The Colonization of Mars
- Thread starter Quintillus
- Start date
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- Mar 17, 2007
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Rather than fighting a civil war on the New Frontier, the factions divided up the ship's landing pods and split off shortly before planetfall, all landing on different parts of the planet. Communication with each other was lost, and whether diplomacy or war could follow when they met each other again nobody knew.
The Spartans landed in the following area:
They sent their Scout Rover (the vehicle you see) to the south towards the ocean, and finding nothing of particular interest, settled in place. The citizens of the base, New Sparta, began working the rolling, rainy terrain 1 SE of Sparta, producing 2 food and 1 mineral. The city began work on a Command Center, the Martian equivalent of a Barracks, which gives a morale bonus to units. The second of the two Spartan colony pods headed to the south, were some rocky outcroppings were spotted by the rover. Then it was time to decide what to research.
Corazon had taken a couple leadership classes back in the day, and skimmed the smac.pdf command document that the leaders of the Martian mission had been given, but it was clear that there would be a lot more guesswork here than there would be if this were trying to lead a civilization on Earth. Of course, half the technologies the Spartans would research would be re-inventing the Terran versions. Be it for good or ill, the Greek Space Command hadn't included information on how to build every deadly weapon in the world on the mission's computers, so even if the material to build a thermonuclear bomb were there, the technology probably wasn't. They'd just kind of figured that if a nuke were needed on Mars for some reason, they'd forward the information on the spacewaves. Oh well, it only took them a few years to discover it the first time, right? For now, Corazon decided on the Applied Physics technology. Better, she figured, to be caught with a poor economy than with an excellent one and not a single unit to defend it.
The next several years went by calmly enough. Corazon was a bit ill at ease in ruling an entire faction, but the stategic command taught on Earth for the most part applied, and an intelligent staff helped make her job feel a bit less like taking a shot in the dark. And since the population of New Sparta remained small, the citizens were calm. But there was one odd thing:
See those reddish squares by the rover? Apparently the bateria outwitted the scientists back when they were oxyfying the atmosphere and melting the ice, and acclimated to the Martian climate quite well. Now they've become a slightly irksome fungus-like specie that covers the ground so much that other life, such as grasses and wheats, are crowded out, and our rover must move at minimal speeds. Not that we anticipate any problems.
The second Martian city was founded in 2044.
The Chief Librarian, regrettably, is off by 36 years in his records. We can't quite figure it out; 36 days would be about right if it were the Julian calendar but 36 years is ridiculous. Oh well. He finds the books when we need them.
In 2144, our rover happened upon a nice lookout on a hill that gave us a good view of the lands to our east. For the most part they're dreadfully arid and desertlike; many are rocky as well, meaning we can't build farms. But perhaps more importantly, we see what looks like a border of some sort to the east.
Noting that we don't see a border of our own, we aren't sure, but that's no reason not to investigate.
The discovery mission, unfortunately, is delayed by sending our rover into a fungus patch. It's kind of like sending a Horseman onto a mountain.
In 2150, I realize that I'm probably missing something in regards to terraforming. Applied Physics will give me some cool lasers in a few turns, but I don't think that's what I need to build roads, as awesome as laser-built roads would be. So I pull out the smac.pdf command guide and do some searching...
...and discover that in fact I'm not missing anything, and that I do not have the ability to terraform right now. As I figure, neither the Scout Patrol nor Scout Rover unit can terraform. Turns out that I need to discover Martian Ecology. Kind of logical. At least there's a good reason we don't have roads. To think, we're used to high-speed maglev trains on Earth, and here we're walking scores of miles across foreign terrain to get to another city.
The rover doesn't find any signs of another civilization near the border-like thing, but does find a nice sunny mesa that would make for a good place for solar power plants. If we decide to cross the desert, it may be a good settlement place. The rover heads down to the river to travel more quickly, and soon happens upon some supplies from Earth!
Energy credits? What are those, you may be asking. Well, you see, it's kind of cold here on Mars most of the time. It does occasionally get up into the 60's (around 20C), but most of the year, it's downright frigid. So electric energy is quite valuable, especially as we don't have much of it yet. Solar is our main means of getting it, since we don't want to repeat the fossil-fuel dependence Earth suffered through last century. It's like the carbon trading they tried back around 1995, except that it's a lot more important when survival and not just treaty provisions can ride on it.
