Damien Knight's corporate address, est. 2209

Alright, folks, I hereby open this quarterly meeting of the Ares Macrotechnology Board of Directors. Let's address the elephant in the room.

The Inflection Point that's been all over the media recently is real. We've run the numbers and while there is some wiggle room in the exact figures that are being slung around in the Commission Report, the core concept is solid. The Slavic Federation are already in the early stages of prototyping colony ships, and the Kavithans are already getting strangely religious about the idea. The future of humanity, it has been decided, is offworld.

We are in a prime position to get on this bandwagon before it leaves the station.

The end of the financial year is coming up soon, and several of our departments will be in a position where they can turn their attention towards the 'Seeding' project. We need to decide which department will be in the lead - this will likely have great influence upon our future in the stars.

While I would love nothing more than to cut you all out of the loop, I'm sure those of you that keep obsessive track of power blocs - that is, all of you - will be aware that I do not currently have the supermajority required to do so. Therefore, the board will have considerable control over the shape of the future of this project, and you - or any designated representatives, for those that choose to remain on Earth - will be equally in control of any colony founded by this Project.

---

(1) Knight Errant: Relations are already strained on Earth, where even the most benign piece of corporate espionage is likely to result in legal action. As Ares resolutely proved when they moved their headquarters into high orbit as a tax dodge, 99.9% of human law ends at the exosphere. When they turned their eyes to a new frontier, some argued that it was perfectly reasonable to expect, defend against, and even pre-emptively strike based on an expectation that their competitors would revert to the law of the jungle. As such, Knight Errant was tapped as one of the main possibilities for leadership of the Project.

Knight Errant was formed soon after Damien Knight took leadership of Ares Macrotechnology, and has quickly risen to become a juggernaut in private security, even taking on contracts to act as private police forces for entire cities. Their flagship project is the Detroit Metroplex, former corporate headquarters of Ares, which boasts the lowest crime rate of any city in the Americas outside of Brasilia.

Under their plan, the colony will be drawn from the veterans of Knight Errant and the people of their sister-subsidiary, Ares Arms, and the cargo hold filled with the finest examples of their products. When the ship lands, the first people to step off it will be armed to the teeth, and the colony will be able to meet any problem head-on. This society will be militaristic, authoritarian, and brutal.

Brasilia bonus - Units have +10% Strength in melee combat
Engineers - +2 production per city
Lifeform Sensor - reveal alien nests on map
Weapon Arsenal - begin with a soldier unit


(2) Ares Integrated Solutions: There is no need for cynicism and militarization. Relations here on Earth may be strained, but for the most part they're peaceful. With a whole new world to fill, the resource shortages plaguing Earth will surely be a non-factor. So why, some argue, should conventional war be prepared for, when the eternal skirmish of the free market would prove so much more profitable?

Cobbled together from the bought-out remains of General Motors, Apple, and half of Silicon Valley, AIS is the largest fulfiller of government contracts in the Western hemisphere, and one of the largest suppliers of consumer goods in the world. They control more docks and trade hubs than entire countries.

Their proposal is that logistics and international trade be the lifeblood of the new colony, thus making the most of the inevitable presence of other entities on this new world. The people for the colonization will be drawn from their marketing and sociology departments, as well as large numbers of the more controllable artists from Ares Global Entertainment. This society would be less prepared for outright war, but more adaptable, sophisticated, and better able to integrate with other nations.

Polystralia bonus - +2 Trade Routes available for the Capital
Artists - +2 culture and +1 health per city
Continental Surveyor - reveal coasts on map
Laboratory - begin with the Pioneering technology (required for trade depots)


(3) Screw This, This Is My Ticket Off This Rock: The board was not entirely pleased with Damien Knight's plan. Where he saw his legacy, they may have seen their escape from a dying world. Should they choose power games, things will turn ugly fast. Within minutes, tactical alliances will form and voting blocs will begin to accumulate power. Within hours, Damien Knight will reluctantly began negotiations. Within days, the espionage will begin.

