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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Tatbee · Mar 10, 2022

Edited plan.
Tell me what's wrong with it.

[] Plan: Reconciliation Through Cooperation
-[] Officially instruct Ambassador Stardust to call a summit of the leaders involved and attempt to hash out a diplomatic solution that everyone can live with. (Results uncertain, I hope you trust your Diplomatic Corps)
--[] Request Waystation host the summit, and act as a neutral third party.
--[] Stress the importance of working together against Compact/Charter aggression.

-[] Proposal 1)
--[] For each system; Osliam, Idyllia, and Waystation.
--[] AIC will provide enough resources to build 1 gate defense, to be used as they please.
--[] On the condition that all parties cooperate, and prioritise the construction of:
---[] 1) Waystation>>Capitata gate defense.
---[] 2) Osliam>>Waystation gate defense.
---[] AIC will provide the required resources to construct these 2 gate defenses.

-[] Proposal 2)
--[] Binding Defensive Pact, against Compact/Charter aggression.

-[] Offer all parties support for Nationalised BLG and Immortality efforts, starting after 1 year, if they collectively agree to Proposals 1) and 2).

-[] The exact details of these proposals, and the support offered, are open to negotiation.

clockworkchaos said:
In the interest of not getting it heated, lets take a bit of a break, I think people have made their points on this issue, and feels like it's getting to the point where we're kinda bordering on getting mean?

I don't mind heated debate.

CyberFemme · Mar 10, 2022

OK! I've gathered up a bunch of lore from the Discord that @Amorous Intent has shared, and I'm going to post it all here in a single convenient package for the science nerds to enjoy!

Amorous Intent's Lore Snippets

Macron accelerator base concept would come from advanced FRM project (accelerators for fusion drives)

On fighters:

Both are manned, and generally light fighters are single occupant interceptor/dogfighters. Think F16 in space. Heavy fighters tend to be double occupant, and serve as (aero)space superiority fighters first, and multirole spacecraft secondarily (including unmentioned roles such as AWACS, EWAR, CYBERWAR, & drone command).

High thrust, high maneuverability, and high delta-v all come from the use of nuclear lightbulb reactors, DPF fusion, and the like. They perform very much in a performance pocket similar to very late WW2 fighters and early jet fighters, moreso than 5th generation fighters. Light fighters tend to have a single engine producing ~3 g of forward thrust that can be redirected via thrust vectoring and other such tricks in pretty much any direction.

Scouts serve a purpose of getting in close to unknown spacecraft and getting a more detailed scan to identify them than a mere drive plume analysis can provide. They often make the difference between accidentally shooting down merchant vessels and getting ambushed by military vessels with inconvenient engine signatures.

Interceptors mount all kinds of weapons depending on mission, from small turrets carrying ETC gun PDWs, to directed EMP guns, all kinds of missile loadouts, and usually one fixed spinal weapon such as a railgun, ETC cannon, or FEL. Strike craft tend to focus on anti-capital and orbital bombardment weapons rather than anti-fighter weapons.

Dogfights mean the same damn thing as they do in the air, modulo lack of air and gravity. Despite the endless predictions of first jets, then missiles, then drones, then space finally spelling the death knell for dogfighting, it invariably winds up being proven wrong. In space, it's because interceptors and drones tend to use up most of their missiles in the first pass, and the defenders need to turn around and engage again. In very short order, the order of battle descends into the attackers pressing right up into the enemy capital craft's space and the defenders dogfighting against them where they have a logistical advantage.
Space combat in FTFYM is heavily styled after Homeworld and In the Black, and I've never hidden my inspirations.
Fighter combat borrows more from In the Black than Homeworld, mind you.

Optionally manned. Often not quite with enough room for a cockpit, but that's a mass-saving measure, not a determinant of size.

Fighters use skin radiators.

One, they're aerospace fighters, not space fighters, so yes they need to be aerodynamic, two, sloped armor is superior to flat armor unless you're using brittle ceramics, and a conical front section maximizes your frontal armor, and three, the front section has a spinal railgun, cannon, or FEL mounted in it.
They can generally mount a few small turrets, the nose conceals a spinal weapon (railgun, cannon, or FEL), and they can mount missiles or lance bombs.

Heavy fighters are just generally higher performance, with more engines, more room for payload and fuel, and bristling with more weaponry and sensors. They also sport a copilot to more directly command the drones instead of having them play follow the leader.

Air superiority, space superiority, and aerospace superiority all serve as a role where a single craft can beat out the fighter, interceptor, & strike craft roles in all other categories at only a very minor loss of performance in the specialist's area. As such, it makes more sense to build an equal number of generalist craft instead of one each of the specialists, enabling them to adapt to the role needed for the mission, often on the fly. As its own role, superiority fighters specialize in establishing tactical dominance in the area enabling strikes on capital craft.

Strictly, light fighters are multirole fighters, trading performance for price and versatility, and heavy fighters superiority fighters, but the general trend has blurred the line between the roles heavily, as superiority fighters often have significant secondary capacity as strike craft, scouts, and EWAR--the roles that are traditionally the province of multirole craft.

Lancer drones in particular arose due to the deadliness of the actual strike role, and how much pilots bitched about doing it without already having established space superiority. So give the role to a dedicated drone that can eat the losses, and save the pilots for the actual role of establishing tactical dominance. The name comes from the way they "joust" at the target repeatedly to deliver their guided bombs, consuming much of the fuel they would need for dogfighting and escaping the area after delivery.

The name strikecraft has become a generic term for everything from the lowly lancer drone to even corvettes, as every tactical smallcraft can fill the strike role except shuttles and breaching pods.

10 minutes of dV? Yeah, you could probably get away with that. 10 minutes of life support? No, you'd want hours to about a day so you can have significant range, and so that you can limp home on the last dregs of your propellant.
3 g at full load. You get higher thrust as you dump missiles and expend propellant.
Though yes, you can always throttle down a bit to get consistent acceleration.

