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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AKuz · Jul 28, 2022

winning vote said:
accept ismeu's application right away, immediately launch a campaign to take bestreer, and a diplomatic envoy to talk to xotreh

Projects Locked in for Next General Congress:

Case Sashay: Begin Offensive Operations into Bestreer said:
[x] [MilComm] Case Sashay: Begin Offensive Operations into Bestreer

Even with Task Force 12.7 defeated, the threat of the Star Navy of the Solarian Compact remains. Even now Task Forces from 9th Fleet's base in Bastion advance down the Dragon's Wing towards Amaranth.

In order to secure the Commonwealth against Solarian incursion, Defence Coordinator Kozlova and her staff have put together "Case Sashay", a plan to take, occupy, and fortify the Bestreer System.

Along with the admission of Ismeu to the AIC, the General Congress has ordered DC Kozlova to Initiate Case Sashay to secure Bestreer and move the front lines farther away from highly inhabited population centres.

Dice Bonus: N/A

Project Progress: Automatic

Cost per die: 5E

Projected Results: Dispatches Congressional Navy to secure Bestreer, triggers subvote for Operational Orders
Intensely Desired by Ismeu

Open relations with Xotreh said:
[x] [MedComm] Open Relations with Xotreh

Exactly what it says on the tin

-

The Ismeu system's request for admission in the Amaranthine Interstellar Commonwealth has been immediately ratified and the half dozen representatives dispatched by Ismeu to deliver their message have already been sworn into the General Congress.

Their first decision is the ordering of Ambassador Stardust to dispatch Diplomats to Xotreh to open formal diplomatic relations and hopefully convince them that we pose no threat to their continued safety and freedom.

Their second decision is authorizing Defence Coordinator Kozlova to initiate Case Sashay, an offensive into Bestreer to take, hold, and fortify the system and its gates.

Defence Coordinator Kozlova informs the General Congress that they will need to make several decisions on operational orders for the offensive.

-

[ ][Force Deployment]
-[ ] Mobile Force
-[ ] Vanguard Force
-[ ] Home Force

Pick and Choose any or all of the following Congressional Navy Forces to participate in Case Sashay:

Mobile Force

CO: Stephanie Rousseau

Location: Chinook

Current Orders: Defend the Amaranthine Interstellar Commonwealth by acting as a rapid response force in the event of any hostile incursions.

Commanded by Commodore Rousseau, this force is currently home ported in Chinook, and while they serve as a defensive force in that system, their training, experience and equipment inclines them towards rapid manoeuvres, raiding actions, and pitched battles.

The officers and crew of Mobile force tend to think of themselves not as spacers or sailors, but almost as Cavalry(!) and even sometimes as Knights of the Revolution. They think of themselves as a force built around swift manoeuvre, high aggression, and close engagements. They'll often call their vessels ships. (Or uncommonly "Rides" or "mounts" if they're feeling dramatic.) They have a high percentage of Ares defectors as well.

(Even their uniforms have been designed with a flourish that draws elements from pop cultural early modern knights or Napoleonic era cavalry units. They tend towards idealism and romantic views of revolutionary war whose tone is set by their Commanding Officer.)

Assigned Craft:

CNS Velasco	United States of America-class (Ares)	Fleet Carrier	Captain Esteri Attar	Flagship, Can Carry Four Wings, former Ishtar's Light, captured from Hermes-Ishtar at Second Gaid
Orca Wing	Chinook Model Switchblade (Indiegenous Chinook)	Multirole Strikecraft	Wing Commander Jasmine Ang	Attached to CNS Velasco
Red Wolf Wing	Chinook Model Switchblade (Indiegenous Chinook)	Multirole Strikecraft	Wing Commander Heloisa Kimura de Lima	Attached to CNS Velasco
Zephyr Wing	Chinook Model Switchblade (Indiegenous Chinook)	Multirole Strikecraft	Wing Commander Ara Helge	Attached to CNS Velasco
CNS Storm Wing	Chinook Model Switchblade (Indiegenous Chinook)	Multirole Strikecraft	Wing Commander Colin McRae	Attached to CNS Velasco
CNS Salvation	Great Heathen-class (Ares)	Light Cruiser	Captain Adelia Swift	Out of action until October 2255
CNS Shamhat	Great Heathen-class (Ares)	Light Cruiser	Captain John Rankin
CNS First Lion	Stakhanovite-class (Indigenous Five Lions)	Light Cruiser	NPC CAPTAIN	Converted Freighter, Can carry One Wing
CNS Dragoon	Enterprise-class (Solarian Navy)	Frigate	NPC CAPTAIN	Former SNS Captor, captured from Solarian Navy at Second Shei
CNS Righteous Tempest	Cossak-class (Ares)	Frigate	Captain Vehement Shade
CNS August Willich	Cossak-class (Ares)	Frigate	Captain Estoc Jayanto
CNS Saratoga	Cossak-class (Ares)	Frigate	NPC CAPTAIN
CNS Elysium	Cossak-class (Ares)	Frigate	NPC CAPTAIN
CNS Asphodel	Cossak-class (Ares)	Frigate	NPC CAPTAIN
CNS Rojava	Cossak-class (Ares)	Frigate	NPC CAPTAIN
CNS Shippy Mcshipface	Cossak-class (Ares)	Frigate	NPC CAPTAIN

