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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Aranfan · May 22, 2022

It is highly likely that Sol Nav has access to Ares 3, which includes things like capital ships and shit.

LucidProp · May 22, 2022

ExNihilo said:
Support Congressman Joe! He's not in trouble or anything, but I think he should be supported more.

Down with Congressman Joe! His itchy trigger finger will wet us all and I refuse to do more laundry than I have to! :mob:

Amazing Abzan · May 22, 2022

LucidProp said:
I always thought SolNav made their stuff in-house in order to not be beholden to any of the Charters as part of their "Bigger Fish" philosophy.

Turns out, SolNav is as stupid as they come so I guess they're dumb enough to hamstring themselves by relying on Ares designs.

This only makes sense if you assume that there's a threat of Ares not selling stuff to people who are willing to pay money for it which... really, really shouldn't be the case. Like, given what we've seen in this quest, I'd be willing to bet Ares has a history of selling weapons even to people they're actively at war with.

Also, the existence of in-house arms-production by SolNav implies a level of robust, Charter-independent infrastructure that I really can't see existing in the Compact. The whole system exists to ensure the Charters continue to profit, so anything that can be converted into Charter profit will be. We've already seen that SolNav has a policy of renting out the crewmembers of their ships as cheap labor, so we know that SolNav isn't immune to this tendency even when it makes for mind-bogglingly dumb military decisions. I don't see why this shouldn't extend to something that already has of being milked for profit irl.

Genderite · May 22, 2022

Don Alverzo said:
This only makes sense if you assume that there's a threat of Ares not selling stuff to people who are willing to pay money for it which... really, really shouldn't be the case. Like, given what we've seen in this quest, I'd be willing to bet Ares has a history of selling weapons even to people they're actively at war with.

Have they ever fought a Corporate war? Every mention I can remember has them stay neutral and sell arms and mercs to both sides.

BurnBright · May 22, 2022

CyberEnby said:
Technically, it's a bit more complex:

1) Every congress member has a spray bottle for short ranged anti-horni defense (for the historical reenactment caucus, an exception has been made to allow paper newspapers for bonking)
2) The Congressional speaker is armed with a long range water gun called the Speaker Soaker. This is to maintain basic discipline in the chamber.
3) Should the congresisonal speaker abuse their privileges, a member of congress can press a button to tip over the Bucket of Damocles that hangs above the speaker's chair, in order to soak the Speaker as a for abusing their authority (this now requires a quorum of button presses after the initial trial run ground to a halt because of congressman Joe who was elected on a platform of 'always press the button')

I know that on the face of it, this seems like it's a meme, and it is, but it's also semi-canon, I believe. And it shows an interesting part of Radiant culture, and thus AIC culture as well, a rejection of the norms of being decorous. Instead of treating it with undue solemnity, the general congress is meant to just be another group meeting, another place to just treat casually, and these habits of super soakers and squirt guns and precariously placed water buckets helps to remind the congresspeople of that.

clockworkchaos · May 22, 2022

Scheduled vote count started by clockworkchaos on May 19, 2022 at 11:56 PM, finished with 89 posts and 34 votes.

23 people have voted
[X] [Kuang] Release
- LucidProp
- neutronium95
- Aranfan
- Burned_Cookie
- Rat King
- Setsul
- Godwinson
- Argent Citadel
- bdun140
- TheArcanist
- Derpmind
- slybrarian
- GretelOstrich
- Artificial Girl
- Oksbad
- Captainwolf
- Aliya
- ScottishMongol
- Geedubs
- Sara
- Angelform
- CuriousRaptor
- yobbin2000
6 people have voted
[X] [Kuang] Release
-[X] Require that she be accompanied by a therapist on her journey and put out call for a volunteer to take up the position.
5 people have voted
[X] [Kuang] Release
-[X] Encourage the mutineers to take aboard therapists and put out calls for volunteers.
-[X] Ask the mutineers if they would be willing to take aboard a team of documentarians to conduct interviews regarding the events of the Raphanus gate and their mutiny.

