Idk, why but all of the sudden I have this bullshit problem where randomly my game freezes and unfreezes that is driving me nuts.
I tried even uninstalling and reinstalling.
At this point I believe it must be the connection, as of recently my WiFi has become spotty and unstable, is it possible that the game connecting and disconnecting to the internet is causing me this issue?
Obviously for game purposes (and also because systems are still limited) your empire can never end up with infinite resources, but from the perspective of one of its inhabitants at which point a system would be so developed that virtually every citizen lives (or, in some cases COULD live) in a post scarcity society?
I get that not all of them due to their respective cultures could achieve that (for example the Lumeris are culturally capitalist to the core, the Cravers are a sentient plague, the Hisso are bound by code, the UE might want incentives for its citizens to work for the empire, the Nakalim but many others: the Unfallen, the Horatio, the Sophons, the Umbral Choir (especially it, with its whole thing being unity and harmony (ignore that everyone is now part of a hivemind) the Voydani(?), Vaulters(?), Riftborn(?) don’t seem to have culturally any issues with ensuring each of its people have access to some or all of the basic resources they need to live, especially in the late game.
Btw, I’m referring to the people the empire itself consider people, so, only Horatio for Horatio, the Voydani for the Voydani (everyone else is or will become just a fuel source), idk if biological beings survive being turned into geometrical shapes by the Riftborn…
A great problem I often end up having that kills my game is when I finally am able to go to war with a faction (up until recently I played in big maps so i could never find anyone) and realize that I barely touched the military tech-tree and I’m stuck with the earlier unlockable hulls…and i don’t even have tanks despite researching them.
How do you know what to research and when? Because I often think: “I should research some military stuff” but instead end up researching more scientific stuff or diplomatic stuff (yes, idk why but I sometimes also end up lagging behind in industry (which I find comical because while I’m learning the game I play the United Empire because it feels like the most balanced faction to learn the ropes).
Also, I noticed I have yet a shallow understanding on how to equip ships, how manpower and land armies work and how to not end up with long range ships stuck in a short range approach because i can’t put them in the other ‘wings’ of the planning phase.
Last thing is a personal beef of mine but HOW THE FUCK CAN A WHOLE PLANET OR EVEN A FULLY COLONIZED SYSTEM WORK ON ONLY ONE PROJECT OR A SHIP?! 🤣
I understand that the project itself is building up infrastructures for very advanced technology that goes from sort-of feasible tech to terraforming and you want every planet in the system to have access to the same technology, but HOW IS IT POSSIBLE that a ship needs the same amount of of resources and attention from an entire system for the same amount of time that they take into ensuring a planetwide logistics system of automated drones and transport systems and VR internet 3.0??? 🤣
I know that the last question is not useful but I always found it kinda funny because dear god, even the shittier patrol ship must be a master crafted work of absolute perfection if a whole system spend months building it up.
Feels like the devs have completely abandoned support for the game (especially Xbox) so it makes me wonder: what will happen to the game?
Will we ever see World on Fire again? Will we ever see what happened to Cascadia after the war?
Or will we remain with the doubts?
And if PW2 is announced like, tomorrow, when and how would you like it to take place?
It might be that I played A LOT of Project Wingman before AC7 and I’m used to the more simplified and more arcade mechanics (litteraly, in that game your guns don’t shoot bullets, they shoot Cordium-tipped warheads with all the damage they deal)…but damn…i can’t hit nothing shy of a stationary target or a quick plane strafing, the bullets litteraly swivel left to right if i try to right the aim, even when the target is right in my hud often it isn’t hit because apparently the gun us shooting slightly to its left…
…if I use the assisted aiming component somehow I miss MORE.
It is just me or does it feel like the aiming system was modified for the ‘simplified controls’ mode?
Basically the federation collapses after someone does something incredibly stupid and the Arxurs seize opportunity to take out the core worlds (a rouge AI in the shadow fleet took control of the fleet and glassed Afaa, Nishtal and Thalsk (the archivists survived and snuck most of their cryo-subjects and studies on a freighter) eventually the rouge AI fleet was decimated but it took so much resources, assets and soldiers from the federation that, along the loss of the core worlds, it started a death spiral).
A ‘small’ refugee fleet (around 50.000-70.000 Feds onboard) made out mainly of civilian ships and a few garrison warships that escaped the death of their homeworld.
Initializing a series of random jumps, the Feds eventually reached the Sol system (this is one of those timelines in which Sol is much farther from the Federation, not enough for the Farsuls to find and study them, but enough that they aren’t even inside the federation borders or a Chief Hunter territory (albeit close enough that a Chief Hunter might detect stuff there and send a scouting team eventually.