Jousting behavior only happens in empty space. Give fighters an objective to attack or defend that can't maneuver like they can, and all of a sudden they have to fight in a limited arena. Replace energy management with delta-v management, and holy shit, what do you know? Newtonian dogfighting falls right out.
Like, this was literally the solution In the Black had to force players to actually dogfight instead of just jousting all the time. Team Deathmatch didn't work and was boring. Objective gameplay was interesting, because now you've stopped dealing with spherical cows in a vacuum and had to deal with limitations that kept you from engaging in an idealized manner.
Notably, they didn't alter the fundamental mechanics of space in subtle or obvious ways to get this behavior to emerge. They literally just altered the battlefield.
It's the same issue with cyberwarfare and drones. Yeah, if you ignore fucking everything else, drones are obviously superior and pilots should never be used, but once you start actually examining it, you realize that no, you really do need to have human minds in the loop.

You're operating on the assumption that the fighter can simply boom-and-zoom in an alpha strike. That works fine for guided bombs, missiles, and sort of works for kinetic weapons, but the moment you fuck up an alpha strike you're stranded without enough dv to boom-and-zoom back to home base, because now you have to slowly coast through all the point defenses you failed to destroy in the second pass. If you have just enough dv to make a second pass and still stop off at home base to refuel, great job! You've burnt only a quarter of your dv to get up to speed, meaning you puttered about at a quarter of your top speed to do your run, giving you that much more exposure time to the PDWs on each run.

The problem is that the only weapons that stand a chance of mission killing a capital craft in a single attack run are casaba-howitzers, which themselves are the most vulnerable to PDWs. If you're willing to sacrifice your fighters on a failed alpha strike, or risk them getting shot down so they can make a beta strike, then you might as well make them drones. This is literally the purpose of lancer drones, and is why they're hyperspecialized instead of being some kind of multirole fightercraft.

Anything that requires multiple shots, like KEWs, or requires lingering over a spot, like DEWs, means you have to actually slow down to linger a bit in the area, which means you need to devote more of your propellant to maneuvering. Anything that takes more than maybe a second to guarantee a mission kill is better served by extending your stay time indefinitely and relying on half or more of your dv for maneuvering and dodging. A major purpose of fighters operating in a strike role is taking out point defense so that the lancer flight can come in safely and make repeat strafing runs.
There is of course a lot of room between these two extremes, as getting up to speed for boom-and-zooms requires long runs, but by then your capital craft have closed enough to start engaging directly, complicating the battlespace even more.

The following are quotes from Zack Hajj about the nuclear lighbulb engines used by the Shrike fighters from Into the Black, which our Switchblades are based on:

Considering the designs were largely using cold war technology, we assumed modern materials would allow us to significantly reduce the mass, but there are a couple of other things going on here.

For one, essentially every paper out there assumes hydrogen propellant. Our ships use water propellant, which has a much higher molar mass leading to lower specific impulse at the same temperature. One can demonstrate that using the same power for a lower specific impulse will lead to greater thrust, thus increasing TWR. Other benefits of this propellant are that it is much denser than hydrogen, allowing a more compact setup and higher mass flows, and that it's able to absorb radiation from the lightbulb pretty well as is (read, without metal additives that would drive down your specific impulse), both of which also improve performance somewhat beyond just what those first figures would suggest.

For another, much of the mass of a long-term GCNR is in the centrifuge used to process the gasseous fissionable material, that removes fission reaction products and poisons while maintaining the desired level of fissile material to keep fission going at a desired rate. Starfighters are never out long enough to burn through enough nuclear material for all this to matter, and so can do without all of this heavy equipment, instead offloading it to dedicated facilities. After each mission, the contents of the bulb can be piped into vats aboard the carrier which has its own centrifuge that will do the work for it.

-Back to Amorous Intent-

The Switchblade class is just a jank-ass aerospace modification to a preexisting fighter design.

Specifically, the interceptors from In the Black.
Nah, the propellant is actually underneath the pilot in the original Interceptor design. I just added air ducts on the top/sides for thrust augmentation. The nose is where the railgun sits

I mean, it's [gas core engine] 3000 s even before you account for air augmentation, and it's primarily meant for space maneuvering, where you don't really need long periods of thrust.
Even then, it's expected that if you're doing long duration atmospheric missions, or need to return to orbit to rearm & refuel, you'll carry drop tanks with you.

On ECM, VI, and why human crew/pilots are used:

VIs are dumb and easily confused by cyberwarfare. Moreover, the battlescape is rapidly changing and very quickly becomes chaotic after the first exchange. Adding a significant lightspeed delay in addition to the much worse data quality is just going to degrade performance, not increase, especially in an EWAR-rich environment. Moreover, space fighters are slow enough that computer reflexes aren't actually a significant gain over baseline humans, much less modern geneboosted and nano-augmented fighter jocks.
VI assistance still shows up a lot, such as in correcting for drift, navigation, and perfectly timing your fire and adjusting your aimpoint, but taking over entirely for the pilot's judgement is a fast way to get owned by a basilisk or in the second exchange when preprogramming your attack stops being remotely useful.

On Chinook:

Chinook is a Stanford torus with a smaller, inner, agricultural torus 1/3 the size, and a core than contains the engine, fuel, and everything else. The front also has a big plate over the top that acts as a micrometeorite shield, and turns into the mirror for natural sunlight when in station mode.
So to clarify: It goes warp ring, habitat torus, agricultural torus, central reaction engine and misc technical spaces?
The warp ring is actually integrated into the bottom of the habitat torus, but yes.

dead: The habitation ring's warp drive gets partially cannibalized to provide a new drive for the agricultural ring. It could in theory be repaired/replaced with dumb mass, but you'd also need to build a new mirror and hook up new radiators to keep the habitat from cooking.

Common spacelift engines:

Standard lifters. I'd have to doublecheck with @Cyanblackstone, but Elysium is supposed to be a double planet with ~0.9 g and ~1 atm, which rules out all non-rocket launch systems but orbital loops, which are also the most expensive investment.
Methalox Staged-Combustion TurboRockets (SCTRs) are the most common, usually with both the fuel and oxidizer chilled to slush form. After that, it's metallic hydrogen with water to cool the engine, and then nuclear lightbulbs, in that order of commonality. DPF fusion-electric microwave rockets sometimes show up, but they tend to be mostly private rockets for executives

UDD: It's a convenient but expensive fuel, in part because it's not all that stable, even under heavy magnetic fields.