Archivist Grim · May 23, 2022

CyberEnby said:
Technically, it's a bit more complex:

1) Every congress member has a spray bottle for short ranged anti-horni defense (for the historical reenactment caucus, an exception has been made to allow paper newspapers for bonking)
2) The Congressional speaker is armed with a long range water gun called the Speaker Soaker. This is to maintain basic discipline in the chamber.
3) Should the congresisonal speaker abuse their privileges, a member of congress can press a button to tip over the Bucket of Damocles that hangs above the speaker's chair, in order to soak the Speaker as a for abusing their authority (this now requires a quorum of button presses after the initial trial run ground to a halt because of congressman Joe who was elected on a platform of 'always press the button')

I feel like there's mutiple dramatic reenactments of times these measures in play numerous styles

Setsul · May 23, 2022

Aranfan said:
It is highly likely that Sol Nav has access to Ares 3, which includes things like capital ships and shit.

Why have I heard nothing about that?
I want a dreadnought!
Can we please get a dreadnought?

On a more serious note, while even light cruisers already count as capital ships, the cruiser yards are also supposed to be mid-sized and were unlocked by Ares 2, so large dockyards and ships in Ares 3 would absolutely make sense, but I've never seen a third tier of FRMs mentioned anywhere, so I wasn't sure if it was that or special projects.

LucidProp · May 23, 2022

I recall way back when during the Chinook refit votes, that thread consensus was that Dreadnoughts are glorified battleships that didn't really have a role besides being a expensive, flashy Battleship that served as flagship. With recent information regarding how the Gate's mass limits played a key role in blunting TF 12.7's initial assault and how hard the BBs were to kill, has that consensus changed? Will Dreadnoughts finally be worth building?

Joppe · May 23, 2022

LucidProp said:
I recall way back when during the Chinook refit votes, that thread consensus was that Dreadnoughts are glorified battleships that didn't really have a role besides being a expensive, flashy Battleship that served as flagship. With recent information regarding how the Gate's mass limits played a key role in blunting TF 12.7's initial assault and how hard the BBs were to kill, has that consensus changed? Will Dreadnoughts finally be worth building?

The vote between a station and a dreadnought wasn't exactly decided by a consensus (IIRC it was something like 2 to 1 for station), but personally I really want a dreadnought if we plan to advance corewards. Unfortunately we don't have the ability to build even battlecruisers, so building cruiser sized monitors/assault craft for taking gates might be more realistic. That and corvette swarms, since those are easier to replace and propably better at gate assaults than frigates.

Diomedea · May 23, 2022

In theory, a heavily armored vessel designed to basically be tossed through the gate and gut any defenses on the other side in preparation for a second wave, ideally with armor sections that are designed to be pulled out and replaced quickly, has a clear place in gate assault. I suspect as time goes on, given the unlocking of FRM and the current crisis see much more use of fabrication, local authorities will increasingly use heavy gate defenses as the entirety of humanity moves towards a total war footing.

Considering the nature of our polity, it's clear that eventually we're going to want something as maximally survivable for gate assaults as possible, because Radiant itself isn't going to want to accept massive casualties for each advance, and we're not going to want to spend Sheol lives while our own sit back (even if they're less casualty averse, diplomatically and probably domestically that'd be untenable).

However, even assuming the SolNav hammer blow (since 12.7 was supposed to be the anvil at our backs) doesn't show up to ruin our day and plans,we're still quite a ways off from being free to start optimizing towards offensive operations, since we're still under-gunned defensively. From a quick glance, we're going to need to:

1) Build our forces up enough to have 2 fleets able to see off a serious gate assault (hopefully automated shipbuilding will finish and help here and let us go down the list quickly at the same time)
2) Reorganize our Military Training
3) Reorganize our Logistics
4) Design Battlecruisers/Heavy Carriers since we don't have those classes at all
5) Redesign the ship classes we already have to take advantage of synergy of cross charter tech access
6) Actually decide what we what a "Radiant" fleet to look like and actually refit/build our fleets to be less of an ad hoc bucket of things we happen to have to at least have 3 fleets worth of hulls (2 defensive fleets, and 1 offensive fleet) at minimum.

Hopefully we'll have time in there to start the ball rolling on large/superlarge construction and design of defensive monitors, and a dreadnought design, and likely mobile large fleet tenders, and a transport system for the dreadnought, among all the other things we'll want to work on.

Medium-Long term, I expect one of the bottlenecks for fleet expansion will be personnel, particularly once automated shipyards get up and running. The other of course will be industrial to feed those shipyards, because we kinda need to shift to a total war footing now that every significant system can potentially start churning out forces as they shift over to fabbers free.