Oh, and ignore the "Unity" part. My operations director is a sarcastic fellow, calling the New Frontier that when we all know it turned out to be just the opposite.
We notice a new settlement in 2154 - the U.N. Planetary Trust. Must be those Peacekeepers! We try to initiate diplomacy but fail, but we are curious as to what they're up to.
2055 sees our first technological breakthrough: Applied Physics.
We now will be able to use laser weapons! My scientists propose applying the technology to a new rover; I decide to think about it for awhile. Prototyping units is expensive, so you don't want to prototype something you aren't going to use. And while the U.N. city is a tempting target, I'm quite unsure as to whether war is the right decision at the time. But I do decide Martian Ecology is the right next tech to research, and begin on it.
At that point I decide to call it a night and get some sleep. I hit the Escape button, and a dialog comes up. My robot, always the hard worker, tells me, "Please don't go. The drones need you. They look up to you."
16 years of work forming a Martian colony and the robots won't even let you sleep!
The Spartans landed in the following area:
They sent their Scout Rover (the vehicle you see) to the south towards the ocean, and finding nothing of particular interest, settled in place. The citizens of the base, New Sparta, began working the rolling, rainy terrain 1 SE of Sparta, producing 2 food and 1 mineral. The city began work on a Command Center, the Martian equivalent of a Barracks, which gives a morale bonus to units. The second of the two Spartan colony pods headed to the south, were some rocky outcroppings were spotted by the rover. Then it was time to decide what to research.
Corazon had taken a couple leadership classes back in the day, and skimmed the smac.pdf command document that the leaders of the Martian mission had been given, but it was clear that there would be a lot more guesswork here than there would be if this were trying to lead a civilization on Earth. Of course, half the technologies the Spartans would research would be re-inventing the Terran versions. Be it for good or ill, the Greek Space Command hadn't included information on how to build every deadly weapon in the world on the mission's computers, so even if the material to build a thermonuclear bomb were there, the technology probably wasn't. They'd just kind of figured that if a nuke were needed on Mars for some reason, they'd forward the information on the spacewaves. Oh well, it only took them a few years to discover it the first time, right? For now, Corazon decided on the Applied Physics technology. Better, she figured, to be caught with a poor economy than with an excellent one and not a single unit to defend it.The next several years went by calmly enough. Corazon was a bit ill at ease in ruling an entire faction, but the stategic command taught on Earth for the most part applied, and an intelligent staff helped make her job feel a bit less like taking a shot in the dark. And since the population of New Sparta remained small, the citizens were calm. But there was one odd thing:
See those reddish squares by the rover? Apparently the bateria outwitted the scientists back when they were oxyfying the atmosphere and melting the ice, and acclimated to the Martian climate quite well. Now they've become a slightly irksome fungus-like specie that covers the ground so much that other life, such as grasses and wheats, are crowded out, and our rover must move at minimal speeds. Not that we anticipate any problems.
The second Martian city was founded in 2044.
The Chief Librarian, regrettably, is off by 36 years in his records. We can't quite figure it out; 36 days would be about right if it were the Julian calendar but 36 years is ridiculous. Oh well. He finds the books when we need them.
In 2144, our rover happened upon a nice lookout on a hill that gave us a good view of the lands to our east. For the most part they're dreadfully arid and desertlike; many are rocky as well, meaning we can't build farms. But perhaps more importantly, we see what looks like a border of some sort to the east.
Noting that we don't see a border of our own, we aren't sure, but that's no reason not to investigate.
The discovery mission, unfortunately, is delayed by sending our rover into a fungus patch. It's kind of like sending a Horseman onto a mountain.
In 2150, I realize that I'm probably missing something in regards to terraforming. Applied Physics will give me some cool lasers in a few turns, but I don't think that's what I need to build roads, as awesome as laser-built roads would be. So I pull out the smac.pdf command guide and do some searching...
...and discover that in fact I'm not missing anything, and that I do not have the ability to terraform right now. As I figure, neither the Scout Patrol nor Scout Rover unit can terraform. Turns out that I need to discover Martian Ecology. Kind of logical. At least there's a good reason we don't have roads. To think, we're used to high-speed maglev trains on Earth, and here we're walking scores of miles across foreign terrain to get to another city.
The rover doesn't find any signs of another civilization near the border-like thing, but does find a nice sunny mesa that would make for a good place for solar power plants. If we decide to cross the desert, it may be a good settlement place. The rover heads down to the river to travel more quickly, and soon happens upon some supplies from Earth!
