Five more years have gone and there have been many exciting changes that have occurred. Most of the changes have been fortunate which has helped us expand further and become stronger. As we grow stronger there has been more calls to expand further and fight against the Xenos. Although we technically could deploy a Battle company with a Strike cruiser but that would bring too much attention towards us when we have barely got started. I have talked them into agreeing to wait for 20 years more before we come back to this question.

Some of the changes that has occurred:

Exploration

The exploration fleet trading has been a huge success, this has been in large part to the navigators. Captain Hark has completed his job well. It took them slightly longer than 5 months for the whole journey. They were able to get updated star charts for the local sector. This allowed us to see what is happening locally, which was as usual war. Locally there has been an upsurge of Xenos activity, mostly raiding of worlds. They were also able to get hold of almost all of the critical components that we needed. On the ships front there wasn't any news that they could find. There were no sellers and they heard no whispers about derelict ships.

The good news was that they were able to arrange for trade of female. Every year we would trade 25,000 female of child bearing age in exchange for standard weapons/minerals. So there will be annual trade fleet set up for this. The same fleet will be used but the personal will be rotated where possible. Another surprise was that they were able to find good recruits. This time they found around 400 recruits, going forward we might not be able to find similar number as we have already picked the qualified ones. We have decided that we will try and recruit every 3 years from here.

Population

We have seen a population upsurge with encouraging them to have babies and the influx of the new members from the Exploration fleet. This has meant having to build more habitable areas in the planets and more medical staff being needed. We had planned for this upsurge so it has been manageable. Education has also played its role well, the past 7 years has seen to nearly all of the original serfs being educated. Also due to the population surge we are able to open up

Mining

Asteroid mining: The asteroid mining has been same as before no changes. We have decided to focus on planet mining instead due to various reasons.

Planet Mining: The second planet has also been opened to mining. As we expect the population to surge we will be working on making new habitats available.

Research Results

Fleet: There is still ongoing research being carried out, the Frigate work is pretty much finished should be done in a year or two while the Cruiser is taking slightly longer. This is still with in the expected timeline.

Army: The army has been given access to new drones with each squad (6-10 men) having access to one dedicated drone. As the supplies get built up eventually it will be one to one with each person having one drone. Some upgrades have been carried out to the exo-suits. Now they have a grappling gun attached to the suit, this allows them to travel to challenging environment. They have built in medical dispensary and are able to alert the local medic automatically. They aren't rated for space yet as there are still more to be carried out in this front. The optics and electronic support system have been upgraded. This was so that they are able to direct the drone and better still work under most ECM environment. They are also able to get/send feed to other units. This means quicker support and better tactical deployment. The optics upgrade means that they are able to see further in more spectrum, which leads to better targeting. Just in case there is also a failsafe built in which the unit /individual can trigger, this would make them disengage from external network (friendly or enemy).

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Hydroponics

We are now able to create ship based hydroponics system that is rated for warp travel. We have also massively upgraded the hydroponics system in the planet and space station. Due to the trade we have been able to get different plants and aquatic creatures. This has mean we have started creating in door farms to grow food and started aquaponics in planet and space. We are currently researching if aquaponics will be suitable for warp travel. Having mastered the Hydroponics system has also allowed us to start selling them. They are quite popular with the traders.

Recruits

Out of the 400 recruits all of them have started their journey to Space marine. We have already lost 55 recruits so far. The data shows eventually the death rate starts to go down so further along we should be seeing less deaths but this still pains me to see children essentially be tortured and brain washed. We were also able to recruit locally from with in the Bermuda systems. There were 20 recruits selected at the age of 6. I hope most of them make it through this process, I will try my best to provide them with the best care/condition. All the data is being continually added to the Cogitator SM.

Diagnostic Devices

There has been some progress on this, mostly it has been incremental rather than anything revolutionary. One of the devices that we are on the lookout for is Xenos based scanning devices. If we are able to get some I should be able to reverse engineers something out of it.

Armor

This has seen the most progress out of all the ongoing projects. Mostly its because its something I have a lot of knowledge about and researching the other fleet tech has meant some nice synergy. Currently we have been able to formulate a new type of Ceramite, it is 30% better overall while being the same cost to produce. We have started replacing all of our old ceramite with the new version. There is ongoing work to develop better version of adamantium and plasteel but this will take sometime. The two other breakthrough was in the electrically-motivated fibre bundles that go in to the space marine armour and the auto-sense. The new version is quicker, longer lasting and able to provide 50% more strength. This has meant that we have to first train the space marine up to use the new version of armour before we start the replacement. this is slightly slow going but we should have every thing replaced in 2 years time. The auto-sense has been also upgraded mostly due to new sensors and optics. Most of the upgrades have been about detection. Some work will be carried out on the other features like auto targeting etc but these will take a longer time to develop.

Energy Shield

So I was able to scan the energy shield and the atomantic arc-reactor power core that is required to provide energy for the shield. Researching these two though will take a while longer as I do not have any knowledge and we are working of the scans I got of the dreadnaught. It would be helpful to have other shield/energy tech to compare it to. Possibly some Tau ones. For now though there isn't much progress and I do not see much happening unless I put all my energy into this, which I cant at this time.

Drones

The drone project has been a success. Currently they are being used on wargames to find out how we could use it affectively. We have mostly gone with cheap and effective as the main theme for nearly all type of drones. There are a few type of drones that are being tested.

Infantry close support: Has bolters or flamers. These are on the smaller scale 1 meter length by 40 cm width by 20cm depth, a bit like rectangle. they have two bolters/ flamers attached to the front. Most of the internal space is ammunition. They can only fire forward. Run time is only an hour before they need to recharge. They are deployed from a drone carrier.

Drone Carrier: Able to carry 20-50 drones and follow Space Marines. Able to replenish ammunition and recharge Drones. Able to carry all types of drones but usually just one single type per carrier.

Heavy support: These drones were mostly missiles/grenade launchers. When we are able to deploy plasma based weapons they can then be upgraded. These drones were around 50% bigger than infantry drones. These were excellent for non-line of sight fire support. The Space marines/infantry could highlights targets and then watch the fire power land. The different type of Grenades/missiles meant that they could be loaded out for different scenario from anti aircraft to ECM.

With the ongoing projects there were not much time to spare for any new ones. I have asked the Trade fleet to try other world/trade points to see if there was anything we could trade for. I have asked them to be extra careful when doing this as we are still recovering. Another major concern that is growing is as the population grows if we need to retreat we will end up leaving a lot of Tech/population behind. I will have to see if we can trade for a ship/ get derelict ships or start to prepare to build some. If we go the build route we are tied down to this system for a fairly long time. Our priorities will have to change.