Shrike
Temporarily embarrassed kulak
Solar Flames
This is based off an RPG GMed by @BiopunkOtrera many moons ago in which I was a player. Let's have fun!
It is the year 0052 of the Transtellar Era, more than three decades since the greatest war humankind ever saw tore through the origin system; the Solar War. And in its wake, smaller but equally painful wars and insurgencies. For a decade, it seemed as if peace had finally returned - but this was merely a respite as war clouds once again begin to swirl.
What has gone before
In the 2050s of the old CE calendar, a scientific mission discovered something unusual on the Martian moon Deimos, something that defied all astrogeology of the time. It was not until that the unmanned probe was close did mankind finally realize they'd found signs of alien life. The Deimos Anomaly was clearly artificial. Knowing what to look for, survey operations examined Mars and other bodies in the Solar System. Eventually, within a decade, five more were found, all on the Martian surface. Moving these artifacts to Earth seemed impossible at the time and so the Earthlings went to Mars.
With the full resources of major Earth states behind them, Mars colonization went from an idle dream by tech billionaires to reality. While none of the six objects were truly functional machinery as they'd lain exposed to radiation and dust for somewhere between two and three million years, they were still enough to guide human science towards rapid advances in exotic physics and with undue haste, research-colonies sprung up on Mars.
The 2080s saw the first gravity-control technologies exiting the lab and by the 2090s when the first experimental faster-than-light technologies were being developed large-scale Mars settlement was well underway, cities growing up around the sites of the artifacts. The first experimental wormhole was opened in early in the 22nd century and by the middle of that century, the Jovian system and its abundant free energy had became a hive of activity and a nexus of wormhole travel. This unfortunately set the stage for the Solar War.
By the time the 22nd century rolled into the 23rd, two new poles of power had been both established and solidified in the Solar System; an increasingly populous Mars and the industrial-energy powerhouse of Jupiter. While Earth was (and still remains) the most populated location by far, its power was diffuse whereas entire generations of elites had grown up on Mars or around Jupiter. Many old nationalities still existed but they ran perpendicular to this evolved power structure and, politically if not culturally, were slowly dissolving into the pan-national Solar Federation. The year 2201 was deemed Year One of the New Calendar, the Transtellar Era.
The Solar War
It was ongoing disputes over federation and the structure therein that embroiled Solar politics for the first two decades of the Transtellar Era, the all-consuming Great Debate eventually slid into a massive conflict that pitted an alliance of Earth and Mars along with their various spaceholdings and outposts on Venus and Mercury against a bloc of outer system governments and several exocolonies; the Space Independence Alliance. While the former, representing the Federations 'heartlands' was a goliath of population and economy, the Space Independence Alliance had the vast space industries of Jupiter in their corner.
This war, the Solar War, was fought initially with disparate and aged warships predating Federalization or copies of said hurridly put into production as disputes escalated into incidents and then cascaded into conflicts to finally merge into the Solar War but soon enough both sides began building all manner of new weapons. These included both multiple models of Doppels - fifteen meter humanoid battle mecha, decades old but still niche at the start of the war - and new-concept warships to operate Doppels natively. This war 'officially' began in TE0016.
The first phase of the war saw several major but inconclusive engagements and both sides seemingly simultaneously attempted to break the deadlock with the tactical use of WMD, including large numbers of flung asteroids. However the level of destruction caused were so vast that both sides agreed to cease such attacks, and the remains of the war was waged in conventional fashion. This has led to a lasting disgust of further WMD use by both Federation and even Neo-jovian forces that has persisted to this day, and caused large scale environmental damage to Earth and Mars which is still being corrected.
The war was eventually settled after Saturn, led by the Seraphim organization, defected to the Federation cause in exchange for various concessions. Following this defection, the Federation fleets pushed to Jupiter and forced an end to the rebellion in TE0019.
Numerous raids and battles took place beyond Sol, and many colonies were attacked by one side or the other. In general the Solar War marked not just the beginning of the outer system's struggle for independence from the inner, but the struggle for Colonial Independence from Sol.
The Martian Insurrection
Mars was heavily affected by the Solar Wars and while civilian casualties were relatively light, the Red Planet suffered extensive damage to its terraforming project. In the wake of the Solar War, the Martian leadership became increasingly extreme and gave rise to various military cliques and social movements determined to prevent any weakness from growing in the Federation. In TE0029, units formed of officers from these cliques attempted a coup against the Federation government, taking control of Geneva and various orbital platforms. Opposition came from the newly formed INTACT and Seraph controlled Saturnian Defense Force, which was the coup d'etat forces primary target, while many garrison forces and fleets in the outer systems stayed in their barracks and anchorages - while this did prolong the insurrection it also maintained Federation control and presence in the outer systems.
Heavy fighting gripped Sol for six months before the Insurrectionists were finally suppressed. Unfortunately for the Federation however, the resulting purge of disloyal elements from the military significantly weakened its power. Outside the Solar System, this was what other groups had been waiting for.
The First Neo-Jovian War
Those forces still loyal to the ideals of the Outer System Alliance, together with movements dissatisfied with Federation control of the inner colonies had been waiting for just such an opportunity as the Martian Insurrection, and now they moved against the Federation both in Sol and elsewhere. Under the control of the seasoned former Jovian Admiral Alicia Malvin, large numbers of Neo-Jovian ships entered Sol and for the first time, manged to land combat forces on Earth. Despite their initial success however, the Neo-Jovian forces were unable to cope with the Federation's vast industrial base, and, unable to fully secure the Solar System's main planets, were eventually forced to retreat. The Federation pursued them with full force, and the Neo-Jovian main fleet was eventually destroyed at the battle of Point Zeta Five. While Alicia Malvin herself was killed, her protege and long-time second Yoshimoto Amakusa managed to escape, forming the seed around which the Combined Extra-Solar Fleet crystalized.
The Alpha Centauri War
The Federation did not forget Alpha Centauri's role in the First Neo-Jovian War. For a long time the independent minded Alpha Centauri colonists had supported secession movements within Sol as a means of ensuring their own independence. In supporting the Neo-Jovians who had hurt the Federation so sorely however, they had gone a step too far. In the year Thirty Eight of the Transtellar Era, its losses from the Martian Insurrection and the Neo-Jovian War made good, the Federation turned its full weight upon them. In the brief Alpha Centauri War,the entire Alpha Centauri system bought into the Federation as a protectorate. Remaining Centaurian units fled into the verge to join up with the Neo-Jovian resistance.
The Chessmaster Conflict and the Second Neo-Jovian War
In TE0047 a new threat appeared towards the Federation, a mysterious militant group that became known as the 'Chessmasters'. Executing incredibly tight information control much of their ultimate objectives and nature remains enigmatic to this day and unlike the Neo-Jovian groups that had clear political goals, the Chessmasters seemed to want nothing more than shred the Federation as an organization. Their strategy was unpredictable and their targets shifted repeatedly, making them almost impossible to fight preemptively. Worse yet, they were soon joined by the so-called Raskanos Fleet, named after their charismatic ace-leader Alexandra Raskanos. It is generally believed that while the Chessmasters provided some advanced technology to Raskanos, they were primarily co-belligerents with the Neo-Jovians msotly taking advantage of the chaos caused by the Chessmaster campaign to ignite a new struggle.
Ultimately INTACT was able to track down the Chessmaster's primary production cluster and in one of the few uses of WMD since the Solar War, struck it with an overlapping pattern of thermonuclear weapons and immolated it forever. While this resulted in significant public criticism of the tactical commanders, no censure was ever placed on them - clear proof of the seriousness that INTACT took the Chessmaster threat. As for the Raskanos Fleet, its heart was torn out by the destruction of its flagship Entebbe, the death of Alexandra Raskanos and the destruction of much of its active fleet and mecha. INTACT has spent much of the past five years hunting down remnants and attempting to stamp out various anti-Federation insurgent cells.
Groups
Solar Federation
From its capital in Geneva on earth, the Solar Federation rules the entirety of the Sol system and many of the near-Sol colonies. The Federation is hailed by its proponents as the best society earth has ever seen, fighting poverty, oppression and war like no previous political system has and, in the view of some, the last government Humanity will ever need.
Its critics however regard it as a device by which Earth and Mars transhuman elites rule humanity. This is due to the system of exams and tests that control appointment to the higher levels of Sol Fed Bureaucracies, the military and other civil service (and most business) positions. These tests are almost impossible for most "normal" humans to pass, but are much easier for the increasingly common transhumans.
While the civilian government remains democratic, the civil service, military and upper echelons of business are now dominated by transhumans. Humans and transhumans are rated into an ability letter, drawn from the exam system, from F (usually normal humans) to S (the highest grade of transhuman) with S Class being given positions of extreme power and responsibility; this has led to accusations of the development of a new nobility in Sol that bypasses the old democratic system with back-channel dealmaking between the new lords of creation.
Despite this, most people are happier, richer and less likely to be a victim of violence than they were before, and the Sol Fed remains very popular even among its lowest-ranked citizens.
INTACT
The Independent Tactical Armoured Counter Terrorism unit. The Solar Federation's mecha-SS, FBI and Homeland Security all rolled into one.
Military force on the frontier is a different business than within Sol or the more developed colonies. Due to the expense of faster than light jump drives, the numbers of military forces that can be deployed to frontier engagements is somewhat limited. Sol-Fed Space Fleet and Army units have massive firepower but cannot be rapidly deployed.
Rather than attempt to completely reform it's space fleet and army to be able to deploy into the colonies (a move that would anyway have likely raised tensions with the League of Outer Stars and other colonial nations) the Federation Council ordered the setting up of the Independent Tactical Armoured Counter Terrorism unit INTACT. This elite unit would use military mobile suits and combat space vehicles to keep order on the frontier, hunting down pirates, terrorists and those who would disrupt the hard won peace.
