It didn't take too long to get Rory acquainted with the concepts that I was working with. While I doubted he would be able to come up with any useful for some time (because kids always like to go with the rule of cool rather than practicality), the sooner he got through those concepts, the better. A day had been enough to get him through the basics, but he'd need much more time to see the long-game and how to work it to his advantage. For now, he should just focus on making cool things to his heart's content. After all, I might as well let him act like a child while he still could.
Additionally, it gave me time to focus on other topics. Namely, getting on Planet's good side. You see, the planet you arrive on in Beyond Earth doesn't just make up the setting. In actuality, it's a living being unto itself. It commands the aliens, making it analogous to barbarians from the normal Civilization games, but it isn't innately hostile to any of the factions. Rather, it is reactive: attack Planet and it will attack you. If you decide to attack it again, the cycle will repeat until, eventually, Planet decides to wipe you out, forcing you to wipe out all aliens and their nests to avoid being destroyed. Well, in theory, you could get it back to being indifferent, but the sheer amount of aggression it displays makes this infeasible.
If you are kind to it, though, it will gradually grow friendlier, with some of the aliens eventually becoming a sort of AI controlled militia. This only happens if you found a city a certain distance from an alien nest and don't destroy it for a certain number of turns. After that point, the aliens see you as a part of them, and will assist you in battle. Additionally, if the nest is on top of a xenomass tile, you can use said xenomass without have to improve it. Win-win, in my opinion.
Of course, I wasn't exactly sure how to get the planet to be buddies with me, seeing how I only had two humans with me and a horde of aliens. Additionally, I wasn't sure how the people on Planet would react to the aliens. I mean, you could build XCOM HQ as a wonder in Civ 5, so for all I new, the alien war had happened in this timeline and people might still have scars from that.
Ugh, this was going to be a problem.
Now how to fix it. Hmm...
Well, maybe I could plant forests. It worked in Alpha Centauri, so why not here?
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It didn't take me long to modify a fabber into a worker. For those wondering, in my book, fabbers just build structures, while workers can build structures and roads, repair things, and even create more...organic fixtures, like farms or, in this case, forests.
Now, I'll admit it, this plan was a Hail-Mary: I didn't know whether planet would appreciate the effort or just ignore it. You see, in Alpha Centauri, the planet was much meaner than this one. I mean, here, the basic wildlife you encountered was either the wolf beetle or the scarab, both of whom weren't that menacing and could easily be dealt with by basic troops. In Alpha Centauri, the basic enemy was the mindworm: think of them as killer worm/lamprey hybrids that attacked you with psychic powers. Apparently, these could cause people to claw their eyes out and beg for mercy as the worms moved to eat them, which was an extremely unpleaseant fate in any book. Worse still, they existed as hordes known as boils: the bigger the boil, the larger the horde. Needless to say, they were one of the reasons I was glad that I'd landed in the Beyond Universe and not that one.
Back on topic: in that game, you could improve your relationship with Planet in a variety of ways: certain buildings and civics, for example, allowed you to live in harmony with the planet and make it your friend. But, failing that, you could just plant forests over any unimproved tiles and let those convince planet of your intentions. Since that was one of the things I new that could still be done with these workers, I decided to start planting.
The trees I was putting in, of course, had been tweeked slightly: most of them were modified to grow much faster than normal and last much longer, to allow for the forest to quickly take root and remain for some time. These traits hadn't been encoded into the reproductive genes of the trees, though, so any offspring they had would be normal trees. I would not repeat the mistakes that were ruining the Earth prior to becoming a commander.
It didn't take that long to get the forest up. Pretty soon after it was up, creatures began to move into it, eager to find new homes. Soon, the forest was teeming with life.
The sounds filled me with pride, but they also caused a paradigm shift: if this was what one forest was like, then why not make more? Plus it might make Planet happier.
I quickly examined my current base on planet. Nothing too strange, just factories, power plants, extractors, storage, and the defenses needed to protect them. I also made note of where I intended to expand, careful to mark out where the resource providing structures would go: these were what I would center the rest of the base around. With that in mind, I added in roads to make them look relatively normal to human eyes, leaving the finished design before me.
That still left an awful lot of unfilled space...
Which was soon about to be full of plants.
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It took me an entire day, but every area of my base that wasn't a structure or road was quickly covered in vegetation. While the trees were the most obvious, more life forms were also present: tubers and fruits grew in several places, with a few fungi growing over the few fallen trees in the area: the fungi offered many opportunities for research, so I'd collected a few earlier, and since fungi were excellent decomposers, I decided to add a few to make the area around my base more organic.