**(Btw this is a hard sci-fi timeline)**
To their luck the arrive in system in the shadow of Neptune
Once they arrive them and their ships are exhausted, they need at least to set up a temporary colony somewhere to give time to refuel the passengers and ships (among the biggest civilian ships there are greenhouse ships and a couple of mobile refineries capable of scooping a gas giants’ atmosphere and extract fuel for their fusion engines (anti-matter is only used for FTL and they must use sparingly what they have become they don’t have the capability of producing new ones).
Scout ships though quickly return with harrowing news:
This is the Forbidden System
Humans are alive and thriving.
They don’t know exactly how many but they saw signs of colonization of the other celestial bodies of the system.
We do: 50 billion humans, most concentrated on earth but 2/5 of them living in proper extra-planetary nations and colonies stretching from mining bases on Mercury (the extremely dense ball of rock and minerals make it worth the extra DeltaV to reach it), flying cities on Venus full of mega rich, Earth and Luna, Mars and its moons (of course they violently rebelled Earth’s control), various colonies and a couple of nascent nations on the moons of Jupiter and Saturn and various settlements on various asteroids.
They haven’t detected them because luckly for them the last two planets of the system and the Oort Cloud aren’t yet worth reaching to, plus, they are half of the times masked by Neptune itself and Humans needs preparation to set up a scientific expedition to Neptune to study the strange energy signatures and unknown objects.
‘Holy Protector, let’s jump out of here asap!’ That is what the vast majority of them thought, until a bunch of other ships arrived, threatening to shoot them if they don’t shut down their FTL engines and expel the anti-matter NOW.
Turns out the Arxurs made a scientific breakthrough, making them able to detect the presence of a FTL engine signature in a system once a probe reach it…and there are a lot of scouting parties in nearby systems looking for some refugees.
They have to comply if they want a chance to survive.
So, now they are stuck in Sol.
They set up a colony on Triton, trying as best as possible to hide themselves from the humans.
Sooner or later the humans will start sending satellites at the Neptune system, and possibly after that even manned missions.
Worst of all, the humans are close to solving the mystery of FTL, and the Feds have yet to find out about it.
What do you think?
What would happen in this timeline?
I still find completely ballers that people even accepted going to VP after a while, if Tarva gave a arm and a leg to each Venlil that chose to enter it, the UN must have given a whole asteroid worth of money to each human participant.
There are only two chapter in which a reprinted Skalgan Tarva wakes up in a universe where something some sort of psychic entity has infected most humans in the galaxy preying on the anger and disdain that they felt about still not being seen as equals by the ex-Feds and twisting them in a mockery of a human, losing any form of empathy towards anything else but themselves and seeking pleasure into causing pain to others.
(If I remember correctly, after she finds the bones of Clone Tarva 1 she also finds the bones of the thing that she killed…which proceeded to somehow regain consciousness for a few seconds, mocking Tarva and telling her that if he wasn’t dying he would have turned her in one of his concubines (humans in this universe are fuuucked))
As far as i remember was that the galaxy was in chaos and the MCs of NoP1 would have been turned into basically eternal hunters of these monsters.
Then it disappeared…
After NoP1 story ‘ends’ with Kalsim monologue, suddenly he feels weird and all of the sudden reality start breaking apart before a giant: “Simulacrum unstable, emergency wake up of the subjects.”
He then wakes up inside a pod, after struggling to break free of it he realizes that:
He feels incredibly weak and overstimulated, like he never actually used his body before now.
He is surrounded by other pods (around three dozens) which are showing signs of opening themselves.
He is younger than he rememberes, by what he can get from his goop-covered plumage he should be in the young adult age range.
Something is repeatedly hitting the place making it shake.
Before he can ponder more of what is happening, more pods are opened.
These are people he already knows.
The first one he recognizes is Solvin, he is FAR younger than what he remembers, also in the young adult range.
Tarva, Slanek, a Yotul (I don’t think Kalsim ever met Onso) Nikonus somehow, a Farsul (that Archivist that fell in love with a human and kept them in stasis before they fell to the ‘hunger’), another Goijid he doesn’t know (Nulia, she is also in the young adult range), that traitorous Thilfish etc etc…Chief Hunter Isif, Thafk-CHIEF HUNTER WHO?!
Without waisting a second Kalsim tries to tackle the young Isif (in the meantime Slanek is trying to strangle to death Nikonus).
A loud alarm is heard in the room and a bunch of of lanky figures enter the room.
Three humans, two covered in what they remember are scientists suits and one in a bulky power armored combat suit carrying a coilrifle, all three of them are wearing a helmet either fully encasing the head with just optics showing on its metallic surface or equipped with a mirrored glass.
They ask the very confused aliens to move out of the way because they must recover whatever it is in the console right behind them.