Solar Federation Space Force
The 'big stick' of the Solar Federation. While they lack the individual expertise and effectiveness of INTACT ships and pilots, the Solar Fleet has a lot of battleships. Unfortunately these battleships (and the lesser ships) are aging; the vast majority date to the Solar War, many of them taken out of mothballs to replace losses suffered during the Martian Insurrection and First Neo-Jovian War. Such is the size of the fleets built during the Solar War that even with these losses the reserve fleets have sufficed to make good on them and it would take another significant war to finally exhaust them.
Almost all of the relative trickle of new-built warships earnmarked for the SFSF have gone to the 'Frontier Fleet'. This unofficial grouping is the Federation's fire brigade; while not as agile as INTACT it is also structured to bring massive firepower to bear, second only to the Battle Fleet (another unofficial grouping) itself. A continuous and deliberate cycle of crews between postings ensures that, isofar as such a large organization as the SFSF can be seen to be 'fair', all crewers and officers have fair postings and experience is spread throughout the fleet.
Solar Federation Army and Air Force
Mostly deployed in Sol, but also has substantial garrisons in certain areas of the verge. The Federation army and airforce are heavily equipped, but often make use of large numbers of older designs, especially in the verge.
Solar Federation Navy and Marines
Mostly deployed in Sol, but have small presences in the verge on worlds where oceans are important.
White Rose Kingdom
A political dynasty stretching over several star systems with its capital on the ocean world of Godford. As the name implies, the White Rose is a monarchy, with an elected lower house and has existed for decades as an oligarchical ruler of many millions of colonists. Now equipped with large numbers of second-line mecha and substantial political support from the Solar Federation, the White Rose is a rising contender amongst the multitude of distant colonies at the edges of SolFed space. In truth, the White Rose is little more than a client state of the Federation. The recent assassination of the crown prince by assailants unknown has thrown the Kingdom into a panic however, and witch hunts have begun to root out the regicides.
Republic of Cygnus
The Republic of Cynus is named after the binary star system 16 Cygnus where its first wormhole and capital was placed. Colonized predominantly by the ASEAN block was fairly prosperous and a stable ally of the Solar Federation. Transgenic technology flowed freely and many parents took the opportunity to augment their children. Unfortunately, sectarian disputes and inefficiently applied genetic-economic incentives marred this stability. These would have been the simple colonial growing pains that all new nations went through had their peak not coincided with the System War. Attacks by Jovian raiders on the helium scoops in 16 Cygni and the subsequent destruction of the graviton condensory in Theta Cygni plunged the Republic of Cynus into an energy crisis. While at first the citizens drew together, social and ethnic faultlines soon began to fissure. Uprisings began as lower classes with inferior or no augmentation marched for better programs. Sectarian disputes blossomed into sectarian violence. Forgotten grievances were dusted off and trotted out. The military had to step in to restore order.
Thirty years later, it still is. Rabble-rousers and militants vanished into the poorly mapped wilds and heavy-handed attempts to control the situation failed to make a lasting impression. The vicious infighting that nearly tore the Republic apart was eventually contained but at the cost of many civil liberties. Today the Republic of Cygnus is a distorted mirror of the Solar Federation, with transhumans in all key positions in both the civil and military spheres and a government dominated not by civilian officials, but military ones. A focus on the capital and other important systems has let insurgents dig themselves in on several outlying systems which has not endeared the central government to the locals. The Solar Federation maintains ties with the Republic of Cygnus, though pundits question the benefits these bring to the Federation.
League of Outer Stars
The largest Verge bloc, the League of Outer Stars is a dominantly baseline/nearbaseline polity that existed as a loose trading group in the 22nd century. It was the System War that really caused the development of the League of Outer Stars however, as various independent colonists who traded with one side or the other faced punitive raids, unrestricted warfare on commerce and other malaises. This caused several of the stronger independent colonies to band together into the League of Outer Stars, a diverse group committed to the goal of keeping the colonies free of Sol's interference or control.
In the post war world, the League watches the Solar Federation with suspicion and continues to build up its military forces, ready for a possible confrontation. The League's collective military, the Space Operating Force, has two primary objectives; 1) to deter and protect the League against Solar aggression and 2) to provide security for League interests in the lightly-populated (and poorly policed) Verge. To this end the League has invested in mobile dolls, automated mobile suits operating independent of human guidance, which the League's Space Operating Force plans to use in vast numbers to counter Earth's high end transhuman pilots. The League is also one of the few states to officially and publicly have a nuclear umbrella though they exercise tight control over these strategic weapons and none have been used in anger.
The Seraphim
A pro-trangenic organization shrouded in mystery, the Seraphim were originally part of the Space Independence Alliance until their defection from the Jovian cause, bringing vital military plans and codes that ultimately lead to the decisive defeat of their earstwhile allies by the Solar Federation. Today the Seraphim have been accepted by the inhabitants of Sol and now reach through every aspect of the Solar Federation. Their influence is felt from the very tip of the spear, in INTACT field units, to every aspect of the defense industry. Seraphim personnel comprise a larger percentage of the SolFed military every year, and their presence in the defense industry through Tenshi Corp, unknown a generation ago, has ballooned enormously, rendering them by many estimates the single largest defense contractor in known space. Their overt assets range from core worlds, to Sol itself, to hundreds of distant outposts bent on research and discovery in the name of their insular leaders. Unsurprisingly, the official acceptance they receive is not shared by many and there is no small degree of suspicion if not outright conspiracy thinking against them at the middle levels of the Solar Federation's power pyramid.
Trinity Revolutionary Army
The Trinity Revolutionary Army is the official name of the Neo-Jovian movement, founded by Max Gotto half a decade ago during the heights of the Chessmater Crisis. Having lived a second life under the alias 'Ray Foulke', Gotto (believed dead the end of the war) reached command rank in the INTACT security organization before faking his death a second time. Armed with a bevy of highly classified and extremely current INTACT intelligence files, Gotto and his slowly growing Neo-Jovian network managed to seize and ransack a Chessmaster production facility under the noses of both INTACT and the enigmatic Chessmasters themselves.
The term trinity comes from the original three major anti-Federation groups that were brought together by Gotto's inspirational leadership; Gotto's own faction, the Interstellar Army of Freedom and the Combined Extra-Solar Fleet
The Gotto Faction
A disparate group of diehards originally brought together in secret by 'Ray Foulke' during his tenure in INTACT and revealed to human space when 'Ray Foulke' publicly discarded his identity and retook his former name of Max Gotto, Solar War ace and commander, the Gotto faction is equipped with high technology. It is known to control one of the few full sized mobile suit production facilities still in Neo-Jovian hands, stolen from the Chessmasters in what is still considered a masterstroke of treachery.
The Washington Faction/Interstellar Army of Freedom
The 'Washington Army' has a core of Alpha Centauri Freedom Fighters, veterans of the War of Solar Aggression that managed to escape Federation blockades and dragnets. The IAF Has a large mobile suit corps but few combat ships and over the years has cultivated many insurgents and black market contacts.
The Yoshimoto Faction/Combined Extra-Solar Fleet
Based around the old extra-Solar Fleets. Large numbers of ships (though mostly obsolete) and several of its own mecha designs. The Yoshimoto Faction's home base is believed to lie inside a nebula, making them nearly impossible to find.
The Raskanos Fleet
Survivors of the mostly gutted Raskanos Fleet. They have numerous strange weapons collected on the verge, many originating from the Chessmasters operated by some notoriously skilled pilots. Most of them however are very dead and the fleet is a shadow of its former self and in need of leadership. If there's one thing that continues to bind the Raskanos Fleet together it is a deep and abiding antipathy towards the Seraphim's opaque government - perhaps ironic, given the high percentage of Seraphim in the Raskanos Fleet.
Others
Rifters
'Going beyond the Aquila Rift' has become slang for baselines departing the Solar Federation's power pyramid where many feel disenfranchised by a system based in part on genetic valuation. While the early Federation was quite happy to see the backs of malcontents and nonconformists, in modern times there is the opinion that letting so many groups with real or imagined grudges against the Federation depart has proven to be a manifestly poor idea. The addition of various ex-Jovian forces, up to and including main-line (if obselescent) warships has brought an extra urgency to those voices clamoring to 'deal with the Rifter problem'.
Exhumans
The Exhumans are, like Rifters, primarily made up of individuals or small groups that left the constraints of 'civilized' space. However, unlike Rifters which primarily left to escape the Solar Federation's pyramidal power structure, Exhumans instead sought to augment themselves beyond human limits via both transgenic and cybernetic technologies outside of the Solar Federation's monopoly on the techniques. Espousing any number of personal philosophies ranging from the Will to Power to radical libertarianism to violent revolution to simple greed they are thankfully mostly found in the outer rim.
Playable Factions
Solar Federation
Perhaps the greatest failing of the Federation was mistaking pity for empathy.
Factional Starting Tech: Aero-Doppels
Federation Government Special Military Forces
Affinity: INTACT, Solar Fleet
Animus: INTACT
Orders: Domestic, Military, Scrounge, Espionage
Trait: License Holder - Answering only to individuals in the Solar Senate, the PMCs of the Special Military Forces have extreme latitude in tactics, missions and objectives and often perform their missions in unorthodox ways. That said, it's ironic that despite being able to essentially (with the right senator behind them, anyway) tell the more official Federation forces to pound sand, the Special Military Forces often find themselves more constrained than INTACT not due to laws but due to public relations concerns.
