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BACKDROP: In MY 2433 several factions discovered the wreckage of a Progenitor interstellar spaceship on the farside of Nessus. After much investigation it was determined that the ships star charts were intact, and that the hyperdrive engine could be cloned.
By MY 2452 the first fleet of scoutships were built and sent out with a mandate to investigate all of the habitable planets catalogued in the Progenitor ships start charts. The results are mixed: some scoutships return with exciting news of “Eden-class” planets, while other scouts tell tales of planets who have degraded over the eons. Still other scouts fail to return at all…
By MY2475 the "Diaspora of Man" had begun in earnest, with interstellar colony ships being sent out to the far reaches of the Milky Way as fast as they could be built. However as more and more planets were explored it became clear that another civilization had visited many of the former Progenitor worlds in between the time of the fall of Progenitor civilization and the Rise of Man. Traces of this now-vanished civilization could be found in many remote corners of the galaxy, and it appeared that they were drawn to and understood the powers of the Manifolds. Simply called “The Sentinels” because they seemed more intent on watching the planets they visited than in colonization, their artifacts can be found on many of the former Progenitor worlds that house Manifolds. Some of the Sentinel artifacts are benign, while others retain a modicum of their ancient programming and are openly hostile towards humans!
It is now MY2500…..
Sooner or later Humanity knew they would encounter the living descendants of the Progenitors, for with the Diaspora of Man taking humanity to the farthest reaches of the Milky Way it was only a matter of time before this event occurred. However it was also unanimously agreed by all the Factions that no one wanted to win that particular lottery and be the first to encounter the Progs in what would probably be their interstellar back yard, for if what had happened in the Alpha Centauri solar system was any indication as to how the Progs would react to the upstart humans, then whoever did stumble into the Progs was going to be in for a bumpy ride to say the very least!
And yet here you were, not even a year after arriving on your new homeworld of Beratan 4.0, when the skies above opened up and two Progenitor Battlecruisers, one Caretaker and one Usurper, took up orbit around your planet. You listened in on the Progenitor comm channels as each Prog Faction issued ritualistic challenges and insults, each round becoming more pointed and threatening. And then a curious thing happened: instead of escalating to all-out warfare between the two huge battlecruisers, each ship deposited a single drop ship onto the face of the planet, one at each pole, and then the two Prog battlecruisers departed as mysteriously as they had arrived.
But what would have been a xenosociologists event of a lifetime is now a waking nightmare for you, as you realize you are going to be caught in the crosshairs of an all out no-holds barred Progenitor Civil War!
Planet Specifications
Planet: Baraton 4.0
Primary: Class M (currently unnamed)
Population: uninhabited
Climate: temperate
Temperature: average
Gravity: 1.3 standard
Class: habitable
Baraton 4.0 is another planet belonging to the Manifold experiment, and so there could be an operational nexus on the planet. And of course where there is a nexus there are native lifeforms to boot. There are also rumors of an ancient city on the planetary surface. If this is true then it is probably a Sentinel city, and any artifacts which could be recovered would be of significant benefit to the Faction which discovers them!
Directions
1) In your Scenarios subdirectory create a folder called "PyP", and download and unzip the attached files into it.
2) Start up SMAX, then select "Scenario", "Play Scenario", and then go to the subdirectory "PyP" and choose the scenario. The game will automatically load up with the Spartans.
Observations
- If you don’t like the graphics go to the PyP subdirectory and delete the “terr1wreck.pcx” and “texture.pcx” files (and note you need to get out of SMAX first before deleting these files).
- There are significant changes to the alphax.txt file in this game. it is strongly recommended that you review the Datalinks at the beginning of the game, specifically concerning basic units, terraforming options, and certain facilities and SPs (examples: Robotic Assembly Plant has been moved up to Ind Auto, Mining Sats to Doc:Air, while the Empath Guild has been moved to Eudaimonia, among others).
- The Progs really don’t like to be gassed in this game.
Acknowledgements
Many thanx to the following:
- wgabrie for the graphics: I’ve been playing using his texture.pcx file for years now: much better than the default IMO!
wgabrie also did the other graphics changes you will encounter in this scenario.
- Maurid Adran’s idea of having terraformers immediately available for build: no more getting 40 – 50 turns into a game and finding that the AI hasn’t even researched Centauri Ecology yet (and hence not done any terraforming at all!). From what I have seen so far in playtesting this is a significant boon to the AIs! I’ve also “encouraged” the AIs to build these terraformers by making them cheaper to produce.
- I think it was smacksim who originally proposed the idea of having terrain improvements such as mines, solar collectors, and farms linked to techs (instead of being available to build right away): combining this idea with the above of having cheapened terraformers immediately available means that the AIs do plant some forests at the outset of the game.
Hope you enjoy!