Energy credits? What are those, you may be asking. Well, you see, it's kind of cold here on Mars most of the time. It does occasionally get up into the 60's (around 20C), but most of the year, it's downright frigid. So electric energy is quite valuable, especially as we don't have much of it yet. Solar is our main means of getting it, since we don't want to repeat the fossil-fuel dependence Earth suffered through last century. It's like the carbon trading they tried back around 1995, except that it's a lot more important when survival and not just treaty provisions can ride on it.
Oh, and ignore the "Unity" part. My operations director is a sarcastic fellow, calling the New Frontier that when we all know it turned out to be just the opposite.
We notice a new settlement in 2154 - the U.N. Planetary Trust. Must be those Peacekeepers! We try to initiate diplomacy but fail, but we are curious as to what they're up to.
2055 sees our first technological breakthrough: Applied Physics.
We now will be able to use laser weapons! My scientists propose applying the technology to a new rover; I decide to think about it for awhile. Prototyping units is expensive, so you don't want to prototype something you aren't going to use. And while the U.N. city is a tempting target, I'm quite unsure as to whether war is the right decision at the time. But I do decide Martian Ecology is the right next tech to research, and begin on it.
At that point I decide to call it a night and get some sleep. I hit the Escape button, and a dialog comes up. My robot, always the hard worker, tells me, "Please don't go. The drones need you. They look up to you."
16 years of work forming a Martian colony and the robots won't even let you sleep!
Meteor Man
Cylindropuntia imbricata
Cool screenies, Quint.
DJ Bonebraker
a.k.a Laura
Cool! I may have to re-install SMAC sometime... I'm going to mod the terrain, though.. Never did like the way the default terrain looked (I lacked the skills previously, but 4 years of Civ III modding have remedied that).
Nice story so far.
Nice story so far.
Daniel Khan
Bail Baby Bail
The black border is your own.
vyeh
Emperor
- Joined
- May 15, 2006
- Messages
- 1,204
You might want to look at RGE's drabsmac and wgabrie's SMAC terrain graphics mod before you start modding.
DJ Bonebraker
a.k.a Laura
That SMAC terrain graphics mod is perfect, although I'm still considering modding the trees and monsoon jungle graphics... I'm (reasonably) sure I could convert something from Civ III or Civ II ToT that would work nicely.
Perfection
The Great Head.
Directed Research 
Daniel Khan
Bail Baby Bail
We seem to have lost contact with the Mars colony. Must be an Imperial-to-metric conversion problem.
Redman
Emperor
Aahh good old SMAC.. Will follow the story.. Perhaps it will make me install it again..
Redman
TheOverseer714
Overseer
I wish I could find my old SMAC disk..... When you make your first custom vehicle, I recomend a rover colony pod (2-move "settler"). That was my favorite part of the game, the custom vehicles.
GooglyBoogly
Freakamongus
The Spartans do not have to pay for protytyping (it is one of their abiltiies), so the 2-1-2 laser rover will cost just as much as a 1-1-2 one.
Go on, crank out those shiny laser death machines
Go on, crank out those shiny laser death machines
DJ Bonebraker
a.k.a Laura
I had ship-based colony pods, helicopter colony pods, sea-based terraformers and all sorts of other fun stuff....
One trick I used during invasions was to have formers setup roads and bunkers, then put units with heavy armour and no weapons in the bunkers, so they would defend the other units, then have lightly-armoured but heavily-armed attacks units to rush out and attack the enemy. Basically tank destroyers and mobile bunkers 
ooh, and more story please!
ooh, and more story please!
.:KNAS:.
Civfanatic
Why oh why did this die? It started out so good. Dear fellow CFC members, send use the power of peer pressure and guilt trips to make him continue this fine story.
- Joined
- Mar 17, 2007
- Messages
- 9,306
Near the end of 2008, there were many unusually large solar flares that interfered heavily with radio conversions between Earth and Mars. For several months, no communications were possible between the two planets. Finally, on March 31, 2009, a short message got through...
Clearly the Mars expedition hadn't expected the communication to actually succeed this time. But now that it had, the Earthlings could form a response. Granted they weren't thrilled by the estimated month until the infrastructure was all back online, but what could you do about things like solar flares? At least it looked like they'd have the problems rectified in about a month... much better than if an asteriod had hit directly on their landing site...
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