Survival of the Fittest... The tale of a colony.

[Drabus]

Post didn't work with screenshots. Will add them later.

So, being the procrastinator that I am, I figured out how to weave in a few minutes here and there into the game.
Sadly, a few minutes turned into 1.5 hours.

Regardless, I got down with the game, and started a new one. This time, the map looked a little more friendly. I had a large southern rock-face, which had a cape-cod style peninsula coming out of it, making for a perfect place to start my colony - one large entrance. Easier to defend.

This time, I wasn't going to make the same mistake about food. This game was about min/maxing! I built plenty of growing areas so my workers could be gluttonous. I started on my peninsula-base, and this time tried to not give TOO many tasks to do so they could catch up a little better, maintain some balance.

Very quickly, I got a mixed blessing. This random girl decided to join the colony - awesome! She was a brilliant researcher, great at communications, and had some fighting ability, but that was it. She had zero aptitude for mining, building, even hauling. Effectively, she was super weak, couldn't lift anything, but really smart and social. We'll call her Scientist-girl. You can tell I don't usually keep track of the names...

Anyway, scientist girl was great for an initial boost. She went to her research bench and studied endless hours, since that was all she was even able to do. If I had prisoners, she could warden, and if a ship passed, I could send her to the comms console right beside her research station, but that's it. She lived in two rooms. Bedroom and research. Speaking of which, does your social level actually matter when you communicate with other ships? Is there a discount, more available, etc?

Soon enough, the dark season was upon me. I seemed to get plagued this game with solar flares, knocking out all electricity for a day or so. This didn't cause too much inconvenience, aside from the anxiety about my cannons not working for the defense, only to see them get powered right before the invasion starts.
My first invasion was easy to handle, especially with the M4 and Lee-Enfield that I bought form the passing ship during the light season. I took the prisoner, and Scientist-girl started working her magic on him.
The second invasion was made much easier by the fact that Scientist-girl had finished researching more powerful cannons. Unfortunately, the canons leveled the invaders without any needed gun support. If they could have been taken prisoner, they were overpowered.

By the time the second light season was half done, everything was researched, the prisoner was part of the group, and scientist-girl had nothing to do, and was perpetually idle. I wish she had a gym to work out so that she could haul SOMETHING, or at least carry less at a time! She was really annoying! I'm sure the other colonists didn't appreciate the lack of work she was putting in as well!

Soon enough, the goal was to put a geothermic plant on top of a geyser within a canyon. Successfully doing this, also walled off the canyon so that the only entrance to it was going through my own base. Walling off canyons proved to be very useful, because I effectively had only one point of entry, which, over the seasons, became very bloody.

I had also made far too much food. Most of the colonists' time was spent growing, and I was well over six thousand bushels in supply. I sold to every trader I could, to gather a big pile of money, but that money did no good for what was going to come... I shut down my food industry save for a couple of hydroponic tables, so that the colonists could focus on more important things.

Luckily (is it luck?) scientist girl went into a craze (bug - she tried to pick something up that someone else already had) and was never heard from again.

Out of annoyance that my people kept reminding me that a room is too large (I didn't want it to be a room!) and mining within it, I decided to sell a wall to alleviate that problem.

That's when the raiders landed. Eight of them. With grenades.

I thought - what an EXCELLENT chokepoint with that new wall! I will just have my people waiting and ambush them as soon as they come through! This plan may have worked. The raiders came to destroy my lone gun turret, which took them all of a couple seconds, while two grenadiers walked to their death in the ambush. I don't know what made the raiders choose to do so, but this is when they split up. Two grenadiers came towards my ambush gate, while the bulk of the force went the other way, where I had not rebuilt my gun turrets.

I split up my forces. I left two well-armed soldiers by the chokepoint, sent one to capture the incapacitated soldier from the previous feud, and my other five colonists to the other side of the base, where they would await the enemy.

The plan worked... on one side of the base. The grenadiers managed to throw a couple of grenades before being killed, and with the reaction time of my people not being fast enough, they were thrown by the blast to become lifeless corpses. The grenadiers continued into the base, and the warden who had captured the inmate was taken by total surprise, with two grenades to the face - dead.

On the eastern front, my five remaining colonists leveled the playing field, wiping out the bulk of the force that came over. Feeling victorious, they went back to their business to find three dead fellow colonists. Panicking, knowing that it nearly half the force had been ruined, they did not have time for a burial. They needed their food and their sleep, for the strength needed to rebuild the base would not be a trivial amount.