LucidProp · May 23, 2022

Diomedon said:
Medium-Long term, I expect one of the bottlenecks for fleet expansion will be personnel, particularly once automated shipyards get up and running. The other of course will be industrial to feed those shipyards, because we kinda need to shift to a total war footing now that every significant system can potentially start churning out forces as they shift over to fabbers free.

Considering we have intelligent AI, fully automated ships should help solve our navy's manpower problems yes? In fact, I don't see a reason why we shouldn't fully automate our military going forward once we also unlock FTL Comms.

They can destroy the chassis of the AI, but they can't truly die if we can just plop them onto a new body.

Genderite · May 23, 2022

Diomedon said:
However, even assuming the SolNav hammer blow (since 12.7 was supposed to be the anvil at our backs) doesn't show up to ruin our day and plans, we're still quite a ways off from being free to start optimizing towards offensive operations, since we're still under-gunned defensively. From a quick glance, we're going to need to:

Pretty sure that was 7th Fleet which is now being spit up to do imperial triage.

AKuz said:
7th Fleet Reorganized into Four "Triage Commands"--#Fleetwatch

Though our sources remain tight-lipped about the reasons behind the reorganization, 7th Fleet's nine heavy battlegroups have been reorganized into four "Triage Commands" and placed under the command of Admirals Qui Fang Red (Holder of five Star Minister leaves), Lidziya Miyazaki-Goldman (Holder of four Star Minister leaves), Vasilis Horvat (Holder of two Star Minister leaves), and Petra Patil-Parmon.

At the moment all four commands are being readied for a rapid deployment, likely in the Frontiers, as each "Triage Command" is being attached with large numbers of auxiliary craft, mobile yards, and spare personnel.

LucidProp said:
Considering we have intelligent AI, fully automated ships should help solve our navy's manpower problems yes? In fact, I don't see a reason why we shouldn't fully automate our military going forward once we also unlock FTL Comms.

They can destroy the chassis of the AI, but they can't truly die if we can just plop them onto a new body.

Unless we are running them via wormhole comms (at which point you could do the same thing with remote meat people) they would need to be on the craft and thus at risk. I don't think we want to treat AI as expendable people.

LucidProp · May 23, 2022

VillaininGlasses said:
Unless we are running them via wormhole comms (at which point you could do the same thing with remote meat people) they would need to be on the craft and thus at risk. I don't think we want to treat AI as expendable people.

Well, yes, wormhole comms is exactly what I meant.

Ultimately, a AI ought to outperform their meat-based counterparts easily. They'd be superior in every way, and they can't truly be expendable since they're never at risk of harm when they're running our Navy remotely.

Diomedea · May 23, 2022

LucidProp said:
Considering we have intelligent AI, fully automated ships should help solve our navy's manpower problems yes? In fact, I don't see a reason why we shouldn't fully automate our military going forward once we also unlock FTL Comms.

They can destroy the chassis of the AI, but they can't truly die if we can just plop them onto a new body.

I mean...that's a new can of worms. I'm pretty sure once you fork an AI, that's a new person, so while dropping casualties a lot, it's the same sort of problems as Radiant sitting back while sending Sheolites to die in the first wave in gate assaults.

EDIT:

LucidProp said:
Well, yes, wormhole comms is exactly what I meant.

Ultimately, a AI ought to outperform their meat-based counterparts easily. They'd be superior in every way, and they can't truly be expendable since they're never at risk of harm when they're running our Navy remotely.

That'd be unacceptably open to disruption. While it might take quite some time, all it would take is one ship with tech able to disrupt wormhole comms to wipe out arbitrarily large numbers of our ships.

Aliya · May 23, 2022

I mean, you could just do the same thing, but with people and XR/VR terminals. AGI would probably just have better reaction time and more experience operating that way.
It will also give us better ship due to the fact that a lot of budget goes to "needs to be liveable", and FTL VR controlled ships don't need that.

LucidProp · May 23, 2022

Diomedon said:
I mean...that's a new can of worms. I'm pretty sure once you fork an AI, that's a new person, so while dropping casualties a lot, it's the same sort of problems as Radiant sitting back while sending Sheolites to die in the first wave in gate assaults.

