As we mentioned earlier, the universe is a very big place, and you can never
be sure that your fleets are the first to pass by a certain star or planet.
Many worlds out there have been touched by other races before your own, and
you can often find things that suggest they might have once been the home to
aliens or older human civilisations. Anything unearthed by a Planet Survey
that is above and beyond the norm is covered in this category, and are
generically called planet finds. They may be abandoned colonies, crashed
spaceships, vast cavern complexes, unidentifiable machinery, strange statues,
lost colonies ... anything is possible.
When you find something of this type on a world, a list of options will be
shown alongside it, each find will have a small sub-set of the following list:
1) Ignore it - Ignore the find.
2) Search - Search the find with all available means.
3) Open vault - Open the thing, usually for the umpteenth time.
4) Decipher - Decipher all those puzzling/meaningless squiggles.
5) Pray - An act for the desperate.
6) Open Grave - Open that ancient grave carefully.
7) Political -
a)Offer Technical assistance
Dazzle them with your tech (costs 10,000 - 1,000,000 cr)
the chance of them joining your empire depends on the level of
assistance given and the difference in tech level.
b) Offer Medical and Social assistance
As above except on Medical and Commercial front. Costs 10,000
to 500,000 cr. The chance of the planet joining your empire is
based on the difference in Medical and Commercial tech level and
the amount of assistance provided.
c) Negotiate
Diplomats attempt to persuade the planet to join your empire using
whatever means they can. Costs 25,000 cr.
d) Threaten
Use threats and display of power to influence the planet to join
your empire. It helps to have a huge war fleet overhead. Costs
15,000 cr.
[There is always a chance of both failure and success]
8) Bribe -
a) Governmental
Attempt to bribe officials to vote to join your empire. (costs
10,000 cr to any amount you wish to try)
b) Planetary Defence Forces
Attempt to bribe the defence forces to surrender. (costs 100,000 cr
and up)
c) Both
Attempt both of the above options (costs 150,000 cr and up).
[There is always a chance of both failure and success]
9) Destroy Find - Attempt to reduce the planet find to useless rubble.
NOTE : If option 7 or 8 are attempted with less than the minimum credit
amount, the orders are NOT ignored. Rather than being embarrassed, your
political representative will attempt to make up the amount to the minimum
directly from YOUR treasury. If insufficient funds exist then the order will
fail completely.
For example, if you find the ruins of an old alien settlement you may see
something like this appear:-
1) Ignore it.
2) Search it using all means available.
3) Destroy it.
This means that next turn the fleet can issue a Search Planet Find order with
the additional order of, say, "Search using all means available". This is
written as;
Fleet
Fleet Orders
Start
End
7
Search Planet Find
[2,2,2]1
[2,2,2]1
Search using all means available
Any action - be it the destruction, searching or whatever - on a planet find
results in the end of any further movement for that fleet on that turn. Please
note that only one fleet can utilise a find per turn, so having two science
crews move to investigate the find from two different ships will not be of any
extra use.
Some finds work in a number of stages, their options changing each and every
time you take an action with them, while other stay very constant. There are
finds in the universe that can be destroyed with but the slightest touch,
while others are far more robust and are likely to remain as long as your own
race exists! Certain things are simply indestructible, while others may hold
nasty surprises for anyone wanting to investigate them. This is part of the
game you should very much play by ear - no hard and fast rule applies to them.
These finds can yield many different things; rare items of value to increase
your own treasury, insights into technological gains which will help the
advances of your scientists, unknown designs of spaceships that allow new
categories of craft or other, more esoteric, discoveries. The player that
refuses to try and unearth or use these finds will be the one that slips
behind the rest.