Budget:
Player: @Nanolyte
Federation Assault Carrier - 1
Jovian Battleship - 1
Federation Cruiser - 10
Solar War Cruiser - 16
Frigate - 40
Doppel Team [Current] - 120
Doppel Team [Elite] - 20
Doppel Team [Special] - 1
Heavy Doppel Team [Current] - 20
Deviant Doppels [Current] - 10
Aero-Doppel Team [Current] - 20
INTACT
Affinity: Solar Fleet
Animus: Gotto Faction
Orders: Domestic, Military, Production, Espionage, Research
Trait: Cream of the Crop - INTACT has access to the best technology and is staffed by the Federation's brightest. You might not like it but Hiraiface is what peak performance looks like.
Starting Tech: Doppel Production Improvement I - Elite Doppels cost x2, Special Doppels cost x7 [LOCKED]
Budget:
Player: @SirLagginton
INTACT Strike Cruiser - 30
Federation Cruiser - 50
Doppel Team [Elite] - 400
Doppel Team [Special] - 5
Aero-Doppel Team [Elite] - 50
Psycho-Doppel Team [Current] - 5
Solar Fleet
Affinity: INTACT
Animus: Yoshimoto Faction
Orders: Domestic, Military, Production
Trait: We Have Reserves - The Solar Fleet has access to the Ceres Reserve Yard, a massive constellation of defueled ships orbiting the Solar System's largest asteroid. This gives the Solar Fleet a deep reserve of capital ships that can be mobilized during a crisis or to replace losses.
Budget:
Player: @Secondskink
Continent-class Supercarrier - 2
Federation Assault Carrier - 7
Federation Battleship - 45
Federation Cruiser - 200
Attack Ships - 600
Doppel Team [Current] - 1200
Doppel Team [Elite] - 50
Aero-Doppel Team [Current] - 300
Seraphim
Affinity:
Animus: Raskanos Faction, Aeon Union
Orders: Domestic, Military, Production, Research, Espionage, Psychic Supervillainy
Trait: Matrioshka Conspiracy - Even by the standards of the special interest infested Solar Federation, the Seraphim are insular, hermetic and recondite. What are these alien-worshippers that proclaim to be the future of humanity really about?
Budget:
Player: @BiopunkOtrera
Federation Cruiser - 10
Frigate - 150
Doppel Team [Current] - 500
Doppel Team [Elite] - 100
Psycho-Doppel Team [Current] - 25
ECHO CHAMBER
Affinity: Seraphim
Animus: Exhumanoids
Orders: Domestic, Military, Scrounge
Trait: Stupid Sexy Seraphim - The Seraphim are no strangers to manipulating everyone around them to their ends and there's nothing more photogenic in war than a platoon of skinsuited pilots sporting the latest cosmetic upgrades. It makes for a good distraction from the real business going on.
Budget:
Player: @Sara
Frigate - 30
Doppel Team [Current] - 100
Doppel Team [Elite] - 50
Psycho-Doppel Team [Current] - 5
Trinity Revolutionary Army (Neo-Jovian)
Faction Trait: Trinity Base - A concealed headquarters and assembly facility where Max Gotto spirited away the captured Chessmaster assembly forge. The Solar Federation would dearly love to know where it is so they can blow it up. Until then however, it is the hidden factory that supplies the Trinity with newly-built weapons. Worse yet, it's believed that the Chessmaster auto-assemblers can take apart nearly anything and add it to its databanks - Federation forces are warned to not allow anything remotely sensitive to fall into the hands of the Trinity forces.
Gotto Faction
Affinity: Washington Faction, Yoshimoto Faction
Animus: INTACT
Orders: Domestic, Military, Production, Scrounge, Espionage
Trait: Jupiter Alive! - Under Max Gotto's charismatic leadership and by playing on Federation overreach, the Gotto Faction has become a social media darling and the face of liberation.
Budget:
Player: @Silence
INTACT Strike Cruiser - 1 (Edmund Dantes)
Jovian Battleship - 2
Jovian Heavy Cruiser - 5
Solar War Cruiser - 6
Light Carrier - 12
Attack Ships - 25
Doppel Team [Current] - 100
Doppel Team [Elite] - 25
Doppel Team [Special] - 2 (Stolen INTACT prototypes)
Heavy Doppel Team [Current] - 20
Heavy Doppel Team [Elite] - 5
Deviant Doppels [Elite] - 5 (Brynhild Corps)
Mobile Armor [Old] - 20
Mobile Armor [Current] - 5
Mobile Armor [Elite] - 2
Washington Faction
Affinity: Gotto Faction
Animus: INTACT
Orders: Domestic, Military, Scrounge, Espionage
Trait: A Rifle Behind Every Leaf - Practically a revolutionary franchise, the Interstellar Army of Freedom are experts at stirring up local support and slipping weapons through all but the tightest blockades.
Budget:
Player: @Nerdorama
Solar War Cruiser - 2
Light Carrier - 25
Frigate - 30
Attack Ships - 50
Doppel Team [Old] - 1000
Doppel Team [Current] - 125
Heavy Doppel Team [Old] - 100
Heavy Doppel Team [Current] - 25
Mobile Doll Team [Old] - 500
Yoshimoto Faction
Affinity: Gotto Faction
Animus: INTACT
Orders: Domestic, Military, Production, Scrounge
Trait: Jovian Starsailors - The Combined Extra-Solar Fleet is the proud inheritor of the Jovian expertise at wormhole navigation. All your ships may freejump two sectors instead of one.
Budget:
Player: @Furrybacon
Jovian Command Carrier - 3 (Protector, Archangel, Liberator)
Jovian Battleship - 12
Jovian Heavy Cruiser - 20
Solar War Cruiser - 24
Light Carrier - 35
Attack Ships - 150
Doppel Team [Old] - 250
Doppel Team [Current] - 100
Heavy Doppel Team [Old] - 50
Heavy Doppel Team [Current] - 25
Other States
White Rose Kingdom
Affinity: Solar Fleet, Federation Government Special Military Forces
Animus: Gotto Faction, Raskonos Faction
Orders: Domestic, Military, Production
Trait: Often Underestimated - The White Rose Kingdom, especially in the aftermath of the recent assassination blamed on whatever militant group is in vogue at the time, has long been seen as essentially "Mostly Harmless". Someone is almost certainly going to find out that this is nowhere near true.
Budget:
Player: @Ranger
Federation Battleship - 5
Solar War Cruiser - 50
Frigate - 160
Attack Ships - 200
Doppel Team [Old] - 3000
Doppel Team [Current] - 500
Doppel Team [Elite] - 5
League of Outer Stars
Affinity: Trinity Revolutionary Army
Animus: Solar Federation
Orders: Domestic, Military, Production, Research
Trait: Shiny and Chrome - The League is the most powerful baseline-dominated human polity and to match the Solar Federation's 1%er outlier superiors has invested heavily in autonomous robots (the infamous Raptor series of mobile dolls are only the most well known) and full-body cyborging for special forces and elite pilots.
Budget:
Player: @Exhack
Jovian Heavy Cruiser - 12 (used as command ships)
Solar War Cruiser - 20
Light Carrier - 200
Doppel Team [Current] - 50
Mobile Doll Team [Old] - 5000
Mobile Doll Team [Current] - 1000
Mobile Doll Team [Elite] - 25
Deviant Doppels [Elite] - 5 (Living Dead Corps)
Mobile Armor [Current] - 40
Republic of Cygnus
Affinity: Federation Government Special Military Forces
Animus:
Orders: Domestic, Military, Production
Trait: Trusted Organs of Oppresssion - This is the 17th time we've had to put down mass insurgencies and we have become highly proficient at it.
Budget:
Player: @kosi
Federation Battleship - 2
Solar War Cruiser - 25
Frigate - 200
Light Carrier - 20
Attack Ships - 250
Doppel Team [Old] - 10,000
Doppel Team [Current] - 500
Doppel Team [Elite] - 5
Aeon Union
Affinity:
Animus: Seraphim
Orders: Domestic, Military, Production, Psychic Supervillainy
Trait: The Void's Teachings - The Void does not speak with words, but it speaks nonetheless. Those who consider the Seraphim dangerously strange and cultish have not met the zealous esoterics of the Aeon Union.
Budget:
Player: @SitzKrieg
City-Ships - 4
Solar War Cruiser - 25
Frigate - 100
Attack Ships - 200
Doppel Team [Old] - 2000
Doppel Team [Current] - 100
Heavy Doppel Team [Old] - 250
Unaligned Militants
Raskonos Faction
Affinity:
Animus: Seraphim, INTACT
Orders: Domestic, Military, Scrounge, Research, Espionage, Psychic Supervillainy
Trait: Midseason Uglies - The Raskonos Faction has a whole collection of mad science technologies scoured from every crazed inventor and Nephilim cache site across human space. Some of these are exceptionally powerful, though the Raskonos Faction is critically short of numbers.
Budget:
Player: @Etranger
Supercarrier Defiance - 1
Doppel Team [Current] - 10
Doppel Team [Elite] - 10
Heavy Doppel Team [Current] - 5
Deviant Doppels [Elite] - 5
Deviant Doppels [Special] - 5
Psycho-Doppel Team [Current] - 5
Exhumanoids (name TBD)
Affinity:
Animus: INTACT, Federation Government Special Military Forces
Orders: Domestic, Military, Scrounge
Trait: Fly The Black Sail - With the Federation stretched from multiple conflicts, it's a good time to be an honest pirate. Especially if you can manage to spirit your stolen ships away to a secret shipyard and refit them and expand your piratical armada.