Obviously that isn’t enough and that causes extra confusion and confusion among the aliens.
Then they murmur something between eachother and remove their helmet.
They are Noah, Sara and the guard is Marcel (I imagine that here he has a thick beard for some reason)
This is enough to stun everyone in the room and allow Noah and Sara to recover something on the console.
Then, Tarva tries to ask Noah what is happening, Slanek is asking Marcel what happened (all he could remember is him killing Nikonus and being strapped to a operating bed, did he come here to save him?) Nulia is extremely confused why she went to sleep as a teen and woke up 5 years older etc…
They quickly realize though that these aren’t the same people they remember, Marcel looks at Slanek with confusion and slight disdain saying: “I don’t know you.” Which further confuses Slanek, Tarva is screaming at Noah why he doesn’t remember anything of their time together or their children, Noah simply stares at her in silence with what seems like understanding in his eyes, paradoxically Nikonus, Isif and the Archivists already have realized that maybe their memories are false.
Tyler burst through the reinforced door telling them that they need to scheddale the fuck away from this place asap and ask them what to do with the experiments.
After a quick debate (which to the aliens horror includes also the possibility of simply killing them all and burn the place down, even though that one is quickly shot down) they decide to lead them out of there and escape (the UNCC can easily track them across the ship).
Fast forward some of the aliens that stick with the humans mainly to understand WTF is happening, discover that they aren’t aliens at all, they are the cumulative result of years of research in genetic engineering by the humans on the UNCN Odyssey, a enormous generational ship (the habitative rings of the ship alone have the cumulative surface area of Africa) set on course for a habitable planet discovered around Epsilon Eridani and currently 3/4 of the way through the travel, just 60 more years to go.
They derive originally from a program to adapt Earth’s animals and cattle to the the environments that they will encounter on the planet (yes, some jokesters already proposed to call it Reach) but when they identified signs of tool utilization and basic mathematics in their ancestors they decided to expand the program to see if they could create new sapient life.
And yes, they did, roughly 30 species, whose DNA sequences are in them and in Sara’s data drive (many of the Feds species were generated by computers).
They find out that after creating a bunch of them they wanted to study how their behavior with humans changed and adapted depending on many possible different scenarios.
Their entire life was nothing more than a day long experiment, they already went through multiple even vastly different scenarios involving humans and them in various situations (the Federation and the Dominion were just one among multiple possible scenarios they created, they already ran that simulation with various alterations on how they work, what happens, who is in charge…) (btw, by default the experiments have all a omnivore diet similar to humans)
The reason why they saw humans of the Odyssey in the simulation is also to see how they would interact with the current crew and passengers (after hearing from Nulia and Slanek what happened in the last simulation Marcel scoffs at his simulated self and say: “Damn, the computer made me one very whiny bitch this time.”)
Also, there is a three ways civil war going on in the ship right now: specially heavily modified humans to live in the ship very radioactive engine decks wants fucking rights and in recent years a large portion of the population went into body-modding, that though, because it risked mudding further mankind’s genetic stocks, warranted a response from central command imposing a ban if further genetic modifications, that triggered a wave of protests by the modders which triggered a more heavy handed approach from central command which triggered some extremist groups to start attacking isolated UNSF forces which triggered another civil war.
Now our ‘alien’ protagonists finds themselves trapped in a gigantic tin can, with false memories and torn between what to do and who to help (on one side the UNCC is a authoritarian government, but they are also the ones with the capacity to actually ensure the survival of their species by creating thousands of other experiments, plus, they are treated fairly well due to being the result of years of research and many people under it are people they formed relationships in their false lives).
On the other, the engine humans want to be treated better and have the power to potentially fuck everyone up by redirecting the ship into a star.
On another still, the generebels can be equated to preys fighting off a giant predator (the UNCC), they also have some people they formed relationships with in their false life, but they are splintered in many factions, some even fighting eachother and some being little more than marauding bands lead by a warlord.
Also, in this timeline Jones and Meier are swapped, Meier is the cold calculating machine that is willing to sacrifice even a third of the ship if this will ensure the greater number of saved humans and the completion of the mission, Jones instead is the charismatic and gentle leader of one of the bigger and more well organized rebel factions.
How would the protags react and live in this universe? What would they do? Would they try to lay low and hope the humans don’t blow up the ship? Would they try to reconnect with their ‘friend’ even if said friend doesn’t remember them? (I doubt the UNCC will let them kill themselves)
If major fic characters (or your OCs) are among the first batch of experiments too, how would they react and adapt to their new situation?
The life support system hummed at an almost hypnotic frequency, a constant contrast to the deep silence that wrapped around the small ship, the Pax. It wasn't an empty silence, but an absolute one, the total lack of feeling that came with being inside a warp bubble. Outside, the universe didn't exist as a concept; reality was a tunnel of pure, twisted white light flowing around the hull like a forgotten river.
