Stellaris Wars - Resurgent: A Rise of the First Order AAR

[Arithmetician]

The Final Order continued to relentlessly pursue its enemies, bringing ever greater weapons to bear against them. No matter where the enemy ran, there was nowhere in the galaxy to hide.

The Supremacy II had arrived.

​

The new Mega Star Dreadnought was far more powerful than the old Supremacy had been and was equipped with an upgraded Jump Drive that gave it unprecedented range. The Supremacy II could easily jump across even the galactic core, ambushing unsuspecting enemy fleets and quickly wiping them out. Whereas the new Imperial Star Destroyers each had a single axial superlaser, the Supremacy II had twenty superlaser batteries (though each was considerably weaker than the Xyston's superlaser), and an overwhelming number of fighters. Moreover, it could construct new Star Destroyers on the move (though the mod wouldn't let it construct Resurgents, only battleship-sized vessels and smaller), capable of mopping up resistance in neighboring systems after it had established a beachhead.

(The Supremacy II was about ~600k fleet power before jumping, ~480k fleet power after a jump. It cost nearly 39,000 alloys to construct, and its energy requirements were such that you practically needed a Dyson Sphere to keep it running, as it cost 2,000 energy in upkeep each month. )

The results spoke for themselves.

​

As soon as its Jump Drives were recharged, the Supremacy II ambushed a pair of Allied Star Nations fleets in the Epsilon Crateris system. Once again, the Mega Star Dreadnought left no survivors in its wake.

​

It would take time for ground troops to make their way to the Jhennlot capital, but little was standing between them and victory now.

​

At long last, victory had come in the Second Final Order-Allied Star Nations War. But four more wars still raged across the galaxy.

​

The Final Order could now turn their attention to the Mishar. Most of the Mishar fleet was destroyed from extreme range in the Battle of Lyctabon before they even had a chance to retaliate.

​

The Mictor capital itself was also under siege, and with one last ground invasion, the Final Order put an end to the first machine uprising.

​

The invasion of the Misharan Archives, followed by their ecumenopolis capital, the Font of Knowledge, were the largest ground battles to date in the Final Order's history, but the valiant Stormtrooper Legions emerged victorious. The Mishar would surrender soon thereafter, reduced to a rump of their already vestigial empire.

But unrest was brewing within the Final Order itself...

 

[HistoryDude]

Well, there's peace now.

Doesn't look like it will last...

 

[Arithmetician]

​

The Supremacy II wasn't the only super weapon to be developed in the final years of the wars that had consumed the galaxy for decades on end. The Eclipse was a Super Star Destroyer with an axial superlaser vastly more powerful than the Xyston class. Any ship, even the mighty Mandator IV, or the Supremacy II itself, would theoretically be vaporized by it in a single shot.

​

Yet in spite of this awesome power, there was a a growing separatist movement within the ranks of the Final Order. Like others who had willingly joined the Final Order, the Ymorz of the Empire of Ymoria were granted full rights as members of the Order. However, the Ymorz were strongly xenophobic, and many among them came to resent the regularity with which they had to interact with other species, now that they were integrated into the Final Order. They began agitating for a more isolationist foreign policy, and when the Supreme Leader refused to put aside his goal of galactic unification under a single hegemonic government, many Ymorz began plotting sedition.

​

The size of the burgeoning Separtist was alarming. Only 26.6% of the population had full political rights within the Final Order, with the vast majority being indentured laborers, and that ratio was only growing more and more lopsided with time. The isolationist Defensive Readiness Watch accounted for 19.7% of that free population, and they would soon find common ground with the Friends of Liberty Initiative, which had been vigorously suppressed by the Final Order since its inception, and strongly objected to the Supreme Leader's slavery policies.

Thankfully, as the head of the Committee for the Preservation of the New Order (COMPNOR), Gallius Phennir was all too happy to help bring the rebellious Ymorz worlds back into line, though not through any means as crude as the Death Star. Instead, he launched a series of mass arrests and political purges, carried out by COMPNOR agents. Disgruntled citizens who spoke out against the Final Order's ideology were quietly made to "disappear".

(One of my mods, possibly Dynamic Political Events, grants access to the "Thought Police" edict. For its duration, it gradually removes pops with less than 40% happiness that do not share the empire's governing ethics. Mechanically, this does not count as purging, but it carries a constant -30 opinion penalty with all Egalitarian empires while it is active.)

