Another funny story from Drox Operative

.... assuming you have the requisite geeky sense of humour of course!

So I'm now up to approximately level 49 and am theoretically half way through the game. Of course if I continue to have as much fun as I have had so far there are always the other race ships (I've tried Hive and Human and much preferred Hive) along with the Ironman mode to experiment with.

The previous system provided me with the slenderest of victories. The randomly generated sector was large, thinly populated and extremely hostile to space-faring races. I shared a starting system with Cortex and basically ended up running their colonisation programme. Due to some unlucky colony destructions I ended up taking on missions to transport colony modules to each of their three planets at one point or another.

Eventually I managed to navigate through the inhospitable border sectors and found Human. At approximately the same time I was informed that Brunt had been obliterated by Overlord without my ever having met them.

I subsequently switched allegiance to Human and ran a barrage of anti-monster missions in their home system and an adjoining infested system. Eventually I built up enough reputation for an alliance with them and promptly exterminated their enemy, Cortex (although I did feel a bit guilty about it).

I continued to run missions for Human although it seemed that economic, fear or legend victories remained distant. However, the pressure was ratcheted up when I returned from a run and found that the two Human planets had, through some unknown cause, ended up utterly wrecked and would almost certainly be wiped out in the near future. One was destroyed even as I ran the next mission.

Needing to do something drastic I sped into the next sector. I knew that Overlord was there somewhere but had previously been deterred by the legions of surrounding monsters. However, my luck held and I discovered their planet just as it was hit by a large comet. A few shots from my guns and I had my Military victory.

The saga didn't end there, however. I arrived back and barely had time to refuel before the other Human planet was destroyed by monsters. To add insult to injury it was replaced by another Overlord colony. If I had thought about it I might have sensibly shrugged this off and flown away. However, instead I promptly declared war on Overlord and purged the last race from the sector.

This might have merely been a moment of pique but it triggered the lose timer. I had to rush around and use consumables to restore some of my ship's health and do my exchanges with my stash in record time. Worse, I was left with no friendly planet to repair at or trade with.

On the plus side, of course, I did get rewarded and promoted despite leaving a smoking and lifeless system in my wake! Unethical methods but they got the job done.