Vanguard Force:

CO: Admiral Shayla McLean

Location: Radiant

Current Orders: Rest and Refit Before Next Operation, Defend Radiant System From Attack

Commanded by Admiral McLean, by training, experience, and equipage, this force contains the bulk of the Congressional Navy's heavy assault elements and has been thrown into the heaviest fighting the Congressional Navy has yet seen.

Vanguard Force consider themselves a professional military force. While they share some commonality with Home Force culturally, much more so than Mobile Force, they consider themselves career revolutionary guardians.

Their uniforms are much more military in cut than Home Force's and they tend to wear Berets as head coverings. (This practice was introduced by Admiral McLean and has become part of Vanguard Force's internal culture.)

Assigned Craft:

CNS Kiel Mutiny	Kaiserreich-class	Battlecruiser	Captain Inana Devlin	Radiant	Flagship
CNS Valerie Shah	Freedom's Light-class (Solarian Navy)	Cruiser	Guillermo Kageyama	Chinook	Captured from Solarian Navy at Second Shei
CNS Choreographer	Janissary-class	Light Tender	Captain Karl Xanothos	Radiant	Can Carry Six Corvettes
CNS Valiant	New Model-class (Ares)	Strike Corvette	Captain Lian Al Khawaldeh	Radiant	Attached to CNS Choreographer
CNS Defiant	New Model-class (Ares)	Strike Corvette	Fool's Errand	Radiant	Attached to CNS Choreographer
CNS Reliant	New Model-class (Ares)	Strike Corvette	Rouge Napier	Radiant	Attached to CNS Choreographer
CNS Actium	New Model-class (Ares)	Strike Corvette	Captian Samuel Smiles	Radiant	Attached to CNS Choreographer
CNS Crête-à-Pierrot	New Model-class (Ares)	Strike Corvette	Captain Nkiru Chaudhari	Radiant	Attached to CNS Choreographer
CNS Valmy	New Model-class (Ares)	Strike Corvette	Captain Sumac Barros	Radiant	Attached to CNS Choreographer
CNS Second Lion	Stakhanovite-class (Indigenous Five Lions)	Light Cruiser	NPC CAPTAIN	Radiant	Converted Freighter
CNS Third Lion	Stakhanovite-class (Indigenous Five Lions)	Light Cruiser	NPC CAPTAIN	Radiant	Converted Freighter,
CNS Revolutionary Will	Cossak-class (Ares)	Frigate	Captain Yamamoto Hanae	Radiant
CNS Revolutionary Grace	Cossak-class (Ares)	Frigate	Captain Martin Pagonis	Radiant
CNS Liberte	Hollywood-C-class (Hermes-Ishtar)	Frigate	NPC CAPTAIN	Radiant	Converted Courier
CNS Egalite	Hollywood-C-class (Hermes-Ishtar)	Frigate	NPC CAPTAIN	Radiant	Converted Courier
SNS Tartarus	Emden-Class (Solarian Navy)	Point Defence Destroyer	NPC CAPTAIN	Radiant	Former SNS Tenryu, captured from the Solarian Navy at Second Shei
SNS Free Melbourne	Oslo-Class (Solarian Navy)	Minesweeper	NPC CAPTAIN	Radiant	Former SNS Melbourne, captured from the Solarian Navy at Second Shei
SNS Free Kinshasa	Oslo-Class (Solarian Navy)	Minesweeper	NPC CAPTAIN	Radiant	Former SNS Kinshasa, captured from the Solarian Navy at Second Shei
CNS Under New Management	Don River-class (Ares)	Fast Tanker Auxilary	Adras Kierenos	Radiant

Home Force:

CO: Currently Vacant

Location: Radiant

Current Orders: Defend the Radiant system both from Hostile incursions, but from counter-revolution and coup from within the Congressional Navy.

A collection of mainly corvettes deployed as a home guard within Radiant, Home Force specifically think of themselves as a citizen militia of spacers. And they draw their internal culture and practices DIRECTLY from spacers and do not take kindly to anyone calling their craft "ships".

Much of this culture comes from the example of CNO and grandfather of the Navy Admiral Mansur who is a Spacer's Spacer. Their uniforms tend towards high practicality.

