When we get back to Earth, because we will get back to Earth, are we going to forget our past and turn it into a Gaia world, or will we terraform it back to a continental world?
I think it would be more precious to return Earth to as it was, than to turn it into what it could be. Even a perfect gaia world wouldn't seem like Earth. For that matter the game stores the original homeworlds of a species, even if that species' homeworld is lost to them. Using this information we can accurately place species pops back to their homelands, and using our terraforming tech we can recreate their homelands. It's unfortunate that the sentinels never conducted any diplomacy with us, because their species was the only one in the galaxy that evolved to live on gaia worlds - we'll never know how they came to be.
Would it still have 100% habitability as a continental world?
Only to humans (a few other species might be fine), but otherwise yes it would have 100% habitability.
I thought we were actually doomed when they were overrunning our defensive lines, but then this happens.
We can actually challenge them in direct combat? No more bombing worlds and running, no more being blown to smithereens by their fleets? Also, the avatar resurrected?
In another way this was utterly predictable. They can't develop. They have one pattern for their Swarm fleets. They can't change. They can't adapt. We can. We can advance, with our new technologies and Science Nexus. Every moment they are stalemated is a nail in the coffin for them.
Just remember that whether this is our last stand or our great victory, this will be our finest hour. The time we stared down the monsters of the void and the demons of our future, without fear, without trepidation, without division. The day we looked the evils of our past in the eye and said, "To hell with you!"
I think that sums it up rather nicely.
But yeah, every stalemate got us one step closer to that magical moment when our weapons would be able to overcome their ludicrous buff of +150% damage & +150% hull.
Condensed timeline:
2400 - Subspace echoes begins, first sign of the prethoryn vanguard appears. The galaxy at large takes no notice, the Mandasurans and Adnorans wipe out most of their military strength in a pointless war.
2401 - Prethoryn begin their advance upon the galaxy with rapidity, overcoming the weakened Mandasuran worlds in the West. Most of the world's states begin changing their mind when pressed with this new danger, old rivalries end, and many states begin to federate, with the Mandasurans joining the federation with the humans and Belmacosans. Earth is repurposes all industry to the making of Peacekeeping vessels, as traditional interstellar politics unravels in the face of this threat.
2403 - UN doctrine is to be sneaky breeky and strike Prethoryn troop transports when the Prethoryn fleets move off to other star systems. This allows for the recapturing of worlds and forces the prethoryn to continually try infesting the same worlds over and over again, buying more time for Earth. Honestly Earth was in a terrible position with the benefit of hindsight. If it did not re-purpose all of its laboratories to the construction of warships, it would've fallen much sooner, and would not have been able to send forth a colony to Olympia. Yet by repurposing all of its laboratories to industry, no more discoveries were being made, and so I now realize there was no chance we could've defeated the prethoryn in the long term.
2405 - one of the last rogue AIs calculates that everyone on Earth will die in the conflict to come. Earth's conclave of telepaths gaze into the shroud and see a familiar planet - it's Earth, though its laboratories are gone, in place of many, many industrial centres. The smoke clears in the skies and the telepaths see millions of bodies, all of them human, the skies over earth adrift with the orbiting wreckage of destroyed starships. The telepaths explore whether this is a possible future; an indomitable will retorts,
"
THIS FUTURE SHALL COME TO PASS, AS SURELY AS THE SUN RISES. IT IS YOUR DESTINY."
The psychic emanations left behind by this vision are channeled into the Avatar of the shroud. Both the AI prediction and the vision would come to pass as true.
2408 - Earth falls, Earth is subsequently reclaimed, with its shipyard rebuilt and Sol fortified.
2411 - The Sentinel Order is formed from the refugees and veterans of the Prethoryn scourge's advance.
2412 - Colonization of Olympia begins, and with it, the plan to research our way towards victory. I knew getting to the point where our ships could weather the 150% damage the prethoryn inflicted and overcome the 150% hull they had, we'd have the tools needed to win. But we couldn't do that if we didn't have a safe base to actually conduct research in.