Ruben broke the silence, his voice filling the cramped cabin. He leaned back in his padded seat, his brown eyes fixed not on the control panels, but on his crewmate.
"I know the technical part is impressive, the sensors buzzing, the new smell of metal and ozone from the engine," he gestured with one hand, a badly hidden smile playing on his lips, "but ignore the stats for a second. Stop and feel the moment. Out there, reality is literally being rewritten. And you're right in the middle of it. Tell me, Camila, you're a paragraph in the history books now. How does it feel to be the first woman to crew a working ship with the first FTL engine in history? No textbook answers, please."
Camila kept her eyes fixed on the console in front of her, her fingers dancing over a diagnostic screen that didn't need attention. She was a statue of efficiency, her dark hair pulled back in a bun as tight as her posture. For a long moment, the only sound was the soft click of a pressure valve.
"I don't feel much," she finally said, her voice flat and smooth, like the surface of a frozen lake. She paused, thinking, as if choosing her words was an exercise in surgical precision. "The feeling of the jump itself... was like drinking for the first time."
Ruben tilted his head, his smile growing. The answer caught him off guard. He had expected a speech about duty, scientific progress, or legacy. "Drinking? You mean... alcohol? Whiskey, vodka, something like that?"
"Something like that," Camila confirmed, still not looking away from the screen. "That sudden moment of transition. The world you know dissolves and is replaced by something completely new. There's a burning, not in the stomach, but behind the eyes. A numbness in the fingertips. A universal weirdness that tells you nothing will be exactly like it was a second ago."
"And did you like it?" Ruben pushed, genuinely curious. He leaned forward, the leather of his seat creaking under his weight. "That first cosmic shot?"
"I was indifferent," she answered, finally turning to face him. Her eyes were a stormy gray, calm but impossibly deep. "It was just a sensory input. A side effect of dimensional acceleration. Liking it or not is an emotional luxury I can't afford during a critical flight phase. The important thing is that it was bearable and the warp field stayed stable."
Ruben let out a short laugh, a warm sound that seemed to momentarily heat the cold, recycled air of the cabin. "Amazing. You have a unique way of sucking all the poetry out of a historical moment and turning it into a checklist. It's kind of ironic, don't you think? You picking me as your mission partner. The pragmatist and the loudmouth, because I definitely consider myself one."
"There's no irony at all," Camila replied, her voice leaving no room for doubt. "The choice was based on objective parameters. I don't need a poetic partner. I need an experienced one."
She paused, as if pulling up a mental file. "You were a key pilot on Mars. Specifically defending Tharsis-4 Station. You led a squad of three old interceptors and managed to take out two frigates from Earth's attack force using only the gravity of the moon Phobos as a slingshot. A half-second miscalculation and you would've been space dust."
Ruben looked away, the unexpected memory wiping the smile off his face. He rubbed the palm of his hand on the panel in front of him, wiping away invisible dust. "That was five years ago, Camila. Another life. I was younger, dumber, and had a lot less to lose."
"That was exactly what saved Mars's independence," Camila continued, her voice growing more intense. "It wasn't a final victory in the war, it was a decisive resistance. Earth's forces miscalculated. They expected a quick surrender. Your defense, and the defense of others like you, denied them that quick win. It forced Earth to negotiate, not out of goodwill, but because the cost of taking over became politically impossible without a huge victory to back it up. They didn't get their final win. They got a mess. And you were one of the anchors holding that mess together. And now..."
She paused, and the hum of the life support seemed to get louder in the silence.
"Now, five years later, here we are. A Martian and an Earther. Together, in this interstellar tin can, about to be the first people to step foot on a planet in another system. To prove that both people can live together again. Not as a colony and a capital, but as one. That is the real mission, Ruben. More important than the engine, more important than our destination, maybe. We are the proof of concept."
Ruben stared at her, a new look on his face. It wasn't his easy smile anymore, but something closer to respect and a playful fondness. "Wow. Camila. Where did that come from? Why are you so poetic all of a sudden? You, who found breaking through the fabric of space-time 'indifferent,' are giving a speech about the union of people."
He laughed, shaking his head. "I think the FTL jump scrambled your brain."
Camila held his gaze for a moment, and the corner of her mouth might have twitched into a half-smile, a ghost of an expression that vanished before it could stay. "Looks like we're here," she said simply, turning back to the main console.
As if summoned by her words, the ship's soft, synthetic AI voice filled the cabin. "Attention. Warp exit sequence started. Reentering standard space-time in ten seconds."