Assigned Craft:

CNS Blaire Mountain	New Model-class (Ares)	Strike Corvette	NPC CAPTAIN	Radiant	Flagship
CNS Scutum	Comet-class (United Starhaul)	Patrol Corvette	NPC CAPTAIN	Radiant
CNS Buckler	Comet-class (United Starhaul)	Patrol Corvette	NPC CAPTAIN	Radiant
CNS Nasty Bastard	Jury Rigged-Mess of a Drone Carrier	Beats Me	Jean-Paul Beaumont	Radiant	An ugly mess put together from whatever came to hand, captured from Hermes-Ishtar in Thoa
CNS Fourth Lion	Stakhanovite-class (Indigenous Five Lions)	Escourt Cruiser	NPC CAPTAIN	Radiant	Converted Freighter

In all cases the Shei United Front Space Force will be participating with their newly commissioned craft in order to gain operational experience:

SUFSF-VEF:

CO: Force Commander Repentant Slaughter

Location: Shei System

Current Orders: Conduct training exercises

Commanded by Repentant Slaughter one of the few Sheolite aerospace commanders to make multiple GTO sorties before Operation Michmas and the Liberation of Shei, who should by all rights be on his fifth death, the VEF is determined to keep the fight against the enemies of freedom as far away from Sheol's orbitals as possible.

Comprised of captured Solarian Navy Frigates, a pair of freighters hastily converted into Escort Carriers and two newly trained "Dare to Die" strikecraft wings, the VEF is prepared to assist the Amaranthine Congressional Navy in all offensive and defences actions until the last Meritocracy is downed in the blood of the last Executive while hanging from the entrails of the entire joint Ares and Solarian Admiralties.

Assigned Craft:

UFC Sic Semper Tyrannis	Herald Kanumba-class (Solarian Navy)	Frigate	N/A	Shei	Former Collette Croca, captured from Solarian Navy at Second Shei
UFC Mortem Ad Deos	Herald Kanumba-class (Solarian Navy)	Frigate	N/A	Shei	Former Jacob Temrash, captured from Solarian Navy at Second Shei
UFC Memento Mori	War to the Knife-class (Indigenous Shei)	Escourt Carrier	N/A	Shei	Converted Freighter, can carry one wing
Vanguard Wing	Chinook Model Switchblade (Indiegenous Chinook)	Multirole Strikecraft	N/A	Shei	Attached to UFC Momento Mori
UFC Memento Vivere	War to the Knife-class (Indigenous Shei)	Escourt Carrier	N/A	Shei	Converted Freighter, can carry one wing
Forlorn Hope Wing	Chinook Model Switchblade (Indiegenous Chinook)	Multirole Strikecraft	N/A	Shei	Attached to UFC Momento Vivere

As part of Case Sashay DC Kozlova is also requesting that the General Congress authorize her to requisition the craft used for Tripwire to rapidly fortify the Bestreer-Arizona and Ismeu-Xotreh gates

[ ] [TRIPWIRE] Authorize
[ ] [TRIPWIRE] Refuse

REVERSE TRIPWIRE - During the showdown with Task Force 12.7, the Congressional Navy Converted several cargo craft to carry prefabricated gate defenses up the chain and to lurk out of the way, pretending regular business until the go signal is given then laying defences across the Solarian Navy's line of retreat.

While this project did minimal damage to the routed TF 12.7, DC Kozlova wishes to repurpose the idea to rapidly set up defences across the Bestreer-Arizona and Ismeu-Xotreh gates to instantly create defensive lines that will force Charter attackers to think twice.

As the Reverse Tripwire axillaries are already in place, and their conversions have yet to be reverted, the cost to redeploy them as "Tripwire (Sashay)" is minimal.

Costs: (10 BR, 10SR, 6E)

-

Home Force CO:

As well, a matter of housekeeping needs your attention: since Commodore Kozlova's promotion to DC, the post of CO, Home Fleet has been vacant, filled by a number of temporary commanders, but while the Force's size is small, the commander of this force commands the collection of armed craft permanently stationed above the heads of the General Congress itself. So it remains an important post that requires Congressional approval to fill.

[ ] [HFCO] Write In

Select a Captain or Wing Commander from the current List

As well, though we never stopped taking submissions, we remind and ENCOURAGE you to submit officers to serve as Captains and Wing Commanders for the Congressional Navy. They provide both MECHANICAL and NARRATIVE bonuses.

