused around clumps of one-three star systems, more likely indicating one rather than the other ones around it. Some red squares with exclamation marks, red heads with a hollow middle and a dot in it, and more.
That's odd, I played a good amount of Stellaris in my day, definitely not enough to know the game like the back of my hand, but enough to recognize the look of it, and this looks very similar to the galaxy view in the game. But there's obviously no way that I would be in a game of all things, that's just illogical and stupid.
Right?
If I could glare, I would. Trust me. This is a novel experience. Interesting how my sleep-deprived mind came up with Stellaris instead of a game I knew better. Like Skyrim. Or Fallout. Or DayZ, or PUBG, or Supreme Commander or Elite Dangerous or Conan Exiles or-.
Stop. Calm down. This is just a dream. I can't actually test that theory because I don't have a body, so you know what? Fuck it! Let's have some fun. By the power of blissful ignorance, I will stay sane!
Oddly enough, for Stellaris, I sure couldn't see the GUI that displayed my resources or the other menus. Normally you'd have a bar on the left and top of your screen, and another one on the right that was called the "outlier" that showed all of your important things like planets, sectors, fleets, megastructures, and other things. But I didn't have that. I needed to do some testing.
'Uh... Energy Credits?'
203k/5.8m(6.8k)
I could feel my non-existent jaw drop.
Not only did it work, plus the small black screen in front of me, I've never seen a resource cap that high! What the hell? The production is kinda lack luster. A quick glance showed the year to be an easy 2381.1.08, which meant that 6.8 was indeed rather mediocre, especially if it were a player-led empire. However, the resource cap is something I've never even got close to in a game! What the hell was going on? Did this empire have entire worlds covered in resource silos? Or starbases with a resource silo building?
I never made many resource silo buildings, but it could be possible to get that high with a planet or three with silos on them.. even then, 15 buildings, times 2,000 storage, equals 30,000 total storage. So I'd need nearly 200 planets dedicated to resource storage to get that number, excluding any starbases.
What in the genuine, actual fuck?
'Total Planets?'
60 total planets
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8 ring-world sites
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4 Ecumenopolis
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6 Foundry Planets
16Energy Planets
18 Mineral Planets
4 Strategic Resource Planets
4 Research Planets
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6 colony ships en-route (4 Ring-world Sites, 2 Foundry Planet Classifications)
Wow. That's uh, surprisingly in-depth. But I'm happy it doesn't get into planet names and other such fuckery. Seriously, who actually names their planets? I have enough time to change the name to what I want that planet to be used for, and that's it. For example, with a planet with more energy districts than mineral districts, I'll name it "EP" standing for "Energy Planet". Or vice versa; "MP" for Mineral Planet, etc...
Wait. Technically I'm naming the planets. There's a name randomizer when you colonize the planet. Well then.
Ahem, anyway, none of those planets have names related to resource storage. What about starbases?
'Starbases.'
63/45 Starbases.
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13 Shipyards (3 Citadels)
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26 Bastions (20 Citadels)
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20 Anchorages (2 Citadels)
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4 Storages (4 Citadels)
\\/
-!Warning!-
Due to 18 Starbases over Maximum, Starbase upkeep increased by 360%!
Well. That's not good. 360% is a lot lower than it should normally be though. Only 20% per starbase rather than 25%? Interesting. Also, 4 storage citadels? That seems like very few...
'Storage Starbases.'
-Citadel-Class Storage Starbases-
6 storage modules
4 storage buildings
10 storage platforms
Excuse me what. More than one storage silo building? Storage modules? Storage PLATFORMS? What in the goddamn?
'Storage Platforms!'
-Starbase Storage Specs-
Modules: 1000 storage
Buildings: 2000 storage
Platforms: 5000 storage
Hmm. 6,000 8,000 50,000 = 64,000. 64,000 x 4 = 256,000.
That's still not even close to six million though, I'm foolish to think that this would be even close... but where's all of the storage coming- wait. I'm dumb.
'Resource Storage.'
-Energy Credit Storage Breakdown-
Base: 20,000
Hyper-Engineering: 25,000
Mega-Engineering: 100,000
Giga-Engineering: 600,000
Ultra-Engineering: 3,000,000
Storage Starbases (x4): 256,000
Resource Dimensions (.5): 500,000
Resource Compression Techniques: 20%
Resource Storage Algorithms: 10%
Total: 5,851,300
-Mineral Storage Breakdown-
Base: 10,000
Hyper-Engineering: 25,000
Mega-Engineering: 100,000
Giga-Engineering: 600,000
Ultra-Engineering: 3,000,000
Storage Starbases: 256,000
Resource Dimensions (2.0): 4,000,000
Resource Compression Techniques: 20%
Resource Storage Algorithms: 10%
Total: 10,388,300
Wait-wait-wait. Hyper engineering? Giga-engineering? Oh my god. This isn't normal Stellaris. Are these mods maybe? No, that's an arbitrary expression. But this isn't normal vanilla Stellaris. I play on console, so I haven't experienced anything outside of vanilla aside from videos with mods installed.
Now for the real question. Why the hell does this empire have a meager gain of less than 7k energy credits, have a slightly reasonable amount of stored energy credits. But a maximum storage in the multi-millions? Was something just recently built that needed such an obnoxious storage capacity? Maybe spending spree on alloys? But what about that horrible production? Some new upkeep system from building a mega-structure of some kind? Recently switched job focus from energy production?
Hmm... 'Energy Production.'
-Energy HEPWISXBAKWIWHNDX
{ERROR}
{ERROR}
"I can understand the curiousity, but this is getting boring to experience. I'm just going to do you and everybody else a solid and give you an instinctual and academic understanding of what's going on in your empire. Seriously, this is boring. Go have fun and purge some Xenos and protect bubbles from harm. Later -or maybe not-."
-Admin
It wasn't quite a voice, but the screen in front of me definitely carried a weight to it, like it was important. And it very well was. It also helped me realize something very important; this isn't a dream. I could've pretended it was a dream to help cope. But no, this is too much. My brain couldn't make a dream this lucid.
I want to be upset, I want to cry. But really? I should rejoice. I'm a disembodied entity that has control over a Stellaris game, this is cool as fuck. Maybe if I win, I can go home? Yes- that'll be my new goal. Win this game and go home. Home doesn't have much to offer, but I don't think I'll be able to handle this for even a full 24 hours. I suspect I'll be able to win within a few hours though. I think. I should be fine.
Right?