The pure white light flooding the cabin started to pulse. Ruben adjusted himself in his seat, his body shifting into professional mode in an instant. He pulled the five-point harness, buckling it tightly across his chest. Adrenaline, an old friend, welcomed itself back into his veins.
"Well, partner," he said, his voice firm now, without his usual joking tone. He looked at her, her profile outlined against the pulsing glow of the viewing window. "Ready for the second shot? They say reality hits a lot harder."
Camila didn't answer with words. She just nodded, a single, firm, and perfectly controlled motion. Her fingers hovered over the stabilization controls, ready for the dance. The light pulsed faster. Three seconds. Two. One.
The tunnel of light collapsed. The Pax was spit back out into the real universe. The silence of the warp was replaced by the quiet, crushing impact of existence. The stars, billions of them, exploded in the viewing window like shards of ice. And right ahead, taking up half the screen, was the planet: a deep, hypnotic blue, wrapped in veils of white clouds, hanging majestically against the endless background.
The silence of orbit was absolute. Out there, against the star-speckled darkness, hung the planet. At first glance, anyone would mistake it for Earth. Deep, bright blue oceans covered most of its surface, while green and brown continents spread out like careless brushstrokes. Big white clouds swirled over the poles, promising complex weather systems. But there was one detail that crushed any illusion of familiarity: a huge, majestic ring system, like a frozen rainbow of silver, ice, and ochre, circled the planet's equator. The bits of ice and rock caught the light of the distant star, creating a halo that looked like a cosmic jewel resting delicately on the void.
Ruben sat frozen, the air caught in his lungs. "It's beautiful," he whispered, his voice rough and full of awe. "Just perfect. Look at it, Camila. A ring. A damn ring. Like someone took Earth and put a wedding band on it."
Beside him, Camila was silent. But it wasn't her usual professional silence. For a brief second, her jaw relaxed. Her lips parted slightly. Her gray eyes, always so controlled and analytical, lost focus, as if the image was too big to be processed by her mental algorithms. It was a tiny glitch, a one-second crack in her armor of logic.
It lasted exactly one second. But Ruben saw it.
He turned to look at her, a teasing smile dancing on his lips. "So you do get impressed sometimes, huh?" he said, his tone carrying a gentle victory. "The machine has a heart, after all."
Camila blinked. The mask slipped back into place instantly. Her jaw tightened, and her eyes got their clinical shine back. "I was just observing," she said, her voice as flat as an autopsy table. "Cataloging cloud formations and possible turbulence zones for reentry. Just protocol."
Ruben threw his hands up in surrender, but the smile didn't fade. "Sure, sure. Cataloging. With your mouth open and everything. Must be a new atmospheric analysis technique. Visually swallowing the air. Don't worry, I'll pretend to believe you."
He shifted in his seat, his eyes still shining with the discovery, and spoke to the main console. "Computer, start pre-landing sequence. Atmospheric reentry path. And give me the full specs on the energy shields and gravity drive. I don't want any surprises when we start scraping the sky of this planet."
The AI's synthetic voice answered right away, filling the cabin. "Understood. Calculating the best reentry path based on current atmospheric data. Energy shield parameters: capacity at one hundred percent, frequency modulation stable, heat sinks working. Gravity drive: calibration finished, drag compensation ready, field integrity at ninety-nine point seven percent. All systems are within normal ranges for atmospheric reentry. Approved."
Ruben nodded, his fingers moving over the controls with the ease of someone who had done this dance countless times. "Good. Very good." He looked at Camila, his brown eyes shining with an energy that went beyond professionalism. "So this is it. We made it. Two people who were killing each other half a decade ago, together in this tin can. And now we have a planet to explore."
He started to turn back to the controls, but Camila's voice cut him off like a cold blade.
"Wait."
Her tone was different. It wasn't her flat cataloging voice. It was the tone she used when something was wrong. Her fingers flew across the diagnostic screen at a speed that bordered on controlled panic. "I'm getting readings."
Ruben stopped. "What is it?"
"Readings," she repeated, narrowing her eyes as the data rolled in. "These aren't just the biosignatures we expected. It's more than chlorophyll and simple ecosystems." She paused, zooming in on a spectrogram. Her voice, when she spoke, had a hint of something Ruben had never heard from her before: disbelief. "They are signs of complex life. And... a technosignature. Weak, scattered, but unmistakable. Low-frequency radio emissions. Leftover heat from industrial processes. Someone is here. Or was, very recently."
The silence that followed was heavy, thick as lead. The beauty of the ringed planet outside suddenly felt less like an invitation and more like a warning.
"Holy shit..." Ruben whispered, the words slipping out like an unholy prayer. He ran a hand through his short hair, his eyes glued to the screen now showing peaks and valleys of data that changed everything. "That changes things a bit. Actually, it changes things a lot."