See [HERE] for details, please add #CNSubmission to the submission so that it's easier for us QMs to track it

Cassiemouse · Jul 28, 2022

My initial impulse is that we should leave Mobile fleet in Chinook to defend from an attack from that angle and send Vanguard fleet to move into Bestreer and fortify the system. Do we think we will see an attack through Chinook? Will Vanguard fleet be enough to hold Bestreer against attack?

spiritualatheist · Jul 28, 2022

Cassiemouse said:
My initial impulse is that we should leave Mobile fleet in Chinook to defend from an attack from that angle and send Vanguard fleet to move into Bestreer and fortify the system. Do we think we will see an attack through Chinook? Will Vanguard fleet be enough to hold Bestreer against attack?

We're going to be launching a gate assault into the teeth of a charter fleet. I really don't think we can afford not to throw as heavy a punch as we can.

Cassiemouse · Jul 28, 2022

spiritualatheist said:
We're going to be launching a gate assault into the teeth of a charter fleet. I really don't think we can afford not to throw as heavy a punch as we can.

Is the fleet already in Bestreer? I thought we were trying to race there before them and fortify the system.

AKuz · Jul 28, 2022

At the moment there is no fleet in Bestreer, as I understand it in and out of universe the idea is to launch Case Sashay now before the system is occupied

Setsul · Jul 28, 2022

Honestly, this is better than anything I hoped for.
Only one ship needing repairs, Velasco finally fully loaded up, the Four Lions somehow instantly reconverted to Carriers (though it should be 'Escort', I think) after we voted for Cruisers and got them for Second Shei, and TRIPWIRE.

And then Shei did somehow that should be impossible and squeezed strikecraft wings into Frigates.
Seriously, the Light Carrier we can build on the same keel as a Light Tender, which fits 4 Corvettes, can only fit 2 wings. The converted Five Lions cruisers can only fit 1 wing.
But somehow the Sheolite Frigates, which should be less than 1/4 as large as a Light Cruiser/Tender/Carrier hull because we've been building Frigates in the same dock as Corvettes, can somehow fit half as many wings as a Light Carrier. As many as a converted ore hauler that should be much larger than a Frigate.
I don't even want to know how tight they're packing everyone.

Anyway, we've got a major strategic decision to make:
To fight a task group or to not fight a task group.
This might sound weird, but it'll affect us for years. Right now we can choose between turtling up or trying to shoot our way out.
Whichever we choose will irrevocably cement our strategy.

AKuz said:
Between the three Battlegroups of the 9th Fleet based in Bastion and the three HI security contractor Battlegroups stationed out of Symphony we would expect the SFREA to have six Battlegroups, more than four times the size of the Congressional Navy and allies combined.

Basically, we have a bit less than 1/4 of 6 battlegroups, so around 1.5 battlegroups.
The SFREA/SolNav has one battlegroup that is a little bit banged up (their capital ships went in at Second Gaid and never returned) in Thoa and another on its way, split into two task groups.
A bit less than 2 battlegroups vs a bit less than 1.5 battlegroups certainly sounds defendable.
We can do that, and that's it.
Once the task group presumably coming to Arizona fortifies the Arizona-Bestreer gate we are not getting out anymore. We need a year for a new light cruiser (maybe slightly less with automation now), we've only got two (Five Lions planning to build a third next year) light capital and two (soon three, Five Lions is building one) escort yards. So realistically, to get the bare minimum needed for an offensive fight (so not just the same number of ships) we're looking at 2+ years. And we're relying on the SRFEA not sending any of its 2 or 3 other battlegroups during that time or SolNav sending reinforcements or Ares sending reinforcements from Asgard. Of course we could be lucky and Blue Squadron gets bored and leaves or we manage to nudge them in that direction via propaganda, but things are mostly out of our hands.

So the upside of turtling up is that we should be safe for now and get enough time for Broadcast 2, the downside is that we're completely at the mercy of the SFREA/SolNav/Ares never showing up to finish us off and pretending we're someone else's problem for years.

The alternative of course, is to go high risk, high reward and kick the hornets' nest.
Blue Squadron in Thoa has not declared for the SFREA yet. Against just them or a task group we can hold with much fewer ships than we'd need against both at once. So there is an option to leave only, let's say 0.5 battlegroups worth of ships there and send the rest to Bestreer.
If the task groups are only supposed to "persuade" Iyuhi and Arizona to join the SFREA, nothing happens. If they are rushing towards us, then we'd outnumber the lone task group 2:1 and could fight them in a system where they don't have fixed defences. They are of course not obligated to attack through a gate into a superior force, so if we want that we need to go in with that goal and e.g. set up a pincer maneuver with half our fleet in Radiant and the other half in Ismeu.