Cybernetics:

Cybernetics: As for cybernetics, Jensen, but without the nonsense like the Icarus landing system, the nano-invulnerability ferrofluid armor, and the tactical exploding system.

Note, in Tyrants the term for someone who is cybernetically augmented is 'warewolf'.

On assault carriers and forcing gates:

The point is that big spacecraft soak up lots and lots of fire compared to smallcraft, which gives them the chance to swarm out and attack after the first wave of missiles has gone off instead of getting annihilated trying to cross the gate without protection.
As others have pointed out, complexity matter very little when it comes to designing ships. A "big dumb armor mass with tugs" is disposable and requires a bunch of tugs that can be shot down during a gate defense. Integrating engines means the big dumb mass can be recovered, and it can provide a bunch of really handy tech to actually support the bloody strikecraft instead of needing a separate carrier to do it for you.
Another advantages of assault carriers is that the strikecraft have a place to rearm and refuel without having to cross the most vulnerable region over and over again.
Yeah, you really do want a mix of capital craft and strike craft to handle assaults, as that requires intelligently focusing your fire.
Capital craft are too dangerous to be ignored, but can soak up damage like nothing else. Strike craft die easily, but are numerous and dangerous enough to be threats to even capital craft.

One common tactic is to have your capital craft plink at the frontal gate defenses until those are more or less gone, and then send in strike craft (or just go backwards through the gate) to mop up any flankers.
There are, of course, plenty of tactics to punish anyone who tries this, because gates make for an arms race.

On weapons:

Cannons lose effective range and mass in favor of low power draw and going slow enough to laugh in the face of Whipple shields.
Mostly, that the mirror going to be big for a powerful laser like that, which in turn slows down its traversal. I'm not entirely sure that you could significantly beat out just spinning the fightercraft itself in traversal speed and use a lens to do fine adjustments.

what distinguishes a capital laser from a PD laser? In a phased array, can't different parts of the array be tasked to track different targets, allowing capital lasers to function as PD lasers?

That's actually the big advantage of a phased array over more traditional lasers, yes. And the main distinguishment between a capital laser and point defense is the intensity. For any given beam waist, intensity will determine effective range, element size (and thus traversal time), and what it can be used for. PDWs can use 15 MW/m^2 or less, with capital lasers generally needing 100 MW/m^2 or more to reliably do damage.

I mean, yes, but why would you? Fabbers can miniaturize traditional particle accelerators down to the infrared or even visible range, and there are laser wakefield accelerators on top of that. They can get really small.

You can assume 100 T field strength is achievable, though.

Railguns run pretty hot, are massive energy hogs at high rpm, and have issues with barrel erosion. While it's better in a vacuum, spacecraft are generally having to fight for every joule of electricity and fight to dump every joule of waste heat.
Conventional weapons can fire as fast as they can load bullets in the chamber, and don't have barrel erosion issues.
As a result, it makes more sense to save the railguns and coilguns for PDW methods that firearms and lasers can't do, and missiles are too expensive or also unable to do, like sandblasters

Also, you do need capacitors (or flywheels) for EM guns, and those are generally less efficient than chemical weapons in terms of volume and mass

Carbon electrodes on the armature that flash heat into plasma to reduce rail erosion. It still fucks the rails up, given thermal plasma is pretty corrosive itself, but nowhere near as bad as before. Like In the Black, the massively reduced erosion is solved by slowly pushing the rails inward after every shot to maintain contact, and after a number of rounds ranging from the hundreds to thousands, the railgun needs to be serviced.

On hydrogen-boron fusion:

The dense plasma focus design I based it off of, Focus Fusion, plans to use a 1x1x3 m device that consists of the roughly beer can sized beryllium device, many, many thin layers of metal foil for capturing x-rays, wrapped around by a big water shield. Extending down from the focus is a traveling wave direct converter to extract energy from the ion beam and plasma, and to save room, the capacitors storing both the energy from each shot to smooth the grid power out and the energy needed to fire the next shot are wrapped around the converter tube.
That's pretty big, and gets even bigger if you try and turn it on its side where it can no longer use the ground to act as an x-ray shield.
But you can replace the water shield with composite metal-metal foam that's just as effective as water by mass (if not potentially more so) but much, much thinner, and you can rearrange the capacitors however the fuck you want, in addition to using 23rd century capacitor technology to shrink them.
In a tank, the engine compartment's armor itself can serve as the radiation shield, and the capacitors can be shared with a railgun or coilguns.
The thing is, from memory and purely eyeballing it, the water shield's total thickness, on both sides, can't be more than ~300-500 cm, which makes the x-ray photocollector pretty chonky.
The design "only" generates 5-10 MW, but it can scale down pretty much indefinitely by decreasing shot frequency from 200 Hz down to whatever is needed to keep the capacitors topped up

clockworkchaos · Mar 10, 2022

CyberEnby said:
OK! I've gathered up a bunch of lore from the Discord that @Amorous Intent has shared, and I'm going to post it all here in a single convenient package for the science nerds to enjoy!

Amorous Intent's Lore Snippets

On fighters:

The following are quotes from Zack Hajj about the nuclear lighbulb engines used by the Shrike fighters from Into the Black, which our Switchblades are based on:

-Back to Amorous Intent-

On ECM, VI, and why human crew/pilots are used:

On Chinook:

Common spacelift engines:

Cybernetics:

Note, in Tyrants the term for someone who is cybernetically augmented is 'warewolf'.

On assault carriers and forcing gates:

On weapons:

On hydrogen-boron fusion:

Oh no I'm gonna have to read this for combat engine aren't I?

@AKuz what if we just replaced the combat engine with a 'Conquest: The Frontier Wars' game?

Amorous Intent · Mar 11, 2022

CyberEnby said:
The following are quotes from Zack Hajj about the nuclear lighbulb engines used by the Shrike fighters from Into the Black, which our Switchblades are based on:

-Back to Amorous Intent-

It's funny, because in my initial conception for the Switchblade, I switched from (presumed) hydrogen to liquid methane to improve remass density, and directly fed air into the engine to during atmospheric flight instead of/in addition to methane to extend flight time. Someone (I forget who) pointed out that the lightbulb reactor needed to be seeded with metal particles to improve absorption, and thus would need a separate source of metal particles. At the time, there was no information on Atomic Rockets about alternate NTR propellants, so I had to assume they were right, and rethought my design to just be an air augmenter.

