Planetfall: going fishing, losing touch with reality, and watching sports
Psi-Fish owned sectors are Abundant! Psi-Fish make more Demands! Psi-Fish start at War with you!
So said the intel briefing for Angelus, a planet supposedly lousy with psionic extradimensional fish. These fish have breached our dimension, bringing with them Void storms and deposits of cosmite. Our empire’s Penumbra faction wants us to wipe out two Psi-Fish dwellings. At which point, I’ve confirmed that we can declare “mission accomplished” and pack it in. This isn’t going to be like the hopperhound fiasco on Virginia, where I ended up having to burn the whole planet because I misinterpreted my orders. Which happens. You can’t make an empire without burning a few planets. But now we’re here to do a job and then call it a day, which will secure the Void Lure for our empire, which will let us recruit Psi-Fish during later missions. “Capable Pets,” the Psynumbra told us when they named the mission.
So where are all the Psi-Fish at?
It’s turn 27 and I’ve explored about half the planet, which seems to be one giant continent. Here’s what my imperial cartographers have put together:
We’re the lavender empire straddling the east/west split at the edges of the screen. You’d never know from 27 turns of exploration with three scouts that Psi-Fish are “abundant”. We’ve found other NPC factions. Angelus is host to Forgotten, Paragons, and Therians, each with two dwellings. But no sign of psionic extradimensional fish yet. And it’s looking increasingly doubtful that any Psi-Fish we do find will be near our starting location. Which means a long hike for our armies. I suppose if it takes long enough to find the fish, we might be deep enough into the tech tree to set up an orbital relay.
Void storms are supposedly common, but as we’ve expanded our colonies, there haven’t been any in our way. Like other hazards, if you annex a province with a Void storm, that colony takes a happiness hit. People don’t like living in hazards. They don’t like lava, radiation, abyssal tears, and Void storms outside their front doors. Void storms also reduce energy income.
When you fight a battle in a province with a Void Storm, there’s a chance each turn that a unit will suffer Dimensional Instability. This debuff has increasingly dire effects as it stacks. The first stage of Dimensional Instability is increased vulnerability to kinetic damage. The second stage is increased vulnerability to losing action points from staggering, a side effect of melee damage, explosives, and other severe impacts. The third stage is doing 20% less damage when you attack. And the fourth and final stage means blinking to a nearby random space every turn. If you suffer fourth stage dimensional instability, please consult a doctor. No wonder colonists get bummed out when they have to live in a Void storm.
The Dvar in our empire would like us to annex the cosmite nodes that are also plentiful on Angelus. We’ve got a couple close enough to oblige them. We also researched ley lines for the Kir’ko, which earned us enough imperial renown to buy a Dvar doctrine called Factory Overdrive. This boosts production in a colony at the expense of happiness. Which is no big deal, because Angelus is lousy with stadiums from the olden days. The people who used to live here sure did love their sports. When a colony adds a province with a stadium, it gets enough of a happiness boost to offset Factory Overdrive and then some. In fact, a stadium more than makes up for a Void storm. No one cares about dimensional instability if they get to see their favorite team playing starball, or whatever space sports get played in these stadiums. And, seriously, they’re all over the place on Angelus. It’s like there was some kind of space Olympics on this planet.
Next: here, fishy, fishy, fishy
Previously: the end of Virginia