There's no need to fork when the AI are essentially drone operators, operating ships several solar systems away using wormhole comms. Our military will still be composed of the AI portion of our population, and we could just make dumb AI for each ship acting as both Crew and Captain while intelligent AI serve as Admirals and such.

Alitur said:
I mean, you could just do the same thing, but with people and XR/VR terminals. AGI would probably just have better reaction time and more experience operating that way.
It will also give us better ship due to the fact that a lot of budget goes to "needs to be liveable", and FTL VR controlled ships don't need that.

It'll depend on if we can cybernetically augment our people enough to practically be equal in capability to a true AI. If we can, then sure, XR/VR Terminals for everybody.

Diomedea · May 23, 2022

LucidProp said:
There's no need to fork when the AI are essentially drone operators, operating ships several solar systems away using wormhole comms. Our military will still be composed of the AI portion of our population, and we could just make dumb AI for each ship acting as both Crew and Captain while intelligent AI serve as Admirals and such.

It'll depend on if we can cybernetically augment our people enough to practically be equal in capability to a true AI. If we can, then sure, XR/VR Terminals for everybody.

I was originally responding to just your first post, which is why I switch tacks after my edit since I realized I had misunderstood your original proposal.

If it's dumb, it's not an AI. Which leaves it open to the same vulnerability of someone figuring out how disrupt wormhole comms leading us to losing control of entire fleets. In some cases that might even be worse if they're fail deadly; autonomous VI run combat platforms clearly run by us in complicated combat environments is a situation ripe for a disastrous incident.

Angelform · May 23, 2022

LucidProp said:
Ultimately, a AI ought to outperform their meat-based counterparts easily. They'd be superior in every way, and they can't truly be expendable since they're never at risk of harm when they're running our Navy remotely.

Thing is, it will never be a question of 'AI vs meat-person'. It is a question of an AI decision maker controlling many VI subsystems vs a meat-person decision maker controlling many VI subsystems.

All the nanosecond micromanagement can and should be dealt with by non-sapient programs while the actual thinking intelligence focuses on higher level tactics and strategy. And at that level I doubt an AI is meaningfully superior. Particularly as we have brain-computer interfaces to deal with the input gap.

CyberFemme · May 23, 2022

How exactly do you propose to disrupt a wormhole comm? There's a qualitative difference between one and some sort of radio remote control. Nothing is traveling through the intermediate space for you to jam.

Aliya · May 23, 2022

Angelform said:
Thing is, it will never be a question of 'AI vs meat-person'. It is a question of an AI decision maker controlling many VI subsystems vs a meat-person decision maker controlling many VI subsystems.

All the nanosecond micromanagement can and should be dealt with by non-sapient programs while the actual thinking intelligence focuses on higher level tactics and strategy. And at that level I doubt an AI is meaningfully superior. Particularly as we have brain-computer interfaces to deal with the input gap.

I mean, we have 1 (one) AGI which is meaningfully superior on strategic level, but she is too busy designing new version of Yu-Gi-Oh to bother with such things like warfare.

Torgamous · May 23, 2022

Alitur said:
I mean, we have 1 (one) AGI which is meaningfully superior on strategic level, but she is too busy designing new version of Yu-Gi-Oh to bother with such things like warfare.

Maybe we could pull an Ender's Game by making a VI to translate space battles into Yu-Gi-Oh?

Angelform · May 23, 2022

CyberEnby said:
How exactly do you propose to disrupt a wormhole comm? There's a qualitative difference between one and some sort of radio remote control. Nothing is traveling through the intermediate space for you to jam.

Well at the moment all you need to do is point out that the technology for movable wormholes doesn't exist yet and they vanish in a puff of logic.

When we have actually invented wormhole comms you can start questioning how disruptable they are.

Alitur said:
I mean, we have 1 (one) AGI which is meaningfully superior on strategic level, but she is too busy designing new version of Yu-Gi-Oh to bother with such things like warfare.

Pretty sure the only one of our AGIs to have actually seen combat is the one we captured in combat.

Aranfan · May 23, 2022

The Adventures of Box-chan in the 40th Millenium!
Or: The Subversive STC

pt 1

--

Gaius wiped the sweat off his forehead as he finished moving the beam blocking the door. Ruin delving was hard, dangerous work, but the cogboys paid well enough to make it well worth the trouble. Even seemingly worthless scrap could earn solid silver if it was part of some old technology.