Apparently Hajj ran into the same problem as me, but unlike me, he actually has the wrinkly brain to do the math himself. Turns out I didn't need to worry about additives at all, though IIRC air is more transparent to UV than water.

Traehgniw · Mar 11, 2022

#GalacticSurvey

Map Designation: NT-28

System Name: Mobius

Political Status: Omoikaine research colony

Charter Presence: Omoikaine research colony, a little Cern and MSI presence

System Population: 50 million

System Bodies:

several relatively uninteresting planets, a few inhabited
3. Klein, toriodal planet, theoretically a terraforming candidate

Notable Features:

Contains an actual toroid planet! These very-fast-spinning worlds were theorized to be possible, but it was assumed that they were so unlikely that none would ever be seen. When this one was found, Omoikaine, H-I, and Ares got into a bidding war over it; Omoikane spent enough money on the bidding war that they were unable to buy another highly unusual system that came up a few months later.

Most of the system's population lives on Klein, but some Cernnunos orbital farms and MSI-crewed shuttles exist; Klein is not self-sufficient and is largely reliant on imports of food and other supplies. While it is terraformable, the horde of geologists, astrophysicists, and other Klein researchers are not done studying the current state of the only toroidal planet known!

There has already been one Black Winter about an attempt at even slight terraforming of Klein.

Tatbee · Mar 11, 2022

Tatbee said:
Edited plan.
Tell me what's wrong with it.

No takers?
I guess my plan is perfect.

New plan then.

[] Plan: Incentivise Reconciliation
-[] Officially instruct Ambassador Stardust to call a summit of the leaders involved and attempt to hash out a diplomatic solution that everyone can live with. (Results uncertain, I hope you trust your Diplomatic Corps)
--[] Request Waystation host the summit, and act as another neutral third party.
--[] Stress the importance of working together against Compact/Charter aggression.

--[] As part of any diplomatic solution, the AIC may offer the following:

--[] 1) Subsidise Gate Defenses
---[] The AIC will provide resources, materials, funds, and/or support, to construct any gate defense effective against Charter/Compact aggression.
---[] The Osliam>>Idyllia gate defense is invalid.

--[] 2) Subsidise Smallcraft Yards
---[] The AIC will provide resources, materials, funds, and/or support, to construct Smallcraft Yards.
---[] Maximum of 2 per system.

--[] 3a) A binding Defensive Pact, against Compact/Charter aggression.
---[] For all signatories, AIC will provide support for:
---[] Nationalised BLG; starting 6 months from now, completion in ~9-12 months(?).
---[] Nationalised Immortality; starting 1 year from now, completion in ~15-18 months(?).

--[] 3b) Join the AIC.
---[] AIC will begin integration immediately, providing full BLG and Immortality; completion in ~3-6 months(?).

Thoughts on new plan?

DecaffeinatedOwl · Mar 11, 2022

Tatbee said:
No takers?
I guess my plan is perfect.

New plan then.

[] Plan: Incentivise Reconciliation
-[] Officially instruct Ambassador Stardust to call a summit of the leaders involved and attempt to hash out a diplomatic solution that everyone can live with. (Results uncertain, I hope you trust your Diplomatic Corps)
--[] Request Waystation host the summit, and act as another neutral third party.
--[] Stress the importance of working together against Compact/Charter aggression.

--[] As part of any diplomatic solution, the AIC may offer the following:

--[] 1) Subsidise Gate Defenses
---[] The AIC will provide resources, materials, funds, and/or support, to construct any gate defense effective against Charter/Compact aggression.
---[] The Osliam>>Idyllia gate defense is invalid.

--[] 2) Subsidise Smallcraft Yards
---[] The AIC will provide resources, materials, funds, and/or support, to construct Smallcraft Yards.
---[] Maximum of 2 per system.

--[] 3a) A binding Defensive Pact, against Compact/Charter aggression.
---[] For all signatories, AIC will provide support for:
---[] Nationalised BLG; starting 6 months from now, completion in ~9-12 months(?).
---[] Nationalised Immortality; starting 1 year from now, completion in ~15-18 months(?).

--[] 3b) Join the AIC.
---[] AIC will begin integration immediately, providing full BLG and Immortality; completion in ~3-6 months(?).

Thoughts on new plan?

So, the problem I have is that I don't see how this addresses the immediate issue of Orochi and the Hand Biters feeding off eachother.

It's not that roping everyone into a defense pact is a bad idea, mind, but it feels like missing the trees for the forest.

Amazing Abzan · Mar 11, 2022

Tatbee said:
No takers?
I guess my plan is perfect.

New plan then.

[] Plan: Incentivise Reconciliation
-[] Officially instruct Ambassador Stardust to call a summit of the leaders involved and attempt to hash out a diplomatic solution that everyone can live with. (Results uncertain, I hope you trust your Diplomatic Corps)
--[] Request Waystation host the summit, and act as another neutral third party.
--[] Stress the importance of working together against Compact/Charter aggression.

--[] As part of any diplomatic solution, the AIC may offer the following:

--[] 1) Subsidise Gate Defenses
---[] The AIC will provide resources, materials, funds, and/or support, to construct any gate defense effective against Charter/Compact aggression.
---[] The Osliam>>Idyllia gate defense is invalid.

--[] 2) Subsidise Smallcraft Yards
---[] The AIC will provide resources, materials, funds, and/or support, to construct Smallcraft Yards.
---[] Maximum of 2 per system.

--[] 3a) A binding Defensive Pact, against Compact/Charter aggression.
---[] For all signatories, AIC will provide support for:
---[] Nationalised BLG; starting 6 months from now, completion in ~9-12 months(?).
---[] Nationalised Immortality; starting 1 year from now, completion in ~15-18 months(?).

--[] 3b) Join the AIC.
---[] AIC will begin integration immediately, providing full BLG and Immortality; completion in ~3-6 months(?).

Thoughts on new plan?