He took a deep breath, pulling himself together. "But we still need to land. The mission hasn't changed. We knew this was a slim possibility. We just didn't expect it to be so... real."
Camila turned to him, and for the first time, there was something besides logic in her eyes. There was worry. "You don't understand. If there are people, if they are a civilization, our arrival could be taken the wrong way. An unknown ship, entering their atmosphere, warp tech they might have never seen. If they're hostile, we could trigger an interstellar incident before we even touch the ground. Or worse."
Ruben stared at her. He saw the tension in her shoulders, the way her fingers were slightly curled, as if ready for a fight. He knew what she was. He'd known since their first day of training. Camila wasn't just an Earther. She was a clone, grown in a biogenesis tank, designed to be the perfect crewmate: loyal, capable, disposable. She knew Earth saw her as a tool. She knew many Martians would see her as an abomination. She didn't have a people. She didn't belong anywhere.
"No," he said softly, his voice dropping all jokes. "You don't need to be afraid. Look at me."
She did, her gray eyes meeting his.
"I know what you are," Ruben continued. "I know you're a clone. I know they made you in a vat, gave you implanted memories, and told you that you were just a spare part for humanity. But here, on this ship, you aren't a tool. You're my partner. And even if your DNA was made in a lab, you can trust me. I won't let you down."
Camila stood perfectly still. For a long moment, she said nothing. Then, her voice came out, a barely audible whisper. "Trusting is something I've always done. I was programmed for it. To trust. To obey. To follow the human next to me."
"No," Ruben said. "That isn't obedience. That's a choice. And I don't want a meat robot by my side. I want you."
He laughed, a low, warm sound that cut the tension like a knife. "By the way, you know what else? One day, when all this is over, I want to take you out to dinner. A real dinner. Food that doesn't come from a tube. A table that doesn't have seatbelts. Maybe even candles, if you don't think that's too primitive."
Camila frowned, confusion briefly replacing her worry. "What do you mean by dinner?"
Ruben just smiled, that wide, irresistible smile that had already disarmed generals and charmed crowds back on Mars. "One day I'll show you. It'll be a new experience. Better than drinking, I promise."
Before she could answer, the AI interrupted. "Reentry path calculated. Starting landing sequence."
The ship shook gently. The gravity drive roared in silence, creating a distortion field that began to push the Pax out of orbit. Outside, the planet's silver ring began to pull away, and the blue and green curve grew, swallowing their field of view.
Reentry started as a whisper, a soft brush against the first layers of the atmosphere. The thin, cold air began to flow around the hull. Then, the friction increased. The energy shields flickered, forming a cocoon of golden and orange plasma around the ship. Friction flames licked the windows, turning the outside into an inferno of light. The cabin vibrated, a deep and steady shake. The sound was a muffled roar, like a dragon breathing on the other side of a steel wall.
Through the glowing light, the planet revealed itself. The clouds got closer, white and gray masses that swallowed the ship for a moment. Turbulence shook the Pax, but the gravity drive balanced every bump with a precise counter-force, keeping the path steady. The plasma light faded. The sky, which had been black, turned a deep blue. And then, they broke through the cloud layer.
Down below, a continent stretched all the way to the horizon. Lush green forests covered rolling hills. A silver river wound through the valley like a vein of mercury. And further north, where the hills gave way to a coastal plain, there were structures. Lines that were too straight to be natural. Metallic glints reflecting the sunlight.
Humans achieve FTL but after meeting the Arxurs the astronauts are captured, interrogated and then a big Arxur fleet swiftly reach Earth and conquer it.
What would happen after that for you?
Is mankind doomed doomed to extinction?
Is mankind doomed to exist under a totalitarian regime?
Would mankind surprisingly find itself better in some aspects if they made first contact with the Feds first?
My personal take is basically the Imperial Fiefdom origin of Stellaris.
What about your?
Would it even breakdown or would it keep going after the federation and the Dominion are a shell of their former selves?
I do imagine that after a couple of centuries more, knowledge and the average IQ of the Feds would degrade so much that they start thinking some technologies they have are powered by magic and have to constantly mantain decaying systems because they don’t even know how to replace them anymore.
Arxur society instead would tear the social structure that it has left so apart that Arxur space would collapse into small marauding bands of cannibal sociopathic Arxurs (Kinda like the Reavers of Firefly (https://firefly.fandom.com/wiki/Reaver)) traveling the stars killing, pillaging and [much worse things] everything and everyone even among themselves because that is litteraly all there is left of them.
That would be a minority though, likely the social order would degrade enough for defectives to slip through the cracks and establish isolated communities far away from the federation or their sociopathic cousins (it is highly believed among any defective Arxur scientists that them and the ‘Bettered’ Arxurs are fundamentally becoming two different species, them being still social and cooperative and those that will keep devolving until they either kill themselves completely or devolve back into highly asocial non-sapient predators on some forgotten Cattle World.