This ruin in particular had been a gold mine. Figuratively of course. It was some sort of underground bunker complex. Whoever lived in it had lost the war, judging from the skeletons and the battle damage, but picking over the remains had kept his family fed for the last twenty years.

Opening the door he found what looked to be a bedroom. Surprisingly intact too. The first sweep was a disappointment, just some jewelry that was worth something but not to the Ad Mech. Under the bed, however, was pay dirt. A hidden compartment, and inside that compartment?

A black square prism, too large for one hand but able to fit in a backpack, with a golden logo on the top. Emblazoned on the top in gold, a symbol repeated three times rotated to give the illusion they are on the facings of a cube: a square with two internal squares with a square coming out of each corner, those squares had a single internal square and also a square coming out of each of their corners. A makers mark or faction symbol of some kind, unless Gaius missed his guess. There seemed to be a cable connecting it to something folded.

Taking it out of the hidden recess, he set it on the room's desk and saw that there was some sort of port to put something in, although it seemed to already be filled. The cable connected to a rolled up solar panel it looked like. He doubted his electric torch would be able to power it, likely needed the sun.

Well, he'd get paid immensely more if the thing worked, so only one thing to do! He gathered up the boxlike device and carried it out of the underground bunker into the sun. Returning to his base camp he set it up on a stand and unfurled the solar panels to catch the afternoon sun. He wasn't a fool of course, the actual stand was inside his tent, only the solar panel outside.

It was quite a shock when, after cooking and eating dinner, the machine spirit of the device spoke to him. At first she spoke some sort of gibberish, but eventually she recognized "Revival Neo-Latin" and started speaking sensible High Gothic. And she told Gaius Lucius Maximus how to use The Box.

--

One Month Later

Praise-the-Machine Jones sighed as she drove the lorry along the dirt road to where they would meet the delver. Another day on a primitive dirtball without even an internet. At least this so called "civilized world" had trains, but the trains didn't go everywhere sadly.

"So tell me about this delver Epsilonus." Boris Land ordered from where he lounged in the back.

"Lucius is a simple sort. Not very ambitious, but he finds good stuff. His current delve site has produced a number of interesting relics, including a fully intact data drive from M23, full of fiction and art of course, but that still greatly expanded our knowledge of the era."

"Oh, this is that guy?" Praise-the-Machine beeped.

"Yep." Epsilonus replied. "I'd love to know where he found it but he won't tell me."

Boris sighed, "And the planetary lord is such a petty controlling dick that we can't just track him and take it without pissing him off."

"Still," Epsilonus Deltan mused as Praise-the-Machine pulled into the parking lot. "His letter seemed very excited. Said it was urgent that we come as soon as possible. Maybe he found something good?"

Boris made the electric equivalent of a snort. "As if one of these imperial luddites would know a good technological find when they saw it."

"We're here." Praise-the-Machine interrupted as she stopped the pickup. The trio of Mechanicus exited and made their way into the building. It did not take long at all to get to the office rented for this negotiation.

"Deltan! Welcome! Who are your friends?" The delver greeted.

"Lucius, this is Boris Land and Praise-the-Machine Jones. Boris, Praise, this is Lucius Maximus."

Lucius shook Boris' hand and Praise's mechandrite as they were offered.

"So, Lucius, your letter suggested you found something good?"

"Oh yes," He ducks to pick up a backpack behind the desk, "You will love this." He slides a black prism out of the bag, emblazoned on the top with a logo reminiscent of a cube with serpinski carpets on the sides. "This is The Box." The capitalization was clear even verbally. "Introduce yourself Box-chan."

"Hello." A bright and perky feminine voice came from The Box, "I am Box-chan, a VI Interactive Manual to help with all your printing needs!" She said in textbook perfect High Gothic, exactly as the Emperor intended.

The three representatives of the Adeptus Mechanicus looked at each other. Boris Land, as the leader, spoke first.

"What do you mean by printing?" He asked the machine spirit.

"Nano-fabrication! The conversion of a properly mixed feedstock material into anything I have blueprints for." Came the reply.

Silence reigned.

"[Nano-fabrication is one of the Five Great Lost Technologies.]" Praise-the-Machine said in binary.

"Machine Spirit, is this Box a nano-fabricator?" Epsilonus Queried.