None of the plans you've proposed address (or even really acknowledge) the actual issue at hand. We're having this vote because there are tensions between Gentle Repose and Osliam. Those tensions are a result of the fact that Osliam's president got elected because of his anti-augment rhetoric and saber rattling towards Gentle Repose, things he's only doubled down on since actually taking office. None of your plans even mention Ochiro's rhetoric or belligerence, they're all just proposals for us to build a bunch of infrastructure with a defensive pact tacked on.

If I hadn't seen the actual post outlining the situation and just tried to guess what we're dealing with based on what your plans do, I'd assume the issue was something about the other systems feeling underdeveloped or unprepared for the imminent Charter invasion. I would have no idea that there was an hostility between our allies beyond maybe disagreeing on how to prepare for the invasion.

clockworkchaos · Mar 11, 2022

Don Alverzo said:
None of the plans you've proposed address (or even really acknowledge) the actual issue at hand. We're having this vote because there are tensions between Gentle Repose and Osliam. Those tensions are a result of the fact that Osliam's president got elected because of his anti-augment rhetoric and saber rattling towards Gentle Repose, things he's only doubled down on since actually taking office. None of your plans even mention Ochiro's rhetoric or belligerence, they're all just proposals for us to build a bunch of infrastructure with a defensive pact tacked on.

Mmmmmm, this is iffy. There is a good argument to be maid that he got elected because he reached for the stars, the vote turn-around came after the debate where he was for BLG and immortality, something the other Candidates were not advocating until later/lesser.

clockworkchaos said:
After a stunned silence that has been widely memed, both of the other candidates and the moderators argued about his ability to do that while also implementing immortality within two years and a "Nationalized" Radiant-style BLG. In an even more memed retort, he compared this reaction to 'Compact politicians telling us people's basic needs are not within the budget.' In this and the final debate he surged, and at the last moment gained enough support to crown him the victory, primarily from voters who had been leaning towards Olliander previously.

People were in no mood for 'we can't afford that', after years of being told it by CEO's as a reason for.... everything else. Which doesn't mean his campaign was ALSO based in questionable rhetoric but... that isn't all he is.

Model DC.14F · Mar 11, 2022

Come to think of it, what are the actual names of the Political parties does the FRO have? All three candidates were said to represent political fractions, and Ochiro was explicitly mentioned to have a party.
Going from the updates, they can be categorized as:

Socialist/Utopian
Militarist/Reformist
Conservative, but favors Welfare Programs

Actually, rereading the update, there may be a possibility that Ochiro is deliberately overstating the hand biter threat as a way to get elected. While it's clear that he is probably a legitimate racist, most of this is rhetoric not actions, and most of his popularity come from his bombastic populistic pandering.
New theory, Ochiro's motivation isn't that he's a bigot, but because he's a nationalist (planetalist?), who wants Osliam to be free of outside influence. His primary goal was to prevent the other two candidates from being elected, because Klymia was an 'anarchist' who wanted to recreate Radiant on Osliam, and Drako wanted to join the Radiant-Sheol military alliance. As such, he'll be wiling to agree to any one-time deal that benefits Osliam, but will refuse any that require long-term commitments on his end.

DecaffeinatedOwl · Mar 11, 2022

clockworkchaos said:
Mmmmmm, this is iffy. There is a good argument to be maid that he got elected because he reached for the stars, the vote turn-around came after the debate where he was for BLG and immortality, something the other Candidates were not advocating until later/lesser.

True, but that's not the problem. If it was just nationalized BLG we'd just pay up out of spare change and go back to war preparations.

It's the blatant saber-rattling at an ally promoting mutual radicalization that's got our collective panties, boxers, knickers, what have you in a bunch. We don't need this ever, and we especially don't need this now on the eve of battle.

So mostly what we need is for Ochiro to back off on the Repose-facing gate, and to do so with as little hurt feelings as possible. Everything else, sure, fine, but he's got to stop handing the Hand-Biters free ammunition.

clockworkchaos · Mar 11, 2022

One other thing about Orochi.
He's a formere dissident, the only one among the candidates, and was arrested for it. I suspect* that was also part of his election and is part of the problem now. "You are asking for to much, you are wrong and need to stop demanding stuff." is something he's used to being told. By the capitalist class who everyone now agrees he was right and they were wrong. So when people tell him that worrying about the Hand Biters is racist, he's like "I've been through this song and dance before." But again, speculations.

*You are the QM who posted it, why do you use suspect? Because I haven't entirely nailed down bit, when I write characters I have bits that are 'this is true' and bits that are 'this may be true, but this might be' I like characters with mixed and muddled motivations like real people. Plus final agreements are after other Qm's talk.

Solarstream · Mar 11, 2022

[X] Provide a Ladder Down

Tatbee · Mar 11, 2022

TripleTango said:
So, the problem I have is that I don't see how this addresses the immediate issue of Orochi and the Hand Biters feeding off eachother.

It's not that roping everyone into a defense pact is a bad idea, mind, but it feels like missing the trees for the forest.

Don Alverzo said:
None of the plans you've proposed address (or even really acknowledge) the actual issue at hand.

This addresses the issue, all on its own.
Stardust hashes out a deal.

[] Officially instruct Ambassador Stardust to call a summit of the leaders involved and attempt to hash out a diplomatic solution that everyone can live with. (Results uncertain, I hope you trust your Diplomatic Corps)

The rest is incentives, tools in Stardust's belt, that may be offered to reach a diplomatic solution.
- Do they want more Gate Defenses or Smallcraft Yards?
- Do they want BLG and Immortality benefits, from a closer relationship with, or simply joining, the AIC?

Amazing Abzan · Mar 11, 2022

Tatbee said:
This addresses the issue, all on its own.
Stardust hashes out a deal.

The rest is incentives, tools in Stardust's belt, that may be offered to reach a diplomatic solution.
- Do they want more Gate Defenses or Smallcraft Yards?
- Do they want BLG and Immortality benefits, from a closer relationship with, or simply joining, the AIC?

But you haven't actually stated what sort of deal you want to achieve. Stardust has no objective here except some vague notion of everybody being happy. Should they be using those incentives to push Osliam to recant its recent statements? Should they be using them to encourage Gentle Repose to clench its teeth and work with the racist dude? What are Stardust's priorities, what are the redlines? What is the actual goal of this diplomatic effort?

