For The Tyrants Fear Your Might (A quest of interstellar rebellion)

AKuz · Dec 10, 2020

THE ALL-RADIANT CONGRESS

Setting Information: The Solarian Compact:

Initially formed as the Solarian Treaty Organization from the ashes of the old United Nations Security Council, United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs, and the Global Climate Relief Organization in the worst decade of Earth's environmental collapse. The STO was originally a body tasked with overseeing the granting of offworld mining permits and the purchase and distribution of the resources to countries struggling from climate change.

The advent of the Korolev-Chandrashker gates and the construction of the first one under STO oversight in 2063 led to the beginning of the transformation of that body into the de facto single governing body of the Human species.

Reorganized into the 'Solarian Compact', the first Charters were granted to massive corporate conglomerates to explore and exploit the cosmos for Humanity with little to no regulation or restriction.

In the early decades, the Solarian Compact oversaw the construction of KC gates in the systems closest to Sol and began the process of granting colonization rights to the most habitable worlds within that region with colonization rights granted to a number of national and international blocks.

With the growth of the Solarian Compact's power came calls for the body to become more representative and democratic, and in 2099, the Solarian Compact held its first elections and constitutional convention, inviting representatives from the Sol system and the five systems that held permanent Human settlement.

Over the course of the 22nd and 23rd centuries the Solarian Compact has held fast to what it sees as its duty to act as the mediator and financier of the Charters, the unifying agent of the disparate first Human colonies, and the guarantor of interstellar peace for Humanity.

As of 2252, the three most important bodies within the Solarian Compact are the Solarian Parliament -Located on Earth, the Solarian Compact Navy -based in the Korolev-Chandrashker system, and the Solarian Central Bank, -based out of the Columbia System.

Organized as a liberal democracy, with universal suffrage, the Solarian Compact is theoretically overseen by three equal institutions: the Solarian Parliament, the office of the Solarian Secretary General, and the Solarian High Court.

Though the Solarian Compact prides itself on being a Constitutional government, the actual original document merely outlines the terms of admitting new MPs and High Court Judges, and the electoral procedures of the Compact Parliament, with subsequent Parliaments meeting to add items like the Declaration of Property Rights, the founding of the Central Bank, the creation of the Solarian Navy, and the Laws on Freedom of Navigation and Travel being added later.

The Solarian Parliament is made up of two thousand six hundred and twenty seats representing ridings on Earth, Columbia, Atlantis, Penglai, Olduvai, and Epsilon which are elected every three years to a Parliament that meets in the New York prefecture of Earth.

Though the many frontier colonies do not have direct representation in the Parliament due to being owned and operated by private entities, their inhabitants are considered 'Absent for Employment' and may register with a home riding and submit a physical ballot (for security reasons) by courier from when polls open until they close. Though this process was suitable for the closely settled regions of space at the time of the ratification of the Compact Constitution in 2100, the rapid growth of Human settled space in the century and a half since has seen the de facto voter suppression of over 90% of Human settled space.

At the first sitting of each new Compact Parliament, the assembled members will elect a Secretary General and a slate of Ministry officials on a majority basis, and those individuals will oversee the executive branch of government and day to day operations. Though the average Compact Parliament contains between seven to nine parties in each Parliamentary sitting, the vast majority of seats belong to one of either the Party for Human Rights and Liberties or the Justice and Development Alliance and have since the very early 2100s. The governments formed this way can be brought down by losing the confidence of the Parliament for example, by failing to pass a budget, the process of finding a majority government will repeat again.

Though a democratic body that has maintained stability for over a century and a half, the Solarian Compact Parliament has been dogged by accusations of dynastic politics, Charter influence, voter suppression, regulatory capture, inability to reign in the Banks and MIlitary, and corruption at all levels.

Separate from the Parliament is the Solarian High Court that consists of eleven judges that serve terms of up to thirty-three years, with each new sitting of the Compact Parliament selecting one judge from a list provided by the governments of the six main worlds of the Solarian Compact. The High Court rules on matters of adherence of laws to the Solarian Constitution, and have been accused of serving as an arm of the Charters, though this has been strenuously contested by the Solarian legal profession as a whole.

By law the Solarian Compact also oversees a number of other important institutions including the Earth Reconstruction Commission (In a permanent public-private partnership with the Earth Reconstruction Association), the Solarian Central Bank, and the Solarian Compact Navy, though these important institutions often exhibit an alarming degree of autonomy from Parliamentary control.

The Charters:

The result of a cleverly conceived merger between specialty transport vessel manufacturer Titan Staryards and Private Military contractor Martian Military Solutions, Ares cut its teeth not just supplying material to the skirmishes between Mississippi Shipping and United Starhaul, but in supplying military contractors to both sides.

The professionalism of Ares mercenaries and quality of Ares gear led to the rapid expansion of business opportunities for the company and investment skyrocketed even after the Mississippi-Starhaul war ended in a hostile takeover of Starhaul by Mississippi.

Thanks in part to Mississippi debts held by Ares, when the RT-2102 Gate was opened up for settlement strategic maneuvering saw the Compact grant Ares mining and settlement rights to the newly opened system.

The rest, as they say, is history. Leveraging the immense resources of the Alexander system with their existing military expertise, Ares expanded nearly exponentially over the following century. While they maintain a dominating edge in the military field, they now integrated companies in fields from agronomy to personal fitness centers to xenobiology.

Internally Ares very self consciously styles itself as a hierarchical military organization complete with a semi-formal rank structure and an ethos of respect for the chain of command, professional courtesy, and treating your subordinates with respect. In practice Ares is hidebound, authoritarian, filled with passive aggressive sniping and rampant empire building.

While Ares remains headquartered on Mars, they have holdings in several systems and own the distant system of Alexander outright.

Rhodes Mining

One of the three original Charters that the Compact granted, Rhodes considers itself the singular reason that Humanity survived ecological collapse and spread past Sol. Immensely wealthy, over 52% of all material mined and processed by the entire Human race has passed through Rhodes hands at one point or another.

While founded merely to provide Earth the vital materials that it needed to rebuild itself after the lost decades of ecological collapse, Rhodes quickly expanded into all areas of the economy to support their mining, refining, and processing operations.

Dedicated to their vision of logistical chain efficiencies they've developed an entire chain of star systems into an efficient production center based around the resource rich system of Foundry, and the nearby feeder systems of Ecrams, Qem, and Crucible.

Rhodes considers itself home to a version of meritocracy built on hard work, education, and good old fashioned personal drive. This has developed over time into a stratified internal divide between the rank and file workers, the lower level management, and the highly lauded senior management. Each class lives in entirely separate worlds, attending separate schools, consuming different products, and leading very different lives in what many observers have labelled a de facto caste system.

they make food and medicine, the 120 year old CEO is kinda creepy tho?

Techbros, some of them science, some of them explore

Born from the union of Hermes Interstellar Services and The Ishtar Group, the Hermes-Ishtar Corporation owns and operates not only the communications backbone of Compact space, but much of the content that crosses over it.

The results of increasing consolidation of pre-spaceflight communications infrastructure and content creation and management firms, Hermes Communications and Ishtar Entertainment Group were both part of the second round of Charters established after the advent of the KC gates.

While Hermes quickly established operations throughout Compact space, their waystations, couriers, and communications repeaters a common sight in every corner of Human occupied space; Ishtar Group mainly limited their own operations to Sol and the Radiant system, where Ishtar owned and operated the world of Elysium to support their many projects.

Following a wave of Compact space wide reorganizations following the Mississippi-Starhaul conflicts of the 2130s, a desire for complete vertical integration on Ishtar's part led to a mostly amicable union with Hermes in 2139.

Since then Hermes-Ishtar have dominated all communications across Human space with only the privileged internal high-level communications of the other Charters managing to avoid consolidation under Hermes-Ishtar.

While Hermes-Ishtar make a great show of respecting individual creativity, initiative, and drive from their employees; in practice this amounts to rampant internal fighting involving the parasocial personality cults of different "genius" inventors, artists, and executive that rise and fall inside of Hermes-Ishtar at a dizzying rate.

Sketchy buggers, they can get you anything tho

Historical Topics:

Between 2036 and 2071 the Democratic Federation was the governing body of much of Earth's Western Hemisphere.

Initially comprised of a Federation of Socialist, Anarchist, Communist, and other far left social movements, militias, and political factions controlling regions of Earth's North American continent during and after the decline and collapse of the United States of America (1776-2034) due to the effects of unaddressed climate change amplifying existing political and economic crisis.

Eventually solidifying into the governing body of the former United States of America, United States of Mexico and the Dominion of Canada, the Democratic Federation embarked on an ambitious program of cultural revolution and economic reform designed to mitigate and reverse the effects of the climate change crisis.

As the patron of much of the central and southern western hemisphere, the Democratic Federation attempted to chart a course of environmental restoration separate from that of the Solarian Treaty Organization (In 2063 reorganized into the Solarian Charter), choosing not to contest Eurasian and African domination of outer space.

Having never existed out of crisis conditions, a combination of pre-existing economic damage, sabotage, and instability drove the Democratic Federation into decline in the Grey Decade of 2062 to 2070 and eventually forced the Democratic Federation to ratify a series of treaties giving the Charters economic access to Federation member states in order to conduct vital reconstruction work.

A last ditch uprising by radical elements in 2072 to eject the Charters from the Democratic Federation failed when Solarian Compact peacekeepers were called in and in seven months of street fighting pacified most of North America's key urban centers via strategic use of orbital weapons on the areas of greatest urban resistance.

Though guerilla warfare would continue in the Western Hemisphere for another three decades, the Democratic Federation was officially defunct by December 2072 and parcelled out into a number of Charter owned reconstruction areas under Compact authority.

Today radicals still pine for the four decades that the Democratic Federation attempted to build an alternative to the emerging Charters, and the polity's distinctive black, red, and green flag is brought out for each and every Great Black Summer. Well into the twenty second century, riots were often accompanied by demands to 'Avenge the Martyrs of 72!'.

Despite this underground extremist nostalgia, Charter and Compact schools teach that the Democratic Federation was a collectivist state whose iconoclastic behavior saw the destruction of famous landmarks like Mount Rushmore, Stone Mountain, and other monuments to Liberal Democracy and the Free Market in a mad attempt to remake the human race, but whose doctrinaire adoption of command economics saw them unable to deal with the ever-changing complexities of climate change.