2413-2422 - Sol's strongest Fortress has FP of 11k, the UN fleet has 122 destroyers equipped with kinetic artillery and AA guns, with a total strength of 23.1k FP. The UN engages in constant hit and run tactics, firing kinetic volleys off at the Prethoryn before retreating, or trying to cleanse worlds before the scourge arrive. Two infested worlds are cleansed but attempts to cleanse more with hit and run tactics begin to fail as the prethoryn swarm begins to amass significant numbers of broods, capable of defending every world from us. The UN loses all of its destroyers but its avatar, piloted by Mira Petrenko, continues to launch delaying actions and raids all across Prethoryn space. The Sentinel Order gifts us some ships, and they too continue raiding until they perish. The UN of Earth switches tactics and instead of building fleets, begins building as many Fortresses as possible.
2422-2433 - The Prethoryn cease making huge gains for this decade. They are caught trying to crush UN raids, and in particular face real resistance from the two large federations of the Propitious Pact and the Bright Entente. It seems quaint now, but in those years the UN of Earth gazed in awe as the Adnori and Belmacosans sent fleets with a strength of 70k into Prethoryn space. The prethoryn scourge was known at this time to have at least around 1,500,000 fleet power of ships. While it was clear that this was an impossibly large number to defeat in combat (being larger than the navies of every galactic state combined, possibly to such an extent that if every state unified all of their navies, the Prethoryn would still be 10x more powerful), it was hoped that we could keep leading the prethoryn on wild goose chases until such time as our technology better allowed us to defeat the scourge or just blow up their infested worlds, slowly depriving them of reinforcements. These assumptions were to be proven as rather optimistic, as Earth falls in 2433, as something in the Prethoryn consciousness changes - they stop chasing after raiding ships, and instead attack border worlds with immense force, once more resuming expansion. Those early 33 years felt exceptionally long, longer than the next hundred years.
2434-2479 - The entire galaxy is united into 3 federations, all of them sending their warships into battle against the Prethoryn. The Belmacosans send forth a fleet of strength 150k, which at that time was the largest allied fleet ever recorded. The UN Navy itself had a fleet strength of 32k. Easily the most significant development in this era was that the Belmacosans discovered energy lance weapons, and with extensive networks of research sharing occurring between all galactic states, it isn't long before the technologically backwards southland states are all also fielding energy lance weapons. The arrival of these weapons causes a new stalemate, thus for 45 years the Prethoryn stop making advances into the South or Western front. This stalemate ends on 2479, because for whatever reason, that was the year the Prethoryn decided to invade every border world on the Western front at the same time.
2480-2580 - Everywhere across the galaxy the Prethoryn continue making advances, with all of the states doing their best to halt or slow the prethoryn scourge. Resistance centered around the Adnori remnant in the machine crescent, the Belmacosan state fighting a two-front war and the Xeltek, which had been able to efficiently adapt technologies collated by the UN of Olympia. Furthermore the Olympians prepared their defences in this 100 year era, building up their fleets and conducting raids, teching up and liberating Olympia's neighbours wherever possible. This wasn't exactly a stalemate, but it was as slow a death as the galaxy could force against the prethoryn: A protesting defeat.
2581-2620 - Earth develops psi-jump drives, giving their entire fleet massive mobility against the prethoryn. The Sentinel Order is exterminated. Olympia is attacked for the first time.
2621-2630 - The Olympian fleet is capable of destroying isolated broods of prethoryn scourge, wiping out fleets of 100k strength, delaying the twilight death of Olympia's allies even further, buying time to bring in more refugees.
2631-now - The Olympian fleet can destroy the prethoryn scourge.
Grey years = Everything's not more fucked than the usual
Red years = Everything's more fucked, why is it all on fire
Cyan years = Actually things are shaping up to be getting better
All in all the one thing I kept in mind when prolonging the grey and red phases was an undying hatred to eliminate all prethoryn for making us leave Earth right when it was starting to get really interesting. And I say that in character and out of character
Also on the note of ground troops, infested worlds cannot be occupied. Our ayy lmao defence force might currently already be able to defeat invading prethoryn, but that's not really useful except in dire circumstance, as the only time we'll fight prethoryn ground forces would be if we were invaded - and if we were being invaded, something would be terribly wrong.
A rejected idea to raise moral. It was only sent in because the creator didn't realize the risks of using a Voice-to-Text Dictation Program:
We have Australia class colony ships
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Topic: Stellaris: Never leave Earth (Read 90753 times)