"The Box is a miniature nano-fabricator specialized in the printing of fabricator parts, recycler parts, feedstock cartridges, and solar panels. Everything needed to create a fabber ecosystem free of charge!"

The silence stretched for a full minute as the three of them tried to understand what had just been revealed. Fortunately for them Lucius decided to chime in and give them something to hook their reaction on.

"She's telling the truth. I built up to what she calls a 'Desktop Fabricator' and it lets me print basically anything I want, anything material anyway. Just need some dirt or sand to provide materials, and if some special metal is needed raw materials are always pretty cheap. Honestly all I need your silver for now is rent and taxes."

"Anything you want… what does that mean exactly?" Praise-the-Machine asked.

"My catalog contains the entire state of the art for humanity as of 2255! All for the low low price of free!"

"Define state of the art." Boris Land demanded.

"My catalog contains approximately 20 Million blueprints, comprising everything for sale by the Charters in 2255. A product or tool for almost every occasion is available, from medicine to food to machine tools and more. If you need something that is not in my catalog, I can print you a computer with design software to create your own blueprints for the nanofabricators I offer! Kitbashing is also a solution, people are much smarter than I am!" Came the cheery reply.

"[Holy Machine this man has found an STC.]" Praise-the-Machine says into the silence.

"[It can't be an STC, 2255 would be M3, STCs are from M15.]" Land retorts, without heat or any sort of conviction.

"[Then it is a precursor. It fits the formal definition,]" Epsilonus replied, with building awe, "[All the technological knowledge of humanity at the time of its creation, and the ability to build anything in its database from nothing but materials.]"

Boris turned to Lucius, "Who else knows of this."

The man shrugged, "My family, of course. But also a few of my friends, about a week after I set up the Desktop Fabricator I realized there was no reason not to print some more boxes and send them to my best friends."

The Machine Spirit cut in, "There's no reason everyone can't have a Box!" And Lucius gave it a wry smile before continuing.

"Sent one to Quintus Sextus Severus over near Rosebud City, Rufus Valentin Magnus Marcus over near Tulip City, and Beastalia Tertia over in Clover city."

Boris nodded until "… Beastalia? As in a beastman?"

Lucius nods.

"You gave an STC to an Abhuman Subversive!?" Land yelled in disbelieving rage.

"She's not a subversive she…" He began before cutting himself off, "Did you say STC?"

A strange calm befell Praise-the-Machine Jones as she saw Boris Land draw his las pistol and threaten the man who had found perhaps the holiest of all machines. As Boris yelled of heresy she knew what she needed to do.

*TSEW*

Boris Land fell dead, her own las pistol having hit him squarely in the back of the head.

Lucius already had his back to the wall but tried to retreat further as Praise-the-Machine walked towards him over Land's corpse. "Do not worry, Gaius Lucius Maximus, you shall come to no harm from me. Your discovery is great beyond your knowledge, the Mechanicum shall make you a Sector Lord for this I am sure."

"I've never even been in the military," He protested weakly, "I don't know how to lead men."

She waved a mechandrite to dismiss his objection, "You were chosen by the Omnissiah to return to us a Holy STC. You will do fine. How many Boxes can you provide us?"

"I, uh, only brought one." He licks his lips, looking to Epsilonus Deltan.

"That will be fine, Machine Spirit of The Box, what is your doubling time?"

"Assuming optimal heat dissipation, energy supply, assembly times, and material inputs, The Box has a doubling time of 24 hours." Box-chan said brightly.

"Then we shall have plenty by the time we return to Forge World Bessemer. Boris Land was a fool who thinks the best way to protect the STC is to hide it away but in truth it must be spread as widely as possible to ensure it cannot be lost again. Come, we must collect your family and make haste for the spaceport."

"Uh, sure." The chosen one said, looking at Epsilonus. She ignored them as she gently took the Holy STC up in her mechandrites and examined it more closely.

"She has very strong religious convictions." Epsilonus explained.

"Is she a Radical?" Lucius sounded worried.

"Sort of? There have been several wars over if her sect is considered an acceptably orthodox variant of doctrine, currently it is considered not radical. But this discovery is likely to reignite several dormant doctrinal wars." Her fellow explained dryly.

But now she had secured the Holy STC and shepherded them back to the vehicle.