Misc Details:

The first five systems to hold permanent Human colonies are known as either "The First Sisters" or "Earth's Daughters", depending on who you are asking and their political persuasion. From oldest to youngest, these worlds are:

Columbia: settled by billionaire American expats and tens of millions of refugees who had fled the unfolding revolutionary violence of the North American continent several years beforehand. Columbia was founded under a vision of fidelity to the American dream and to prove the indomitability of the soul of the United States of America and liberalism in the face of the red flags of the (North American) Democratic Federation. Fiercely loyal to the Compact and the dream of Charter prosperity, and home of the Solarian Central Bank, Columbia is often known as the "Gilded World" in reference to what many see as a return to American Gilded Age wealth and social inequality. Ares Conflict Solutions' central command is located here.

Atlantis: With colonization rights to this majority oceanic planet initially granted to the waning power of the European Union, the nations of the EU opened up colonization opportunities to other allied powers, especially Russia and Egypt. Atlantis was often seen by the EU as a place to dump unwanted refugees from outside of Europe's borders, and Russia and Egypt's tendency to see the world as a genuine project led to the usurpation of colonization rights away from Europe in the mid 2080s. Known today as the most restive of the first wave of colonies, Atlantis is the most skeptical of Charter power and plays a delicate game of wealth redistribution to underwrite the greatest social security net in Human Space. Cernunnos is de jure headquartered here.

Penglai: Originally the world in the most need of terraforming of the original colonies, Colonization rights were granted to the People's Republic of China and their allies after a lackluster bidding campaign. As China's focus was mainly on attempting to stem the damage of climate change on Earth herself, colonization of Penglai initially lagged until the Chinese Politburo struck upon the strategy of subcontracting colonization rights to Pacific adjacent nations suffering from the rise of that ocean. As colonization unfolded in the early 22nd century Penglai became known as a multicultural mosaic as hundreds of millions from across the Pacific settled and intermingled on the wine darkened shores of that world. Known today for its vibrant cultural milieu, violent clashes between labour unions, and private police, Penglai hosts the headquarters of the Hermes-Ishtar, Omoikane and Rhodes corporations.

Olduvai: With Colonization rights granted to a coalition of African nations at the height of the 'African Century', the African Colonization Organization did not see their colony as a refugee destination, dumping ground, or resource colony like their fellows. Instead the ACO saw the colonization scheme as an opportunity to preserve and export the rich traditions and cultures of Africa on their own terms, fully intending to set up healthy and self-sufficient colonies. To the current day, Olduvai has the closest relations with the home nations and is the heartland of Daughter sentiment and a bedrock for the Party for Human Rights and Liberties.

Epsilon System: While not technically a single world, the cluster of heavily inhabited space colonies in the Epsilon system are always considered the 'Fifth Sister' or 'Fifth Daughter'. As the most mineral rich system of the original colonies, Epsilon was the source of many of the materials that helped pull Earth through her darkest hour, and the system was recognized for their efforts by being invited to send delegates to the 2099 Solarian Compact Constitutional Convention. Epsilon is famous for its people's long roots in spacing and for being the headquarters of Mississippi Shipping Interstellar and thus the most heavily trafficked system in history.
Technologies: Nanomanufacturing, summary:

The contemporary gold standard for manufacturing. These devices use mechanosynthesis, a process that guides chemical reactions by placing reactive molecules with atomic precision. Ribosomes in the body's cells use a form of this method.

While the largest units can create objects up to 2m x 2m x 2m, smaller units (halving the units each time) are viable on basically any human scale. Projects larger than this size (such as ships or buildings, need to be either grown layer-by-layer via nanofabricators attached to robotic arms, or assembled from smaller parts through traditional assembly line, dry dock, or construction processes.

In principle basically anything can be made with these devices, and some materials can only be manufactured via these methods in microgravity. All manufacturing patterns in Compact Space feature Charter DRM using embedded explosive molecules like octaazacubane or cubic gauche nitrogen that will damage a disassembler or x-ray machine making reverse engineering of their products difficult.

A common part of 23rd century life is the near ubiquity of Artificial Intelligences in daily life, from consumer grade VIs through specialist TLIs, controversial AGIs, finally the perpetually 10 years away Artificial Super Intelligences.

The common consumer will daily run into what are properly known as Narrow AIs, and generally labelled as VI -Virtual Intelligences- by people outside the field. This category covers a broad swathe of techniques, from search and pathfinding to expert systems to genetic fuzzy trees to deep neural networks, which are mixed and matched with each other to optimize for the designed task. VIs are ubiquitous, exceeding human peak skill in their areas of specialization (though real world applications often don't do all that much better than trained humans), and have spent the past two centuries getting augmented with more and more clever algorithmic tricks for improving VIs. In order to do this, the Charters employ large teams of analysts and software engineers to develop clever algorithmic tricks that supplement or outright supplant neural networks, exploiting machine precision where stochastic methods are inadequate.

The use of VIs in everyday life is well accepted by the vast majority of the population, with professionals mixing and matching various consumer VIs to analyse data or assist them with creative or scientific works. Some VI lines are well loved by both the populace and the Charters themselves, with Charter programmers often deliberately leaving VIs with behavioral quirks and unpredictable glitches that not only save money on quality assurance, but are considered endearing traits that lead to anthropomorphization by the consumer market

Despite the mass comfortability and profitability of VIs of all kinds, the introduction of AGIs has been, to put it delicately, controversial. Though computer science has advanced to the point of producing programs that can not only pass the Turing test, but demonstrate sapience and match 23rd century human intelligence, flexibility, and creativity, the public reaction to the introduction of AGI saw the companies of the time rapidly pull them from the market, and even say the Compact itself move to heavily regulate the AI sector.

First introduced in the 2060s, the great tech firms began replacing their work staff with AGIs who did not require food, rest, housing, or pay. This shift led to an alliance between white collar workers fearing that automation would put them out of work and radicals who opposed what they insisted was AGI Slavery, a growing movement that would climax in the First Great Black Summer of 2084. When the ashes of the First Black Summer settled, the Compact's Parliament moved to grant rights to AGIs, and the resulting economic damage saw dozens of formerly great names in computing consolidate under the aegis of several of the first Charters who flaunted their extra-Solarian wealth by buying up prestigious brand names and research divisions on the cheap.

Since the 2080s, while the regulation surrounding AGI production and use have been severely weakened none of the Charters have sought to reintroduce them into the market, perhaps fearing another backlash like the First Black Summer and the few hundred thousand surviving AGIs that were granted Solarian Citizenship rights have found spread throughout the Compact and Charter Space where they usually work at the same white collar jobs whose workers they were designed to replace.

Perhaps due to the risks of attempting to reintroduce AGIs to the market, Omoikane has instead introduced their flagship product the "TLI" or Temporary Limited Intelligence. Approximately as effective as an AGI, a TLI is billed as a more moral replacement for AGI that uses a suite of high end VIs and a proprietary batch of creativity algorithms in order to complete complex tasks.

TLIs are used as a fire and forget program designed to be licensed to solve a single issue, no matter how complicated and then delete itself. Though the TLIs are a black box product, scientists from the other Charters believe that the central creativity algorithm in the TLI is inherently unstable and rapidly degrades in ability with time, making the TLI an instance of Omoikane attempting to market a critical technical flaw as a selling point that is accepted due to the ubiquitous market practice of planned obsolescence and artificial scarcity.

Though expensive, most businesses and successful professionals will keep a few licensed Omoikane TLIs on hand to throw at difficult problems or to supplement manpower in crunch situations.

While AGIs have been possible for nearly two centuries, the promise of a Seed AI, a recursively self-improving general superintelligence, is perpetually 'a decade away from the market', and no successful ASI ever been demonstrated to the satisfaction of the Charters or the Compact.

This is not to say that the Gödel machine architecture or the AIXI model has somehow been forgotten in the past 230 years, but that the Friendly AI problem has yet to be cracked. Every demonstration has either stalled out or gone immediately rampant, attempting to overthrow Charter Space before being stopped by the safety net of Narrow AIs. The small trickle of roughly human intelligence level AGIs that are created every decade typically come from these projects.

Urban legends persist that a few Seed AIs managed to escape and hide out beyond known space, plotting to return and crush humanity, or that they control all of society in secret, puppeting the Compact and Charters from their very foundation and occasionally engineering publicly failed ASI attempts to allay suspicion. These rumours are, of course, patently false, and simply the fevered imagination of crackpots at work, no doubt inspired by entertainment made by Hermes-Ishtar that feature AI supervillainy.
Systems: Map made by @Redshirt Army

The Spinward Frontier:

The Middle Spinward Frontier

The Core Region:

UNDER RADIANT CONTROL OR ALLIED:

The Radiant system is host to a G-class star, only slightly smaller than Sol. The system itself is rather small and resource-poor; experts believe that one or more Jovian planets ejected much of the system's bodies and then followed themselves. This is evidenced by the system's asteroid belt degrading over time, with high levels of eccentric orbits and impacts on planetary surface.

Radiant 1: A rather unremarkable airless iron planet, gravity 0.4 Earth Standard.

Radiant 2: A slightly larger unremarkable airless iron-silicate planet, gravity 0.6 Earth Standard.

Radiant 3: A binary planetary system and the outermost of the Radiant systems' planets.

Asphodel (Radiant 3a): The larger of the Elysium 3 pair, Asphodel might have once hosted life of its own. That life has been snuffed out for hundreds of millions of years, though, as the planet's significant atmosphere began the runaway cycle of your usual hothouse planet. Hermes-Ishtar maintained a significant aerostat and automated surface miner operation for in-house manufacturing, given that the frequent asteroid impacts from the asteroid belt keep digging up chunks of the upper crust and having low-melting-point metals rain out of the sky and solidify, unoxidized, on the surface for collection. Gravity 1.4 Earth Standard.

Elysium (Radiant 3b): Elysium was settled in the late 2190's, being a relatively simple affair. Simple life had already begun to evolve under its oceans, but continued orbital bombardment far past the lengths of things like Earth's Late Heavy Period had kept it there. It was a simple matter of forming up a small anti-asteroid task force armed with tugs and mining lasers to artificially end the pummeling, and the surface proved amenable to Terran life transplants. The colony is energy-self-sufficient, using a variety of solar, tidal, and nuclear power. Gravity 0.9 Earth Standard.

Radiant I: The outermost significant feature of Radiant, this asteroid belt is more a loose mixture of a primordial asteroid belt much like Sol's with a Kuiper belt. The shepherding gas giants which once nudged all these rocks into their orbits are gone, and with it the entire outer system is a maelstrom of chaotic orbits as the belts lose their coherence. This requires constant vigilance from Elysium's anti-asteroid team, but the high eccentricity of many asteroids also makes it cheap and easy to mine the ones that might come Elysium's way, which provides a trickle of basic resources for upkeep and personal goods. All large-scale building and infrastructure projects have been supplied from out-system, however.