More to that, assuming at some point before this ultimate decline the Feds or the Arxurs find out humans are alive and extremely paranoidically ready to throw hands if something of unknown enters their system…how would they act?
For me, Possibly, the Arxurs that still hold to reason would realize it is best not to interact with the fuckers who weaponized a Dyson Swarm around their star.
But the Feds need a foe, something to justify their belief and The Arxurs seem to be next to their expiration source as a reliable threat.
So, would they attack? Or would they realize there is a much higher chance they would just end up hammering the last nail in their coffin?
I somewhat imagine the Feds might end up as the human tribe in ‘Why we walk in silence’ (https://www.reddit.com/r/NatureofPredators/s/qeHmAPuhNi ) hiding away, scared, barely surviving on Stone Age tech, fearing that if they attract too much attention a universe that HATES them would unleash Arxur marauders or the MENACE upon them.
Basically it is a NoP x World on Fire (https://projectwingman.fandom.com/wiki/World_on_Fire (the name of the world of Project Wingman)) taking place around a century after the game.
The Federation is, SOMEHOW still alive, although the fallout of the Cascadian War mellowed them down a lot, Cascadia is now one of the biggest powers on the planet (although not the only one and still rebuilding after the second calamity).
Most importantly of all, do you have present the Carboniferous Age of Earth? Welp, the post-2nd calamity is hotter due to basically Earth’s core being constantly angered, basically every fault line on the planet has entered hyperactivity.
Luckily earth’s life adapted, do you remember the geothermally evolved wales? Well, thanks to the absurd amounts of Cordium exposure that life and humans had on the planet the substance altered life itself making it much more resilient and capable of feats they previously couldn’t.
For example there is the typical increased strength and stamina of life (Monarch and Crimson 1 were some of the first humans to develop those traits (explaining why they could take so many Gs for prolonged periods of time) but life due to the growing planetary temperatures, has evolved to become much more resistant to high heat (how much? Well, plants in this universe can now grow plentiful right next to lava lakes because their alteration made them capable of acquiring energy through the heat passed through their roots and animals (including humans) can survive extreme heat conditions for prolonged periods of time, along a smaller but still present capability of acquiring energy from heat; many lifeforms, including humans, have also developed a visible orange bioluminescence due to all the Cordium coursing through them)
Nowadays Earth looks like a volcanic planet: the planetary average temperature is around 40-50°C (the seas litteraly constantly boil in some areas) but, despite everything, teeming with life adapted to live in this high heat environment).
In this timeline, when the Odyssey makes first contact the meeting must be moved in the Scorch of VP (the area right next to the burning glass desert of VP) because more comfortable for the humans.
Humans can technically live on Feds worlds but, funnily enough, could not feed on them for long because they lack enough Cordium in their body and Cordium deficiency for a animal of Earth is like a 12 times worse B12 deficiency.
Also, Feds never discovered Cordium before now and discovering that it is, in fact, a pretty common component of any planet with a active mantle might be cause of preoccupation.
How would the Feds and Arxurs react to the current state of Earth? Would the Feds consider Cordium evil because ‘corrupts life making them develop predatory traits’? Would the Arxurs use mankind as a proof that Betrerment works (struggling in a world constantly ablaze has turned pretty squishy monkeys in beings capable to live right next to a active volcano (Cordium mutations includes also better filtering abilities for the lungs).
I think one of the major fears of the Feds would be manifest when a human nation decides to colonize a habitable planet that they didn’t realize it was already a fed colony.
Feds would watch in horror as the humans bombard the planet with a lot of Cordium weapons until they trigger a planetary calamity before building over the ashes.
They aren’t dumb, causing a Calamity on habitable planets is the first step in the humans colonization of the planet, because the calamity litteraly turns the planet into a similar version of current Earth (it is litteraly terraforming a habitable planet in a Burning Planet (as they are now classified) after that the humans put practices in place to shorten the planetary ice age and the now new burning planet is colonized with colonists and Earth’s lifeforms (usually to compensate for the lifeforms that couldn’t adapt to the calamity).
Feds obviously fail to recognize that this is also litteraly the thing that they do with anti-matter bombs when creating a new colony.
What do you think would happen here? Humans are divided into smaller nations but their knowledge of Cordium makes them capable to trigger a planetary apocalypse on a fed world with a few well aimed strikes and then casually start rebuilding over the ashes and carbonized fed bodies, or, if they want, they could corrupt the preys through Cordium exposure so they develop similar heat resistant traits.