This is definitely high risk though. Rear Admiral Kang is leaning towards the SFREA and the incoming task groups are technically SolNav, where a chunk of the other loyalties lie. Chinook may have prepared for an evacuation due to 12.7 and we should make it back in time to Radiant for a fight for all the marbles, but they're not going to be happy about it. And it would be a fight without panic projects.
In the event that we do succeed, whether it's just against one task group or two fights against both or eveything, the hornets' nest will have been kicked. It might make the SFREA less inclined to fight us, it might make them more inclined to fight us. If we're lucky, we can liberate Arizona and maybe even Inspiration. If we're unlucky, the unconfirmed third SolNav battlegroup was chilling in Bastion and promptly launches towards us, bring us back to square one or worse if we destroyed only one task group.

I'll show a rough estimate of what might be coming later.

tl;dr
To fight or not to fight?
This is the first time we can pick a fight on our terms. Should we?

Cassiemouse · Jul 28, 2022

I do think it makes sense to try to insert agents into Thoa because we had reports of unrest among the fleet there. Not sure how we would go about doing that though.

Torgamous · Jul 28, 2022

Cassiemouse said:
I do think it makes sense to try to insert agents into Thoa because we had reports of unrest among the fleet there. Not sure how we would go about doing that though.

By voting to do that in the actual turn vote. We could even give it a Focus die if we want to be really sure it'll pass.

Setsul · Jul 28, 2022

Cassiemouse said:
I do think it makes sense to try to insert agents into Thoa because we had reports of unrest among the fleet there. Not sure how we would go about doing that though.

Probably the same way we did it with 12.7: Via MedComm.
It might be time to formalize it into PropComm and DipComm, since we'll mostly be doing propaganda and diplomacy now that the RBC is dead.

Cassiemouse · Jul 28, 2022

Yea, I understand the mechanics. I was just trying to figure out the story way to insert people there. I don't think there is any traffic between Chinook and Thoa so us opening the gate to come into Thoa seems like it would give away the ruse. Maybe we would need some clever way to do it!

Setsul · Jul 28, 2022

Casually walk up to them. Initiate eye contact. Say "sup?" Pretend like you're exactly where you're supposed to be.

Seriously though, it would start with purely digital contact like with 12.7 and eventually we might convince the watch officer on duty to look the other way when we send a stealthed CROW craft through the gate that might show up as a minor radar/lidar anomaly. Add some hangar crews on our side and that could work.
Definitely something long term though, but if we go with turtling up then Blue Squadron might stick around for another couple years yet.

EDIT: If that's feasible we could also start slowly sending stealthed loitering munitions through. Just in case.

Cassiemouse · Jul 28, 2022

I did forget that the gates were always open. So, yea, sending data through would be the easiest way to start out, I guess!

AKuz · Jul 28, 2022

Setsul said:
Honestly, this is better than anything I hoped for.
Only one ship needing repairs, Velasco finally fully loaded up, the Four Lions somehow instantly reconverted to Carriers (though it should be 'Escort', I think) after we voted for Cruisers and got them for Second Shei, and TRIPWIRE.

And then Shei did somehow that should be impossible and squeezed strikecraft wings into Frigattes.
Seriously, the Light Carrier we can build on the same keel as a Light Tender, which fits 4 Corvettes, can only fit 2 wings. The converted Five Lions cruisers can only fit 1 wing.
But somehow the Sheolite Frigattes, which should be less than 1/4 as large as a Light Cruiser/Tender/Carrier hull because we've been building Frigattes in the same dock as Corvettes, can somehow fit half as many wings as a Light Carrier. As many as a converted ore hauler that should be much larger than a Frigatte.
I don't even want to know how tight they're packing everyone.

Anyway, we've got a major strategic decision to make:
To fight a task group or to not fight a task group.
This might sound weird, but it'll affect us for years. Right now we can choose between turtling up or trying to shoot our way out.
Whichever we choose will irrevocably cement our strategy.

Basically, we have a bit less than 1/4 of 6 battlegroups, so around 1.5 battlegroups.
The SFREA/SolNav has one battlegroup that is a little bit banged up (their capital ships went in at Second Gaid and never returned) in Thoa and another on its way, split into two task groups.
A bit less than 2 battlegroups vs a bit less than 1.5 battlegroups certainly sounds defendable.
We can do that, and that's it.
Once the task group presumably coming to Arizona fortifies the Arizona-Bestreer gate we are not getting out anymore. We need a year for a new light cruiser (maybe slightly less with automation now), we've only got two (Five Lions planning to build a third next year) light capital and two (soon three, Five Lions is building one) escort yards. So realistically, to get the bare minimum needed for an offensive fight (so not just the same number of ships) we're looking at 2+ years. And we're relying on the SRFEA not sending any of its 2 or 3 other battlegroups during that time or SolNav sending reinforcements or Ares sending reinforcements from Asgard. Of course we could be lucky and Blue Squadron gets bored and leaves or we manage to nudge them in that direction via propaganda, but things are mostly out of our hands.