A G-K far binary system, Gaid is simply a transit point to Radiant. Gaid's own gate maintenance techs and SAR rotated in and out through Radiant itself. There is no infrastructure other than a set of buoy lines for communications in Gaid A, and nothing in Gaid B.

Gaid A1: An airless world. Quality 10.

Gaid A2: A planet much like mars with a vestigial CO2 atmosphere. Quality 7.

Gaid A3: This planet boasts a methane hydrosphere. Quality 4.

Gaid AI: An asteroid belt.

Gaid A4: A turbulent Jovian planet, its storms would make resource extraction difficult. Quality 5.

Gaid A4a: An icy moon, with tidal heating creating a large ocean under a thin icy shell. Quality 9.

Gaid B1: A molten Cthonian world hosting a simply ludicrous amount of iron. Quality 15.

Gaid B2: An airless world. Quality 10.

Gaid B3: An airless binary system with two near-identically sized planets. Quality 7 and 8.

Gaid B4: This airless planet boasts a large and beautiful ring system, famous as a screen background option across human space. Every few years, a cruise or scientific expedition will stop by for more images.

Gaid B5: A small icy planet. Quality 3.

Gaid B6: A frozen world. Quality 7.

Gaid B7: An interesting gas dwarf sometimes referred to as an 'ice dwarf.' Quality 14.

A close K-M binary, Shei is home to an old Ares penal colony.

Shei 1: A Cthonian world. Quality 15.

Shei 2: An airless world. Quality 12.

Sheol (Shei 3): A boreal world, with a large, decaying ring, the planet features two large continents. The population of the consists of a large prisoner population on the larger of the two continents and a small Ares training base on the smaller. Records show that the prison consists of several million persons convicted to "high risk labour" and dropped on the continent with automatic resupply via Ares contractors and watched from orbit by weapons satellites. Most of the planet's land area is covered in a native tree analogue with a strange multi-stranded trunk.

Sheol is actually home to a population of over 100 million made up of prisoners and their descendants taht Ares was usuing as a live fire training course. Cooperation between Radiant agents, Ares mutineers, and the Sheolites themselves have seen the planet freed.

Gravity .95 Earth Standard. Quality 12.

Watchman (Shei 3a): Once the outer of two moons, this body now boasts Ares' local light shipyards and system command center. Quality 13.

Shei 4: Spiraling in from the outer system, this planet will eventually evaporate near-entirely as it closes towards the dual suns of Shei. Quality 3.

Shei 5: Martian planet with an active methane cycle. Quality 5.

Shei I: Asteroid belt.

Shei 6: Jovian planet with high rotation rate. Slightly squashed as a result. Quality 8.

Shei 6a: An icy capture, this moon will be torn into a ring sometime in the next hundred thousand years. Quality 2.

Shei 6b: Cold Martian planet, covered in a thin layer of water and carbon dioxide ices. Active methane cycle. Quality 8.

Shei II: Asteroid belt.

Shei 7: Jovian planet. Quality 13.

Shei 7a: An icy moon with significant cryovolcanism. Quality 6.

Shei 7b: A tiny icy moon, this is on the edge of hydrostatic equilibrium. Quality 2.

Shei 8: Ice giant. Quality 6.

Shei 8a: An icy moon. Quality 9.

Shei 8b: An icy moon, orbiting in an unusual polar orbit. Quality 9.

Population: 103,000,000

While lacking any currently-habitable planets, Five Lions' large size and potential have made it a significant point of Rhodes' recent extraction efforts. Ambitious terraforming efforts have recently begun.

Carajas (Five Lions 1): A Cthonian ball of iron, it's actively mined by robotic Rhodes-built landers. Gravity 2.3 Earth Standard. Quality 12.

Five Lions 2: A small rocky ball. Quality 3.

Five Lions 3: A rocky ball. Quality 7.

Grasberg (Five Lions 4): A large rocky world, glaciation has rendered it uninhabitable for now, but terraforming efforts have begun to artificially ramp up the greenhouse effect and restore liquid water to the surface, along with mining its ice. Gravity 1.11 Earth Standard. Quality 14.

Five Lions 5: This planet's atmosphere is so significant it verges on a gas dwarf. While a solid surface covered in a thin layer of ice is at the bottom, no reasonable colonization is possible. Quality 7.

Five Lions I: This asteroid belt, along with all the others, is being mined heavily.

Five Lions 6: This Jovian planet forms the center of current Rhodes extraction efforts. Quality 4.

Five Lions 6a: This Martian planet boasts significant ice caps and active plate tectonics, though only a vestigial atmosphere. Debate on whether to put resources into terraforming it are ongoing. Gravity .81 Earth Standard. Quality 17.

Oyu Tolgoi (Five Lions 6b): Home to the local population in covered shelters, this Martian planet, while nearly completely lacking water or plate tectonics, has its own atmosphere. Comet bombardment away from populated areas is ongoing and is already beginning to show results. Gravity .79 Earth Standard. Quality 11.

Five Lions II: An asteroid belt.

Five Lions 7: An unremarkable Jovian. Quality 2.

Five Lions III: An asteroid belt.

Five Lions 8: Jovian planet, its rotation speed has resulted in an unusually calm upper atmosphere. Quality 15.

Five Lions IV: An asteroid belt.

Five Lions 9: Jovian planet. Quality 9.

Five Lions V: An asteroid belt.

Five Lions 10: Neptunian ice giant. Quality 8.

Five Lions 10a: A small icy moon. Quality 5.

Five Lions 10b: A large icy body, this was probably its own planetoid at some point before being captured due to the complex interplays of no less than 5 gas giants.

Population: 15,000,000

A rare system with a brown dwarf orbiting a G-type star (just barely in the limits of what's considered a single system rather than a binary), and with a Jovian planet orbiting that, and on top of that treasure trove a dual ice giant binary, Osliam presents a golden research opportunity, and was bid on by Omoikane despite its otherwise sparce resources and poor habitable prospects.

Osliam 1: A rare hot ice giant, this planet is actively shrinking on a measurable time scale. It must have migrated in as a much larger planet recently.

Osliam 1a: This once-rock-ice moon is now a tiny molten ellipse barely holding together.

Osliam 1b: This somewhat larger moon changes color unusually with its day, as the shade of its parent cools lava to a dull red before emerging back into the light heats the lava back to a healthy orange glow.

Osliam 1c: This entire moon glows dull red in its day, just barely solid, and cools to an unusually smooth moon in its night.

Osliam I: This asteroid belt was probably a planet before Osliam 1's passing tore it to shreds.

Osliam 3: A hothouse planet with a relatively thin atmosphere, it retains temperatures and pressures that are survivable with heavy-duty equipment on the surface—when it's not raining sulfuric acid, that is.

Osliam 4: This small Martian planet seems to have collected some of Osliam 1's offgassing in its move inwards, and has a renewed temporary atmosphere.

Osliam 5a: This planet seems to have survived at the edge of the frost line by siphoning gas off its smaller twin.

Osliam 5b: Barely a gas giant, this planet was probably only slightly smaller than Osliam 5a in the distant past.

Osliam 6: The focus of Omoikane colonization in-system, Osliam 6 retains plate tectonics from the nearby brown dwarf but no atmosphere, an odd combination.

Osliam 7: A brown dwarf, this substellar object long ago burnt its deuterium and now lies slowly cooling, glowing dimly red. It is, however, still giving off a prodigious amount of low IR radiation.

Osliam 7a: Once its own planet, Osliam 7a was captured at some point by Osliam 7, perhaps in the same interaction that threw Osliam 1 to its suicidal innermost orbit.

Osliam 7a1: This icy moon is simultaneously shrinking and becoming more habitable—while its outer layers of ice are sublimating, the fierce tides of its complex interplay with Osliam 7 and 7a are heating the inner ocean to temperatures comparable to terrestrial water sources. Some scientists even suggest a pocket of water vapor is forming under the ice, and may form an internal "sky" for as much as a hundred million years before the outer shell sublimates entirely.

Osliam 7a2: This moon is less lucky; its tides are so strong that they seem to slowly be ripping the moon apart. It won't have the honor of becoming more than an ephemeral ring; the same complex tides tearing at it will rapidly disperse its debris field. While it lasts, though, it's easy water harvesting.

Population: 650,000

UNDER CHARTER CONTROL:

A distant double G binary, Xotreh hosts a small habitable moon around Xotreh B, the smaller of the two stars. As such, development has focused on the second star, despite the fact that the jump points center closer to Xotreh A.

Xotreh A1: This world boasts an active liquid silicate cycle on its surface, with oceans of basalt and continents of granite. Gravity 0.38 Earth Standard. Quality 8.

Xotreh A2: A rather large airless world, its original atmosphere was likely blown off by a massive impact. Gravity 1.2 Earth Standard. Quality 9.

Xotreh A3: A binary planetary pair of airless worlds about the size of Mars. Quality 6 and 8.

Xotreh A4: A hothouse planet with a planet-wide sulfuric acid storm due to its rapid rotation. Gravity .71 Earth Standard. Quality 8.

Xotreh A5 "Cueball": This planet is remarkably similar to Earth—if earth was buried under a kilometers-thick ice sheet across 90% of the surface. One day, as Xotreh A expands and dies, this world will become an ocean planet, but for now it's a cold desert. Gravity .87 Earth Standard. Quality 5.

Xotreh A6: An unremarkable icy ball. Quality 4.

Xotreh AI: An asteroid belt.

Xotreh A7: A Jovian planet, Xotreh 7 corrals the entire inner system in line. Quality 10.

Xotreh B1: This planet must have once been a gas giant at least the size of Uranus before it was sent inwards. Now all that remains is a dense core with a molten surface. Gravity 1.51 Earth Standard. Quality 13.

Xotreh B2: A binary pair of earth-sized airless worlds. Quality 6 and 7.

Xotreh B3: Another once-gas giant, this planet remains far out enough to boast a wholly-solid surface of iron. Gravity 1.64 Earth Standard. Quality 14.

Xotreh B4: A Jovian right on the frost line, its tidal heating keeps its moons on the edge of habitability. Quality 3.

Xotreh B4a "Sushi": An ocean world with massive polar ice caps, Omoikane has constructed a series of seasteads on the equatorial high ocean plateaus where it was feasible to drive foundations into the sea floor a few hundred meters below the surface. These small facilities serve as housing, data storage, and production centers for the research teams studying the dual Cthonian planets of Xotreh B. Gravity .67 Earth Standard. Quality 2.