At the same time, a massive campaign began to promote the glories of the Final Order's conquests, the virtues of obedience to the Supreme leader, and general patriotic fervor, while xenophobic factions within the government were blacklisted, a policy that also affected members of the Neo-Imperial Purity Front, whose views were widely viewed as taking Neo-Imperial supremacy too far in an increasingly diverse Final Order.

Crime and general lawlessness were also growing problems in the outlying systems, integrated from the Final Order's former vassals and protectorates. There was a shortage of qualified citizens to serve as enforcers. Often, a planet's enforcers would be resettled from off-world, typically from the overpopulated planets in the Final Order's core systems, around the original Supremacy. Other times, a certain degree of criminality would be tolerated, even condoned (albeit through unofficial channels), with cooperative local crime lords keeping the worst excesses of their organizations in check. In any case, as long as each planet continued to meet its quotas for contributions to the Final Order's war machine, they would largely be left alone.

Another machine uprising occurred, this time in the Cooperative of Tanzin. Unlike the assimilating DAAR, the Prime Confluence were classified as "Rogue Servitors", who wished to forcibly pamper their former masters. Laughable as these goals were, the Final Order secretly supplied the Confluence with alloys, bankrolling the construction of additional warships, so as to wage a proxy war against the Cooperative, with whom relations had greatly deteriorated. However, the Supreme Leader was careful not to give the Confluence too much support. Ultimately, they would merely serve as a distraction for the Cooperative.

​

The DAAR themselves were finally shut down for good two years later. The Shantari were the only remaining power at war with the Final Order, but they would not last much longer.

The Shantari Prime Justicar and their command staff would remain steadfastly in denial that they had lost the war, until Stormtroopers forced their way into the command bunker on the last Shantari habitat, and summarily executed them.

​

At long last, nearly 30 years after it had begun, the Great Galactic War was over, and the Final Order was once again at peace. The space directly administered by the Final Order had increased greatly as it integrated its subject nations, and the Shabtak had been forced into the hegemony. Meanwhile, the Mictor and DAAR uprisings had been decisively put down, the bulk of the Mishar's industry and archives belonged to the Final Order, and the Aztani had been saved from extinction, while the Sacred Ziiran Theocracy, a vassal of the Polvanite Company, and seized much of former Shantari space, though the Final Order had seized the surviving Shantari core worlds. However, much of the space that went to the Ziirans was lifeless. Where the Death Star had not destroyed planets, the Shantari had frequently bombed those taken by the Ziirans into Tomb Worlds, as part of a scorched earth strategy against amassed foes that they had no hope of defeating.

Yet the separatist Isolationists were digging in, and as a new age of rider dawned upon the galaxy, with the Final Order as its clearly dominant power, it was time to make surviving marauder bands extinct.

 

[Arithmetician]

Ymoria continued to remain the center of the separatist movement, and local dissidents began to strengthen their hold on the planet, though they stopped short of openly declaring hostilities against the Final Order.

​

The Eclipse led the campaign to put an end to the marauder's raiding once and for all. It was backed up by six Resurgent-class Star Destroyers, and multiple Xyston-class Star Destroyers.

The Marauders would now witness the firepower of the fully armed and operational Eclipse...

​

In an instant, an entire Void Dwelling was annihilated. It wasn't long before the others were destroyed as well.

In the following year, the Anathurians willingly joined the Final Order, leaving the Thorquell, the Jhennlot, the Cooperative, and the Confluence as the only independent powers outside of the fallen empires.

​

One of those fallen empires, the Tebazoans, finally took note of the Final Order's dominance, and roused themselves from their slumber, determined not to be outdone by a younger nation. However, their fleets were still insignificant next to the Final Order's might.

​

War soon after recommenced against the Allied Star Nations.

​

United against a common enemy (and thanks to the tireless efforts of COMPNOR), the separatist movement fell apart.

​

The war against the Jhennlot did not last very long, and they were quickly overwhelmed, leaving a void of unclaimed systems in their wake.

The Thorquell fell soon thereafter as well, unable to stop the inexorable advance of the Final Order's fleet on their homeworld.