Imagine being a Goijid on a post-calamity Cradle, most of your specie is now soot, carbonized bodies and ashes that now cover your face, most of those that survived have died of heatstroke or hunger, your great cities have been turned into scorched ruins, the geography of your planet has been altered everything of your people has been burnt away, you can feel it, the Cordium coursing through your veins, changing you, corrupting you, you can see it coursing through your veins, bright like a exterminator’s flamethrower.
Exofighters soar through the sky, their engines spewing even more Cordium over you, you already saw them in action, both in space and in the atmosphere, doing impossible turns and deadly manouvers like nothing, humiliating your space navy and air core with a violent elegance.
In the distance you see a refugee camp, the scorched predators have put them up all across the planet, they say it is meant to help the Goijid population recover and to atone themselves for the damage they caused.
Bullshit, you know those will soon turn out to be glorified cattle farms…but…they have food and medicines…and you haven’t eaten in a week, even if you manage to escape this condemned planet the federation will hunt you down like the freak of nature you have become.
As you ponder if it is better to starve or accept trout new nature, a exofighter turns back, seemingly observing you, observing what you will choose.
There, you spot the insigna of a crown on its wings.
Also, a thing I find quite funny is that the Feds couldn’t demoralize the humans here because many litteraly worship fire and Ashes in the form of the Dust Mother
“We were molded from dirt, by Her hand. And as we were created, so shall we return to Her. Bury us in the ash of our forefathers, and you will see us in flames.”
-Excerpt of the Book of Fire, First Perdition
And also these humans can survive rather a lot while actively on fire (although they still feel pain and still not for more than a hour).
In this timeline pretty much everyone lost the galactic war, after the final push to Afaa the Shadow Caste had a final ace in their sleeves and from a bunch of hidden asteroids bases around the Afaa’s system they launched roughly 3000 FTL capable stealth missiles to…everyone, enemies and pawns alike.
It was the Shadow Caste own version of ragequitting.
These missiles we’re designed with special anti-matter warheads meant to minimize damage to the surrounding area but Maximise damage done to the planetary crust and tectonic plates, the reason being that this way they would ensure there are actually people to lord over after the galactic-arm-wide calamity.
Cut to about 400 years later, it has been about a couple of centuries since on Earth people started to finally rebuild.
Obviously, mankind has fractured back in competing nations with competing ideologies.
Earth is most definitely not the only planet with such situations: everyone is in their own personal fucked situation, the thing is that due to the UN weapons buildup before the calamity humans had plenty of war machines and weapons to keep themselves busy with (I’m pretty sure a handgun is cheaper than bread in human space).
Interstellar contacts with other species have been mainly sporadic as everyone was more busy surviving than mantaining diplomatic contacts.
In this era, the nations limited resources and need for manpower has brought a new wave of mercenary and PMC to acquire enough power that some of the larger companies are basically interplanetary nomadic nations.
The story follows a modest-sized mercenary corp who, like many other companies like them, follows the recent re-opening of diplomatic relations with other species through the galaxy, have chosen to embark themselves to help the balkanized aliens fighting eachother and others for the right prize.
They would experience how the various alien species cultures have changed after the calamity, likely commit some warcrimes and slowly grow in size as ex Feds and Arxurs that have grew disgruntled with their nation for a reason or the other.
They will also uncover what happened to some of the long lost arkships and UN fleets.
In this timeline the ‘Big Bad’ would be a slowly expanding Krev Consortium as they remained without competition.
Yes, in case you couldn’t tell i replayed Project Wingman recently. Good game, dear god, mercenary difficulty is both insanely hard and insanely good.
Like this one.
I believe there was a dead fic with that idea in mind, humans were nearly wiped out by a malicious alien empire but million of survivors either took control of the aliens’ flagship or were launched in a experimental super-battleship tens of kilometers in size with the main goal of survival and the secondary goal of absolutely kill any xeno of that empire.
I think it would be funny to see this version of Kalsim when after getting through the human fleet he finds out that the humans, in fact, don’t inhabit space habitats with engines but one or a handful of warships with enough firepower to level a system.
It would be like: “Congrats, you beaten the boss…INITIATE PHASE TWO!” Dreadnaught weapons activation sounds.
I mean, some of the darker fics in which mankind was nearly genocided but them or their descendants came back with revenge in their hearts (like Nature of Abandment, Scorch Directive, New Old Path…that fic where humans are spliced with Venlil to created Gaians…)
I’m saying this mostly because I am seeing this image everywhere on the internet right now.
For what I understand it is like turbo cyberpunk dystopia?
And why humans are so interested in in the Grey Planet? (Which they litteraly use as a dump)
Lastly, idk why but I’m now imagining a full blown revolt being underway inside the system (maybe Mars is revolting AGAIN) in which rescued expies and dedicated species are press ganged into aiding the revolutionaries.