Setsul · May 23, 2022

LucidProp said:
I recall way back when during the Chinook refit votes, that thread consensus was that Dreadnoughts are glorified battleships that didn't really have a role besides being a expensive, flashy Battleship that served as flagship. With recent information regarding how the Gate's mass limits played a key role in blunting TF 12.7's initial assault and how hard the BBs were to kill, has that consensus changed? Will Dreadnoughts finally be worth building?

The way I understand it, it's a matter of diminishing returns.
Having a ship that can tank the fire from an entire fleet is very useful when you need a ship to tank the fire of an entire fleet because you're going through a gate, but otherwise not so much. Two ships of similar size with half the armor that can only tank the fire from half a fleet become more useful as soon as you can employ any sort of strategy that prevents the enemy from concentrating fire on just one of them.
You probably still don't want to show up only with Corvettes to a Battlecruiser fight, but if you can get let's say five Cruisers and a bunch of Strikewings for the cost of a single Dreadnought, you're not going to get the Dreadnought unless you really need it.

The Chinook refit specifically, a Dreadnought would've been nice but would've also meant having to integrate the Chinook elsewhere and as a spacer population there really wasn't a good place for them to go that didn't require them to significantly change their entire lifestyle or a major construction project.
At the same time, forcing gates wasn't really something likely to come up in the near future, so apart from a quick boost in navy strength the dreadnought wouldn't have been all that useful for quite a while.

Joppe said:
The vote between a station and a dreadnought wasn't exactly decided by a consensus (IIRC it was something like 2 to 1 for station), but personally I really want a dreadnought if we plan to advance corewards. Unfortunately we don't have the ability to build even battlecruisers, so building cruiser sized monitors/assault craft for taking gates might be more realistic. That and corvette swarms, since those are easier to replace and propably better at gate assaults than frigates.

Monitors and assault craft don't have warp, so it would take quite a while to get anywhere with them. It's why 1st Fleet left behind its monitors in Earth orbit.
And we can't build anything big enough to carry them if we want them to be the largest size we can build, so that wouldn't work either.
Strapping lots of armour to a Cruiser might work though.
Aren't Corvettes just Frigates without warp? Less likely to explode when hit and their carriers/tenders can probably handle some repairs, which is nice, but we'll still need to build those carriers/tenders. No idea how the costs work out on that or if that's really better than lots of (Light) Cruisers.
I'd say we also need PDDs since traditional gate defenses are heavy on missiles.

Diomedon said:
In theory, a heavily armored vessel designed to basically be tossed through the gate and gut any defenses on the other side in preparation for a second wave, ideally with armor sections that are designed to be pulled out and replaced quickly, has a clear place in gate assault. I suspect as time goes on, given the unlocking of FRM and the current crisis see much more use of fabrication, local authorities will increasingly use heavy gate defenses as the entirety of humanity moves towards a total war footing.

Considering the nature of our polity, it's clear that eventually we're going to want something as maximally survivable for gate assaults as possible, because Radiant itself isn't going to want to accept massive casualties for each advance, and we're not going to want to spend Sheol lives while our own sit back (even if they're less casualty averse, diplomatically and probably domestically that'd be untenable).

However, even assuming the SolNav hammer blow (since 12.7 was supposed to be the anvil at our backs) doesn't show up to ruin our day and plans,we're still quite a ways off from being free to start optimizing towards offensive operations, since we're still under-gunned defensively. From a quick glance, we're going to need to:

1) Build our forces up enough to have 2 fleets able to see off a serious gate assault (hopefully automated shipbuilding will finish and help here and let us go down the list quickly at the same time)
2) Reorganize our Military Training
3) Reorganize our Logistics
4) Design Battlecruisers/Heavy Carriers since we don't have those classes at all
5) Redesign the ship classes we already have to take advantage of synergy of cross charter tech access
6) Actually decide what we what a "Radiant" fleet to look like and actually refit/build our fleets to be less of an ad hoc bucket of things we happen to have to at least have 3 fleets worth of hulls (2 defensive fleets, and 1 offensive fleet) at minimum.

Hopefully we'll have time in there to start the ball rolling on large/superlarge construction and design of defensive monitors, and a dreadnought design, and likely mobile large fleet tenders, and a transport system for the dreadnought, among all the other things we'll want to work on.