​

The Allied Star Nations were no more, but even absent a common enemy, COMPNOR continued to detain any who still had lingering separatist sentiments.

Scarcely any time passed between the fall of the Allied Star Nations, and the Final Order's declaration on the Cooperative of Tanzin, the last bastion of democracy in the galaxy that was not subservient to the Final Order. They had managed to fight off the Prime Confluence, but they were hopelessly outnumbered and outgunned by the Final Order.

Hostilities had also resumed against the Mishar, but their defeat was similarly a foregone conclusion.

​

Tanzin itself was a remarkably prosperous, if severely overpopulated planet, the center of an extensive trade network. The surrounding Tanzin core worlds worlds were also quite wealthy, if not to the same extent as the capital. In the years following the conquest of Tanzin by the Final Order, it would come to be called the Jewel of the Outer Rim.

​

Despite the fall of their capital early in the war, the Cooperative continued to fight bravely. In the Psi Coronae system, a small detachment of the fleet, consisting of six Imperial Star Destroyers and led by the Resurgent-class Star Destroyer Anya Karu, engaged a much larger but technologically inferior Cooperative fleet, largely corvettes and destroyers.

While the Cooperative's ships could not withstand the firepower of the Final Order's capital ships, the more nimble vessels were able to evade their turbolasers, and struck at the Anya Karu.

"Sir, we've lost our bridge deflector shield!" an officer on the Anya Karu shouted to its commander, Admiral Bohme.

"Intensify the forward batteries, I don't want anything to get through!" Bohme shouted back.

Yet the Anya Karu continued taking damage.

"Intensify forward firepower!!!"

"Too late!"

​

Losing power, the Anya Karu began to sink into the gravity well of the nearest planet, before its reactor went critical, causing the ship to explode.

Cooperative holo-news played the destruction of the Anya Karu as if it were some kind of great victory, selling the idea to their the Vhellet people that the Final Order could somehow be defeated. And to be fair, they had succeeded where others had failed; no one had destroyed a Resurgent-class Star Destroyer before. But now, each Resurgent-class Star Destroyer represented only a bit more than a month of the Final Order's metallurgical output, and many more were already being constructed at the Cybrex Alpha shipyards to replace it.

​

The war against the Cooperative continued for another five years, but this was largely due to the Supreme Leader taking time to fabricate claims on the Vhellet's other core worlds. The war was ended at the Supreme Leader's leisure, with the Cooperative forced to join the hegemony, though with their core cut out and under the direct control of the Final Order.

Only the decrepit empires of ages past now stood between the Final Order and total galactic domination!

And when a former Shantari planet, calling itself the Shantari Free Concordat, tried to secede from the Hegemony, the Final Order's retribution was swift and just.

 

[Arithmetician]

"Let the past die. Kill it if you have to."

​

Following the Supreme Leader's orders, war was declared on each of the fallen empires in turn. The Omni were the first to face the Final Order's wrath.

​

Instead of fighting the Final Order directly, the Omni invaded Themlar space, but the Final order quickly pursued them.

​

Meanwhile, Omni fighters engaged the Final Order's TIEs, but they were quickly overwhelmed.

With the Omni defeated and their ring worlds seized, the Final Order massed its fleets in the north before attacking the Tebazoids.

​

Jumping in, the Final Order's navy ambushed the Tebazoids in their home system.

The first wave of Tebazoid Battlecruisers was wiped out in the opening volley, leaving a debris field that the second wave would have to pass through.

While the debris was hazardous to larger ships, TIEs nimbly maneuvered through it to attack the Tebazoid battlecruisers and their escorts.

​

With the Tebazoid fleet finally destroyed, the invasion of Cradle could begin.

(As an aside, the design for the troop transport in the mod is the Acclamator, which I found rather cool, or at least a scaled down version of the Acclamator)

​

Victory assured, Kylo Ren was coronated as the Emperor of the Galaxy, and instituted a system in which nobles loyal to him would supervise the Empire's territory. Some critics would say that referring to the new empire as the "Second Galactic Empire" was hypocritical, given the new Emperor's desire to "let the past die", but those who dared to argue with him tended not to live for very long.

(Removed Diplomatic Corps, as there's little need for Diplomacy at this point, when we can rule through sheer military force and terror.)