So the upside of turtling up is that we should be safe for now and get enough time for Broadcast 2, the downside is that we're completely at the mercy of the SFREA/SolNav/Ares never showing up to finish us off and pretending we're someone else's problem for years.

The alternative of course, is to go high risk, high reward and kick the hornets' nest.
Blue Squadron in Thoa has not declared for the SFREA yet. Against just them or a task group we can hold with much fewer ships than we'd need against both at once. So there is an option to leave only, let's say 0.5 battlegroups worth of ships there and send the rest to Bestreer.
If the task groups are only supposed to "persuade" Iyuhi and Arizona to join the SFREA, nothing happens. If they are rushing towards us, then we'd outnumber the lone task group 2:1 and could fight them in a system where they don't have fixed defences. They are of course not obligated to attack through a gate into a superior force, so if we want that we need to go in with that goal and e.g. set up a pincer maneuver with half our fleet in Radiant and the other half in Ismeu.

This is definitely high risk though. Rear Admiral Kang is leaning towards the SFREA and the incoming task groups are technically SolNav, where a chunk of the other loyalties lie. Chinook may have prepared for an evacuation due to 12.7 and we should make it back in time to Radiant for a fight for all the marbles, but they're not going to be happy about it. And it would be a fight without panic projects.
In the event that we do succeed, whether it's just against one task group or two fights against both or eveything, the hornets' nest will have been kicked. It might make the SFREA less inclined to fight us, it might make them more inclined to fight us. If we're lucky, we can liberate Arizona and maybe even Inspiration. If we're unlucky, the unconfirmed third SolNav battlegroup was chilling in Bastion and promptly launches towards us, bring us back to square one or worse if we destroyed only one task group.

I'll show a rough estimate of what might be coming later.

tl;dr
To fight or not to fight?
This is the first time we can pick a fight on our terms. Should we?

Oh, I fucked up, the War To the Knife class are the converted freighters you were told were coming. Sorry

Fixed

(I'll be honest I did a lot of backend shit today off of less sleep than I deserve (minor landlord complications) so if there are errors chalk it up to that)

Setsul · Jul 28, 2022

AKuz said:
Oh, I fucked up, the War To the Knife class are the converted freighters you were told were coming. Sorry

Honestly, the Sheolites using their decades of bunker experience to simply pack everyone twice as tight would've been completely in character.

While we're on the topic of things that shouldn't work: How would Home Force get to Bestreer? Most of it isn't warp-capable, that's why it became Home Force in the first place.

AKuz · Jul 28, 2022

Setsul said:
While we're on the topic of things that shouldn't work: How would Home Force get to Bestreer? Most of it isn't warp-capable, that's why it became Home Force in the first place.

Yup.

natruska · Jul 28, 2022

#CNSubmission (sorta! SUFSF-VEF!)

NAME: Digger Rossi (she/her)
BIO: Young Digger never felt drawn to the Sheolite military's flashier branches. She cared little for suborbital pilots or special forces operators. Hell, she didn't even want to go topside if she could help it. Her parents were tunnel engineers and she followed in their footsteps. She might still be in that construction battalion if Ares hadn't hit her jobsite. After that, she found herself desiring a more kinetic line of work.

After a year as a line combat engineer, Rossi joined the SCMC's elite Special Excavation Arm. The small tunnel warfare unit had a notoriously high operational tempo, and Rossi quickly progressed from rookie to veteran to commander. It was around this time that critics first attacked her for her belligerence. SEA activity - and casualties - only increased under her command, and without Radiant's intervention she might've ground the unit down to a stub.

But Rossi's SEA passed the final test with flying colors. Armed with modern 'fabbed' explosives, they undermined Camp Rumsfeld's defenses and played a key role in the brutal urban combat that followed. During the fighting a bandaged, dirt-caked and sleep-deprived Rossi became an icon, with her brusque remarks ("Grace of God, we're ahead of schedule. Clean-up tomorrow.") spreading through the ranks. She was decisive to the point of rashness, mildly self-promoting, at times almost arrogant. And they loved her for it.

After liberation Rossi would return to civil work, coordinating the rollout of modern 23rd century infrastructure. But she could not avoid the public eye. A fierce partisan of the Soldiers' and Officers' Councils, she supported their campaign to depose the SCMC in the 2254 elections. In the aftermath, Rossi secured a commission in the still-hypothetical Sheolite fleet, hoping to push for a strong, independent and aggressive force to counterbalance Radiant ("Bless the elves, but they just don't have the stomach for it. We're talkin' about war here.").

Rossi's bombast, fatalism and flair for the dramatic has earned her a small but extreme fanbase on Elysian Tumblr. As a devout Black Catholic she finds this development disturbing, but her attempts to dissuade them have only made it worse.