What will be assumed to be someone's secretary will jam a ballpoint pen into the carotid artery of the leader of a voting bloc and fling themselves out a window, jetpacking into the back of a heavily-armoured van and escaping down the street. Board members will retreat to teleconference, and many will get the rare treat of being able to broadcast their own murder. As defences around the board members skyrocket, attention will shift to the shares themselves, and heists of bearer stock certificates and modification of digital ownership logs will begin en masse. A month after the initial meeting, 43% of Ares Macrotechnology shares will have changed hands at least once. The final compromise will be struck: each board member will control whatever percentage of the ship that they held percentage of Ares itself.

In the end, the ship will be the most expensive abomination the world will ever know. Great palaces will be jammed into place among cavernous cargo holds containing whatever precious materials the board members feel would be most valuable on the new world, only to be torn down or redesigned as shares change hands. Board members will grapple for greater weight allowance by pouring their own funds into the engine and battery R&D. Entire private armies of espionage teams, called Shadowrunners, will be added to the personnel manifests, as will facilities for the health and comfort of the board members. This society may not be prepared for anything the new world might throw at them, but they will be the wealthiest and sneakiest bastards since the fall of the Byzantine Empire.

ARC - Covert Operations are 25% faster and cause 25% more Intrigue
Aristocrats - +3 energy and +1 health per city
Fusion Reactor - begin with 100 energy
Raw Materials - begin with a clinic

---

Author's note: Time for another go. This time will, I think, be a bit more narrative-driven and less purely mechanical, especially since this time will be fluffed as one month, rather than one year, per turn.

Yes, I'm ripping off Shadowrun. I'm just taking good ol' Damien and his megacorp, though - no magic, no dragons, no elves, just good ol' unrestrained capitalism and the magnificent bastard behind the Nanosecond Buyout.

I will also be accepting suggestions for the naming of our ship and soon-to-be-capital, though I've got ideas for what to call it in the case of each of the three ideas.

 

(3) Screw This, This Is My Ticket Off This Rock


I see no way this could go wrong.

 

The Ares Integrated Solution seems like the best bet.

 

The Board recognizes Senator Locke, chairperson of the Board and head of the Joint Committee for Wartime Spending

3. The Brasileans have some hardy boys, certainly, but as I'm sure our dear executive will agree, superiority will come not merely through strength, but strength and guile.

As for a name for our capital, as we are Ares, why not name the capital after Phthia's most terrible warrior?

Aristos Achaion.

 

(3) Screw This, This Is My Ticket Off This Rock

Photographs proved the existence of the ship. Intercepting communications provided a list of the ship's personnel. But I'm freely willing to admit that I shot my boss and stole his hands and face in order to be here with all of you. I'm willing to do this because, at this point, the shares are under my name, gentlemen.

I'm Trahj Aiden, and I'm pleased to meet you.

 

(2) Ares Integrated Solutions

You all have no idea how powerful this set up is. Seriously, 4 trade routes straight off the bat, with pretty much any station/colony that is on a coastline anywhere in the world? All you need is Ecology and you have a massive advantage in the early game.

 

As we set our course across the stars to a world unknown, it's clear we must not forget our roots. How could we? It's clear that the militaristic powers have led to our current status, and it's equally clear that our own fiscal prowess are allowing us to set foot on our future home first. Our reach and management of our financial empire has led us to this point.


[IMGUR]qc1XVni.png[/IMGUR]
My name is John Smith, Doctor of Economic Development.


The decisions laid on the table are clear. While there will likely be alien life on our new planet, best to build up our weapons while there- our current arms and armor will be a beneficial place to start, but I'd rather our storage space go to something else. While Production is excellent, we will streamline processes as needed.

Looking at our third option, I have no desire to share more pieces of the pie than need be. Bringing on a ship full of aristocrats with their heigh maintenance and power plays seems both distasteful and counterproductive- on the new world we will have enough challenges. Let us set ourselves up as Kings. If we want for intrigue, well, there is always each other once the planet is subjugated. Failing that, we can always put a call back to earth.