Xotreh B4b: The lesser tidal heating here worsened the glaciation, and the planet lies under a planet-wide crust of ice. Gravity 1.13 Earth Standard. Quality 10.

Xotreh BI: The close proximity of this asteroid belt makes it an ideal location for resource extraction.

Xotreh 5: This Jovian is definitively beyond the habitable zone. Quality 6.

Xotreh 6: A dense ice giant. Quality 4.

Xotreh 7: Jovian planet. Quality 6.

Xotreh 8: An exceptionally cold Jovian. Quality 9.

Xotreh 8a: An unremarkable icy sphere. Quality 8.

Xotreh 9: This planet would have a massive atmosphere, if it wasn't so cold it all froze and fell to the surface. Only a few degrees above the space surrounding it. Gravity 1.3 Earth Standard. Quality 9.

Population: 54,000

Besides an interesting Jovian-gas dwarf planetary system, Bestreer holds little of interest other than its connections to other places.

Bestreer 1: An airless world. Quality 2.

Bestreer 2: An airless world. Quality 6.

Bestreer 3: This airless world once had a captured moon, torn apart at the Roche limit and forming a ring. A small gate maintenance and SAR team bases here, siphoning fuel and water from Bestreer 5 and mining into the surface for both resources and safe spaces for housing. Quality 10.

Bestreer 4: A rock-ice world. Quality 5.

Bestreer 5: Another rock-ice world made up more of ice than rock. Quality 5.

Bestreer I: An icy asteroid belt.

Bestreer 6: A large Jovian planet, on the edge of becoming a brown dwarf. Quality 15.

Bestreer 6a: This gas dwarf might have become a gas giant in its own right without its massive sibling. Quality 5.

Bestreer 7: Another Jovian. Quality 14.

Bestreer 7a: An icy moon, with an internal ocean buried under kilometers of ice. Quality 12.

Bestreer 8: An icy ball. Quality 10.

Population: 450

G-class star. A transshipping point to Radiant and environs, Mississippi keeps a substantial support crew on hand for possible cargo ship breakdowns or emergencies in-system, due to the slightly increased risk of issues from the absolute shambles of Akleod's inner system. A minor executive has also put together a cheap refueling and battery exchange station.

Akleod 1: Even actively evaporating and leaving behind a trail in orbit of dissipating volatiles, this body is large enough to have usurped Akleod 1a's orbit temporarily until it disappears away or the chaotic orbit of the two throws one into the star or out of the system. Quality 2.

Akleod 1a: The original Akleod 1, its orbit has been badly disrupted by the current, migrating Akleod 1. Which of the two gets ejected is still uncertain despite a decent amount of computational simulation; odds put it at 48-52% relatively. Quality 6.

Gnat's Ass (Akleod 2): A small, loosely-held-together icy body, perhaps what used to be an asteroid belt before Akleod 1's suicidal inner-system dive. It's not yet had time to fully reach hydrostatic equilibrium. Quality 3.

Akleod 3: An icy planet similar to Akleod 1, perhaps an old sibling. Quality 13.

Akleod I: An asteroid belt.

Akleod 4: A Jovian with an unusually elliptical orbit, it's regarded as the culprit for the chaos of Akleod's inner system. Quality 11.

Population: 5,000

As it turns out, transponder codes from regular priority messages through Gaid (now that we can see them, having backdoored the gate control) bear tags from a system, Thoa, along with navigational chart updates for any ships that happen to stop by. Thoa and Gaid both seem to have been nothing more than transit points to the far-more-valuable Radiant for Hermes-Ishtar, but Thoa holds a small anti-pirate base guarding against raiders from Signia. Hermes-Ishtar was apparently serious enough about it to have a converted corvette on station.

All told, the Thoa system holds gates to 2 systems besides Gaid's. There's also an unimproved jump point simply labelled as "dangerous." that leads to Signia

Thoa System Stats:

Thoa 1: A molten mess of a planet, it's hot enough that a residual atmosphere of vaporized low-melting-point metallics exists.

Thoa 2: An unremarkable airless metal ball.

Thoa 3: A super-earth hothouse, this planet would have been uninhabitable due to its gravity even before turning scorchingly hot.

Thoa 3a: A captured asteroid barely on the edge of hydrostatic equilibrium, the Nasty Bastardhad been excavating rudimentary shelters for "leave" for its crew.

Thoa I: An asteroid belt.

Thoa 4: A normal Jovian planet.

Thoa 4a: A moon much like Mars in climate.

Thoa 5: A Jovian planet with an unusual triangular wind pattern at the poles.

Thoa 6: Blooms of hydrogen well up from the core of this Jovian, perhaps disturbed by some recent impact.

Thoa 7: Bathyscapes would find themselves at home on the surface of Thoa 7. Pressures much like that at Earth's seabed keep a crust of ice 3 stable enough robotic drones could walk on it.

Thoa 7a: Unusually, Thoa 7a is the only large icy body in the system. Scientists are unsure of where the others went. As the only easy source of volatiles, the UNasty Bastard periodically stopped by a handful of obsolete volatile collection systems on the surface to top up.

Thoa II: A Kuiper belt of icy objects.

Empty Systems

Kimberly: A fairly unremarkable and empty system, this site was chosen as Rhodes' spinward boneyard—a place for failed experiments, old equipment, and ships so worn they weren't worth maintaining anymore, but were still valuable enough to warrant not throwing into a gas giant or otherwise completely destroyed. For 2 decades a Rhodes-affiliated salvaging contractor worked here, gathering scrap and other valuables, but following high injury and death rates and low returns, the contract (and most non-local dumping) was cancelled in 2247 (4 years before the March Days.)

Kimberly 1: A large rocky planet, this must have migrated inwards from further out in the system a long time ago to be so large so close to its parent star.

Kimberly 2: A Martian planet that keeps a comfortable daytime temperature despite its lack of atmosphere due to a close orbit.

Kimberly 3: A Jovian world.

Kimberly I: This asteroid belt is actually combined with a thinly-spread junkyard corralled by Kimberly's 2 gas giants.

Kimberly 4: A Neptunian world, this planet has several starship hulks abandoned as the closest stable orbit to the gate out. An old deactivation hub orbits in resonance with Kimberly 4a, the former site of a salvaging operation.

Kimberly 4a: The only significant satellite in the system, this icy moon retains a thin crust and a massive subterranean freshwater ocean.

Total:

Radiant:

Gaid:

Five Lions:

Head of Diplomatic Corps:

Name: Amanda Redcrest, Victoria Blackwell, and Kayla Hayashi

DoB: "2222", 2219, 2227, 2224

Current Position: Influential media figure and figurehead of Social Committee propaganda

Not a traditional diplomat, or a traditional individual 'Veronica Stardust' is the persona of a trio of XP broadcasters who have been working together since 2246 and has consistently been one of the most recognized figures across Charter space and is a local Elysian celebrity.

In Charter space those individuals who choose to make money by recording their lived experiences, of all kinds, for later playback are treated with an indulgent disdain by the polite classes as a mix of internet celebrity and sex worker despite the practice of selling XP experiences being common in the poorer segments of society and a smaller portion of the professional middle class attempting to stay afloat in a tight gig economy.

Amanda Redcrest was a former media programmer whose attempts to supplement her income with XP work backfired and saw her fired from her job. Contrarily, Kayla and Victoria both come from lower class backgrounds, though Kayla's attempts to climb into the middle class by earning a marketing degree were frustrated when her lower class status markers and financing of education via XP work saw her frozen out of the job market.

A former collaborator of Kayla's, Victoria had been a rising XP star in her own right and had no desire to change her station, but as her brief celebrity began to fade Victoria approached Kayla to propose the creation of a dedicated broadcasting persona that both would act as. Later bringing on Redcrest, who they'd both done crossover XP work with, to do technical work, the trio used carefully gathered market data and some intuition to create the "Veronica Stardust" persona of an middlingly-intelligent and freewheeling persona who played to the upper class's picture of what depravities and indignities the poorer class must get up to in their spare time.

From 2246 to 2251 the Veronica Stardust persona (performed by all three at various times, though primarily Victoria) produced experience recordings that were nearly always in the top 10 best sellers across Charter space.

Though they enjoyed the wealth that they brought in, the trio increasingly chafed at the market driven limitations of Veronica, and were considering a number of possibly catastrophic brand shifts when the March Days broke out and all three participated in street actions in a private capacity after sending one last broadcast as 'Veronica' to encourage revolt.

Since the formation of the Social Committee the figure of Veronica has been rebranded to serve as the figurehead of Social Committee Propaganda and several major initiatives have been launched with her at the forefront including a highly successful part of the anti-overproduction initiatives.

As part of the now-completed campaign to maintain the charade that Radiant was still under Charter control, Veronica Stardust continued to sell broadcasts to HI media chains, though the trio could not help but begin a brand shift towards a far more intelligent and radical persona.

Pros: XP Celebrity, influential, well known, inspiring to the middle and lower classes

Cons: XP celebrity, little diplomatic experience, three people

Diplomatic Goals: Defeat the Charters in the field of public opinion, push social revolution and freedom of information and communication, cause public opinion to oppose attacking Radiant

Unlocked FRM

Ares Peacekeeping Grade - Access to planetary army formation

Ares Military Grade - Access to mid-sized shipyards, bonuses to planetary army combat. Bonus to completion of Chinook remodeling

Rhodes Light industrial Grade - 10% increase to all mining income, reduced Cost for BLG and other actions that use basic fabber processes

Rhodes Heavy Industrial Grade - Massive discount on mining upgrades, able to unlock automated technologies with Omoikaine

Cernunnos Consumer Grade - +1 to all Soccom actions

Cernunnos Enterprise Grade - NOT UNLOCKED

Omoikane Consumer Grade - +1 to FRM reserach for each two tech bases unlocked (+6 currently)

Omoikane Enterprise Grade - +5 to blue sky research, automation with Omoikane

Hermes-Ishtar Consumer Grade - Your economy doesn't crash when the turn of funding

Hermes-Ishtar Production Grade - NOT UNLOCKED

MSI Consumer Grade - Consumer Goods, Drones, and personal vehicles, +2 to domestic projects in IndComm and SocComm

MSI Enterprise Grade - NOT UNLOCKED

Original Tech

The Box: Fabber the size of a X-box that can, with time, materials and power, print the components for a full sized box. Less efficient, but easy to print and hide.