​

After the conquest of the Tebazoids, the Zaydran Remant was next. Boundary was destroyed by the Death Star, to serve forevermore as a reminder to the Zaydrans as to the unstoppable power of the Empire.

​

While the Empire's citizens would never go as far as casting aside their organic bodies entirely, and thus cutting off their connection to the force, cybernetics eventually became commonplace among Imperials, granting them greater adaptability and durability. And with continuing medical advances, death by natural causes had been all but eradicated among the empire's leaders.

Soon, only the Hasplav Guardians remained.

​

They were swiftly swept aside into the dustbin of history.

​

Yet in the final days of the war, a new threat emerged...

 

[Arithmetician]

The Unbidden, invaders from another dimension, emerged within the Osmadin System, in Cooperative space. It was to the galactic north of Tanzin, prompting Emperor Ren to order all available ships to mass there.

​

Eventually, the fleet was ready, engaging the largest detachment of the Unbidden force in the Omega Vulpeculae system. The Unbidden's weapons appeared to be mostly short to medium range, meaning that the Empire's Resurgent-class Star Destroyers and Xystons could easily annihilate them at range. As well-shielded as the Unbidden's ghostly ships were, even they couldn't repel firepower of that magnitude.

​

Barrage after barrage of withering fire streamed from the Imperial Navy, cutting through the Unbidden like a hot knife through butter.

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With their main force defeated, the Imperial Navy could move on the Dimensional Portal in the Osmadin system. At the same time, detachments of the Imperial Navy engaged Unbidden fleets in surrounding systems, seeking to cut off their advance before they reached inhabited worlds.

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The Dimensional Portal fell, and, in a resounding victory for the Empire, without casualties. But while the Unbidden's reinforcements had been cut off, there were still a few roving fleets that had to be eliminated, lest they go on to menace the galaxy.

The Empire caught up to the Unbidden's final fleet in the Ulmio black hole system. However, an admiral had the fleet jump in far too close to the Unbidden, resulting in both sides engaging at nearly point-blank range, in turn exposing the fleet to the Unbidden's powerful Matter Distintegrators.

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As such, losses were heavy in the fiercest battle of the Unbidden War.

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But the brave men of the Empire fought bravely, and the last Unbidden invaders were finally destroyed.

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The galaxy was united at last under the firm hand of the wise and immortal Galactic Emperor, Kylo Ren. Surely, a new era of stability, peace, and prosperity awaits!

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(Yeah! I finished the AAR! Hope you enjoyed!)

(And isn't it fun when you effectively become the crisis?)

 

[Sailormarsfan1701]

View attachment 658188
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(Hi! It's been way too long! I'm sorry that I didn't finish the last AAR that I started... things got really crazy, and then I had to get a new computer too, so I wasn't able to continue. I'll try to keep things more succinct this time so that I can actually finish the report.)

I recently completed a game where I played as the First Order from Star Wars, making use of the Rise of the First Order mod, and the Animated First Order Portrait mod. However, rather than using the Origin that gives Starkiller Base (Rise of the New Order), I chose to mix things up a bit. Through a freak hyperspace accident, the flagship and mobile capital of the First Order, the Mega Star Destroyer Supremacy has been stranded in a distant, unknown galaxy. Unperturbed, Supreme Leader Kylo Ren, now older and somewhat wiser, has vowed that the First Order will establish dominion over this new galaxy, bringing about a new era of law, order, stability, and progress.

Before we begin the AAR proper, a quick rundown of my build for the First Order.

Government: Military Dictatorship

Ruler Title: Supreme Leader

Civics:

Project Resurrection - This gives various small military bonuses, allowing the First Order to quickly construct an advanced navy and train new ground forces

Nationalistic Zeal - the First Order is nothing but not zealous in pursuit of its goals

Ethics:

Authoritarian - a strong hand is required to bring order to the galaxy.

Fanatic Militarist - above all else, the First Order is a military organization, aiming to achieve hegemonic domination over the galaxy.