The light season was good to me. I had a prisoner from the recent fight, and one from the first fight of the dark season. Both were convinced to join the cause.
A traveller also was crossing the area. Seeing no way to talk to him, I did what any colony in desperation would do - I shot him into unconsciousness, and then stuck him in a cell and forced him to join.
There was also a slave trader that came into coms range. Thinking I was going to get a great deal, I bought up those two slaves for nearly five thousand dollars. Well, I'm going to survive this better than I thought! That is, until I realized that they both have not one useful skill. One can research and warden, which will have minimal use, and the other is simply a firefighter. Not a single other skill, but he KNOWS how to put out fires!
They will make good red shirts on the next invasion...

*Time Passes*

It was a gleary night. The colony was fully assembled behind a row of sandbags. The solar flare was upon us, and the turrets were down. Fourteen invaders were approaching, ready to take the lives of every one of us, for whatever reason. As the rain beat down on us and the lightning struck nearby, we waited, trenched in position, weapons in hand, hungry, tired, but knowing that this would be the end of us if we did not fight it.

The solar flare let up, and all our guns came back online. It wasn't enough. The invaders poured in, and made quick work of the guns. I shot blindly, hoping that my bullets would hit, but the scum hid behind rocks and walls, anything to cover from the hundreds of bullets. Gun turrets started exploding, one of the men went down because of it. The fool tried to repair it while it was being shot. The battle raged on, and casualties were high on both sides. People I had spent the last two months of my life were dying in front of me. It was horrible. I couldn't take it anymore.

I gathered the rest of our troops who were still able to move, and rallied them together. We flanked the enemy behind a mountain while they destroyed the rest of the gun turrets, and managed to kill a couple before they realised what was happening. That's when the grenade hit. We dove for cover, but Moon died to that. He saved us all by jumping onto it. It was bloody, but the invaders started to run. "Victory!" I yelled, looking around me to realize how this was not a victory at all.

Corpses. Everywhere. I tried to rescue my roommate, but he succombed to his injuries while in my arms. It was only me and a couple of other badly wounded colonists left. We couldn't possibly survive another hit. We were done for. I started to cry...

That's when I woke up to the sound of the sirens. It had only been one terrible nightmare. Or was it a premonition? The sirens blared as we were all called to arms. The invaders were coming. There were fourteen of them. We were mobilized.

As we gathered, I brought everyone together. I told them of my dream. Was it a premonition? The details were far too accurate. We couldn't let this happen "again." As a group, we decided to take my premonition as truth, and figured out how to work around it. We cleared the rocks of debris, and built a dozen extra gun turrets. We would need it. We got the sandbags ready, and took cover, as the invaders flooded in.

It was still a bloody battle, but this time, it was completely one-sided. A few turrets succomed and exploded, but the invaders fell. I gathered the forces to flank them again as I knew they would soon flee, their losses too bad. We shot one in the back, and they all started to flee. None would make it out conscious. From a barrage of bullets, every last one of the cowards fell. Only two survived in the wreckage, barely clinging to life. One died as we went to stabilize him, and the other succombed to his injuries on transport.

It was a complete success. I don't know what came over me that night, but whatever it was, it saved us all. We lived to fight another day. The eclipse was ending, and hopefully we would be able to restock with more minerals from the industrial traders, and better prepare for the next eclipse. One day, we would make it off this rock...

*Part 2 to come "soon"*


Suggestions/Notes:
- Let colonists climb over tables, etc to repair walls, at reduced speed.
- Similar to the "Home zone," perhaps add a "Don't care" zone, such as for walls far away so that they don't remind you that you need power, and so that the workers don't go to repair them.
- Not everything within a wall needs to be roofed and a building! Sometimes I might want to seal off a mountain entrance with a thick wall, like a dam. That doens't mean I want it to be a giant room, just... walled off.
- Perhaps add an option to video your game without an external program, to replay or share, such as in games like Starcraft?
- Answer question about social with comms!
- Be able to choose NOT to roof an area. Maybe you just want a walled outdoors area, for example making a large area within rock to put your solar panels?

[Yarkista]

I think this belongs in the "stories" subforum, and your sugestions should go into the "suggestions" sub forum

I look forward to reading part 2.

[YBenjius]

Amazing story! Very pleasant to read Really looking forward to part 2. About your suggestions, I think you're right on all of them. Especially for the choice between a rooftop or not. After seeing some let's plays this seems to be a good feature to prevent unplanned/unwanted roofing.

[Drabus]

OOps. Totally right about moving it. I haven't been on the forums in a while, didn't have time to check it out before posting, and they've changed a lot (for the better) in the past few weeks!

Thanks for the feedback =)

[Tynan]

Just got a chance to read this, laughing. This is awesome.

[W1Z25]

good read op!

+1