The 1st Fleet arrives in the Chil'ko system on high alert. As they arrive, we spot an unknown ship waiting for us orbiting one of the planets. It appears to be going about its business, however, and its profile doesn't match the sensor logs from the Eliel. It doesn't respond to our hails, but it keeps its distance as our ships move to secure the site of the attack. Once it's been determined that there are no hostile vessels present any more, the Eliel returns and together with the 1st Fleet heads towards Chil'Ko V.
Our ships conduct a thorough examination of the debris and make some strange discoveries.
The attacker, whoever they were, is no longer here and the debris they've left behind doesn't tell us much. Still, we beam the wreckage aboard and bring it back to Federation space for further study. Perhaps a more intensive review of the debris and the Eliel's sensor data will yield something more.
After several months, we have as complete a picture of the incident as we're going to get. Captain Chen, the commanding officer of the USS Eliel, is commended for his unorthodox but effective maneuver. We're left with a couple of disconcerting conclusions. There's an as-yet unknown group out there that's interested in our technology, and they possess technology that's almost entirely unfamiliar to us. Whoever they are, we know they're dangerous, and we're left with the troubling suspicion that we haven't seen the last of them.
As those of you familiar with Star Trek will have probably already guessed, this is our first hint of the Borg. The Borg are Infinite's version of the endgame crisis in Stellaris. In Stellaris, has a chance to trigger after a certain amount of time has passed in game, and is preceded by just a couple of events warning you that it's on the way. In Infinite, there's a longer event chain leading up to the arrival of the Borg that's designed to roughly follow the events of the shows. We'll be hearing more from the Borg before too long.
The other ship we noticed in the Chil'Ko system turns out to be a exploration vessel from a new civilization: the J'naii Council. Once there language has been added to the Universal Translator we open diplomatic relations with them.
As is becoming our standard procedure, we follow up first contact by opening our borders and proposing an embassy exchange, both of which are accepted. The J'naii are located to the galactic south-east of us, not too far from the Klingons. Slowly but surely, the quadrant is beginning to fill-in.
You can see my two science vessels skirting out along the edges of Cardassian and Klingon space, as I mentioned in the last update. You might also notice I have a ship next to several Bajoran ones - the minor power located between myself and the Cardassians Union. That's my first spy ship, which I've sent to Bajor to attempt to subvert the population to my cause. I'm not sure if this will actually make them more likely to try and declare their independence or not, but I figure it can't hurt. Unfortunately, I don't accomplish much. My spy is detected by the ruthlessly efficient counter-intelligence of the Obsidian Order and is forced to flee. The Cardassians are none too pleased with me, and galactic tension goes up a bit as a result.
The next several years pass peacefully. I continue researching and unlock the next several traditions. During this period, we get our first unique leader via event, Admiral Nechayev of TNG infamy.
I say infamy because Nechayev is often antagonistic towards the crew of the Enterprise in TNG, but whether she's a good or bad admiral is sometimes a matter of debate among Star Trek fans. For our purposes, she's an admiral with normal traits but a couple free levels of experience, and I haven't recruited an admiral on my own yet, so I put her in command of the 1st Fleet.
I finish unlocking the Federation tradition block, which means we get some nice bonuses and we get to unlock our first Ascension perk. For those not familiar with Stellaris, Ascension perks are (generally) powerful buffs you get to choose from each time you complete a tradition group. You'll get a maximum of four of them, so it's worth putting some thought into which ones you want to take and how they'll compliment your strategy. I choose a perk that gives a bonus to my research rate since getting a tech lead is a key part of my game plan. Research is something you'll be doing all game, so getting bonuses early helps you pull ahead, from your rivals and stay ahead, since new techs unlock better buildings and bonuses, which help you do even more research, rinse and repeat.
Finishing a tradition group means we also have to pick a new one to work on, even though it'll be a few more years before I have enough unity to unlock it. I debate between Research and Development as being the most useful to me right now.
The +1 planet size from Research isn't bad, but I find everything else in there a bit underwhelming. Faster anomaly research speed isn't terribly important, in my opinion. I've already got bonuses to that from other things, and I might be wrong but there don't seem to be as many anomalies as there are in Stellaris. Sooner or later, I'll run out of anomalies and it'll be a useless buff. I didn't take a picture of the individual traditions within the group, but I'm not terribly impressed by those bonuses either.
Development, on the other hand, has some nice perks indeed. The increase to sublight speed is decent, as is the reduced cost of claims; Influence is the scarcest resource in the game, so anything that helps save Influence is valuable. Even better, there's a tradition within Development that gives you a chunk of Influence every time you found a new colony, which is half of my long-term solution to the Influence shortage. Once I've unlocked that, colonizing a planet will give me enough Influence to claim several more systems. As long as I'm prioritizing claiming systems with habitable worlds, I should be able to fund a long and steady chain of expansion and growth.
We continue developing and expanding. We colonize the M-Class planet in the newly claimed Wolf 359 system We have a presidential election, and one of our scientists replace T'Pragh (who has been patched to now correctly show as a Vulcan). In 2356, we also finish incorporating the Betazoids into the Federation, which means we get their planets, their ships, and their space. We also get their unique civic added to our own, which I quite like.
The Betazed civic boosts our opinion with Minor Powers, which is very handy since the plan is to peacefully incorporate as many Minors as possible. The emissary we had working on integrating the Betazoids is now free for reassignment, so I promptly send them to the Idanian Clans to ask if they'd like to join the Federation. It turns out they would, so I immediately start the integration process with them. Each integration can take up to 10 years, so there's no time to waste.