Species: Imperial

Traits:

Intelligent
Natural Engineers
Conformists
Decadent
Repugnant

The First Order will have a strong focus on building the most technologically advanced navy in the galaxy, with warships and superweapons dwarfing those of any potential rivals, in turn requiring great feats of engineering (Intelligent and Natural Engineers). Members of the First Order, especially its troopers, are indoctrinated in its ideology from a young age, and Imperials in general believe strongly in loyalty to the government (Conformists). Like the Empire before it, the First Order will have little qualms about enslaving aliens, freeing Imperials from menial work to focus on developing new weapons (Decadent). However, the totalitarian ideology of the First Order and often spartan lifestyle of a constantly mobilized military make few enjoy their company (Repugnant).

That's it for this post. Next up, the actual AAR itself!

have you thought of playing fallen republic say i dunno the chiss id love to see you play a imperial remnant custom civ in vannila stellaris id love to see someone do grand admiral thrawn in an aar

 

[Nikolai]

(Yeah! I finished the AAR! Hope you enjoyed!)

It was, as always, very enjoyable!

 

[Arithmetician]

have you thought of playing fallen republic say i dunno the chiss id love to see you play a imperial remnant custom civ in vannila stellaris id love to see someone do grand admiral thrawn in an aar

Funny that you should mention that.

When I tried to run Fallen Republic on my computer some time ago, I found it invariably tended to crash a few days into the game. I have no idea why though; to my knowledge, I wasn't running any other mods. And in any case, Fallen Republic is a significant departure from vanilla.

However, as you may know, there's a "Star Wars: The Galaxy" mod. That one hasn't been updated, as the author got invited to work on Fallen Republic, and was limited to only six prescripts (with random positions for any other nations), but as it happens, someone else posted a mod titled "Star Wars Complete". It takes the map from "Star Wars: The Galaxy", and brings the total of possible prescripts to over two dozen.

I had recently got into teaching myself to do some modding, as a means of fixing some errors in some other portrait and starting systems mods that I had. "Star Wars Complete" has a number of dependencies that aren't listed on the main mod, so I had to do some light modding on my end so that it would actually spawn a number of the nations correctly, but now I have it in an operational state. More than that, I've been able to make some minor additions of my own to the map (adding initializers from the Star Wars Starting Systems and Portrait Collection Pack, and then outright adding a few new systems to the map, such as Scarif and Exegol).

I still have a few tweaks that I want to make to the map before it's ready, as well as make some adjustments to the prescripts themselves, but I hope that I'll be able to do a Star Wars campaign using the map over the Christmas break.

Among the potential starts I could play as, with the mod configured as it currently stands:

Old Republic (with the potential of using console commands to adjust my shipset to Clone Wars-era Republic or the Galactic Empire partway through the game, depending on how I play)
Anaxes (may remove them for being too close to Coruscant)
Alderaan
Kuat
Corellia
Techno Union (Skako)
Onderon
Mandalore
Arkanian Dominion
Intergalactic Banking Clan (Muunilist)
Commerce Guilds (Felucia)
Trade Federation (Cato Nemoidia; their expansion would be cut off by Kuat if they started on Neimodia proper)
Geonosis
Kamino
Bothawaui
Anoat Sector (Gentes, with the Ugnaughts as founder species)
Sullust
Mon Calamari
Rebel Alliance (Yavin IV)
Naboo
Sith Empire (Dromund Kaas)
Revan's Sith Empire (Lehon)
Chiss Ascendancy (Csillia)
Hutt Cartel (Nal Hutta)
Pyke Syndicate (Kessel)

I had been leaning toward an Old Republic start, and spreading out, but there are a number of viable options here. What do you think?

 

[HistoryDude]

Good job conquering the galaxy and defeating the Fallen Empires and the Unbidden!

For a new start, an Old Republic start sounds good. So does Anaxes. Would be interesting to see how the "Defender of the Core" does.

 

[Arithmetician]

Well, of course the ships I had were extremely powerful, though for most of them (except the Mandator IVs, the Supremacy II, and the Eclipse), the power was (roughly) offset by the increased build cost.

As for my next planned run, I also managed to get the Iridonians, Kel Dor, Togruta, and Pantorans working. The former three certainly add some much-needed competition to the northern part of the galaxy, which otherwise would have been dominated by the Intergalactic Banking Clan without real opposition. Also added initializers for Ahch-To and Bestine.

Just have a few more tweaks I want to make here and there, checking for initializers on some key planets. I expect that by Tuesday/Wednesday, I can start playing.