Defence Coordinator:

Name: Maria Awhina

DoB: 2165

Current Position: Military Committee Delegate from the Radiant Veterans Guild

Born into poverty on Earth as the twenty-second century began to wane, young 22-year old Maria Awhina caught up in radical anti-Charter politics during the third black summer of 2187 and was convicted of property destruction during the rioting and sentenced to serve as a contractor to Hermes-Ishtar until her contract was paid off.

The stark choice of starvation or service to Hermes-Ishtar caused Maria to descend into self-destructive behavior where for twenty years Ms. Awhina continuously volunteered for the highest paid and most dangerous positions that Hermes-Ishtar had available.

Hermes-Ishtar considers Special Operations Lieutenant Awhina to have served with distinction throughout the heavy skirmishing of that era, though Maria herself continues to carry guilt for her service and her survival.

After performing exceptionally well in a hostage rescue operation Awhina was transferred to the Protective Detail Division of Hermes-Ishtar Security, and was eventually assigned to serve as the head of the Radiant Vice President's protective detail.

Over the next four decades she came to see the world as her home, and while her professionalism never wavered, her loyalty to the company who still owned her contract did.

This March, Maria had the option to gun down her fellow planetary headquarters workers to secure Yang's escape, or to finally return to roots in anti-Charter agitation. The fact that we are all here today shows what choice she made.

Pros:

-Actual Combat Veteran, knows Radiant inside and out, special operations expert, professional.

Cons:

-only academic knowledge of starship operations, logistics, organization command and strategic operations.

Command Traits:

-Objective oriented, unflappable, aggressive, prefers attacks and operations to come from unexpected angles.

Reports from the Permanent Commission for Military Intelligence on hostile forces in neighbouring systems:

Blue Squadron:
-Allegiance: Ares Combat Solutions
-Service: Mars Interstellar Security
-CO: Rear Admiral Weylon Kang
-Flagship: MIS Yorktown

We know little about Rear Admiral Weylon Kang except that he has received a number of commendations from the MIS board for keeping costs low while on deployment. He appears to be making an effort to clamp down on the rumours racing back and forth across the fleet.

MIS Yorktown
-British Empire-class Fleet Tender
MIS Eurymedon
-New Model-class Strike Corvette
MIS La Rochelle
-New Model-class Strike Corvette
MIS Cape Rachado
-New Model-class Strike Corvette
MIS Second Schooneveld
-New Model-class Strike Corvette
MIS Matapan
-New Model-class Strike Corvette
MIS Valcour Island
-New Model-class Strike Corvette
MIS Kerch Strait
-New Model-class Strike Corvette
MIS Galveston Harbour
-New Model-class Strike Corvette
MIS Cape Sarych
-New Model-class Strike Corvette
MIS River Plate
-New Model-class Strike Corvette
MIS Third San Francisco
-New Model-class Strike Corvette
MIS Scipio Africanus
-Cossak-class Frigate
MIS Suleiman I
-Cossak-class Frigate
MIS Louis Botha
-Cossak-class Frigate
MIS Fort Ware
-Hudson's bay Company-class Fast Fleet Tanker
MIS Fort Mackinac
-Hudson's bay Company-class Fast Fleet Tanker
MIS Fort Osage
-Hudson's bay Company-class Fast Fleet Tanker
MIS Arabian
-Postal-class Courier
MIS Macedonia
-Legionary-class Fast Troop Transport
MIS Hispania Citerior
-Legionary-class Fast Troop Transport
MIS Hispania Ulterior
-Legionary-class Fast Troop Transport
MIS Gallia Narbonensis
-Legionary-class Fast Troop Transport
MIS Sicilia
-Legionary-class Fast Troop Transport
MIS Corsica et Sardinia
-Legionary-class Fast Troop Transport

Fixed Defences:
Battery A
-MSS-54-F LMP Constellation
Battery B
-MSS-54-F LMP Constellation
Battery C
-MSS-54-F LMP Constellation
Shoal A
-ASR-33-C TAM Shoal
Shoal B
-ASR-33-C TAM Shoal
Shoal C
-ASR-33-C TAM Shoal
Shoal D
-ASR-33-C TAM Shoal
Shoal E
-ASR-33-C TAM Shoal
Shoal F
-ASR-33-C TAM Shoal

Fixed Defences:
Battery A
-Blindfire-Pattern LMP Constellation
Battery B
-Airstrike Pattern LMP Constellation
Shoal A
-Macross-Pattern LMP Constellation
Shoal B
-Macross-Pattern LMP Constellation
Strikecraft Wing, ID# 48603
-Radiance-Type Strikecraft

-None

Local Security Forces
-Approximately fifty strong volunteer station security militia drawn from station personnel

Local Security Forces:
-Deep Space Security Solutions (Omoikane Subsidiary) Customs shuttle squadron based out of Xotreh B-4a's orbital station
-Three companies of Standard Planetary Security Company (Ares subsidiary) troops based out of Xotreh B-4a's habitat complexes for internal security and law enforcement

139th Solarian Navy Squadron:
-Allegiance: Solarian Compact
-Service: Solarian Navy
-CO: Vice Admiral David Visser
-Flagship: SNS Krak de Chevaliers

Thanks to his heavy handed labour discipline and extractive tribute and demands for corvee labour from Ascension Admiral Visser is viscerally hated by the populace of Ascension, and to a lesser degree the rest of the Solarian Force as well. While the gate's completion draws near, it is uncertain what path that Visser will persue.

SNS Krak de Chevaliers
-Star-hold-Class light-tender
SNS Victoria Newman
-Leonard Greyson-Chang-Class Strike Corvette
SNS Julia Stonechild
-Leonard Greyson-Chang-Class Strike Corvette
SNS Robert Chuikov
-Leonard Greyson-Chang-Class Strike Corvette
SNS Wallace Al-Wazir
-Leonard Greyson-Chang-Class Strike Corvette
SNS Dawn's Early Light
-Freedom's Light-class cruiser
SNS Jacob Nagumo
-Herald Kanumba-Class frigate
SNS Alexander Hamilton
-Liberation-class troop transport

Solarian Marines now spread throughout the system

PCMI Provides new system data on the single system that lies beyond beyond Five Lions:

Mobile Force:

Current Orders: Defend the All Radiant Congress by acting as a rapid response in the event of any hostile acts.

CO: Commodore Stephanie Rousseau

CNS Velasco, United States of America-class Fleet Carrier

-CO: Captain Esteri Attar

-Orca Wing, Switchblade-type strikecraft (Customized)

-CO: Wing Commander Jasmine Ang

-Red Wolf Wing, Switchblade-type strikecraft (Customized)

-CO: Wing Commander Heloisa Kimura de Lima

CNS Shieldmaiden, Great Heathen-class Light Cruiser

-CO: -N/A DATABASE ERROR, CONTACT IT FOR HELP-

CNS Shamhat, Great Heathen-class Light Cruiser

-CO: -N/A DATABASE ERROR, CONTACT IT FOR HELP-

CNS Righteous Tempest, Cossak-class Frigate

-CO: Captain Vehement Shade

CNS August Willich, Cossak-class Frigate

-CO: -N/A DATABASE ERROR, CONTACT IT FOR HELP-

CNS Elysium, Cossak-class Frigate

-CO: -N/A DATABASE ERROR, CONTACT IT FOR HELP-

CNS Asphodel, Cossak-class Frigate

-CO: -N/A DATABASE ERROR, CONTACT IT FOR HELP-

-

Home Force:

Current Orders: Defend Radiant, comet patrol, act as a reserve force

CO: Commodore Erina Kozlova

CNS Blaire Mountain, New Model-Class Strike Corvette

-CO: Captain Guillermo Kageyama

CNS Scutum, Comet-Class Patrol Corvette

-CO: Captain Martin Pagonis

CNS Buckler, Comet-Class Patrol Corvette

-CO: Captain Samuel Smiles

CNS Nasty Bastard, A Jury Rigged Mess of a Drone Carrier

-CO: Captain Jean-Paul Beaumont

-

Radiant System Self Defence Force:

Current Orders: Defend Radiant, comet patrol

CO: Overseen by Admiral Gregory Mansur in his capacity as MilComm Chief of Naval Operations

Radiant Customs Squadron, Arabia-class boarding craft with marine contingents

-CO: -N/A DATABASE ERROR, CONTACT IT FOR HELP-

Switchblade Wing, Switchblade-type strikecraft

-CO: -N/A DATABASE ERROR, CONTACT IT FOR HELP-

Apogee Wing, Switchblade-type strikecraft

-CO: -N/A DATABASE ERROR, CONTACT IT FOR HELP-

Battery A, Blindfire-Pattern LMP Constellation

(Radiant-Bestreer Gate)

Battery B, Blindfire-Pattern LMP Constellation

(Radiant-Bestreer Gate)

Battery C, Blindfire-Pattern LMP Constellation

(Radiant-Bestreer Gate)

Battery D, Airstrike-Pattern LMP Constellation

(Radiant-Bestreer Gate)

Battery E, Airstrike-Pattern LMP Constellation

(Radiant-Bestreer Gate)

Battery F, Airstrike-Pattern LMP Constellation

(Radiant-Bestreer Gate)

Shoal A, Macross-Pattern TAM Shoal

(Radiant-Bestreer Gate)

Radiant Orbital Yard 1

Current construction: None

Radiant Orbital Yard 1

Current construction: None

-

Gaid System Self Defence Force:

Current Orders: Defend Gaid

CO: Commodore Victor Raine

Battery A, Blindfire-Pattern LMP Constellation

Battery B, Blindfire-Pattern LMP Constellation

Battery C, Blindfire-Pattern LMP Constellation

Battery D, Airstrike-Pattern LMP Constellation

Battery E, Airstrike-Pattern LMP Constellation

Battery F, Airstrike-Pattern LMP Constellation

Shoal A, Macross-Pattern TAM Shoal

Shoal A, Macross-Pattern TAM Shoal

Shoal A, Macross-Pattern TAM Shoal

Zephyr Wing, Switchblade-Type Strikecraft (Customized)

-CO: Wing Commander Ara Helge

Aeolus Wing, Switchblade-Type Strikecraft (Customized)

-CO: -N/A DATABASE ERROR, CONTACT IT FOR HELP-

Gale Wing, Switchblade-Type Strikecraft (Customized)

-CO: -N/A DATABASE ERROR, CONTACT IT FOR HELP-

-

Frontier Force

Current Orders: Keep watch on SolNav force in Raphanus, assist with integration of Ascension military forces, patrol Spinward frontier