Also, the lack of sticks to go with carrots, in addition to the lack of clear goals, means there's a very real possibility of this diplomatic conference ending with no solution and thus absolutely nothing changing in this situation. There's nothing stopping anyone (particularly Ochiro, who is noted for his belligerence) from just throwing their hands up and walking away.

Tatbee · Mar 11, 2022

Don Alverzo said:
But you haven't actually stated what sort of deal you want to achieve. Stardust has no objective here except some vague notion of everybody being happy. Should they be using those incentives to push Osliam to recant its recent statements? Should they be using them to encourage Gentle Repose to clench its teeth and work with the racist dude? What are Stardust's priorities, what are the redlines? What is the actual goal of this diplomatic effort?

Also, the lack of sticks to go with carrots, in addition to the lack of clear goals, means there's a very real possibility of this diplomatic conference ending with no solution and thus absolutely nothing changing in this situation. There's nothing stopping anyone (particularly Ochiro, who is noted for his belligerence) from just throwing their hands up and walking away.

I see.
So voting for just this:

[] Officially instruct Ambassador Stardust to call a summit of the leaders involved and attempt to hash out a diplomatic solution that everyone can live with. (Results uncertain, I hope you trust your Diplomatic Corps)

Is an invalid vote?

Godwinson · Mar 11, 2022

A vote can be valid and still also be a bad idea.

Amazing Abzan · Mar 11, 2022

Tatbee said:
I see.
So voting for just this:

Is an invalid vote?

It's a valid vote, in the sense that it will be counted and will take effect if most people vote for it. It's just that what you'd be voting for is pushing the problem onto Stardust and giving no direction beyond "handle it." You should only vote like that if you'd be okay with basically any outcome, including a continuation of the status quo.

Tatbee · Mar 11, 2022

Don Alverzo said:
But you haven't actually stated what sort of deal you want to achieve. Stardust has no objective here except some vague notion of everybody being happy. Should they be using those incentives to push Osliam to recant its recent statements? Should they be using them to encourage Gentle Repose to clench its teeth and work with the racist dude? What are Stardust's priorities, what are the redlines? What is the actual goal of this diplomatic effort?

To actually answer all these questions.

I want Stardust to attempt hash out a diplomatic solution that everyone can live with. (yes, that's the vote)

That means, find out what each side wants, and doesn't want, then find a compromise.

As I don't know what each side wants, I can't include that in a plan.

I can include incentives Stardust can use, to help reach a compromise everyone will agree to.
Which boils down to "we'll give everyone free stuff, if you both compromise"; as a relative superpower we can afford it.

Also, the lack of sticks to go with carrots, in addition to the lack of clear goals, means there's a very real possibility of this diplomatic conference ending with no solution and thus absolutely nothing changing in this situation. There's nothing stopping anyone (particularly Ochiro, who is noted for his belligerence) from just throwing their hands up and walking away.

The ~~carrot~~ *sticks is not getting free stuff.

Amazing Abzan · Mar 11, 2022

Tatbee said:
That means, find out what each side wants, and doesn't want, then find a compromise.

As I don't know what each side wants, I can't include that in a plan.

I strongly suggest you reread the threadmark, as it details what the various groups actually think of the situation and what outcomes they might prefer. Like, look at this:

clockworkchaos said:
Gentle Repose's Reaction

Ochiro's election has generated outrage within Idyllia. Dozens of different politicians have demanded a formal apology for mischaracterizing them as 'Hand Biters'. Though in a twist of irony, the election has stroked a defensive sentiment in Gentle Repose, where recent local elections (and please note here, every town and settlement in Gentle Repose is allowed to keep their own schedule) have shown several Hand-Biter candidates performing better than expected, while non-Hand Biter candidates are constantly outdoing each other searching for new ways to condemn Osliam without whole heartedly borrowing Handbiter rhetoric.

In any event, relations between Osliam and Idyllia are rapidly cooling to the point where polling in both systems shows each System considering the other a possible military threat nearly equal with that of Task Force 12.7

As of this morning Alliyana Fyre, Idyllia's diplomatic representative in Persephone City, has lodged a formal request that we not lend Ochiro administration material aid as long as he is working to inflame anti-augment sentiment. The hope being that Ochiro cannot keep to his campaign promises without significant outside aid.

Somewhat ironically, our analysis shows that at the time of the election, the Hand-Biter driven project for Gate Defences, which always relied on the toleration of the non-Handbiter majority for the expenditure, was floundering under arguments about its cost and practical military effectiveness. Now it seems inevitable that the Gate Defences will be completed on time (the Idyllia Soldier's Council hopes to finish by early July) no matter who wins in any of the upcoming elections. It also seems as if the Hand-Biter promise of "ten wings" of Strikecraft for system defence will be at least partially fulfilled even if they fail to gain a majority over the coming year, which still seems more likely than not, if no longer certain.

This section makes it very clear what Gentle Repose wants: an end to the anti-Augment sentiment and belligerence from Ochiro with an apology for what he's said thus far and an end to aid for Osliam if they don't walk back their rhetoric. They view Osliam as a significant military threat so long as Ochiro continues his posturing.

There's details like this for every involved party. You really shouldn't be in the position of having absolutely no idea what anybody wants so long as you're paying close attention to the available information.

BlueTwinkleToes · Mar 11, 2022

[X] Provide a Ladder Down
[X] Officially instruct Ambassador Stardust to call a summit of the leaders involved and attempt to hash out a diplomatic solution that everyone can live with. (Results uncertain, I hope you trust your Diplomatic Corps)

Ladder plan seems the most well thought out. However, I do wonder how much that would restrict Stardust from adapting to the situation.

AKuz · Mar 11, 2022

Scheduled vote count started by AKuz on Mar 8, 2022 at 9:13 PM, finished with 156 posts and 30 votes.