Offshore, things were remarkably similar: algae grew in large clouds, with plankton feasting on it in the more open areas. Closer to shore, colonies of chelonian sought shelter from predators amid vast coral reefs. The presence of my machines barely seemed to disturb them, which wasn't very surprising. Not that it detracted from the beauty of the scene. The stunning view of the native life on the planet kept my attention for a full minute, before, reluctantly, I prepared to leave. I had other things that needed to be done.
Before I could leave, though, I received an alert that informed me that something had just been uncovered by my fabbers that required further examination, preferably by something small and capable of detailed examination.
Good news: I had something that could do that.
Bad news: that something was me. As in, my avatar: I'd added in a bunch of cybernetic and biological enhancements to it during the few times I'd been able to leave Rory on his own (mostly whenever he was sleeping), turning it into a walking research station. I'd also made it able to breath both on Earth and on Planet, so I didn't need to worry about a helmet, not that I wouldn't bring one anyways for protection.
Well, I could wait and make a new machine to examine the oddity, or I could just go and study it myself...
Or I could do both. After all, even if I went to study it, it wouldn't hurt to have a machine capable of in depth sample analysis near by. Plus it was boring spending all of my time in my avatar on the hub world or in a lab.
So then, I guess I was going down to Planet. And I was bringing a rover with me.
Well, what was the worst that could happen?
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It was funny, being on the surface of Planet for the first time. Or rather, the first time that I was on it in my avatar. The soil was firm, the light was bright but not blinding, and the sounds were rather reassuring.
Following me was my vehicular companion: a rover. Specifically, it was one that was almost identical to the ones used by the colonists of this planet. This was because, quite simply, the design was actually very good in its own right: it had all of the facilities I needed for my mission already included, so all I really had to do to it was bring those systems up to speed with the ones my Progenitor level commander used. Once that was done, it had bene a simple matter to get it rolling off the vehicles factory.
Now, we were at last at the target: it appeared to be some kind of skeleton. Now, normally, the skeleton wouldn't have much valuable stuff in it, but apparently something inside the skeleton was giving strange readings, and I wanted to find out what it was. So, carefully, I entered it and began using the rover to scan it.
Strangely, I could make out odd, wormlike shapes coming from what looked like the ribs of the skeleton, which were now quite a distance above me. Though mostly covered in plant matter, the ribs were still holding, which was a testament to the strength of life on this planet. Something to think about later, I noted.
It didn't take me long to realize that the search would go faster if I just set the rover to start examining the skeleton, so I did that, put it on guard mode (Did you really think I wouldn't arm it before I built it? I like to come prepared), and decided to take a nap.
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One hour later, the rover awakened me. According to its notes, it had finally located the anomaly...which, apparently, was in the canopy with the worms...oh wait.
Worms...canopy...
Why hadn't I seen this earlier?
Those were Canopy Floating Worms, one of the artifacts you could get in the Rising Tide expansion. If you assembled them with two other artifacts, you would acquire some reward that gave you an edge against your competitors. I remembered that the preferred reward for this artifact, when combined with others, made workers move farther, which would probably be applicable to all of my fabbers, which would be undoubtable beneficial to my cause.
Alright, time to go artifact hunting.
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When I left the skeleton, though, I found a worrisome sight.
Before me was a massive pack of wolf beetles. As in, well over a hundred. Which was, quite simply, way more than I could take down with the rover.
Desperately trying to keep cool, I ordered in a set of bombers and tanks to come in and clear me an escape-why aren't they focusing on me?
The wolf beetles, to my surprise, seemed ignorant of my presence. Instead, they focused on a the skeleton. Perhaps they held some kind of reverence for it? I mean, it mentioned that in the game when you made an expedition on the skeleton.
For a moment, the beetles stared at the skeleton, though why was beyond me.
Then, they turned their attention toward me and, slowly, began to advance.
While I was still scared, some of my fear had given way to wonder: while the wolf beetles were advancing on me, I could tell this wasn't predatory behavior: something else was driving them.
Eventually though, they got to close, leading me to yell at them since I hadn't had the foresight to produce handheld firearms for personal defense. Which, honestly, made no sense, considering how my dad had taught me how to use semi-automatic pistols.
"GET BACK!"
The beetles, to my surprise, stopped, then did just that.
Confused, I stared at them for a moment, before yelling again.
"STOP!"
They stopped.
Okay, one last order.
"Come to me."
The pack advanced until they were within biting distance. Cautiously, I put out a hand...
And soon felt myself petting a wolf beetle. Confusion filled me for a moment, before I realized that this wasn't actually surprising: ingame, if you explored an alien skeleton, you'd automatically gain an alien unit under your control when the expedition was complete.
Looks like I had a pet wolf beetle pack now.
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I wasn't jumping to conclusions just yet, but I think planet appreciated my actions.
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AN: Read and Review. This is Flameal15k, signing off!