UNITED FRONT SERVICE HISTORY: Commander of the Special Excavation Arm during the liberation of Shei, various technical/administrative roles during the tech-up.
COMMAND TRAITS: Technically Inclined, Militaristic and Aggressive (even by Sheolite standards), Groundpounder

"It is fatal to enter a war without the will to win it."
― Douglas MacArthur

(i realized about 75% of the way through writing this that i was just writing 'sheolite mini MacArthur' and i love/hate it)

Setsul · Jul 28, 2022

Oh yeah, remember this?

AKuz said:
Institutional experience that the SUFSF longs for as the majority of Sheolites are in favour of a military campaign to secure the Ismeu system whether or not they join the AIC, preparing to do the job on their own with or without the support of the AIC.

I can't tell whether they threatened to outright annex Ismeu if we rejected or if they were planning to defend Ismeu against all comers on their own. Either way, with just the two Frigates and two converted freighters they got, barely more than Ismeu (2 Corvettes and 1 converted freighter), it's certainly ambitious. One might even say incredibly aggressive.

Regarding the vote, if we're going purely for defence only it's got to be Vanguard Force and Authorize TRIPWIRE, right? You take the Minesweepers when going into unknown territory, Mobile Force is already in Chinook and down to 1 Light Cruiser and Home Force is way too slow and small. Vanguard Force (+SUFSF-VEF) should be more than enough to keep Tripwire safe and there's no reason not to build that.

If we decide on a more ... Sheolite approach to the incoming task group, it gets a bit more complicated. Pulling the entirety of Mobile Force out of Chinook seems too risky and Home Force isn't exactly mobile.

The Laurent · Jul 28, 2022

Ralyx said:
Because obviously the only thing that can prevent lunacy is tyranny. Impeccable logic, 10/10, would nuke Earth again.

"First you pretend to do what they want. Then you do what they want. Then you're them."

...are you actually responding to Silvia Greene at this point?

Setsul · Jul 28, 2022

A rough idea what to expect from the two task groups, based on the "6 battlegroups > 4x AIC" quote, brought to you by quarantine.
I'm simply ignoring Carriers/Tenders and only going by what they are carrying.

Here's what we've got, with weaker variants that are counted towards that category in brackets.
1 Battlecruiser
3 Cruisers (2 Light)
14 Frigates (2 converted Couriers)
9 Corvettes (2 Patrol)
1 Point Defence Destroyer
2 Minesweepers
1 Fast Tanker
9 Strikecraft Wings (Fourth Lion doesn't seem to have one yet)

By even more general categories:
1 Battlecruiser
3 Cruisers
24 Escorts
9 Wings
3 Auxiliaries (the tanker is my 18th camel)

-> Average Light Battlegroup (2/3 of what we've got)
1 Flagship/heavy capital (likely Battlecruiser, maybe Tender/Carrier)
2 Cruisers (possibly Light)
16 Escorts (e.g. 12 Corvettes in a Fleet Tender + 4 Frigates)
6 Wings (should fit in two bigger Light Carriers or a single large Fleet Carrier)
2 Auxiliaries

This could be completely off, especially in terms of composition, but it does roughly fit with Blue Squadron in Thoa (remnant of one battlegroup) and the rest of second Gaid, supposedly (parts of) another battlegroup. I suspect that the flagship of the second wave at Second Gaid, a Battlecruiser with (full?) Admiral Milanovic commanding it was this battlegroup's flagship. Add the two Light Cruisers and it tracks. The second Battlecruiser could've been part of it, but that would've made the other battlegroup that participated really anemic. I mean if everything the second wave was part of Blue Squadron's battlegroup then other one would've been just a Fleet Carrier with up to four, but most likely two Wings, a Light Cruiser, and two Frigates. That's just sad.
So splitting in a way that I think is likely it would've been these groups:

HI battlegroup LARGE HAM under Mark Charleston:
1 Fleet Carrier
1 Battlecruiser
1 Light Cruiser
6 Frigates
Still a bit small, but I don't know how to rate strikecraft.

Ares battlegroup NO SUDDEN MOVEMENTS under Admiral Milanovic:
1 Battlecruiser
2 Light Cruisers
3 Frigates
12 Corvettes (in 1 Fleet Tender)

Also 3 Fast Tankers and 1 Courier so those numbers for Auxiliaries seem spot on for two battlegroups.

It's still a bit off overall, even if we ignore our Wings and count the ones in the first battlegroup as replacement for more Escorts and one Light Cruiser, but it seems at least plausible.