21 people have voted
[X] Provide a Ladder Down
- DecaffeinatedOwl
- CyberFemme
- spiritualatheist
- Amazing Abzan
- NedTheNanite
- ThatGazzer
- Torgamous
- Chlof
- Regency
- Travler66
- UponALotusBlosom
- Hazardine
- Doordox
- LilyWitch
- Godwinson
- Graf Tzarogy
- Sara
- HeroCooky
- Solarstream
- BlueTwinkleToes
- The Laurent
6 people have voted
[X] Officially instruct Ambassador Stardust to call a summit of the leaders involved and attempt to hash out a diplomatic solution that everyone can live with. (Results uncertain, I hope you trust your Diplomatic Corps)
5 people have voted
- [X] Officially instruct Ambassador Stardust to call a summit of the leaders involved and attempt to hash out a diplomatic solution that everyone can live with. (Results uncertain, I hope you trust your Diplomatic Corps)
4 people have voted
-[X] If no progress is being made, feel free to bail.
3 people have voted
[X] Plan Sheolite Sphere
3 people have voted
-[X] Make it clear that the AIC is present as a neutral arbitrator. We will neither choke off Osliam's resources nor fulfill Ochiro's promises for him.
3 people have voted
-[X] Nudge towards a deal that would see both Gentle Repose and Osliam placed on an accelerated timetable for BLG Expansion and immortality through Sheolite aid, although Radiant might assist with expertise and such.
3 people have voted
-[X] If Ochiro doesn't want to accept that, remind him that he can't fulfill his campaign promises on his own and Radiant isn't biting, but don't be drawn into any attempts at sanctions or anything of that nature.
2 people have voted
[X] Plan Respect Sovereignty
- Angelform
- Burned_Cookie
2 people have voted
-[X] Support Sheol and Gentle Repose's suggestion of a resource reduction other than that required to provide for BLG, since removing that would be inhumane. (Greatly pleases Gentle Repose, slightly pleases Sheol, Heavily displeases Osliam.)
- Angelform
- Burned_Cookie
2 people have voted
--[X] List criteria for the end of Resource-Reduction: Osliam formally allies with or joins the AIC.
- Angelform
- Burned_Cookie
2 people have voted
-[X] It is not the job of the Amaranthine Commonwealth to intervene in the internal affairs of Independent Systems. If Osliam attempts to blockade Idyllia, or if Idyllia attempt to attack Osliam, then we will intervene. However until and unless it becomes a humanitarian issue it is not our job to dictate what opinions people hold or what they spend their own resources on.
- Angelform
- Burned_Cookie
2 people have voted
--[X] Act as a mediator and neutral party. Offer to guarantee treaties if that will help.
- Angelform
- Burned_Cookie
2 people have voted
--[X] Do NOT make deals. The point of the summit is to get people talking to each other and hopefully acting like adults, not to trade favours for an 'advantageous' outcome.
- Angelform
- Burned_Cookie
1 people have voted
-[X] She should talk to Sheol first, see what their Redlines are, and outline what she's thinking so far.
- Joppe
1 people have voted
-[X] Pray this works.
- The Laurent
1 people have voted
-[X] If it doesn't, that is to say if he refuses all of this and isn't even willing to at least make compromises, go along with the Resource-Crunch proposal by Gentle Repose and Sheol, as much as it sucks.
- The Laurent
1 people have voted
-[X] Suggest she talk to all parties in advance separately/privately in advance.
- The Laurent
1 people have voted
-[X] Ochiro Offer
- The Laurent
1 people have voted
---[X] Offer some help towards Immortality: promise to provide all data from Expanding Treatment Capacity (also promising to continue work on it next turn) to help him if he needs it, and research towards Advanced Cern FRMs ASAP (IE, starting next turn), which may provide key healthcare aid to fulfill his promises.
- The Laurent
1 people have voted
----[X] If he wants these, he needs to soften his Augment rhetoric and make provisions for Augment healthcare.
- The Laurent
1 people have voted
---[X] Offer to build one or both gate defenses, as needed, by the end of the year at latest staffing them with trained Osliam military officials/etc and fully under Osliam control if he publically ditches the defense-gates idea for GR.
- The Laurent
1 people have voted
---[X] Offer to talk with him about the "Nationalization" BLG issue in an open negotiation later on in the year. Kick that can down the road.
- The Laurent
1 people have voted
-[X] Gentle Repose should get the same offers/help in terms of their own BLG and medical services, as well as revealing what's being asked of Ochiro.
- The Laurent
1 people have voted
--[X] Also offer to pay for the full resource-costs (BR, SR, E) for the defensive gate being build by GR.
- The Laurent
1 people have voted
-[X] Depending on what he says and Sheol Redlines and etc, Stardust should then get everyone together and hope things can be managed.
- The Laurent
1 people have voted
[X] Plan Why are we here again
- Joppe
1 people have voted
-[X] AIC's primary goals are to convince Osliam not to build defenses facing Idyllia and to de-escalate tensions between two systems. The secondary goals are to convince Osliam to commit to protecting augment rights better, to ensure access to Augment healthcare and to ensure that Osliam builds fixed defenses facing Waystation and the TF 12.7 as soon as possible.
- Joppe
1 people have voted
--[X] Nationalization of the the AIC built BLG infrastructure (by both Osliam and Gentle Repose) and the implementation of BLG expansion (by both) can be used as a "carrot" to convince Osliam to cooperate.
- Joppe
1 people have voted
--[X] Use the promise of providing data (to both Osliam and Gentle Repose) from Expanding Treatment Capacity (and the promise of continuing to work on it), and research towards Advanced Cern FRMs next turn as another "carrot" to convince Osliam to cooperate. Both could help in fulfilling Ochiro's campaign promises.
- Joppe
1 people have voted
-[X] If Ochiro doesn't want to accept a deal, remind him that he can't fulfill his campaign promises on his own and Radiant isn't biting, but don't be drawn into any attempts at sanctions or anything of that nature.
- Joppe
1 people have voted
-[X] Express our displeasure at (Ochiro) the fact that these negotiations are necessary in the first place.
- Joppe
1 people have voted
-[X] Talk to Waystation about gaining their aid by promising to build gates for them (list which) within the next two turns, in exchange for… (Choose as many…)
- Joppe
1 people have voted
--[X] Aid in anti-TF12.7 efforts.
- Joppe
1 people have voted
[X] It is not the job of the Amaranthine Commonwealth to intervene in the internal affairs of our allied neighbours. (Everyone (except Waystation) is slightly-to-moderatly annoyed at our aloofness, and this will set the tone for future diplomatic efforts.
- Pempelune

Rockeye · Mar 11, 2022

What does provide a ladder down..... Mean? Is it a plan vote name or something?