Budget:
Player: @Gladsome
Jovian Battleship - 1
Frigate - 50
Attack Ships - 200
Doppel Team [Old] - 150
Deviant Doppels [Old] - 25
Deviant Doppels [Elite] - 1
The Black Rising
Affinity:
Animus: INTACT
Orders: Domestic, Military, Scrounge, Espionage
Trait: Chaos is a Ladder - The worse things get, the more appealing the Black Rising's ideology becomes. Burn it all down, my child.
Budget:
Player: @Carol
Frigate - 20
Doppel Team [Old] - 150
Doppel Team [Current] - 50
Deviant Doppels [Special] - 1
Rules
To represent the fact that some of the factions in Solar Flames are not traditional states, the typical list of orders is slightly modified.
Domestic Order - This is an all-purpose order for what your faction is doing internally, from hosting the Mechalympics to purging everyone who's mother was left-handed (you monster). This can cover more than one thing but the more you spread it around the less effective it'll be and the more likely the GM will start ignoring the boring bits.
Military Order - Go fight!
Production Order - Factions with access to industrial bases will have production orders. Because I don't want to deal with doing your production for you, you'll get a budget of production every turn to spend.
Scrounge - Not everyone has a military-industrial complex in their back pocket. For those that don't, you have a scrounge order. Like production this will give you a budget but A) it will vary from turn to turn no matter what and B) will generally go up the more the galaxy is on fire as recruits flock to the cause.
Research - Both for developing new robots and new things that aren't robots.
Espionage - Fucking with players and NPCs in deniable, non-obvious ways.
Psychic Supervillainy - Nobody trusts the Seraphim, and for good reason!
Technical Briefing
Wormholes
Static wormholes are the arteries of interstellar commerce. With their individual termini moved between stars at slower-than-light speeds - an arduously expensive decades-long process - and then inflated on arrival they are the superhighways of space. Internal distance of a wormhole can be greatly reduced, compressing the distance from light-years to light-seconds and making convenient travel possible. It is possible - as the first colonization wormholes were, and sometimes still are - to open their far terminus remotely, superluminally, but these wormholes are fundamentally unstable and will collapse after years, a decade or so at the most.
A typical wormhole has a throat ~200 meters in diameter through which all things - physical and energy - must pass. Internal gravity gradients will push anything passing along into the middle of the channel, conveniently keeping them from hitting the stressed space-time that makes up the inner walls (which is universally a Bad Thing). All wormhole mouths will be surrounded by a ring of hardware to anchor them. As wormholes are only metastable, energy must be added to them on a semi-regular basis to keep them stable and traversable, generally directly relative to how long they are and their compression factor (ie, the relative difference between internal and external length).
As ships cannot easily pass one another in a wormhole, most cycle directionality every 24 hours, allowing ships to pass through from one side and then the other. Thus wormholes are a natural chokepoint and most will have dozens of cargo ships large and small waiting by each terminus for the next opportunity to fly through.
Greatly downscaled derivatives of wormhole technology are used for independent FTL travel by ships, though various intricacies of polydimensional and exotic physics means that while ships can 'jump' independently, they generally do so to known locations or risk blowing through one or more levels of redundancies and safeguards in their all-important jump drives. Thus despite in theory ships being able to jump anywhere within range, in practice human space is essentially a network of 'tram lines'.
Phase Compression Motors
The so-called 'Mercurion Drive' was originally a Jovian black project to improve on the tried and tested fusion motors in used at the time. Luckily for the Solar Federation only a few test articles were complete before the war's end; unfortunately for the Solar Federation, these and the scientific team responsible fled via the last Jovian-controlled wormholes into friendly Verge states. The major Verge states sitting in opposition to the Solar Federation were fertile ground for advanced technology and eventually they stole a march on the Federation and introduced the technology into regular military service ahead of the larger but more conservative Solar power.
Nicknammed 'glitterblowers' due to the spacetime transients generated as a side-effect of their operation, phase compression motors are the first effective reactionless propulsion system. Earlier technologies such as vaccum-plasma thrusters were interesting cases but had hugely inferior propulsive efficiency to fusion rockets. The superiority of phase compression motors over fusion rockets has seen them rapidly replace the older propulsion system and only absolute beaters still use fusion plama motors.
Units
Solar Federation Warships
In many ways the Solar Fleet and its ship designers are extremely conservative, the heritage of the Solar War. Jupiter was the shipbuilding and more importantly ship designing center of the Solar System and when it rebelled, it took much of the young Federation's expertise with it. The Federation was left using ships intended for power projection and independent operations; while many of these were new designs the loyal parts of the Federation were unable to rapidly introduce entirely new designs like the Jovians. This legacy is clear even today, with almost all Solar Federation warships being hybrids.
Continent-class Supercarrier Gondwana-class
The new Continent class supercarriers are the most recent product of Sol's drive yards. Even larger than the feared Defiance class of the war and capable of holding a staggering four hundred standard doppels inside their enormous hangars, there are so far only two of these massive vessels in service. Each one makes up the centre piece of one of the Federation's outer system fleets. Currently the Asia patrols near White Rose Space, while the South America watches the League border. Widely seen as a clear sign of Federation strength, opinions on these incredibly expensive ships is sharply divided inside the Solar Fleet itself - unfortunately for those who might prefer a more sane fleet organization, the Federation seems committed to building no less than five more.
Cost: $300
Mecha Bays: 100
Federation Assault Carrier
Combining the power of a battleship with the airwing of a fleet carrier, the Atlantic-class assault carrier is a fleet flagship built only in small quantities. Bristling with anti-capital and anti-suit ordnance, this ship is designed to survive even a full squadron's attacks.
Cost: $125
Mecha Bays: 15
Federation Battleship
The SFN mainline battleship is designed for leading smaller fleets and providing a heavy anti-capital ship strike capability. It was built to take into account modern mobile suit tactics, and thus carries more anti-suit weaponry and superior targeting compared to the previous generation of battleships, at the cost of only marginal increases in firepower. Combined with its large air wing, the standard battleships are tough targets for even an elite suit squadron.
Cost: $60
Mecha Bays: 6
Federation Cruiser
The smallest vessels in Solar Federation Navy used to carry fighters or mecha, these ships are the core of the SFN fleet. Though capable of limited independent operations such as leading anti-pirate forces, they generally serve as battleship escorts. They have been mass-produced, and the design has been extremely refined. Examplified by the Rio De Janeiro (or 'City') class, Federation cruisers have few weaknesses, but no true strengths.
Cost: $20
Mecha Bays: 3
INTACT Strike Cruiser
Vessels such the SFS Calais (famous for the final strike on the Chessmaster headquarters) are strike cruisers designed for long-range unsupported operations. They have large stores and fuel capacity, as well as a scaled down version of the battleship drive system and weapon emplacements. These ships also have superior sensors and ECM system compared to the rest of the fleet, as well as large suit hangars. Unfortunately, the armor these ships is fairly weak for its size, and they must rely on ECM and superior range to survive a capital ship onslaught.
Cost: $40
Mecha Bays: 4
Neo-Jovian Warships
Jovian warship designs were almost all efficient single-purpose designs, intended to be operated in integrated task forces. Much of the success of the rapid Jovian design process was thanks to the use of standardized modules and design components such as bridges, hangar bays, engine clusters, etc. These allowed for new warship designs to be drafted almost lego-like and production flights to be changed in process without significant disruptions. Even today there are some who believe the Federation is coasting on derivatives of war-era designs and has failed to match Jovian techniques more than three decades old.
Supercarrier Defiance Dolos-class
Only three of these monster warships were completed by the Space Independence Alliance during the war; two (including the original Entebbe) were destroyed near the end of the war and the third, the Defiance, jumped out of Sol to an unknown destination. The Defiance reappeared during the First Neo-Jovian War but again managed to escape Sol. There are intermittent reports of its movement over the past decade, though no INTACT task force has been able to track this ship down.
Cost: N/A
Mecha Bays: 46
Jovian Command Carrier
Built to act as command and control nodes for Jovian fleets, with the exception of the Defiance supercarriers these ships were the largest ships to be built during the Solar War. No two are exactly identical, though they all share a general gangly, overly-long profile bristling with all manner of electronic exotica, secondary turrets and air defense artillery, while several long-range turrets allow them to provide a degree of fire support from outside the range of even battleships. During the war, the command carriers typically operated all manner of elite, specialist and support squadrons - mobile armors, AWACS, recon, jamming golem and stealth hunter-killer 'hitman' units.
Cost: N/A
Mecha Bays: 20
Jovian Battleship
Jovian-built battleships earned a fearsome reputation as gunfighters during the Solar War and even today outclass anything but a modern Solarian battleship. Their weakness, if they have one, is that their air defense outfits can be spotty - some that saw progressive refits during the war (or afterwards) have large batteries of linear flak cannons, while those operating on the frontiers never saw these upgrades and are rather more vulnerable to attack craft and mecha.
Cost: $50
Jovian Heavy Cruiser
While the Jovian shipyards produced many Los Angeles class multirole cruisers, that famous type was hardly the only ones built. More in line with conventional Jovian design doctrine, these heavy cruisers could handily defeat Federation cruisers in a one-on-one duel. Time and time again the Federation would have to rely on its mecha to achieve victory - a successful strategy, but one that always cost the Federation pilots and machines.
Cost: $20
General Warships
The following warships are found, in various individual classes, across much of known space.
Light Carrier
The Space Independence Alliance moved very rapidly towards concentrating mecha operations on dedicated hangars once war broke out in earnest, building large numbers of these compact cruiser-sized carriers. The boxy, inelegant ships were designed to mothership two full squadrons of mecha, though often operated in overload conditions for many battles. Many were captured at the end of the war and sold off, while others sailing the black are new builds.