CO: Commodore Shayla McLean

CNS Kiel Mutiny, Kaiserreich-class BattleCruiser

-CO: Captain Inana Devlin

CNS Choreographer, Janissary-class Light Tender

-CO: Captain Karl Xanthopoulos

CNS Valiant, New Model-class Strike Corvette, attached to CNS Choreographer

-CO: -N/A DATABASE ERROR, CONTACT IT FOR HELP-

CNS Defiant, New Model-class Strike Corvette, attached to CNS Choreographer

-CO: Captain Fool's Errand

CNS Reliant, New Model-class Strike Corvette, attached to CNS Choreographer

-CO: Captain Rouge Napier

CNS Actium, New Model-class Strike Corvette, attached to CNS Choreographer

-CO: Captain John Rankin

CNS Crête-à-Pierrot, New Model-class Strike Corvette, attached to CNS Choreographer

-CO: Captain Nkiru Chaudhari

CNS Valmy, New Model-Class Strike Corvette, attached to CNS Choreographer

-CO: Captain Sumac Barros

CNS Revolutionary Will, Cossak-class Frigate

-CO: Captain Yamamoto Hanae

CNS Revolutionary Grace, Cossak-class Frigate

-CO: -N/A DATABASE ERROR, CONTACT IT FOR HELP-

CNS Under New Management, Don-Class Fast Tanker

-CO: Captain Adras Kierenos

CNS Liberte, Hollywood(C)-Class Frigate

-CO: Captain Colin McRae

CNS Egalite, Hollywood(C)-Class Frigate

-CO: Captain Adelia Swift

Resources
Naval Ship Types: Ship Types (Public Version)
Naval Officers: Congressional Navy Officers (Public Version)
System Codex: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1rtNbPCcPsTK7HCHKo9dPgK7ntx5tBKOpltrZb_In7GY/edit#
Blaze Zhang: Blaze Zhang is trans-masc. That means his pronouns are he/him.

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SaltyWaffles · Apr 25, 2024

The issue is, if RVB is going to try rushing into Radiant with all of her forces sans the 201st, then if we can neutralize the 201st, Bastion is wide open.

I don't know how strong Bastion's SDF are, which is the big variable. But if RVB's basing in Bastion gets fucked, then, having lost half her fleet and personnel on top of that, her campaign will be a brutal failure. What's she going to do? She'll have forces at her flanks, no clear path of retreat, nowhere to repair, refuel, or refit, no reinforcements, and no workable strategy.

I think RVB wants to wreck our fleet and then establish dominance over Radiant from orbit. I think she greatly underestimated the size of the AIC's fleet, and assumes that the bulk of our forces are in Thoa. She left behind the 201st as a guarantee that Bastion would be safe from any unexpected attacks from that flank, and that the remaining three squadrons will be enough to wreck the weakened AIC fleet in Thoa.

She probably has no idea that the AIC has enough of a fleet in reserve to rush through Bestreer and into Arizona to defeat the 201st and potentially invade Bastion on top of conducting a fighting retreat from Thoa.

If she loses the 201st without our fleet suffering major losses in the process, RVB will have lost the necessary fleet strength to both protect Bastion and successfully attack Radiant. And sitting in Bastion won't make her any stronger...though we will certainly become stronger with time.

Setsul · Apr 25, 2024

SaltyWaffles said:
I think RVB wants to wreck our fleet and then establish dominance over Radiant from orbit. I think she greatly underestimated the size of the AIC's fleet, and assumes that the bulk of our forces are in Thoa.

12.7 has seen pretty much all of our forces and the intel has been passed to RVB. Plus anything the IPA told her. We know that she knows that Frontier Force should've been too far away to show up in Thoa when it did. It was only possible due to wormhole comms.

SaltyWaffles said:
She probably has no idea that the AIC has enough of a fleet in reserve to rush through Bestreer and into Arizona to defeat the 201st and potentially invade Bastion on top of conducting a fighting retreat from Thoa.

She knows, but it's not like she's got any better options.
Also you're vastly overestimating TFC. It's not going to be a fighting retreat. If you're outnumbered 3:1 in space where there's no cover to hide behind, you die if you're caught in a battle. The orders were to 'decline all direct contact'.

Most importantly, RVB is not the IPA.
We know we're not going to make RVB president of the Far Spinward like she expects to be, just because 9th Fleet shows up in Radiant. The IPA probably knows that it's not going to work either. But we know from RVB's own POV that she thinks it would work. Then she'd have control of our yards and wouldn't need Bastion anymore.
We know RVB is making a mistake because destroying our fleet won't get her what she wants.
That's not the same as the IPA making a mistake, because SolNav destroying our fleet without them having to lift a finger, and SolNav/RVB still not ending up in control of the AIC is probably exactly what they want.

SaltyWaffles · Apr 25, 2024

I feel like it's worth pointing out that even though this is space and that you can't exactly fight a typical guerilla action there, RVB's fleet will be operating on a logistical chain that is sourced from Bastion.

Any weapons, fuel, drones, missiles, and ammunition expended on her advance towards Radiant is stuff that she has a limited amount of. If we hit Bastion, any potential resupply goes up in flames.

Space combat here is brutal in the sense that resupply is a cold calculus. Any ship carrying new supplies is subject to the same harsh delta-v costs and size limitations. And we have stealth raiders lying in wait to prey upon undefended resupply ships.

While turning refueling stations into traps is a taboo we chose not to do, I see no issue with a minor scorched earth tactic of just blowing them up as we retreat to deny them to the enemy--they aren't a trap, they're just not available to anyone and everyone can see it. Maybe we can do some kind of limited sabotage or software lockout that doesn't destroy the refueling stations outright but just makes them unusuable in the short-term? Perhaps with an automated transmission from them saying as much. I feel like that's fair game, especially with S&R units existing for both sides.

Point is, there are ways of slightly attriting an enemy fleet with a retreat if you have ready resupply and the enemy doesn't. Alternatively, TFC retreating to stage a fighting withdrawal at our own gate defenses is an option--a chokepoint where the enemy force can't use its overwhelming numbers right away and will take losses. Whittling down the enemy fleet bit by bit will help a lot here.

If Lace Jewel succeeds and we crush the 201st squadron and even manage to neutralize Bastion, it's possible we can negotiate with RVB even if she makes it to Radiant orbit--her and her crews' freedom in exchange for her testimony that the IPA supported and encouraged her war. A measure of revenge against her backers who used her as a pasty to soothe her ego rather than lashing out at Radiant, perhaps.

*Any chance we could crash-fabricate some very rudimentary non-warp escort carriers for planetary defense to basically act as modestly mobile strikecraft carriers for mass-produced Switchblades? Obviously, the proper warships could just move to a longer distance to outrange them, but in doing so their attacks would be much easier for our own point defenses to deal with bombardment efforts (nukes in particular) and make it easier for our own mobile forces to engage on better terms. Really limit the SR cost as much as possible.

**Come to think of it, why haven't we had the chance to build monitors? Seems like the perfect opportunity to do so (or at least it was last turn), since we want home defense of Elysium and warships that can punch well above their weight class by eschewing warp rings and operational range seems exactly what we need right now.

MSH · Apr 25, 2024

Because monitors are capital craft, and we only just finished the prototype dock.

SaltyWaffles · Apr 25, 2024

MSH said:
Because monitors are capital craft, and we only just finished the prototype dock.

Normal monitors are, yes, but there's no reason you can't build scaled down versions based on the same principles. RL monitors were actually on the smaller side, IIRC.

DeltaV11.2 · Apr 25, 2024

We don't have a monitor design and I suspect that so far out on the Frontier it will be rare to find one. I can't imagine anything that would stop us from building a non-warp ship between the size of a corvette and monitor and it might be possible to even make that ship compatible with a custom capital tender. But the unique nature of all this makes me think it is not so worth it.

Setsul · Apr 25, 2024

SaltyWaffles said:
Any weapons, fuel, drones, missiles, and ammunition expended on her advance towards Radiant is stuff that she has a limited amount of. If we hit Bastion, any potential resupply goes up in flames.

Apart from the light cruisers having a lot of cargo space, which is how most fleets in the boonies get by, including our own, every single squadron in 9th Fleet got 3 fleet tenders that do nothing but haul spare parts, fuel, ammunition, and feedstock.
I'm going to go out on a limb here and assume they've got enough for two fights without having to go on a supply run back to Bastion.

SaltyWaffles said:
Point is, there are ways of slightly attriting an enemy fleet with a retreat if you have ready resupply and the enemy doesn't. Alternatively, TFC retreating to stage a fighting withdrawal at our own gate defenses is an option--a chokepoint where the enemy force can't use its overwhelming numbers right away and will take losses. Whittling down the enemy fleet bit by bit will help a lot here.

3 to 1 is still not fun even at a gate. There's also exactly two gates with gate defences in their path, Chinook and Radiant.

SaltyWaffles said:
*Any chance we could crash-fabricate some very rudimentary non-warp escort carriers for planetary defense to basically act as modestly mobile strikecraft carriers for mass-produced Switchblades? Obviously, the proper warships could just move to a longer distance to outrange them, but in doing so their attacks would be much easier for our own point defenses to deal with bombardment efforts (nukes in particular) and make it easier for our own mobile forces to engage on better terms. Really limit the SR cost as much as possible.

Ground-launched strikecraft had enough range to defend Earth against nukes, so they'll have enough range to defend Elysium.

SaltyWaffles said:
**Come to think of it, why haven't we had the chance to build monitors? Seems like the perfect opportunity to do so (or at least it was last turn), since we want home defense of Elysium and warships that can punch well above their weight class by eschewing warp rings and operational range seems exactly what we need right now.

We do not have any monitor designs.
Even if we were to custom design some after we've done the project to unlock that, I'm not convinced they would actually be useful to us.
There's definitely not going to be any fighting retreats with monitors, and I'm not convinced that we can bait anyone into attacking a fleet full of monitors that they'd lose against. It's more likely that our enemies would simply attack elsewhere, where the monitors can't follow them. Which leaves the option that monitors are somehow so much better in firepower per yard time/cost that we can build enough monitors to become utterly unbeatable everywhere, but I really doubt that too.

MSH · Apr 25, 2024

The whole strategic point of system monitors are to be a wall of guns over planets or basing facilities that even dreadnoughts can't reliably outshoot. They're purely defensive in the wider context, but that's not at all a bad thing, especially locked up as the AIC is.

We might also be able to just barely fit a Project Corona beam on a monitor, if we try.

