Meet the Dubtaks, the coolest molten-lead-spotted, terrestrial stingray… things… in the galaxy.
Ascendancy describes them as “Unsportsmanlike Scientists,” due to their ability to steal any and all technologies already discovered by at least two of the other species in the star cluster. I’ve never played as the Dubtaks — they’re one of only four species I haven’t played even once! — but their research-related ability sounds like it could put an interesting spin on the game.
Unlike the Chamachies, who can discover a new tech for free every 89 days and so are always ahead of the science curve, the Dubtaks’ ability mostly guarantees they’ll always be right in the middle of the curve, at best. But it does effectively let other species do our research for us, taking the pressure off our scientists, and meaning we can devote all the effort we would have put into building laboratories and research campuses into other projects instead. So if anything is going to be atypical about this playthrough, it’s that our building habits are going to skewed way away from an entire industry out of the three major industries. We’ll see how that works out for us…
Like a lot of Earth stingrays, the Dubtaks are expert camouflagers, and unlike most Earth stringrays (to my knowledge) they’ve built a civilization on stolen knowledge and a love of gizmos. That civilization is about to venture into the great big universe for the first time. Or at least a small portion of the universe — specifically, an Average-sized star cluster with a Neutral atmosphere and six other species to play with.
The story of the Orange Dubtaks and their quest begins here: a quest to explore the galaxy and exploit every last world, resource, and unsuspecting intelligent lifeform they find along the way.