It's with great confidence that I wish to recommend the Ares Integrated Solutions proposition- Healthy cities, developing a culture to forge a new empire on this new world. Our beloved capitol the center of a web of trade routes- routes that we can build immediately upon the completion of our second site. Finally, a knowledge of the terrain. We will be the first humans, but there will be others following. Best we know the lay of the world and where we all sit in regards to each other.

I stand with Chairman Aekiel's proposal- an early grasp on the trade routes, with an eye for long term development.

John Smith D.E.D.

 

Option 2 is winning against Option 3 four votes to three, but I'll give it another few hours so it'll have been a full day for people to stumble across the thread. Additionally, I'm gonna need someone to pick a number from one to twelve, if anyone feels like taking that responsibility upon themselves.

 

Plan 2
We did the militaristic/covert approach last time and maybe this time we can avoid killing everything.

And number 7

 

...pahahaha.

 

Indeed.

Ares Integrated Solutions will be leading the way into space. Stay tuned.

---------- Post automerged at 08:34 ---------- Previous post was at 05:55 ----------

While it initially seemed that the early days of the colonial efforts would be stricken by corporate warfare, calmer heads prevailed and the project was put in the capable hands of Ares Integrated Solutions and Ares Global Entertainment (which was near-instantly renamed Ares Interplanetary Entertainment). Within days, trade infrastructure enough to fuel continents reshaped itself to funnel the resources of a corporate empire into a single massive project. Entire universities were bought outright to gain access to the minds and works of their social science departments, and countless pieces of media were produced to increase public interest in the project.

The space station Freedom, corporate headquarters of Ares, was made the capstone of a vast ship build under and around it, sending a clear and carefully-crafted message to the world that Ares was putting their heart and soul into the Seeding. Around the world, artists of every type worked feverishly, hoping to catch the attention of the corporate juggernaut and win a place for themselves and their families on the colony ship, flooding every means of communication with free press. The price of the project was almost worth it for the advertising effects alone.

The target for the seeding was Rigil Khantoris Bb, a planet barely within the Goldilocks Zone of a secondary star in a binary system. Fears of it being too hot to host human life were discounted due to it's relative closeness to Earth. Breakthroughs in long-term croygenics allowed millions of colonists to be stacked like cordwood in self-sufficient cryo-coffins, and for a decade each nation winnowed through their populations and head-hunted each others' for the best and brightest minds.

December 31st, 2599 - Turn 0.

1st Board Meeting

Yes, that's actually the date, so happy new year. We redlined the engines a little to arrive exactly today. That's what happens when you give PR companies too much influence over a project.

It's been nearly four centuries since we left Earth, and we've made planetfall onto Rigil Khantoris Bb. Our shipboard laboratories are already fired up and using scans from the planet to hammer out the final details on trade and colonization vehicles, and the continental survey scanners have already taken in all the data they needed.



Arguments back on Earth about the heat of this planet seem to have been entirely justified. Whether we've landed on a particularly infertile region or this is the norm for the entire planet is yet to be seen - I'll keep you informed as survey data starts coming in from our surveyors. There'll be further reports from specialists about this region after I get tired of the sound of my own voice.

Additionally, the plantlife on this planet seems to be entirely fungal in nature, hence the overwhelming blueness of the landscape.

Here's our scan of this continent:

Northwest:


Southwest:


Northeast:


Southeast:


As you can see, we're situated not on an ocean like I originally suspected, but on a massive inland sea. This fact will likely have a great deal of influence over our short-term plans.

Please read over the report on our immediate area, then register your votes for one of the proposals below, or bring up any of your own devising. I'm sure they'll be fascinating.