Cost: $10
Mecha Bays: 6
Solar War Cruiser
Much of the fighting during the Solar War was done by these cruisers, hybrid designs intended as the first class of new, modern Federal ships to supplement and eventually replace the disparate classes inherited from over a dozen major pre-Federation space forces. The fact that both sides of the war built them in large numbers caused no small number of friend-or-foe issues.
Cost: $16
Mecha Bays: 2
Frigate
Frigates were one of the primary power projection ships before the Solar War and the resulting mass militarization of human space - today, they have been relegated to a more secondary role in that regard but still have the advantages of low cost and respectable mecha hangars.
Cost: $10 (if purchased with Scrounge, they cost half as much)
Mecha Bays: 2
Attack Ships
Essentially the classic 20th century destroyer in space, attack ships are typically armed with a few large-caliber pulse cannons or autocannons to defend against mecha or other light attack ships, while their torpedoes still pack a real punch. Enormous numbers of them were churned out by both Federation and Alliance shipyards. Deemed obsolete by the victorious Federation, more recently it's been mooted that selling them off by the hundreds as military surplus was maybe not the brightest idea.
Cost: $4 (if purchased with Scrounge, they cost half as much)
Mecha
The four-unit Element or Fireteam has been standard for centuries, dating back to pre-space Earth. Also, as mecha technology has advanced in leaps and bounds during and after the Solar War, Mecha also have a quality value. This is, and their base cost multiplier, is listed below:
*Old (x1 cost) - old designs dating to the Solar War, or low-cost models that have been built since. Due to be ubiquity of these mecha, if purchased via Scrounge they cost half as much.
*Current (x1 cost) - Various relatively current mecha models, generally no more than two decades old though a small number of limited-run high-spec units from the Solar War would quality.
*Elite (x3 cost) - The cutting edge of what is reasonably mass-producible, the cost of these mecha sees them limited to special operations groups and proven pilots.
*Special (x9 cost) - The bleeding edge of what's even possible, these are singular expressions of the mecha-designer's will and inevitably the titular mecha for whichever season of Solar Soldier Doppel you happen to find yourself in.
Doppel Team
All-purpose bipedal battle mecha, suitable for any environment that isn't horribly unsuitable for human life. Most have at least some ability for aerial operations in a gravitated atmosphere, though they're hardly fighter jets.
Cost: $2 per team
Heavy Doppel Team
'Heavy' doppels were introduced by the Jovians midway through the Solar War, their thick armor making them tough targets for Federation doppels and for a period upended the usual Federal mecha superiority over the rebels. Only the hurried introduction of megaparticle rifles broke the four-month 'Carolean Summer'. Today, heavy doppels still find use in tasks where survivability and firepower are at their most important.
Special Rule: A heavy doppel team takes up 50% more space than standard doppels.
Cost: $3 per team
Deviant Doppels
The Solar Federation builds doppels of quality second to none, but they are also - normally - fairly conservative in some respects. Other groups are not nearly so bound by priors however, with the so-called 'Deviants' being a catch-all term for various strange and unusual doppel designs. Many of them are assymmetric, idiosyncratic or simply weird - almost all of them are babby's first gunpla kitbash.
Special Rule: A Deviant may be built as a Type Prototype at a 2x cost, which gives a type (eg [DAN-69 Hammurabi]). The first time Deviant doppels of that type are deployed into combat they are super-effective as opponents have to figure out just how to fight a seventeen meter mecha-clown armed with a yellow-sound parsnip and crab-fists.
Cost: $4 per team
Mobile Doll Team
The League of Outer Stars is well-known for its expertise in unmanned mecha; the Raptor series is cheap and widely produced to be used in overpowering swarms of killbots. Efforts by the Solar Federation to outlaw autonomous weapons have met a cold reception.
Cost: $1 per team
Mobile Armor
The first mobile armors were built by the League as large and powerful but nonhumanoid mecha; among the first and still most common role was acting as a command-and-firepower node for Raptor swarms. Unlike doppel teams, mobile armors are purchased and operate as individuals, though they take up the space of a normal doppel team.
Cost: $3 each
Special Units
Aero-Doppel Team
The Solar Federation has introduced several models of 'waverider' doppels, capable of transforming from a standard humanoid mecha to an arrowhead silhouette for significantly improved atmospheric performance.
Cost: $3 per team
Psycho-Doppel Team
A recent development by the Seraphim, the Psycho-Doppel is the first type to feature mass-production psychically controlled remote gun drones. While these are not as effective as earlier - but substantially more expensive - types that first saw field use during the Chessmaster Conflict, they are still a significant capability.
Cost: $4 per team
Hunter-Killer Team
During the war, the Jovians developed a series of low-observability doppels to engage in various clandestine tasks ranging from sniping to assassination to sabotage/covert strike. While most were destroyed by the end of the war, every so often one Neo-Jovian group or another managed to cobble together a handful.
Cost: $8 per team (may not be scrounged)
This is based off an RPG GMed by @BiopunkOtrera many moons ago in which I was a player. Let's have fun!
It is the year 0052 of the Transtellar Era, more than three decades since the greatest war humankind ever saw tore through the origin system; the Solar War. And in its wake, smaller but equally painful wars and insurgencies. For a decade, it seemed as if peace had finally returned - but this was merely a respite as war clouds once again begin to swirl.
What has gone before
In the 2050s of the old CE calendar, a scientific mission discovered something unusual on the Martian moon Deimos, something that defied all astrogeology of the time. It was not until that the unmanned probe was close did mankind finally realize they'd found signs of alien life. The Deimos Anomaly was clearly artificial. Knowing what to look for, survey operations examined Mars and other bodies in the Solar System. Eventually, within a decade, five more were found, all on the Martian surface. Moving these artifacts to Earth seemed impossible at the time and so the Earthlings went to Mars.
With the full resources of major Earth states behind them, Mars colonization went from an idle dream by tech billionaires to reality. While none of the six objects were truly functional machinery as they'd lain exposed to radiation and dust for somewhere between two and three million years, they were still enough to guide human science towards rapid advances in exotic physics and with undue haste, research-colonies sprung up on Mars.
The 2080s saw the first gravity-control technologies exiting the lab and by the 2090s when the first experimental faster-than-light technologies were being developed large-scale Mars settlement was well underway, cities growing up around the sites of the artifacts. The first experimental wormhole was opened in early in the 22nd century and by the middle of that century, the Jovian system and its abundant free energy had became a hive of activity and a nexus of wormhole travel. This unfortunately set the stage for the Solar War.
By the time the 22nd century rolled into the 23rd, two new poles of power had been both established and solidified in the Solar System; an increasingly populous Mars and the industrial-energy powerhouse of Jupiter. While Earth was (and still remains) the most populated location by far, its power was diffuse whereas entire generations of elites had grown up on Mars or around Jupiter. Many old nationalities still existed but they ran perpendicular to this evolved power structure and, politically if not culturally, were slowly dissolving into the pan-national Solar Federation. The year 2201 was deemed Year One of the New Calendar, the Transtellar Era.
The Solar War
It was ongoing disputes over federation and the structure therein that embroiled Solar politics for the first two decades of the Transtellar Era, the all-consuming Great Debate eventually slid into a massive conflict that pitted an alliance of Earth and Mars along with their various spaceholdings and outposts on Venus and Mercury against a bloc of outer system governments and several exocolonies; the Space Independence Alliance. While the former, representing the Federations 'heartlands' was a goliath of population and economy, the Space Independence Alliance had the vast space industries of Jupiter in their corner.
This war, the Solar War, was fought initially with disparate and aged warships predating Federalization or copies of said hurridly put into production as disputes escalated into incidents and then cascaded into conflicts to finally merge into the Solar War but soon enough both sides began building all manner of new weapons. These included both multiple models of Doppels - fifteen meter humanoid battle mecha, decades old but still niche at the start of the war - and new-concept warships to operate Doppels natively. This war 'officially' began in TE0016.
The first phase of the war saw several major but inconclusive engagements and both sides seemingly simultaneously attempted to break the deadlock with the tactical use of WMD, including large numbers of flung asteroids. However the level of destruction caused were so vast that both sides agreed to cease such attacks, and the remains of the war was waged in conventional fashion. This has led to a lasting disgust of further WMD use by both Federation and even Neo-jovian forces that has persisted to this day, and caused large scale environmental damage to Earth and Mars which is still being corrected.
The war was eventually settled after Saturn, led by the Seraphim organization, defected to the Federation cause in exchange for various concessions. Following this defection, the Federation fleets pushed to Jupiter and forced an end to the rebellion in TE0019.
Numerous raids and battles took place beyond Sol, and many colonies were attacked by one side or the other. In general the Solar War marked not just the beginning of the outer system's struggle for independence from the inner, but the struggle for Colonial Independence from Sol.
The Martian Insurrection
Mars was heavily affected by the Solar Wars and while civilian casualties were relatively light, the Red Planet suffered extensive damage to its terraforming project. In the wake of the Solar War, the Martian leadership became increasingly extreme and gave rise to various military cliques and social movements determined to prevent any weakness from growing in the Federation. In TE0029, units formed of officers from these cliques attempted a coup against the Federation government, taking control of Geneva and various orbital platforms. Opposition came from the newly formed INTACT and Seraph controlled Saturnian Defense Force, which was the coup d'etat forces primary target, while many garrison forces and fleets in the outer systems stayed in their barracks and anchorages - while this did prolong the insurrection it also maintained Federation control and presence in the outer systems.