Trent01 · Mar 11, 2022

Rockeye said:
What does provide a ladder down..... Mean? Is it a plan vote name or something?

Its a plan name.

The Laurent said:
[X] Provide a Ladder Down
- [X] Officially instruct Ambassador Stardust to call a summit of the leaders involved and attempt to hash out a diplomatic solution that everyone can live with. (Results uncertain, I hope you trust your Diplomatic Corps)
-[X] She should talk to Sheol first, see what their Redlines are, and outline what she's thinking so far.
-[X] Another she should talk to Ochiro on a personal basis, perhaps with the help of any scientist friends she knows. Try to get an in on what he's really thinking.
--[X] Point out that the escalating tensions are empowering Hand-Biter Radicals, show him data/evidence if he's really that stubborn.
--[X] Offer some help towards Immortality: promise to provide all data from Expanding Treatment Capacity (also promising to continue work on it next turn) to help him if he needs it, and research towards Advanced Cern FRMs ASAP (IE, starting next turn), which may provide key healthcare aid to fulfill his promises.
---[X] If he wants these, he needs to soften his Augment rhetoric and make provisions for Augment healthcare.
--[X] Offer to build one or both gate defenses, as needed, by the end of the year at latest staffing them with trained Osliam military officials/etc and fully under Osliam control if he publically ditches the defense-gates idea for GR.
--[X] Offer to talk with him about the "Nationalization" BLG issue in an open negotiation later on in the year. Kick that can down the road.
-[X] Depending on what he says and Sheol Redlines, Stardust should then get everyone together and hope things can be managed.
-[X] Also, make sure Sheol talks to Gentle Repose on all this beforehand as well, depending on what everyone says.
-[X] Pray this works.
-[X] If it doesn't, that is to say if he refuses all of this and isn't even willing to at least make compromises, go along with the Resource-Crunch proposal by Gentle Repose and Sheol, as much as it sucks.

natruska · Mar 11, 2022

#GalacticSurvey

"Well, there's nothing to do but wait. For...good news, we hope. We'll be back-no. No, I'm not reading this. Are you out of your goddamn mind? This has to be the worst crash I've seen in sixteen years, and you want to use it to shill some...scam? Hell no!"
-Commentator Zofia Haneen's viral outburst when asked to lead into a "Rags2Riches" commercial following a major crash in the 2248 Gridiron Galactic. She was traded to H-I's Orbital Racing division for the Sparking Rain IP and broadcast rights for Martian golf.

"Why do these assholes keep trying? I don't get it. The NFL's bigger than God and older than the government. The Rowes have been Raider Nation for two hundred years, man. No amount of 'frontier league' PR bullshit is gonna overcome generational loyalty, especially not when they're putting out a shit product. Rhodes can offer as much cash as they want, but nobody worth a damn wants to play in an empty stadium and live on a dead planet."
-Sports podcaster Calvin Rowe's comments on the founding of the Gridiron Football League.

Map Designation: NS-3
System Name: Streamline
Political Status: Self-Governing Colony (Rhodes controlled)
Charter Presence: Fully owned by Rhodes
System Population: 500,000 permanent residents, peaking at about 1 million during the racing season.

System Bodies:
1
-Gridiron, Venusian
2
-Azote, airless terrestrial.
3
-Asteroid belt
4
-Migrating Jovian
5
-Migrating Jovian

Notable Features:
Gridiron: Leased for terraforming research when humanity first spread into the Frontiers. Named for the enormous experimental sunshade built at the L1 point, protecting the planet and its environs from solar radiation. The region's smugglers relied on souped-up smallcraft stripped of mass - including radiation shielding - to evade customs patrols, and they saw the value of a safe orbit to test their designs. The races started soon enough. In the beginning "smuggler specials" such as slingshot, precise deorbit or rapid orbital rendezvous were common, but they were soon eclipsed by normal point-to-point races.

The sunshade's sudden catastrophic failure scattered the racing circuit, but the institution born in Streamline endured elsewhere. Rhodes's miners and industrial workers were some of its most loyal fans, and Rhodes was the first to seize the chance to grab a bit of Frontier culture by organizing a cup series, kicking it off where it all began. Today, orbital racing is one of the top sports in the Frontier and has a cult following in the Core. It's edgy and exciting. The danger is very real. And much to the annoyance of Hermes-Ishtar, Rhodes holds the most prestigious and historic slice of that pie.

The closest parallel to a race is strikecraft combat, but they fight in normal space. Normal space is big, big is safe, and safe is boring. Most tracks are partially or fully enclosed and dangerously narrow. Huge advances in safety have cut down on deaths, but there is only so much you can do when a body decelerates that fast.

Azote: A dustball that recently (in astronomical terms) lost its atmosphere to a giant impact, millions of years of asteroid bombardment fixed a fortune in nitrates into the planet's surface. The nitrogen extraction operation here employs the systems permanent population, who mostly live underground for protection from asteroid impacts and radiation.

Capitalizing on the "blue collar" cred of orbital racing, Rhodes decided to challenge the NFL with a league based in the Frontier. The "Gridiron Football League" pun was a significant factor, although it ended up based on Azote after a nightmarish first season played in spin gravity. It has seen some success as a spring league, but few doubt it'll survive if it moves to the fall to compete directly. The eight teams play in an underground stadium, which fans consider "some James Bond shit". They're all named for various Frontier markets such as Radiant and Crucible, although they're obviously not local to any of 'em.

System History:
A mostly worthless system with an unstable asteroid belt, Streamline's peak population was a couple million. The mining business had never seen much investment from corporate, and the system would've remained an obscure backwater or emptied out entirely if not for the sunshade project. As it is, it's an obscure backwater except for a couple weeks every February.

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

Been Better

Love the future

It's all in the cards

"Well, I've got nothing."

Been Better

Plausible Engineer

A Fountain of Quest Ideas