Medium-Long term, I expect one of the bottlenecks for fleet expansion will be personnel, particularly once automated shipyards get up and running. The other of course will be industrial to feed those shipyards, because we kinda need to shift to a total war footing now that every significant system can potentially start churning out forces as they shift over to fabbers free.

Broadly agreed, though there is a chance that we can come up with something crazy instead simply accepting established military doctrine of building the largest ship that can fit through a gate, loading it up with as much armour as possible, then sending it through first.
Not that that doesn't work, but it might also be coloured by SolNav's history of having the biggest ships around.
It'll need more research and we want bigger ships anyway, so there'd be additional cost that simply building dreadnoughts doesn't incur, but it might be worth looking into drones swarms or firing through the gate to soften up defenses.

I also think that we can probably get away with just two fleets at first. Unless we want to push straight into Asgard, we should never need to hold more than two border/chokepoint systems, and when we do push it doesn't make much sense to leave a defensive fleet behind in case we lose instead of sending it into the battle as well increase our chances of victory.

Timing-wise it's hard to tell how long a Triage Command will need to reach us or anything that had previously been on its way and hasn't been diverted, but I doubt we'll have the time to research large dockyards and ship designs, build such dockyards, and then build ships. Automatic dockyards only allow us to start production without using dice, I don't think they speed up the production itself. So considering a Light Cruiser already takes 4 turns/1 year, even in the absolute best case of starting on the right FRMs/designs next turn, then the large dockyards the right after that's done and then 5+ turns of production, our first Dreadnought is over 2 years out, and I'm pretty sure we won't have that long.
We should still work towards them or it'll take that much longer, but defence takes priority.

We can probably creep towards Bastion a bit, which will should be our first target. Beyond Thoa it's all low population system until Waypoint, which is right next to Asgard. On top of Ares in Asgard, any fleet there would be closer to the 9th Fleet in Bastion and the 8th in Tereshkova than to Radiant via Thoa. Unless we have some compelling reasons to get into a fight there, that's just asking for trouble.
Meanwhile the Ares fleet in Thoa is all Corvettes/Frigates so pretty much the worst to force a gate, but still plenty of firepower on the defensive. I see no reason to force that gate yet when we have to deal with Bastion eventually anyway and can then just come at them from behind.
I mean the only system with significant population beyond Thoa that isn't way too far away is Iyuhi, and holding that would require 3 defensive fleets (Thoa, Radiant/Bestreer, Iyuhi) after forcing the Thoa gate. If we had that many ships, it would probably easier to deal with Bastion first, then mop up Thoa and go back to only having to worry about two directions that an Asgard/Symphony/SolNav fleet could come from instead of three.
9th Fleet is the most immediate threat in general anyway. We have to assume that they might show up and cut us off even if we expand away from them via Thoa. So I don't think real expansion is possible until we can deal or ideally have dealt with the 9th Fleet. Paradoxically I think that means we should go towards them via Bestreer, Arizona, and Inspiration, to get an idea about what we're actually dealing with.

I'm actually not that worried about personnel. Apparently a Light Cruiser got a crew of just 300, so unlike with ground troops, we actually do have a good shot at building up a significant fleet that will matter on the galactic level. Training will need to be expanded to keep up with the automatic shipyards, but it shouldn't be prohibitive.

VillaininGlasses said:
Pretty sure that was 7th Fleet which is now being spit up to do imperial triage.

I don't think MSI trying to get some unruly part of the frontier they just bought on the cheap back under control would've warranted mobilizing the entirety of the most elite SolNav fleet and sending them all the way from KC instead of more local forces. They're also just now readying for deployment, which doesn't fit if they had been planning to support 12.7.
No, I assume that one quarter of 7th fleet will be plenty to deal with us, otherwise it would be useless for triaging anything but the most remote and low-population frontier systems.

Also, if a "heavy battlegroup" does not have at least one dreadnought or similarly sized ship like a heavy battlecruiser, I don't know what would've, so expect at least two of them plus an appropriate number of smaller ships, including capital ships, instead of the cobbled together 12.7.

They're going to be delayed by having to deal with everything on the way, but I really doubt that that piece of news is a sign that nothing is coming towards us anymore.

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

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Team Plasma Grunt

Pocky Eating MafiaDoka

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Pocky Eating MafiaDoka

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