Heavy fighting gripped Sol for six months before the Insurrectionists were finally suppressed. Unfortunately for the Federation however, the resulting purge of disloyal elements from the military significantly weakened its power. Outside the Solar System, this was what other groups had been waiting for.
The First Neo-Jovian War
Those forces still loyal to the ideals of the Outer System Alliance, together with movements dissatisfied with Federation control of the inner colonies had been waiting for just such an opportunity as the Martian Insurrection, and now they moved against the Federation both in Sol and elsewhere. Under the control of the seasoned former Jovian Admiral Alicia Malvin, large numbers of Neo-Jovian ships entered Sol and for the first time, manged to land combat forces on Earth. Despite their initial success however, the Neo-Jovian forces were unable to cope with the Federation's vast industrial base, and, unable to fully secure the Solar System's main planets, were eventually forced to retreat. The Federation pursued them with full force, and the Neo-Jovian main fleet was eventually destroyed at the battle of Point Zeta Five. While Alicia Malvin herself was killed, her protege and long-time second Yoshimoto Amakusa managed to escape, forming the seed around which the Combined Extra-Solar Fleet crystalized.
The Alpha Centauri War
The Federation did not forget Alpha Centauri's role in the First Neo-Jovian War. For a long time the independent minded Alpha Centauri colonists had supported secession movements within Sol as a means of ensuring their own independence. In supporting the Neo-Jovians who had hurt the Federation so sorely however, they had gone a step too far. In the year Thirty Eight of the Transtellar Era, its losses from the Martian Insurrection and the Neo-Jovian War made good, the Federation turned its full weight upon them. In the brief Alpha Centauri War,the entire Alpha Centauri system bought into the Federation as a protectorate. Remaining Centaurian units fled into the verge to join up with the Neo-Jovian resistance.
The Chessmaster Conflict and the Second Neo-Jovian War
In TE0047 a new threat appeared towards the Federation, a mysterious militant group that became known as the 'Chessmasters'. Executing incredibly tight information control much of their ultimate objectives and nature remains enigmatic to this day and unlike the Neo-Jovian groups that had clear political goals, the Chessmasters seemed to want nothing more than shred the Federation as an organization. Their strategy was unpredictable and their targets shifted repeatedly, making them almost impossible to fight preemptively. Worse yet, they were soon joined by the so-called Raskanos Fleet, named after their charismatic ace-leader Alexandra Raskanos. It is generally believed that while the Chessmasters provided some advanced technology to Raskanos, they were primarily co-belligerents with the Neo-Jovians msotly taking advantage of the chaos caused by the Chessmaster campaign to ignite a new struggle.
Ultimately INTACT was able to track down the Chessmaster's primary production cluster and in one of the few uses of WMD since the Solar War, struck it with an overlapping pattern of thermonuclear weapons and immolated it forever. While this resulted in significant public criticism of the tactical commanders, no censure was ever placed on them - clear proof of the seriousness that INTACT took the Chessmaster threat. As for the Raskanos Fleet, its heart was torn out by the destruction of its flagship Entebbe, the death of Alexandra Raskanos and the destruction of much of its active fleet and mecha. INTACT has spent much of the past five years hunting down remnants and attempting to stamp out various anti-Federation insurgent cells.
Groups
Solar Federation
From its capital in Geneva on earth, the Solar Federation rules the entirety of the Sol system and many of the near-Sol colonies. The Federation is hailed by its proponents as the best society earth has ever seen, fighting poverty, oppression and war like no previous political system has and, in the view of some, the last government Humanity will ever need.
Its critics however regard it as a device by which Earth and Mars transhuman elites rule humanity. This is due to the system of exams and tests that control appointment to the higher levels of Sol Fed Bureaucracies, the military and other civil service (and most business) positions. These tests are almost impossible for most "normal" humans to pass, but are much easier for the increasingly common transhumans.
While the civilian government remains democratic, the civil service, military and upper echelons of business are now dominated by transhumans. Humans and transhumans are rated into an ability letter, drawn from the exam system, from F (usually normal humans) to S (the highest grade of transhuman) with S Class being given positions of extreme power and responsibility; this has led to accusations of the development of a new nobility in Sol that bypasses the old democratic system with back-channel dealmaking between the new lords of creation.
Despite this, most people are happier, richer and less likely to be a victim of violence than they were before, and the Sol Fed remains very popular even among its lowest-ranked citizens.
INTACT
The Independent Tactical Armoured Counter Terrorism unit. The Solar Federation's mecha-SS, FBI and Homeland Security all rolled into one.
Military force on the frontier is a different business than within Sol or the more developed colonies. Due to the expense of faster than light jump drives, the numbers of military forces that can be deployed to frontier engagements is somewhat limited. Sol-Fed Space Fleet and Army units have massive firepower but cannot be rapidly deployed.
Rather than attempt to completely reform it's space fleet and army to be able to deploy into the colonies (a move that would anyway have likely raised tensions with the League of Outer Stars and other colonial nations) the Federation Council ordered the setting up of the Independent Tactical Armoured Counter Terrorism unit INTACT. This elite unit would use military mobile suits and combat space vehicles to keep order on the frontier, hunting down pirates, terrorists and those who would disrupt the hard won peace.
Solar Federation Space Force
The 'big stick' of the Solar Federation. While they lack the individual expertise and effectiveness of INTACT ships and pilots, the Solar Fleet has a lot of battleships. Unfortunately these battleships (and the lesser ships) are aging; the vast majority date to the Solar War, many of them taken out of mothballs to replace losses suffered during the Martian Insurrection and First Neo-Jovian War. Such is the size of the fleets built during the Solar War that even with these losses the reserve fleets have sufficed to make good on them and it would take another significant war to finally exhaust them.
Almost all of the relative trickle of new-built warships earnmarked for the SFSF have gone to the 'Frontier Fleet'. This unofficial grouping is the Federation's fire brigade; while not as agile as INTACT it is also structured to bring massive firepower to bear, second only to the Battle Fleet (another unofficial grouping) itself. A continuous and deliberate cycle of crews between postings ensures that, isofar as such a large organization as the SFSF can be seen to be 'fair', all crewers and officers have fair postings and experience is spread throughout the fleet.
Solar Federation Army and Air Force
Mostly deployed in Sol, but also has substantial garrisons in certain areas of the verge. The Federation army and airforce are heavily equipped, but often make use of large numbers of older designs, especially in the verge.
Solar Federation Navy and Marines
Mostly deployed in Sol, but have small presences in the verge on worlds where oceans are important.
White Rose Kingdom
A political dynasty stretching over several star systems with its capital on the ocean world of Godford. As the name implies, the White Rose is a monarchy, with an elected lower house and has existed for decades as an oligarchical ruler of many millions of colonists. Now equipped with large numbers of second-line mecha and substantial political support from the Solar Federation, the White Rose is a rising contender amongst the multitude of distant colonies at the edges of SolFed space. In truth, the White Rose is little more than a client state of the Federation. The recent assassination of the crown prince by assailants unknown has thrown the Kingdom into a panic however, and witch hunts have begun to root out the regicides.
Republic of Cygnus
The Republic of Cynus is named after the binary star system 16 Cygnus where its first wormhole and capital was placed. Colonized predominantly by the ASEAN block was fairly prosperous and a stable ally of the Solar Federation. Transgenic technology flowed freely and many parents took the opportunity to augment their children. Unfortunately, sectarian disputes and inefficiently applied genetic-economic incentives marred this stability. These would have been the simple colonial growing pains that all new nations went through had their peak not coincided with the System War. Attacks by Jovian raiders on the helium scoops in 16 Cygni and the subsequent destruction of the graviton condensory in Theta Cygni plunged the Republic of Cynus into an energy crisis. While at first the citizens drew together, social and ethnic faultlines soon began to fissure. Uprisings began as lower classes with inferior or no augmentation marched for better programs. Sectarian disputes blossomed into sectarian violence. Forgotten grievances were dusted off and trotted out. The military had to step in to restore order.
Thirty years later, it still is. Rabble-rousers and militants vanished into the poorly mapped wilds and heavy-handed attempts to control the situation failed to make a lasting impression. The vicious infighting that nearly tore the Republic apart was eventually contained but at the cost of many civil liberties. Today the Republic of Cygnus is a distorted mirror of the Solar Federation, with transhumans in all key positions in both the civil and military spheres and a government dominated not by civilian officials, but military ones. A focus on the capital and other important systems has let insurgents dig themselves in on several outlying systems which has not endeared the central government to the locals. The Solar Federation maintains ties with the Republic of Cygnus, though pundits question the benefits these bring to the Federation.
League of Outer Stars
The largest Verge bloc, the League of Outer Stars is a dominantly baseline/nearbaseline polity that existed as a loose trading group in the 22nd century. It was the System War that really caused the development of the League of Outer Stars however, as various independent colonists who traded with one side or the other faced punitive raids, unrestricted warfare on commerce and other malaises. This caused several of the stronger independent colonies to band together into the League of Outer Stars, a diverse group committed to the goal of keeping the colonies free of Sol's interference or control.
In the post war world, the League watches the Solar Federation with suspicion and continues to build up its military forces, ready for a possible confrontation. The League's collective military, the Space Operating Force, has two primary objectives; 1) to deter and protect the League against Solar aggression and 2) to provide security for League interests in the lightly-populated (and poorly policed) Verge. To this end the League has invested in mobile dolls, automated mobile suits operating independent of human guidance, which the League's Space Operating Force plans to use in vast numbers to counter Earth's high end transhuman pilots. The League is also one of the few states to officially and publicly have a nuclear umbrella though they exercise tight control over these strategic weapons and none have been used in anger.