D
BACKDROP: In MY 2433 several factions discovered the wreckage of a Progenitor interstellar spaceship on the farside of Nessus. After much investigation it was determined that the ships star charts were intact, and that the hyperdrive engine could be cloned.
By MY 2452 the first fleet of scoutships were built and sent out with a mandate to investigate all of the habitable planets catalogued in the Progenitor ships start charts. The results are mixed: some scoutships return with exciting news of “Eden-class” planets, while other scouts tell tales of planets who have degraded over the eons. Still other scouts fail to return at all…
By MY2475 the "Diaspora of Man" had begun in earnest, with interstellar colony ships being sent out to the far reaches of the Milky Way as fast as they could be built. However as more and more planets were explored it became clear that another civilization had visited many of the former Progenitor worlds in between the time of the fall of Progenitor civilization and the Rise of Man. Traces of this now-vanished civilization could be found in many remote corners of the galaxy, and it appeared that they were drawn to and understood the powers of the Manifolds. Simply called “The Sentinels” because they seemed more intent on watching the planets they visited than in colonization, their artifacts can be found on many of the former Progenitor worlds that house Manifolds. Some of the Sentinel artifacts are benign, while others retain a modicum of their ancient programming and are openly hostile towards humans!
It is now MY2500…..
Sooner or later Humanity knew they would encounter the living descendants of the Progenitors, for with the Diaspora of Man taking humanity to the farthest reaches of the Milky Way it was only a matter of time before this event occurred. However it was also unanimously agreed by all the Factions that no one wanted to win that particular lottery and be the first to encounter the Progs in what would probably be their interstellar back yard, for if what had happened in the Alpha Centauri solar system was any indication as to how the Progs would react to the upstart humans, then whoever did stumble into the Progs was going to be in for a bumpy ride to say the very least!
And yet here you were, not even a year after arriving on your new homeworld of Beratan 4.0, when the skies above opened up and two Progenitor Battlecruisers, one Caretaker and one Usurper, took up orbit around your planet. You listened in on the Progenitor comm channels as each Prog Faction issued ritualistic challenges and insults, each round becoming more pointed and threatening. And then a curious thing happened: instead of escalating to all-out warfare between the two huge battlecruisers, each ship deposited a single drop ship onto the face of the planet, one at each pole, and then the two Prog battlecruisers departed as mysteriously as they had arrived.
But what would have been a xenosociologists event of a lifetime is now a waking nightmare for you, as you realize you are going to be caught in the crosshairs of an all out no-holds barred Progenitor Civil War!
Planet Specifications
Planet: Baraton 4.0
Primary: Class M (currently unnamed)
Population: uninhabited
Climate: temperate
Temperature: average
Gravity: 1.3 standard
Class: habitable
Baraton 4.0 is another planet belonging to the Manifold experiment, and so there could be an operational nexus on the planet. And of course where there is a nexus there are native lifeforms to boot. There are also rumors of an ancient city on the planetary surface. If this is true then it is probably a Sentinel city, and any artifacts which could be recovered would be of significant benefit to the Faction which discovers them!
Directions
1) In your Scenarios subdirectory create a folder called "PyP", and download and unzip the attached files into it.
2) Start up SMAX, then select "Scenario", "Play Scenario", and then go to the subdirectory "PyP" and choose the scenario. The game will automatically load up with the Spartans.
Observations
- If you don’t like the graphics go to the PyP subdirectory and delete the “terr1wreck.pcx” and “texture.pcx” files (and note you need to get out of SMAX first before deleting these files).
- There are significant changes to the alphax.txt file in this game. it is strongly recommended that you review the Datalinks at the beginning of the game, specifically concerning basic units, terraforming options, and certain facilities and SPs (examples: Robotic Assembly Plant has been moved up to Ind Auto, Mining Sats to Doc:Air, while the Empath Guild has been moved to Eudaimonia, among others).
- The Progs really don’t like to be gassed in this game.
Acknowledgements
Many thanx to the following:
- wgabrie for the graphics: I’ve been playing using his texture.pcx file for years now: much better than the default IMO!
wgabrie also did the other graphics changes you will encounter in this scenario.- Maurid Adran’s idea of having terraformers immediately available for build: no more getting 40 – 50 turns into a game and finding that the AI hasn’t even researched Centauri Ecology yet (and hence not done any terraforming at all!). From what I have seen so far in playtesting this is a significant boon to the AIs!
I’ve also “encouraged” the AIs to build these terraformers by making them cheaper to produce.- I think it was smacksim who originally proposed the idea of having terrain improvements such as mines, solar collectors, and farms linked to techs (instead of being available to build right away): combining this idea with the above of having cheapened terraformers immediately available means that the AIs do plant some forests at the outset of the game.
Hope you enjoy!
D
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