Peaceful expansion and coexistence is the Federation's modus operandi, but it's not a goal everyone shares. The decade of uneasy peace since the Khitomer Massacre comes to an end as two of the Major Powers of the Alpha and Beta Quadrants go to war.
Our ships conduct a thorough examination of the debris and make some strange discoveries.
The attacker, whoever they were, is no longer here and the debris they've left behind doesn't tell us much. Still, we beam the wreckage aboard and bring it back to Federation space for further study. Perhaps a more intensive review of the debris and the Eliel's sensor data will yield something more.
After several months, we have as complete a picture of the incident as we're going to get. Captain Chen, the commanding officer of the USS Eliel, is commended for his unorthodox but effective maneuver. We're left with a couple of disconcerting conclusions. There's an as-yet unknown group out there that's interested in our technology, and they possess technology that's almost entirely unfamiliar to us. Whoever they are, we know they're dangerous, and we're left with the troubling suspicion that we haven't seen the last of them.
As those of you familiar with Star Trek will have probably already guessed, this is our first hint of the Borg. The Borg are Infinite's version of the endgame crisis in Stellaris. In Stellaris, has a chance to trigger after a certain amount of time has passed in game, and is preceded by just a couple of events warning you that it's on the way. In Infinite, there's a longer event chain leading up to the arrival of the Borg that's designed to roughly follow the events of the shows. We'll be hearing more from the Borg before too long.
The other ship we noticed in the Chil'Ko system turns out to be a exploration vessel from a new civilization: the J'naii Council. Once there language has been added to the Universal Translator we open diplomatic relations with them.
As is becoming our standard procedure, we follow up first contact by opening our borders and proposing an embassy exchange, both of which are accepted. The J'naii are located to the galactic south-east of us, not too far from the Klingons. Slowly but surely, the quadrant is beginning to fill-in.
You can see my two science vessels skirting out along the edges of Cardassian and Klingon space, as I mentioned in the last update. You might also notice I have a ship next to several Bajoran ones - the minor power located between myself and the Cardassians Union. That's my first spy ship, which I've sent to Bajor to attempt to subvert the population to my cause. I'm not sure if this will actually make them more likely to try and declare their independence or not, but I figure it can't hurt. Unfortunately, I don't accomplish much. My spy is detected by the ruthlessly efficient counter-intelligence of the Obsidian Order and is forced to flee. The Cardassians are none too pleased with me, and galactic tension goes up a bit as a result.
The next several years pass peacefully. I continue researching and unlock the next several traditions. During this period, we get our first unique leader via event, Admiral Nechayev of TNG infamy.
I say infamy because Nechayev is often antagonistic towards the crew of the Enterprise in TNG, but whether she's a good or bad admiral is sometimes a matter of debate among Star Trek fans. For our purposes, she's an admiral with normal traits but a couple free levels of experience, and I haven't recruited an admiral on my own yet, so I put her in command of the 1st Fleet.
I finish unlocking the Federation tradition block, which means we get some nice bonuses and we get to unlock our first Ascension perk. For those not familiar with Stellaris, Ascension perks are (generally) powerful buffs you get to choose from each time you complete a tradition group. You'll get a maximum of four of them, so it's worth putting some thought into which ones you want to take and how they'll compliment your strategy. I choose a perk that gives a bonus to my research rate since getting a tech lead is a key part of my game plan. Research is something you'll be doing all game, so getting bonuses early helps you pull ahead, from your rivals and stay ahead, since new techs unlock better buildings and bonuses, which help you do even more research, rinse and repeat.
Finishing a tradition group means we also have to pick a new one to work on, even though it'll be a few more years before I have enough unity to unlock it. I debate between Research and Development as being the most useful to me right now.
The +1 planet size from Research isn't bad, but I find everything else in there a bit underwhelming. Faster anomaly research speed isn't terribly important, in my opinion. I've already got bonuses to that from other things, and I might be wrong but there don't seem to be as many anomalies as there are in Stellaris. Sooner or later, I'll run out of anomalies and it'll be a useless buff. I didn't take a picture of the individual traditions within the group, but I'm not terribly impressed by those bonuses either.
Development, on the other hand, has some nice perks indeed. The increase to sublight speed is decent, as is the reduced cost of claims; Influence is the scarcest resource in the game, so anything that helps save Influence is valuable. Even better, there's a tradition within Development that gives you a chunk of Influence every time you found a new colony, which is half of my long-term solution to the Influence shortage. Once I've unlocked that, colonizing a planet will give me enough Influence to claim several more systems. As long as I'm prioritizing claiming systems with habitable worlds, I should be able to fund a long and steady chain of expansion and growth.
We continue developing and expanding. We colonize the M-Class planet in the newly claimed Wolf 359 system We have a presidential election, and one of our scientists replace T'Pragh (who has been patched to now correctly show as a Vulcan). In 2356, we also finish incorporating the Betazoids into the Federation, which means we get their planets, their ships, and their space. We also get their unique civic added to our own, which I quite like.
The Betazed civic boosts our opinion with Minor Powers, which is very handy since the plan is to peacefully incorporate as many Minors as possible. The emissary we had working on integrating the Betazoids is now free for reassignment, so I promptly send them to the Idanian Clans to ask if they'd like to join the Federation. It turns out they would, so I immediately start the integration process with them. Each integration can take up to 10 years, so there's no time to waste.
Peaceful expansion and coexistence is the Federation's modus operandi, but it's not a goal everyone shares. The decade of uneasy peace since the Khitomer Massacre comes to an end as two of the Major Powers of the Alpha and Beta Quadrants go to war.
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