BoD Report: Survey of Immediate Area & Short-Term Prospects



There are two areas to concentrate on - the floodplains along the river to the west, and the plains to the northeast. The floodplains are amazingly fertile, and combined with the food grown in our city will result in fast population growth - current projections predict that by May we'll be able to begin the second round of unfreezing. They also produce an amazing amount of electricity from both solar and hydroelectric sources. The plains, on the other hand, are significantly less fertile and don't allow easy harnessing of solar power, but have significant near-surface mineral deposits that would be a huge boon to our construction efforts.

There is a significant lack of interesting animal, vegetable or mineral samples in the immediate region, apart from some root vegetables growing in the depths of the desert and some floating mineral we have no idea how to utilize.

OPERATION CORINTH



Our continental survey has shown us that there is exactly one place where a canal could be constructed to link our inland sea to the oceans of this world. As our plans leaned rather heavily on turning our capital into a global hub of trade, securing this area should be a very high priority, as without it we will be severely limited in our trade prospects.

OPERATION CORINTH has three variants:

1) OPERATION GOLDEN CORINTH: Ares Macrotechnology is a corporation, and as such we are very familiar with outsourcing. Already some of our employees are starting their own subsidiaries in their downtime. As our population grows, the amount of work we can outsource will grow exponentially.

As such, we should develop our society not upon primary industries, but on the economy - and as per international agreements, economy means electricity. If we focus our society on electrical generation and economic development, we will be able to fund the construction of an entire colony-tank without having to develop the infrastructure to do so. We already have a solid foundation to build on, considering the energy output of our solar and hydroelectric sources.

Summary: Emphasize energy output, buy colonist with energy.

2) OPERATION GREEN CORINTH: Ares Interplanetary Entertainment is very, very skilled at soft influence. Our sociological projections show that we could, with effort, encourage a homesteading mindset among our people, to the extent that they will band together to construct a colony-tank of what they'll believe to be their own free will.

Summary: Emphasize cultural output, unlock Prosperity virtue that gives a free colonist.

3) OPERATION BROWN CORINTH: Why screw around? We want a colony-tank, we build a colony-tank.

Summary: Emphasize production output, build a colonist.

OPERATION CORNUCOPIA

Our immediate area is relatively barren of any interesting formations that we know of. Do we accept this as a matter of poor fortune, or do we expand our study of the natural sciences to see if there's anything we missed?

Summary: Research all techs that reveal resources, in the hopes that we didn't just get fucked by the RNG. Build worker to mine what we hope to find.

OPERATION ANAXIMANDER

Our immediate concern should be exploration. While many aimed to colonize this world, we were the first. We should use this head-start to send team after team into the wilderness to grasp any low-hanging fruit this world may hold, and blaze trails to any trading partners that may be arriving on our continent in the coming months.

Summary: Build explorers, get tech to explore other land masses, focus on overland trade.

Decision: Chlorophyllic or Photovoltaic?

Unless we're unknowingly sitting on a treasure trove of petroleum or titanium, we've only really got two options for the development of our capital - food output or energy output. Building generators everywhere would make us incredibly wealthy, but would limit our medium-term growth, and in the long run our capital would be reliant on imported food. If we build farms instead, our capital will grow in population faster, and would be able to feed the growth of our empire as internal trade begins.


Author's notes: Disregard the name of the city in the screenshots, it's been renamed Aristos Achaion as per Lamora's suggestion.

Erandil's number selected our map seed - rather than just using the regular map generator I dipped into the pre-order bonus, altered generators that produce irregular maps. In this case, Rigil Khantoris Bb is a very arid map, inspired by Alpha Centauri Bb, a theorized planet that orbits at a shockingly close .04 AU around the secondary star in the Alpha Centauri binary system.

 

​

Good morning, I am Aekiel, head of the Cultural Development and Maintenance Department and I come to you today with a proposal.

This new world is a desolate place. A look out the viewport will show you a whole lot of nothing much, which myself and my department find to be utterly wrong. Our ancestors romanticised the stars as being the freedom of humanity, but as is often the case the reality of interplanetary travel proved those flights of fancy wrong.

