Once the trio of ambassadors (Assuming they count as ambassadors) left, unknowingly carrying a virus that would give me the schematics on quite literally everything developed so far on this planet, I quickly got to work improving my defenses on Chiron. (funny thing there: as my worm revealed, it turned out this planet really was called Chiron. What are the odds?) Additionally, I began deploying orbital satellites and fighters to ensure that I would be safe (at least, for the moment).
I also got to work preparing as many reserves for the resources I had, so that I wouldn't be in danger of compromised supply lines should my extractors and generators go down. I'd already started examining the resource cores so that I could move away from a dependence on harvesters, but for now I had to make due with what I had.
Coupled with a few artillery cannons, I soon had a virtually impregnable defense network around my base. Now that I was (relatively) unassailable, time to focus on other matters.
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My worms began feeding me intel exactly one hour after they were deployed, and the results were surprising:
First off, apparently, ALL TWELVE of the playable sponsors had arrived on this planet, making for an awfully crowded world. The only reason that they hadn't fought over the resources was that the planet had a radius three times that of Earth's. As for why they weren't being crushed by gravity, the planet's mass was nines times that of earth, so the overall surface gravity was equal*. How such perfect balance occurred naturally eluded me, and since there were ruins belonging to an alien species on this planet, I was willing to put some stock into the idea that they had been responsible for this. But that was besides the point.
From what I could determine so far, in terms of affinities, ARC, Brasilia, INTGR, and the Slavic Federation were going Supremacy; Kavitha, the African Union, North Sea Alliance and Chungsu were heading toward Harmony, while Elodie, Hutama, Al Falah and the Cooperative were focusing on Purity. That being said, Chungsu was experimenting with Supremacy tech, Kozlov was examining some Purity research and Elodie was consulting intel on Harmony. So, all six affinities were also present. Good to know.
Finally, it looked like everyone had been trying to work together peacefully before I arrived, in spite of the massive ideological differences they had, and that wasn't including the physical ones. Wow, I guess the Apocalypse (or, rather, Great Mistake) really does bring out the best in people. It turned out that some of the stations were the only real source of trouble so far: apparently, some of them had been involved in a slavery ring, and they still hadn't caught all of the conspirators or that one. I wasn't surprised that Barre was one of the people most outspoken against said ring, but the fact Fielding was right behind him was a curveball. Then I realized that, in addition to slavery being an absolutely inefficient labor system, Fielding might have been a descendent of former slaves (a few dozen generations removed, of course). Food for thought.
Finally, though, I got to the goodstuff: the technology. To my surprise, they'd all gotten very far along the tech tree: between all of the factions on planet, they'd unlocked quite literally EVERYTHING on the tech tree, giving me plenty to study. First off, nab the xenonursery: once I had the tech, I decided to head back to my hub and start building one ASAP. First, though, I nabbed some tunneling equipment, hollowed out an area by my base, THEN all of the improvements needed to harvest the affinity resources, and then built a return teleporter. Since R.O.B. didn't try to for me back onto Chiron, I guess he was fine with me heading home for a bit.
Once I was back, I got to work building the vivarium. The minute it was finished, I calibrated it based on what research I had available, then began to cultivate the xenomass. It would take a while to grow, but I could handle that.
You know, I never figured out why commanders seemed to ignore biotech when gathering shinies. That could probably have helped more people than any other tech they introduced to native factions. Oh well.
Next up was firaxite: it took me about an hour, but I managed to figure out how to synthesize it in amounts practical enough for consumer usage. The same went for floatstone. You know, I have to agree with Elodie here: when we have a reference pool several centuries worth of literature, why is floatstone the best name we can come up with for this stuff? Oh well, a question for another day.
Alright, so, I've got samples of all of the affinity resources and the ability to synthesize more as needed. Now I can focus on other matters. Like, for example, further improving my base defenses: an ultrasonic fence was now under construction, and would be the final thing I needed to make alien incursions not related to sabotage only a memory. Combined with a few orbital defenses, umbrellas and a metric fuck-ton of conventional defenses, I finally felt secure.
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Look, I know that might seem absurd, but I prefer to be prepared, okay?
What? I could just adapt to it? Like any good commander?
Ha ha ha.
If nature has taught me one thing, it is that, no matter how powerful an organism gets, none are ever invincible. One day, even commanders like me will meet their match.
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Alright, now that I'd got my defenses set up and had an endless supply of affinity resources, time to start examining all of the tech I had arrayed before me.
