The Space Bears Neptune’s Pride 2 diary – Days 4 to 7 – The Drums of War Thunder…

A close friend of mine became rather addicted to Neptune’s Pride 2: Triton in the early months of this year, after I introduced it to him. Part of his addiction has led to the playing of many games, far more than I’ve ever played, and in his time he even managed to secure a place in the group stages of the Neptune’s Pride 2 World Championship back in July (3 games of 6 people). Due to the importance of the game to himself and to the community of Neptune’s Pride, I persuaded Sam to keep a log of the major events and he went a step further to keep a detailed and entertaining diary. I will post the diary in short segments for you reading pleasure! Here are the previous entries: Days 1-3.

Day Four

The war drums have been sounding all day, and space bears everywhere can sense the imminent outbreak of war. The warmongering Lord Kirk has been enquiring all day of Red troop movements, garrison sizes, etc. We delivered to him grossly overestimated figures (most Red stars we can see are empty) to ensure the ruse works. By the end of the cycle, he seemed ready to strike, though without a definite time of departure from me. We can only hope that Lord Kfix is prepared – the Blue army has more ships than the Red army, so it will take skillful use of the still considerable defender bonus for the Blue hordes to be turned back.

On that note however, the curious Lord Boru had an interesting proposal. He suggested I might use one of his central stars as a stepping stone, so that I could commit a fleet of my own against Kirk’s Blue army…

Very unsure of this. It would be extremely useful to be able to guarantee Kirk’s defeat in this way, but (1) we only have about 50 ships in the area as most were headed to the Yellow border, (2) the Yellow Slug Monsters have moved 99 ships to their border with us, so I can’t really recall the fleet that was heading there, and (3) this might be a trick by Boru to empty my centre stars of ships so that he can betray me and take them for himself. Not impossible, though not exactly likely either. I have decided to leave 70 ships at the Yellow border and move the rest back to the centre, though this will take a day and a half. The supreme council will make a decision as to whether to take Boru’s offer in the next day.

The day ended with Lord Kirk declaring that he was waiting for my signal to unleash his invasion of the Kfixiri. Once Kfix tells me he is ready, I will give the signal, and the dogs of war will be unleashed.

The galaxy at the end of the fourth day…

 

Day Five

War is here.

We gave Kirk’s Blue hordes the signal to move in, but it appears they attacked even before then, according to Lord Kfix. Our predictions for the Blue attack routes were correct – the western attack was successful and Spica fell, but his Eastern army was destroyed. Thanks to our deception, Kirk lost 160 ships, and gained just one star.

We decided we would indeed send our Bears in Tanks into action, going via Boru’s Green star as agreed. Lord Kirk was most displeased on realising his betrayal, but seemed relatively unfazed. Around the same time, the despicable Blue scientists gave Kirk Weapons 3, a good ten hours or so before our noble Bear scientists were set to achieve the same. As a result, it means we will not take Kirk’s star.

Still, it is of no matter. Our main objective was to wipe out a chunk of Kirk’s ships so that the Red Army might gain the advantage, and we have done this. We also cemented the Red-Bear alliance solidly as well, which is no small thing. It would have been nice to get an extra star on top of all that, but realistically we wouldn’t have been able to hold it, and it would have made our borders even more ridiculously stretched.

Away from the warzone, a second fleet is moving to Val Ursii, in case Lord Kfix needs more reinforcements, but I am minded not to send them. The bears must not throw away their now sizable ship count superiority for no stars, now that the first fleet has achieved our objectives. There is also a third fleet, now 150 ships strong, that is circling the home stars, with a commander bear eyeing the Yellow Snail Beasts with a hungry gaze…

On a similar note, new hyperspace technology has allowed us to reach three new stars (with one already fallen) on the Yellow border.

The galaxy at end of Day Five…

 

Day Six

Not long after the cycle began, Lord Kfix sent a request for help. It seems that in his attempts to drive away the invaders, he had inadvertently left a hole in his defences that kirk might use to slip in and wreck his economic infrastructure. We sent the second fleet into Red territory at his request to deter any attacks, and landed at Azmidiske, but by the time they arrived it was clear they were unneeded – Lord Kfix had taken the star now called Kirk’s Folly, and Kirk had wisely not tried to attack the innermost Red stars.We called the fleet back home.

According to Lord Kfix, in his rage and spite, Kirk referred to us using the almost unspeakable slur – “gummy bears”. He will burn for this.

In other news, I thanked Lord Boru the Green for his help, and asked about the now raging Green-Cyan war. Apparently The Fox is on the defensive, and Boru has a fleet en route to the Cyan homeworld to smoke the Fox out of his burrow. This was a little surprising, as their ship count is still rather close, but who are we to judge what goes on outside of our bear scanners? He also revealed that the Yellow star of Nashira, just in range of Val Ursii, has only 34 slug ships on it…

Trade-wise, we are preparing to ship hyperspace to Lord Kfix in exchange for scanning (the last level 2 tech) and we are to sell weapons 3 to Boru for 95 space dollars. The bears are growing advanced indeed…

As the cycle ends, our fleets are getting ready to do what we should have done three days ago – invading the oppressed stars of Uppercut’s Yellow molluscs. We have about 200 warrior bears en route to Giedi, and 70 waiting at Val Ursii, for when Nashira becomes a little less defended (reinforcements are heading there currently). The Red-Blue war and the Green-Cyan war is keeping everyone else distracted, so no one will be able to interfere in our righteous liberation of the Yellow cluster. And providing he doesn’t get weapons 3 for a while, it will not be a long war…

The galaxy at the end of the sixth day…

 

Day Seven

There was a minor mix-up with the trade early on, with Boru sending scanning 2 instead of just outright paying for our weaponry. It was all smoothed over as a misunderstanding, but this does leave Lord Kfix without hyperspace now. We have however, sent Kfix weapons 3, on the understanding that he will send terraforming 3 in return in a day or two when it is complete.

The Cyan Fox sent a curious offer, indicating that all of Lord Boru’s Green army was at the Green-Cyan border, and that we could work together to bring him down. The bear council talked this over – there was never any real possibility of betraying Boru, but we did briefly consider a repeat performance of the Kirk trick, pretending to attack while drawing him into a trap. In the end however, we elected to just ignore the message.

For the whole day, the bold bears of the Northern Fleet were sailing toward the Yellow star of Giedi, singing bear songs and feasting on the finest space honey.

Early into the journey, reinforcements began sailing toward Giedi, bolstering the ships there from 90 to 230. This struck as ominous – why are so few of the slugs’ ships on the Yellow-Green border? Do they have an arrangement of some sort that Boru is keeping from me? The Fox did say that the Green army was almost entirely at the Cyan border – why are Yellow and Green not guarding their mutual border? The council is suspicious.

Anyway with the reinforcements, we were set to win a very narrow victory, with a very tenuous hold on Giedi. But then, five hours from landfall, the bastards got weapons 3 from somewhere. Infuriating! The bears of that fleet were now flying to their deaths, with the slugs set to win with 50 ships left – wiping out our ship advantage and yielding no star in return. Reinforcements are rushing to the area, but it will be some days before we can mount a second attack now.

And so, the first space week ended. The bears have Economy: 57, Industry: 27, and Science: 6 – leaders in every field (well, Boru has Science: 6 too) and our economy advantage means we should be able to maintain this advantage. As long as our allies hold out (and remain allies) the righteous supremacy of the Space Bears should continue.