The Seraphim
A pro-trangenic organization shrouded in mystery, the Seraphim were originally part of the Space Independence Alliance until their defection from the Jovian cause, bringing vital military plans and codes that ultimately lead to the decisive defeat of their earstwhile allies by the Solar Federation. Today the Seraphim have been accepted by the inhabitants of Sol and now reach through every aspect of the Solar Federation. Their influence is felt from the very tip of the spear, in INTACT field units, to every aspect of the defense industry. Seraphim personnel comprise a larger percentage of the SolFed military every year, and their presence in the defense industry through Tenshi Corp, unknown a generation ago, has ballooned enormously, rendering them by many estimates the single largest defense contractor in known space. Their overt assets range from core worlds, to Sol itself, to hundreds of distant outposts bent on research and discovery in the name of their insular leaders. Unsurprisingly, the official acceptance they receive is not shared by many and there is no small degree of suspicion if not outright conspiracy thinking against them at the middle levels of the Solar Federation's power pyramid.
Trinity Revolutionary Army
The Trinity Revolutionary Army is the official name of the Neo-Jovian movement, founded by Max Gotto half a decade ago during the heights of the Chessmater Crisis. Having lived a second life under the alias 'Ray Foulke', Gotto (believed dead the end of the war) reached command rank in the INTACT security organization before faking his death a second time. Armed with a bevy of highly classified and extremely current INTACT intelligence files, Gotto and his slowly growing Neo-Jovian network managed to seize and ransack a Chessmaster production facility under the noses of both INTACT and the enigmatic Chessmasters themselves.
The term trinity comes from the original three major anti-Federation groups that were brought together by Gotto's inspirational leadership; Gotto's own faction, the Interstellar Army of Freedom and the Combined Extra-Solar Fleet
The Gotto Faction
A disparate group of diehards originally brought together in secret by 'Ray Foulke' during his tenure in INTACT and revealed to human space when 'Ray Foulke' publicly discarded his identity and retook his former name of Max Gotto, Solar War ace and commander, the Gotto faction is equipped with high technology. It is known to control one of the few full sized mobile suit production facilities still in Neo-Jovian hands, stolen from the Chessmasters in what is still considered a masterstroke of treachery.
The Washington Faction/Interstellar Army of Freedom
The 'Washington Army' has a core of Alpha Centauri Freedom Fighters, veterans of the War of Solar Aggression that managed to escape Federation blockades and dragnets. The IAF Has a large mobile suit corps but few combat ships and over the years has cultivated many insurgents and black market contacts.
The Yoshimoto Faction/Combined Extra-Solar Fleet
Based around the old extra-Solar Fleets. Large numbers of ships (though mostly obsolete) and several of its own mecha designs. The Yoshimoto Faction's home base is believed to lie inside a nebula, making them nearly impossible to find.
The Raskanos Fleet
Survivors of the mostly gutted Raskanos Fleet. They have numerous strange weapons collected on the verge, many originating from the Chessmasters operated by some notoriously skilled pilots. Most of them however are very dead and the fleet is a shadow of its former self and in need of leadership. If there's one thing that continues to bind the Raskanos Fleet together it is a deep and abiding antipathy towards the Seraphim's opaque government - perhaps ironic, given the high percentage of Seraphim in the Raskanos Fleet.
Others
Rifters
'Going beyond the Aquila Rift' has become slang for baselines departing the Solar Federation's power pyramid where many feel disenfranchised by a system based in part on genetic valuation. While the early Federation was quite happy to see the backs of malcontents and nonconformists, in modern times there is the opinion that letting so many groups with real or imagined grudges against the Federation depart has proven to be a manifestly poor idea. The addition of various ex-Jovian forces, up to and including main-line (if obselescent) warships has brought an extra urgency to those voices clamoring to 'deal with the Rifter problem'.
Exhumans
The Exhumans are, like Rifters, primarily made up of individuals or small groups that left the constraints of 'civilized' space. However, unlike Rifters which primarily left to escape the Solar Federation's pyramidal power structure, Exhumans instead sought to augment themselves beyond human limits via both transgenic and cybernetic technologies outside of the Solar Federation's monopoly on the techniques. Espousing any number of personal philosophies ranging from the Will to Power to radical libertarianism to violent revolution to simple greed they are thankfully mostly found in the outer rim.
Playable Factions
Solar Federation
Perhaps the greatest failing of the Federation was mistaking pity for empathy.
Factional Starting Tech: Aero-Doppels
Federation Government Special Military Forces
Affinity: INTACT, Solar Fleet
Animus: INTACT
Orders: Domestic, Military, Scrounge, Espionage
Trait: License Holder - Answering only to individuals in the Solar Senate, the PMCs of the Special Military Forces have extreme latitude in tactics, missions and objectives and often perform their missions in unorthodox ways. That said, it's ironic that despite being able to essentially (with the right senator behind them, anyway) tell the more official Federation forces to pound sand, the Special Military Forces often find themselves more constrained than INTACT not due to laws but due to public relations concerns.
Budget:
Player: @Nanolyte
Federation Assault Carrier - 1
Jovian Battleship - 1
Federation Cruiser - 10
Solar War Cruiser - 16
Frigate - 40
Doppel Team [Current] - 120
Doppel Team [Elite] - 20
Doppel Team [Special] - 1
Heavy Doppel Team [Current] - 20
Deviant Doppels [Current] - 10
Aero-Doppel Team [Current] - 20
INTACT
Affinity: Solar Fleet
Animus: Gotto Faction
Orders: Domestic, Military, Production, Espionage, Research
Trait: Cream of the Crop - INTACT has access to the best technology and is staffed by the Federation's brightest. You might not like it but Hiraiface is what peak performance looks like.
Starting Tech: Doppel Production Improvement I - Elite Doppels cost x2, Special Doppels cost x7 [LOCKED]
Budget:
Player: @SirLagginton
INTACT Strike Cruiser - 30
Federation Cruiser - 50
Doppel Team [Elite] - 400
Doppel Team [Special] - 5
Aero-Doppel Team [Elite] - 50
Psycho-Doppel Team [Current] - 5
Solar Fleet
Affinity: INTACT
Animus: Yoshimoto Faction
Orders: Domestic, Military, Production
Trait: We Have Reserves - The Solar Fleet has access to the Ceres Reserve Yard, a massive constellation of defueled ships orbiting the Solar System's largest asteroid. This gives the Solar Fleet a deep reserve of capital ships that can be mobilized during a crisis or to replace losses.
Budget:
Player: @Secondskink
Continent-class Supercarrier - 2
Federation Assault Carrier - 7
Federation Battleship - 45
Federation Cruiser - 200
Attack Ships - 600
Doppel Team [Current] - 1200
Doppel Team [Elite] - 50
Aero-Doppel Team [Current] - 300
Seraphim
Affinity:
Animus: Raskanos Faction, Aeon Union
Orders: Domestic, Military, Production, Research, Espionage, Psychic Supervillainy
Trait: Matrioshka Conspiracy - Even by the standards of the special interest infested Solar Federation, the Seraphim are insular, hermetic and recondite. What are these alien-worshippers that proclaim to be the future of humanity really about?
Budget:
Player: @BiopunkOtrera
Federation Cruiser - 10
Frigate - 150
Doppel Team [Current] - 500
Doppel Team [Elite] - 100
Psycho-Doppel Team [Current] - 25
ECHO CHAMBER
Affinity: Seraphim
Animus: Exhumanoids
Orders: Domestic, Military, Scrounge
Trait: Stupid Sexy Seraphim - The Seraphim are no strangers to manipulating everyone around them to their ends and there's nothing more photogenic in war than a platoon of skinsuited pilots sporting the latest cosmetic upgrades. It makes for a good distraction from the real business going on.
Budget:
Player: @Sara
Frigate - 30
Doppel Team [Current] - 100
Doppel Team [Elite] - 50
Psycho-Doppel Team [Current] - 5
Trinity Revolutionary Army (Neo-Jovian)
Faction Trait: Trinity Base - A concealed headquarters and assembly facility where Max Gotto spirited away the captured Chessmaster assembly forge. The Solar Federation would dearly love to know where it is so they can blow it up. Until then however, it is the hidden factory that supplies the Trinity with newly-built weapons. Worse yet, it's believed that the Chessmaster auto-assemblers can take apart nearly anything and add it to its databanks - Federation forces are warned to not allow anything remotely sensitive to fall into the hands of the Trinity forces.
Gotto Faction
Affinity: Washington Faction, Yoshimoto Faction
Animus: INTACT
Orders: Domestic, Military, Production, Scrounge, Espionage
Trait: Jupiter Alive! - Under Max Gotto's charismatic leadership and by playing on Federation overreach, the Gotto Faction has become a social media darling and the face of liberation.
Budget:
Player: @Silence
INTACT Strike Cruiser - 1 (Edmund Dantes)
Jovian Battleship - 2
Jovian Heavy Cruiser - 5
Solar War Cruiser - 6
Light Carrier - 12
Attack Ships - 25
Doppel Team [Current] - 100
Doppel Team [Elite] - 25
Doppel Team [Special] - 2 (Stolen INTACT prototypes)
Heavy Doppel Team [Current] - 20
Heavy Doppel Team [Elite] - 5
Deviant Doppels [Elite] - 5 (Brynhild Corps)
Mobile Armor [Old] - 20
Mobile Armor [Current] - 5
Mobile Armor [Elite] - 2
Washington Faction
Affinity: Gotto Faction
Animus: INTACT
Orders: Domestic, Military, Scrounge, Espionage
Trait: A Rifle Behind Every Leaf - Practically a revolutionary franchise, the Interstellar Army of Freedom are experts at stirring up local support and slipping weapons through all but the tightest blockades.