SolNav should have better ships, so it's always possible they'll bring Heavy Battlecruisers instead of Battlecruisers and (full) Cruisers instead of Light Cruisers.
We can fit four Corvettes or two Wings in a ship based on a Light Cruiser keel, but can fit six Corvettes in the Choreographer, so I assume that Light Carriers for three Wings based on a full size Cruiser could exist. Or they might just bring a Fleet Carrier like the Velasco with three or four Wings. Or they might not bring any Wings at all or more Escorts instead or more Cruiser or our Wings didn't count towards that, or the Ares battlegroups are below average and the SolNav one that is coming is significantly larger than average. It's all very uncertain. So this will just a rough minimum of what to expect.
We definitely know there will be Escorts though, since they are sending Fleet Tenders. Why would battlegroup that I expect to have only ~16 Escorts have two Fleet Tenders that can carry 12 to 24 each? No idea, but 12.7 showed up with two completely empty Light Tenders, so having two half full Fleet Tenders would be less weird than what they've already done. And while a fleet made up entirely of Corvettes from a full Fleet Tender might be better for us, I wouldn't expect it.

So in order of descending probable accuracy and ascending danger this means we should expect each task group to have at minimum:
1 Auxiliary (could be a Fast Tanker, could be Minesweeper or even a Heavy Fleet Auxiliary)
~8 Escorts (probably mostly Corvettes from the Fleet Tender, could be up to 12 + Frigates though)
1 Cruiser (Light if we're lucky, but SolNav doesn't seem to use Light Cruisers)
Maybe 1 Battlecruiser (maybe Heavy)
Maybe 3 or 4 Wings (either in an extra Carrier or in the Fleet Tender)

Especially the last two are fairly uncertain. Could be either, could be both, could be more Cruisers instead.
I'm definitely very unsure how our strikecraft wings are counted towards overall strength.

BarbaCoPut · Jul 28, 2022

Setsul said:
To fight or not to fight?
This is the first time we can pick a fight on our terms. Should we?

We should advance on Thoa, if they decide to remain SolNav/Charter they will strengthen anything that comes by. (We might get lucky with propaganda too...)

[X][Force Deployment]
-[X] Mobile Force

[X] [TRIPWIRE] Authorize

Defenses on the point of entry? Minimal cost? there's no reason to not do it.

[X] [HFCO] Captain Fool's-Errand

How can we not give command to this beautiful rust bucket?

Cassiemouse · Jul 28, 2022

[X][Force Deployment]
-[X] Vanguard Force

[X] [TRIPWIRE] Authorize

I think we need to leave Mobile Force to defend Chinook.

Aliya · Jul 28, 2022

[X][Force Deployment]
-[X] Vanguard Force

[X] [TRIPWIRE] Authorize

I think that leaving Chinook without protection would be a folly.

bdun140 · Jul 28, 2022

#CNsubmission

Name: Margret Baumann (she/her)
Bio: Born more than half a century prior to the revolution, to impoverished parents back on earth, Margret leapt at the chance to escape Sol for the colonies, and spent the majority of her life toiling for the enrichment of H-I. Yet starting from the bottom as she was, it would seem as though enough was never enough, debts piling up and her own advancing age slowing her down, the promise of life extending medical treatment slowly growing more and more distant as her need for it grew more and more dire.

Then came the March Days.

For a time, she was content to sit back and rest her weary bones, finally taking a long-deserved break from her berserk working schedule. Then the All-Radiant Congress decided to one-up itself, cracking the code on the medical treatments Margret had coveted for so very long. Being near the top of the list due to her flagging health, she found herself restored in vitality if not appearance, and the fact that such a miracle was just given freely led her to ask. Why? Why had the charters denied her this? How had she failed? In what regard was she not good enough? This led her down the rabbit hole of revolutionary theory, which in turn lit a fire she herself had thought long extinguished. Though lacking in relevant experience, her diligent work ethic and unshakable zeal has seen her slowly but steadily rise through the ranks. After all, she has all the time in the world now.

CN service history: Served in various positions with competence, if not particular distinction. Was promoted to XO of the CNS Revolutionary Grace prior to the Battle of the Osliam-Shei Gate, is now being considered for promotion to captain due to proposed fleet expansions.

Command traits: Aggressive, Loyal, Determined

BEHOLD! MAD MAGS, THE GRANNIE FROM HELL!

Torgamous · Jul 28, 2022

[X][Force Deployment]
-[X] Vanguard Force

[X] [TRIPWIRE] Authorize

maelstrom.seeker · Jul 28, 2022

[X][Force Deployment]
-[X] Vanguard Force

[X] [TRIPWIRE] Authorize
-[X] Swap authorization to fortify from the Ismeu-Xotreh gate to the Ismeu-Bestreer gate

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

Been Better

Been Better

Market Atheist

Market Atheist

Been Better

Market Atheist

Aspiring Gynoid

Market Atheist

Market Atheist

Been Better

Been Better

Voluta indomita

Market Atheist

Someone I might become

I have ideas. Sometimes they're even good.

Aspiring Gynoid