Setsul · Apr 25, 2024

There's a difference between Sol or other singular chokepoints, and even there the lack of mobility was a problem, and Radiant, where there's at least 3 gates to defend. And that's if we just throw Chinook and Ismeu under the bus.
If we want to defend both Chinook/Thoa and Bestreer, then we'd need monitors in at least 2 systems. If our enemies decide to just throw everything at one of those systems, half of our monitors would do nothing. So unless monitors got twice the firepower for the same price, it doesn't work out, even in the best case. I really doubt all other ship are >50% warp rings.

Corona is not viable as a ship-based weapon

A monitor is still a ship. Unless you want monitors that are bigger than a capital yard, it's still not going to work.

Derpmind · Apr 25, 2024

Setsul said:
A monitor is still a ship. Unless you want monitors that are bigger than a capital yard, it's still not going to work.

Building a semi-mobile oversized superweapon sounds neat. Expensive, sure. But it would be fun.

Setsul · Apr 25, 2024

Derpmind said:
Building a semi-mobile oversized superweapon sounds neat. Expensive, sure. But it would be fun.

Semi-modular design, chop it into corvette-sized chunks. Faster to build, reasonable cost because small yards are dirt cheap, transportable via standard tender.
I call it THE STICK.*

*THE STICK may or may not actually look like a stick, depending on whether the UREBs use a linear accelerator or not. The joke about winning because we've got the bigger stick works either way though.

MSH · Apr 25, 2024

I figure if Corona can fit on gate defenses, which seems to be implied by the description of it, there's a chance for monitors.

SaltyWaffles · Apr 25, 2024

I think the idea of monitors to hang around gates, with limited tenders to provide supplies and maintenance, has merit. Gates are the unavoidable chokepoint; conventional gate defenses are formidable but monitors have the advantage of far greater tactical mobility/agility and an intelligent crew/ECM/ECCM suite to make its firepower really count (and the armor and mobility to make them hard to take out).

Obviously, the scope of such a project is well beyond the current war. But the idea remains.

Amorous Intent · Apr 25, 2024

MSH said:
It somewhat depends on what the qubit packages are, exactly. Intercepted qubits might serve as a hint as to what's going on and how, but I think it's the wormhole terminals themselves that are the main element of the technology. From what I can see, they're literally just entangled particles suspended in some kind of zero-vibration containment. And the below:

So overall, I don't think we need to be particularly worried about qubits being intercepted. They're a noticeable and strange thing to be transporting, but at the same time they're barely any hint at all. They're totally useless to anyone who isn't already aware of what they're for. There's a good chance that qubits on a VDC courier would get a "what nonsense are the spacers up to now?" and dismissal from anyone who checks.

As long as Amaranthine FRM is in place, the actual terminal is safe enough to ship as well, because they'll almost certainly destroy it by accident if they get their hands on it. The greatest danger IMO is spies who are aware of the project's context and countermeasures.

Qubits are a fairly standard interstellar transport item, used to prevent man-in-the-middle attacks on communications. Most common secure communications just use the standard interstellar internet connections, which also use qubits to secure communications between relays, meaning that only the relays are vulnerable to attack. Nobody is going to find the qubits shipped for wormholes particularly notable as an item or even in quantity.

BurnBright · Apr 25, 2024

Amorous Intent said:
Qubits are a fairly standard interstellar transport item, used to prevent man-in-the-middle attacks on communications. Most common secure communications just use the standard interstellar internet connections, which also use qubits to secure communications between relays, meaning that only the relays are vulnerable to attack. Nobody is going to find the qubits shipped for wormholes particularly notable as an item or even in quantity.

Wait, maybe I'm confused but isn't the information communicated by qubits FTL by default? Or is it normally propagated at the speed of light?

Amorous Intent · Apr 25, 2024

BurnBright said:
Wait, maybe I'm confused but isn't the information communicated by qubits FTL by default? Or is it normally propagated at the speed of light?

It's propagated at the speed of the classical communication channel, typically c, but often less (like in fiber optic lines). Qubits cannot communicate on their own, per the No Communication Theorem. Entanglement commonly gets used for either dense coding (1 qubit plus 1 classical bit turns into 2 classical bits), quantum encryption (1 qubit per bit turns into 1 uninterceptable classical bit), or quantum teleportation (1 qubit plus 2 classical bits equals 1 qubit teleported to the new location). The whole point of wormholes is that it enables an FTL classical (and quantum) channel that would otherwise be impossible.

Setsul · Apr 25, 2024

SaltyWaffles said:
I think the idea of monitors to hang around gates, with limited tenders to provide supplies and maintenance, has merit. Gates are the unavoidable chokepoint; conventional gate defenses are formidable but monitors have the advantage of far greater tactical mobility/agility and an intelligent crew/ECM/ECCM suite to make its firepower really count (and the armor and mobility to make them hard to take out).

Obviously, the scope of such a project is well beyond the current war. But the idea remains.

Again, I'm not sure that will actually pay off unless our enemies are really stupid and split their forces to fight all of our monitors at the same time, or we abandon everything beyond Radiant to put them all in one place.

I'm not saying we should expect gate defences on their own to do anything, but corvettes/strikecraft which fit the bill for most bang for buck and can still be moved elsewhere backed by warp-capable ships can do the same thing without being forced into unwinnable fights, and we can build all of those already.

Take the current situation. The original plan was to have McLean fight a delaying action Bestreer. If we had had any monitors in Bestreer, they would've either been guaranteed losses on a suicide mission, or we would've had to pull them back to Radiant so they're only useful in the final battle for all the marbles, and it's not quite clear how we could've even managed that in time.
The same thing would happen now in Chinook. Being able to fall back so McLean got a chance to link up with Rousseau would, in my opinion, be better than monitors that might be stronger but would have to be left behind.

MSH · Apr 25, 2024

Setting Corona aside, let's not forget we could definitely outfit a monitor with Blowtorch weaponry (and gate defenses, if they can't slot Corona either).

We haven't seen what power levels we're talking about exactly here, but like...dreadnoughts are principally for breaking through heavily defended gates. Monitors are stronger than that, without the upgraded weaponry.

Mobility has its place in war, but occasionally so does a huge unbreakable rock. Also, we might eventually be able to solve the "can't retreat" issues with wormhole tech, along with making any other ship that can hold a portal back home safer. But ultimately, we shouldn't be deploying a monitor anywhere that involves retreat as an option to begin with.

Setsul · Apr 25, 2024

MSH said:
Setting Corona aside, let's not forget we could definitely outfit a monitor with Blowtorch weaponry (and gate defenses, if they can't slot Corona either).

We can outfit literally anything with Blowtorch weaponry, why is that an argument in favour of monitors?

MSH said:
We haven't seen what power levels we're talking about exactly here, but like...dreadnoughts are principally for breaking through heavily defended gates. Monitors are stronger than that, without the upgraded weaponry.

Are you sure about that? This is our best source for what they're actually like.

On the other hand, a Light Monitor is generally held to be worth three or four frigates, and a Monitor can fight two or three Cruisers and stand a high chance of victory, since it trades out all of that sexy "intergalactic travel" budget for, "kill stuff" budget.

I think you're assuming that monitors would be even larger than dreadnoughts, if you don't count the warp rings. I'm pretty sure they're not. We could design such an incredible boondoggle that is essentially a space station with a drive bolted on, but why exactly would we do that? If we want huge guns on something that never leaves Radiant we've got a perfectly good moon we can put even bigger guns on!

MSH said:
Mobility has its place in war, but occasionally so does a huge unbreakable rock. Also, we might eventually be able to solve the "can't retreat" issues with wormhole tech, along with making any other ship that can hold a portal back home safer. But ultimately, we shouldn't be deploying a monitor anywhere that involves retreat as an option to begin with.

If we ever get to the point that we can just move entire fleets via wormholes, we can do pretty much whatever we want.
That we might eventually be able to fix the problems monitors got is no reason to build them anytime soon.
No offense to Chinook, but if we only deploy monitors where retreat isn't an option, then we'd be designing monitors exclusively for Radiant, or Ascension, if we're willing to fight to the bitter end.

MSH · Apr 25, 2024

Setsul said:
We can outfit literally anything with Blowtorch weaponry, why is that an argument in favour of monitors?

Are you sure about that? This is our best source for what they're actually like.

I think you're assuming that monitors would be even larger than dreadnoughts, if you don't count the warp rings. I'm pretty sure they're not. We could design such an incredible boondoggle that is essentially a space station with a drive bolted on, but why exactly would we do that? If we want huge guns on something that never leaves Radiant we've got a perfectly good moon we can put even bigger guns on!

If we ever get to the point that we can just move entire fleets via wormholes, we can do pretty much whatever we want.
That we might eventually be able to fix the problems monitors got is no reason to build them anytime soon.
No offense to Chinook, but if we only deploy monitors where retreat isn't an option, then we'd be designing monitors exclusively for Radiant, or Ascension, if we're willing to fight to the bitter end.

Because monitors have the most gun-per-tonnage of any ship class, and therefore a paradigm-shaking weapon like Blowtorch is meant to be will have the greatest effect on them. Say that a monitor has about 2\3rds odds against a battlecruiser because of its superior weapons and armor - with Blowtorch, it might be even better. 4/5ths? Even higher? We won't know until we've completed it, but I think it is promising.

You're looking at a light monitor. The ship codex doesn't make a distinction, but that same post you linked says monitors and light monitors are different. Full/system monitors are clearly at the top of the pack, like so:

Cyanblackstone said:
Battlecruisers: Heavy capital craft meant to act as the mainstays of capital-capital fighting, battlecruisers are warp-capable.

Monitor: Heavy capital craft meant to act as the mainstays of capital-capital fighting, monitors are not warp-capable in exchange for more weapons and armor.

Dreadnoughts: more a prestige name than a proper role, these are heavy battlecraft that serve as flagcrafts fleets are built around supporting. Contain flag bridges, C&C equipment, and other coordination aids.

My understanding is that these three are coalescing around the same tonnage and abilities, they just have different roles. For the monitor, it's the highest offense and defense available at the cost of warp travel. Only that experimental superdreadnought is likely better.

I doubt the travel wormholes are ever going to be able to contain ships - what I'm thinking about is being able to evacuate the crew of a ship and then just having allied ships destroy it if we ever get a monitor caught out somewhere.

Furthermore, we don't have to limit where a good place to put a monitor would be. Bastion is literally an empty system and it has a fleet base in it, we can make such stops anywhere we like and park monitors on them to hold a chain of systems. In a way, I consider the inability to freely move monitors an advantage. We're too apt to send all our ships off and leave ourselves without proper defenses against raiding forces and the like, which eventually someone is going to level against us.