It is utterly depressing, but it doesn't have to be.

For all the talk of food and energy, we cannot forget the importance of the abstract, of culture. We travelled to this new world out of a desire to see humanity do better than it had, to ensure that the Great Mistake would not cripple our entire species. That desire, that hope, is a fragile thing that must be nurtured lest it with and die on this barren world.

So, I come before you today with a proposal I call Operation Green Corinth. My assistant is handing each of you a dossier. Within it is a detailed timeline covering the building and research priorities for the next 20 years, all of which are geared towards ensuring the morale of our population maintains a consistent standard in order that we might encourage those of an adventurous inclination to split from this city and head out to expand our power to other regions.

I believe the planetary survey located a prime location for a canal that would connect Aristos Achaion to this world's wider oceans, rather than just the inland sea we are currently based on.

As a secondary note, though there are others on this board much more qualified than I in the matter, it is my opinion that the greatest hurdle in expanding our presence on this world will be one of food. The old saying goes that an army marches on its stomach and, well, the same applies to a colony. The morale of the city would be very much buoyed by a surplus of food, as well as allowing us to set aside some resources for a future colonial venture.

 

Operation Green Corinth, Chlorophyllic, Floodplains.

 

Operation Corinth is nothing more than trying to run before we have even crawled. Let us grab that which is free, first and foremost.

I, for one, don't want all that money we spent shooting off resource pods to go to waste - or worse, benefit one of our competitors. Anaximander will be the way to go, before we start working on our next city - though I agree that securing the canal spot for our next settlement should be our next highest priority.

As for a name for said settlement, why not Piraeus? After the largest passenger port in Europe, located in nowhere less than our own Athens. It seems fitting.

As for the construction route we should take, the choice is obvious. Chlorophyllic will bring us all the benefits of the other, in time, with the added bonus of putting the land to work. As we all know, any land hex without a population assigned to it is essentially flab - we can have all the generators in the world, but if there's no one working them, what is the point? The Floodplains seem the wisest direction to build in, in this regard.

Finally, in regards to my own self, I have no problem taking up my own additional duty.



Before I became a statesman, there were some that might have known me as a mover and shaker of the private security world. Insinuations by naysayers that this had a hand in my appointment are, of course, false - however, I have no problem taking that role back up in the absence of another contender. Leave the matters of our military to me.

In the interest of that being anything but an empty title, I move to put a Soldier unit on the production queue. You know we'll need them sooner or later, and Soldier units can pick up Resource Pods just as well as Explorers.

 

At last. Landfall. Our preliminary analysis of the coastline indicates that we are in an ideal position to colonize the entire western arm around the inland sea. The interior continent can be spread into once we have developed a strong foundation. In these regards I would propose an increase in our work in the floodplains. We need more people to spread.

On the note of spreading, I've heard plans to build to the south- a modern day Corinth to reach the seas. While I back this wholeheartedly, we know nothing of the area to our south, or surrounding us. Information is key in strategic decision making, and while risks are important for greater reward, prudence is knowing not if- but where there are enemies seeking to cut into profits.Lets not loose our newest investment.

Let us explore. Anaximander: I propose we send our current explorer south, with the intent to secure information about our second location. Senator Locke's proposed Soldier unit will do well for scouting the current area, and if others feel a need for a second explorer, my recommendation is to send him north. Once these units have formed up, I propose the creation of our colonist tank. If the explorers are able to find energy or inspire culture, I move that it be directed towards the colonist tank.

Finally, while our immediate energy development may not run a surplus, we are not here for the short term. We look to the future. Chlorophyllic has my vote for future construction.

 

Anaximander then any Corinth. I do intend for us to seize that canal, but let's find the best path to dedicate ourselves towards, first.

 

Anaximander followed by Green Corinth. I say we focus on Food Resources with a few Generators.

 

Anaximander followed by Green Corinith. Let's actually stabilize first, than we can think about the canal.