Send a message, basically. “Dude, quit it, or I’m going to continue exterminating your horrible cyber-bug citizens.”Īt no point did they contact me to negotiate a peace treaty. So I slapped together a half dozen “Shiva-class nuclear bomber” frigates, attached them to one of my attack fleets, and sent them to obliterate a few Opteris colonies. Got pretty irritating but I didn’t feel like mounting a whole invasion or anything. Stealing from my treasury, inciting rebellions, stealing tech… just constant harrassment. They spent the next while basically harrassing me with their spies. I contacted them and offered a neutral treaty, and they rejected it even though I had won handily. Huzzah.Īt no point did Opteris contact me to negotiate a peace treaty. So I built up a couple of invasion forces, invaded and took the Draylok and Vulfen homeworlds, and fended off the ro-bugs’ response. All suddenly subservient to the ro-bugs in their horrible clockwork federation. I was doing okay for myself, building up my empire rather gradually, when out of NOWHERE, Opteris (horrible cyber-bugs) essentially annexed three other factions- the Draylok (space elf fangly monsters masquerading as attractive space elf ladies), the Vulfen (comically dumb wolf guys who are basically orks), and the Kulrathi (rather a lot like the Kilrathi only instead of anthropomorphic tigers, they’re anthropomorphic bears). One bad thing about Stardrive is the ridiculous pride of the AI. …I get real fuckin’ crazy when shit invades my capital in strategy games, okay? yes those explosions are atomic I went and designed the Shiva-class Nuclear Bomber all special in the shipyard built six of them and dispatched them on their unspeakable task Jake plays Stardrive I guess there's a new one out now I kinda want it I hear they made it even more fun and ridiculous few things will top with the warrior-poet sapient bears though For them, there could be no peace, no compromise, no rest until their home planet was ashes. The Pollops also asked for peace, but their hated tendrils had despoiled Earth itself. Swordbears and Terran marines took Opteris III itself in retaliation, and the surviving cyber-bug… things… sued for peace. Opteris tried to land troops on Rathi, but were repelled. We pushed the enemy from what had been Kulrathi space, and we made inroads on Ralyeh space. Kulrathi swordbears swelled the ranks of our infantry. But I held on to my core systems, though the Pollops in particular did land alien warriors on Earth itself, they were repelled. The Ralyeh Devoted, Opteris, and Pollops all thought it would be fun to jointly declare war on the Terran Federation and its Kulrathi allies. My policy: Conquer and subjugate but do not exterminate they’re just dumb dogs.Vulfar (dumb canid humanoids who prefer swarm tactics and threats to diplomacy) Ralyeh (horrible cthulhuoid death cultists) If they aren’t randomly being horrible espionagey dickheads, they can join me. Pollops (secretly violent plant-beings based off of the skroderiders from A Fire Upon the Deep) the sci-fi tropes of “the bugs” and “the machines” in one revolting package) Opteris (horrible cyber/robotic bug things. Their worlds are off-limits to wholesale destruction. My policy: BE MY FRIENDS! :D Failing that, conquer them.Kulrathi (obvious riff on Kilrathi big anthropomorphic bear people who are warrior-poets) They have a place in my Federation if they want to be cool. My policy: Liberate the owlwoks, have them join my Federation.ĭraylok (toothy, scary, fae manipulators who put on holographic displays depicting them as purple space babes).Huge Homeworld (allowing a population of up to around 18 billion this assumes arcologies)Ĭordrazine (mind-controlling mollusk things who have a cute race of owl-like humanoids called owlwoks mind-controlled to be their slaves).Naval Tradition (our planet is 70% water and the polity with the strongest navy tends to be the most powerful).I’m extrapolating from my own experience with humans) Repulsive (penalty to diplomacy with aliens who find us disgusting.Savage (boosts our ground combat ability- humans are high-endurance high-aggression relative to most animals we know).Less Fertile (humans can only have 1-2 babies at a time on average).Traits we don’t have by default but I make sure we have: Name: The Terran Empire (or Alliance, if I’m feeling less bellicose) When I play Star Drive (a strategy game in the vein of Civilization, but about colonizing lots of planets) I always customize humans (default: the United Federation) thusly:

Kulrathi default traits for stardrive 2