First off, I decided to get some networks up and running: while I had plenty of data-storage to work with, somehow, these ones were better than anything I could access at the moment, plus it had the benefit of allowing to run AIs in them, as well as store recordings of battles and other important tactical crap.
Aaaaaand apparently networking the AIs gave them a veterancy system. Somehow, I felt this was going to be important. But not for now.
Onto the next target: the Surveillance web. While my cyber Warfare routines could trounce virtually all defense systems (with two notable exceptions), extra protection was always appreciated. I built one of these back at my 'capital', while another was integrated into my commander. Now try and hack it.
Now onto the Mantle: leave it to purity to figure out how to match Supremacy's robot assisted research Hypercores with pure human potential. Really admirable, if I'm honest. Plus it made for a good RD center. I had both, so might as well make the most of both of them.
Okay, got some nice structures, plenty to do with them, now onto the juiciest part of the civ series: the wonders. Now, most of these were just famous monuments from Earth's history, but the ones I had access to, being from colonies, obviously did not have that little problem, and were the overall pinnacle of human technology... well, in this universe at least.
Most interesting to me at the moment, though, was the drone sphere: you know those futures where every mundane task is handled by robots? That's the drone sphere in a nutshell: robots exist to solve all mundane problems for society. The security benefit was just a bonus. While I didn't really need to worry about those needs, since I had a loyal army of followers, I felt obligated to do what I could to make their lives easier. They deserve that for their loyalty, okay?
Two other projects had my attention at the moment: the Ectogenesis Pod and the Promethean Project. The first was basically an artificial womb that was millennia beyond the one I had from the Spore universe, while the latter was basically an optimized human genome. Both were really things I wanted for myself and my AI avatars, so I wasted no time building them and using them to, ahem, 'upgrade' my avatar, which I ended up rendering down into proteins to fuel the growth its successor.
Let nothing go to waste!
Also, the process was going to take some time (a few hours) so I decided to power down and take a nap while I waited. After all, what's the worst that could happen?
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Three hours later...
When I woke up, I found myself feeling WAY better than I had ever felt before. I guess the optimized genome really did make life better. Though, TBH, it also felt rather weird. Guess I need to spend time adapting to my new avatar.
Also, I was getting a new alert.
NOTICE: GESTATION OF ENTITY IDENTICATION: N/A IS COMPLETE
Good, one of my AIs was finished...wait, N/A? I'd given them all placeholder designations: Ultima, Superego and ID. Why the N/A?
QUERY: N/A?
SUBJECT WAS NOT GIVEN DESIGNATION.
WHY?
BECAUSE SUBJECT WAS NOT PRODUCED ON ORDERS OF CMDR FLAMEAL15K
THEN WHY WAS IT MADE IN THE FIRST PLACE?
TO AVOID WASTING EXCESS ORGANIC COMPUNDS AND ENERY. GESTATION PODS FOR ALL CURRENT AIs WERE BUILT IN SETS OF FOUR. IT WAS DEEMED ILLOGICAL TO ONLY USE THREE WHEN ADDITIONAL RESOURCES WERE AVAILABLE
Urgh...
ANY INFORMATION AVAILABLE ON NEW AI AND ITS AVATAR?
AI AVATAR IS MALE
Great, another malewho will fight with me for dominance.
THEIR MENTAL AGE IS EQUIVALENT TO THEIR PHYSICAL
WHY IS THAT IMPOR-
PHYSICAL AGE CORRESPONDS TO 10 YEARS OF NATURAL GROWTH
...oh...
RESPONSES INDICATE YOU ARE DISPLEASED WITH CREATION OF ADDITIONAL AI. WOULS TPUCLIKE TO TERMINATE-
NONONO! KEEP I-HIM ONLINE!
VERY WELL. DO YOU WISH TO BEGIN THE AWAKENING PROCESS [Y/N]?
Y
INITIATING PROCESS. DUE TO NATIRE OF SUBJECT, THIS WILL TAKE ONE HOUR. DO YOU HAVE ANY OTHER REQUESTS?
YES. SENDING THEM THROUGH NOW.
REQUEST RECEIVED. WILL BEGIN CREATING CLOTHING NOW. THIS WILL TAKE HALF AN HOUR.
THANK YOU
YOU ARE WELCOME.
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Look, I'm aware that I probably shouldn't have tempted fate before I went to sleep, but this was really just waiting to happen.
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AN: Well, that happened. Anyways, Read and Review. Your reviews are the only way this story will get better!
This is Flameal15k, signing off!