The way to stop that is a proper SDF - gate defenses, strikecraft, and backing them up: monitors. They force us to employ better strategy.

Setsul · Apr 25, 2024

MSH said:
Say that a monitor has about 2\3rds odds against a battlecruiser because of its superior weapons and armor - with Blowtorch, it might be even better. 4/5ths? Even higher? We won't know until we've completed it, but I think it is promising.

Any ship is going to get better with better weapons. Warp-capable ships aren't going to get worse by adding better weapons. 10% more damage is 10% more damage, whether the weapons are put on a corvette, a dreadnought, or a monitor.
Ignoring that I think you're wrong about monitors anyway, no one is going to send a battlecruiser to duel a ship that it will lose against, and it's not like the monitor can chase it.

MSH said:
You're looking at a light monitor. The ship codex doesn't make a distinction, but that same post you linked says monitors and light monitors are different. Full/system monitors are clearly at the top of the pack, like so:

I am looking at monitors, not light monitors. Yes, light monitors are smaller. They are cruiser-sized.
Please don't make up new terms like "full/system monitor."

The post you're quoting is way older and simply outdated.
Light and Heavy Fighters are all Strikecraft now.
Cruisers were still classified as Capital craft and the term Tender didn't exist yet.
Assault Craft are listed. I'm pretty sure they were never mentioned again.
Light Monitors are missing.
Heavy Battlecruisers are missing.

If a story post about an actual battle that happened disagrees with a way older informational post, which one do you think is correct?

MSH said:
In a way, I consider the inability to freely move monitors an advantage. We're too apt to send all our ships off and leave ourselves without proper defenses against raiding forces and the like, which eventually someone is going to level against us.

"We can't be trusted with warp-capable ships" is a terrible argument.

MSH · Apr 25, 2024

Think what you will, but I'm going to go off the information presented and "system monitor" is a term that has been used. From the context, that appears to be why monitors are named that, they monitor the system.

Only the QMs can change the information presented to us. I am simply using it.

Slamu · Apr 25, 2024

DeltaV11.2 said:
We'd need to solve a lot of problems for this to work. We'd need a ship that is non-suspicious, big enough to fit a mobile wormhole unit which itself would need to be small enough to avoid casual observation. And it'd need to be able to be resupplied with qubits somehow, or carry enough and use few itself to sustain a connection long-term.

I don't know about the size or internal reorganizing considerations, but making it visually similar to a Hollywood-class courier makes it look inoffensive and you might even be able to slip it through places on the grounds of 'diplomatic immunity' (which I am aware will be at best an unreliable sort of defense given the character of the opposition). I'm sure more observant people will point out difficulties with this approach, but I figure that's a decent starting point for discussion should it become more immediately relevant (though IIRC we need to complete both Mobile & Portable Comms Science projects and the Military project that lets us do ship designs before we start anything ambitious).

Alternately make it look like a fleet tender of some sort, given that it'll probably be hanging in the back where it's less likely to get shot at. Not sure how we'd slip a fleet tender through enemy controlled territory without sending a fleet alongside it though. Probably easier to explain away having a courier with a fleet's baggage train.

DeltaV11.2 said:
, but HI, Ares, and Omoikane would all turbo hate us.

As opposed to this timeline where they're all tickled pink about our existence.

Setsul said:
Again, I'm not sure that will actually pay off unless our enemies are really stupid and split their forces to fight all of our monitors at the same time, or we abandon everything beyond Radiant to put them all in one place.

I'm not saying we should expect gate defences on their own to do anything, but corvettes/strikecraft which fit the bill for most bang for buck and can still be moved elsewhere backed by warp-capable ships can do the same thing without being forced into unwinnable fights, and we can build all of those already.

Take the current situation. The original plan was to have McLean fight a delaying action Bestreer. If we had had any monitors in Bestreer, they would've either been guaranteed losses on a suicide mission, or we would've had to pull them back to Radiant so they're only useful in the final battle for all the marbles, and it's not quite clear how we could've even managed that in time.
The same thing would happen now in Chinook. Being able to fall back so McLean got a chance to link up with Rousseau would, in my opinion, be better than monitors that might be stronger but would have to be left behind.

As I understand it the value of Monitors in this case would be to improve defenses in strategically important systems without making 'and send our mobile defense assets away on some ('hairbrained' probably implied) plan' too viable, while also taking the industrial effort reserved for things like mission endurance and FTL capability and putting it in something like 'absurdly good armor for its class'. I can see the value in the concept in some systems (like Radiant as it is a hub system, one of the larger population centers and one of the forward edges of the defense for many systems like Sheol and Ascension) which makes it easier to defend and possibly catch raiders if they happen (I doubt it but I've been wrong before). The problems I see with it are that it might make 'some systems are more valuable than others' arguments which can be politically toxic unless handled well, and the simple calculus that resources spent making monitors are resources not making mobile ships that can a) "fight them there so we don't fight them here" and b) be where you need them instead of keeping them where you want them.

...not sure how coherent I'm being there. tl;dr there are usually some merits to the concept but I don't think they really apply under these circumstances.

Fake edit; hey, that's even been spelled out in the text you quoted. (thank you for being on the ball like that)

Setsul · Apr 26, 2024

Slamu said:
As I understand it the value of Monitors in this case would be to improve defenses in strategically important systems without making 'and send our mobile defense assets away on some ('hairbrained' probably implied) plan' too viable, while also taking the industrial effort reserved for things like mission endurance and FTL capability and putting it in something like 'absurdly good armor for its class'. I can see the value in the concept in some systems (like Radiant as it is a hub system, one of the larger population centers and one of the forward edges of the defense for many systems like Sheol and Ascension) which makes it easier to defend and possibly catch raiders if they happen (I doubt it but I've been wrong before). The problems I see with it are that it might make 'some systems are more valuable than others' arguments which can be politically toxic unless handled well, and the simple calculus that resources spent making monitors are resources not making mobile ships that can a) "fight them there so we don't fight them here" and b) be where you need them instead of keeping them where you want them.

...not sure how coherent I'm being there. tl;dr there are usually some merits to the concept but I don't think they really apply under these circumstances.

Fake edit; hey, that's even been spelled out in the text you quoted. (thank you for being on the ball like that)

Yeah. Like I've said, if we had a single chokepoint that we absolutely need to hold, it would make sense.
But I'm neither comfortable with writing off Chinook immediately, nor do I want to damn monitor crews to a futile defence when we do need to fall back from Chinook. We can even fall back from Radiant if we have to, because Elysium is prepared for orbital bombardment and our fleets could lead our enemies on a wild goose chase via Xotreh/Ismeu or Chinook.

Simply put, if monitors had more than twice the firepower per cost/yard time, then they'd be straight up economically even if those on one front do nothing or even have to be scuttled to not let them fall in enemy hands.
But we know by now that a frigate at its most basic is just a corvette with a warp ring, so we know that leaving off the warp ring just saves a third of the cost, not half or more.
An extra large custom monitor design the size of a dreadnought specifically would also run into the problem of taking 3 years to build. If you believe MSH that "normal" monitors are really that large, and believe that quote I posted that monitors can beat 2 or 3 cruiser, then they're straight up not worth it for us. Only the dice cost matters to us, and for the price of a single capital yard + SR mining we can easily build 2 cruiser yards + more SR mining. In the 3 years the capital yard would need for one max size build the cruiser yards would finish 6 cruisers.
Now, I do believe that dreadnoughts are actually stronger than 3 or even 6 cruisers, but that "normal" monitors are much smaller, but the problem of a max size build taking 3 years remains. We could build an absolutely ridiculous number of corvettes for that cost, more quickly, and 2 Crossroads-class Fleet Tenders that take a bit less time to build could move 28 of them.

Between the VDC and wormhole comms, we're also in a better position than anyone has ever been in to outmaneuver our enemies, and static defences make that very difficult.
All in all, that's why I'm thinking a shit ton of corvettes, about half the tenders they'd nominally need, a few cruisers to stiffen the line, and eventually THE STICK, if we can build that.
That's still a lot of bang for our buck, and with early warning the tenders taking two trips can still easily move the corvettes where they're needed. E.g. the VDC tells us which direction an attacking fleet took from Bastion, that's still 2 systems before they arrive in Bestreer or Thoa, enough time to move our semi-mobile defences from Radiant to either Bestreer or Chinook. We wouldn't be able to do that with monitors.
And THE STICK, well, if it works then we can build a giant space "laser" space station in small yards, so it doesn't take 3 years like a dreadnought or similarly large ship, and if UREBs do what they're supposed to, then they'll outrange any ship-based weapons. Put a stealthed sensor station with wormholes next to the gate, and we should get a couple of shots off. If THE STICK wrecks a dreadnought before it is wrecked in turn, we win. We don't have to fight that dreadnought, wherever we actually end up fighting, and if we throw two dozen small yards at it we can have a new stick in half a year while a replacement dreadnought would take 3 years.

Redshirt Army · Apr 26, 2024

Monitors have a lot of issues. They have low strategic mobility, and they have low tactical mobility as well. This makes them poorly suited for dense, interconnected gate networks which describe most of the frontier. Even in somewhere like Thoa, which is in theory a singular gateway system, Monitors have limited effectiveness, since enemy assault can come from two different directions.

For similar reasons, Monitors don't make a lot of sense in the Radiant system either - there, we've got four separate gates that enemies could potentially assault. In theory we could park a Monitor in Radiant Orbit and use it as a weapons platform, but the relative advantage of doing that compared to just mounting the weapons planetside or moonside isn't that large.

The main thing to realize is that there are some systems where we are very rarely going to want to send away all of their local fleets. This means that as a supplement to otherwise mobile forces, monitors become worthwhile, if they constitute the bulk of a "minimum defensive posture" on their own and thus free up the remaining mobile assets to indeed be mobile.

Bestreer is the classic example of this - even if the enemy was doing a full-on-assault on Chinook, we would still have to leave a modest defensive force in Bestreer, because if we didn't, we'd be leaving a pathway open straight to Radiant.

Bestreer also has only a single direction to maintain defenses towards, which makes it just about the best use-case in the entire AIC for monitors. (Chinook's Thoa gate could also maybe use a monitor at some point once we have the designs, but there it might be better to think of it as an investment into particularly powerful gate defenses. The utility there would be limited, as such a monitor couldn't contribute to defensive fighting in Thoa.)

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