Budget:
Player: @Nerdorama
Solar War Cruiser - 2
Light Carrier - 25
Frigate - 30
Attack Ships - 50
Doppel Team [Old] - 1000
Doppel Team [Current] - 125
Heavy Doppel Team [Old] - 100
Heavy Doppel Team [Current] - 25
Mobile Doll Team [Old] - 500
Yoshimoto Faction
Affinity: Gotto Faction
Animus: INTACT
Orders: Domestic, Military, Production, Scrounge
Trait: Jovian Starsailors - The Combined Extra-Solar Fleet is the proud inheritor of the Jovian expertise at wormhole navigation. All your ships may freejump two sectors instead of one.
Budget:
Player: @Furrybacon
Jovian Command Carrier - 3 (Protector, Archangel, Liberator)
Jovian Battleship - 12
Jovian Heavy Cruiser - 20
Solar War Cruiser - 24
Light Carrier - 35
Attack Ships - 150
Doppel Team [Old] - 250
Doppel Team [Current] - 100
Heavy Doppel Team [Old] - 50
Heavy Doppel Team [Current] - 25
Other States
White Rose Kingdom
Affinity: Solar Fleet, Federation Government Special Military Forces
Animus: Gotto Faction, Raskonos Faction
Orders: Domestic, Military, Production
Trait: Often Underestimated - The White Rose Kingdom, especially in the aftermath of the recent assassination blamed on whatever militant group is in vogue at the time, has long been seen as essentially "Mostly Harmless". Someone is almost certainly going to find out that this is nowhere near true.
Budget:
Player: @Ranger
Federation Battleship - 5
Solar War Cruiser - 50
Frigate - 160
Attack Ships - 200
Doppel Team [Old] - 3000
Doppel Team [Current] - 500
Doppel Team [Elite] - 5
League of Outer Stars
Affinity: Trinity Revolutionary Army
Animus: Solar Federation
Orders: Domestic, Military, Production, Research
Trait: Shiny and Chrome - The League is the most powerful baseline-dominated human polity and to match the Solar Federation's 1%er outlier superiors has invested heavily in autonomous robots (the infamous Raptor series of mobile dolls are only the most well known) and full-body cyborging for special forces and elite pilots.
Budget:
Player: @Exhack
Jovian Heavy Cruiser - 12 (used as command ships)
Solar War Cruiser - 20
Light Carrier - 200
Doppel Team [Current] - 50
Mobile Doll Team [Old] - 5000
Mobile Doll Team [Current] - 1000
Mobile Doll Team [Elite] - 25
Deviant Doppels [Elite] - 5 (Living Dead Corps)
Mobile Armor [Current] - 40
Republic of Cygnus
Affinity: Federation Government Special Military Forces
Animus:
Orders: Domestic, Military, Production
Trait: Trusted Organs of Oppresssion - This is the 17th time we've had to put down mass insurgencies and we have become highly proficient at it.
Budget:
Player: @kosi
Federation Battleship - 2
Solar War Cruiser - 25
Frigate - 200
Light Carrier - 20
Attack Ships - 250
Doppel Team [Old] - 10,000
Doppel Team [Current] - 500
Doppel Team [Elite] - 5
Aeon Union
Affinity:
Animus: Seraphim
Orders: Domestic, Military, Production, Psychic Supervillainy
Trait: The Void's Teachings - The Void does not speak with words, but it speaks nonetheless. Those who consider the Seraphim dangerously strange and cultish have not met the zealous esoterics of the Aeon Union.
Budget:
Player: @SitzKrieg
City-Ships - 4
Solar War Cruiser - 25
Frigate - 100
Attack Ships - 200
Doppel Team [Old] - 2000
Doppel Team [Current] - 100
Heavy Doppel Team [Old] - 250
Unaligned Militants
Raskonos Faction
Affinity:
Animus: Seraphim, INTACT
Orders: Domestic, Military, Scrounge, Research, Espionage, Psychic Supervillainy
Trait: Midseason Uglies - The Raskonos Faction has a whole collection of mad science technologies scoured from every crazed inventor and Nephilim cache site across human space. Some of these are exceptionally powerful, though the Raskonos Faction is critically short of numbers.
Budget:
Player: @Etranger
Supercarrier Defiance - 1
Doppel Team [Current] - 10
Doppel Team [Elite] - 10
Heavy Doppel Team [Current] - 5
Deviant Doppels [Elite] - 5
Deviant Doppels [Special] - 5
Psycho-Doppel Team [Current] - 5
Exhumanoids (name TBD)
Affinity:
Animus: INTACT, Federation Government Special Military Forces
Orders: Domestic, Military, Scrounge
Trait: Fly The Black Sail - With the Federation stretched from multiple conflicts, it's a good time to be an honest pirate. Especially if you can manage to spirit your stolen ships away to a secret shipyard and refit them and expand your piratical armada.
Budget:
Player: @Gladsome
Jovian Battleship - 1
Frigate - 50
Attack Ships - 200
Doppel Team [Old] - 150
Deviant Doppels [Old] - 25
Deviant Doppels [Elite] - 1
The Black Rising
Affinity:
Animus: INTACT
Orders: Domestic, Military, Scrounge, Espionage
Trait: Chaos is a Ladder - The worse things get, the more appealing the Black Rising's ideology becomes. Burn it all down, my child.
Budget:
Player: @Carol
Frigate - 20
Doppel Team [Old] - 150
Doppel Team [Current] - 50
Deviant Doppels [Special] - 1
Rules
To represent the fact that some of the factions in Solar Flames are not traditional states, the typical list of orders is slightly modified.
Domestic Order - This is an all-purpose order for what your faction is doing internally, from hosting the Mechalympics to purging everyone who's mother was left-handed (you monster). This can cover more than one thing but the more you spread it around the less effective it'll be and the more likely the GM will start ignoring the boring bits.
Military Order - Go fight!
Production Order - Factions with access to industrial bases will have production orders. Because I don't want to deal with doing your production for you, you'll get a budget of production every turn to spend.
Scrounge - Not everyone has a military-industrial complex in their back pocket. For those that don't, you have a scrounge order. Like production this will give you a budget but A) it will vary from turn to turn no matter what and B) will generally go up the more the galaxy is on fire as recruits flock to the cause.
Research - Both for developing new robots and new things that aren't robots.
Espionage - Fucking with players and NPCs in deniable, non-obvious ways.
Psychic Supervillainy - Nobody trusts the Seraphim, and for good reason!
Technical Briefing
Wormholes
Static wormholes are the arteries of interstellar commerce. With their individual termini moved between stars at slower-than-light speeds - an arduously expensive decades-long process - and then inflated on arrival they are the superhighways of space. Internal distance of a wormhole can be greatly reduced, compressing the distance from light-years to light-seconds and making convenient travel possible. It is possible - as the first colonization wormholes were, and sometimes still are - to open their far terminus remotely, superluminally, but these wormholes are fundamentally unstable and will collapse after years, a decade or so at the most.
A typical wormhole has a throat ~200 meters in diameter through which all things - physical and energy - must pass. Internal gravity gradients will push anything passing along into the middle of the channel, conveniently keeping them from hitting the stressed space-time that makes up the inner walls (which is universally a Bad Thing). All wormhole mouths will be surrounded by a ring of hardware to anchor them. As wormholes are only metastable, energy must be added to them on a semi-regular basis to keep them stable and traversable, generally directly relative to how long they are and their compression factor (ie, the relative difference between internal and external length).
As ships cannot easily pass one another in a wormhole, most cycle directionality every 24 hours, allowing ships to pass through from one side and then the other. Thus wormholes are a natural chokepoint and most will have dozens of cargo ships large and small waiting by each terminus for the next opportunity to fly through.
Greatly downscaled derivatives of wormhole technology are used for independent FTL travel by ships, though various intricacies of polydimensional and exotic physics means that while ships can 'jump' independently, they generally do so to known locations or risk blowing through one or more levels of redundancies and safeguards in their all-important jump drives. Thus despite in theory ships being able to jump anywhere within range, in practice human space is essentially a network of 'tram lines'.
Phase Compression Motors
The so-called 'Mercurion Drive' was originally a Jovian black project to improve on the tried and tested fusion motors in used at the time. Luckily for the Solar Federation only a few test articles were complete before the war's end; unfortunately for the Solar Federation, these and the scientific team responsible fled via the last Jovian-controlled wormholes into friendly Verge states. The major Verge states sitting in opposition to the Solar Federation were fertile ground for advanced technology and eventually they stole a march on the Federation and introduced the technology into regular military service ahead of the larger but more conservative Solar power.
Nicknammed 'glitterblowers' due to the spacetime transients generated as a side-effect of their operation, phase compression motors are the first effective reactionless propulsion system. Earlier technologies such as vaccum-plasma thrusters were interesting cases but had hugely inferior propulsive efficiency to fusion rockets. The superiority of phase compression motors over fusion rockets has seen them rapidly replace the older propulsion system and only absolute beaters still use fusion plama motors.
Units
Solar Federation Warships
In many ways the Solar Fleet and its ship designers are extremely conservative, the heritage of the Solar War. Jupiter was the shipbuilding and more importantly ship designing center of the Solar System and when it rebelled, it took much of the young Federation's expertise with it. The Federation was left using ships intended for power projection and independent operations; while many of these were new designs the loyal parts of the Federation were unable to rapidly introduce entirely new designs like the Jovians. This legacy is clear even today, with almost all Solar Federation warships being hybrids.
Continent-class Supercarrier Gondwana-class
The new Continent class supercarriers are the most recent product of Sol's drive yards. Even larger than the feared Defiance class of the war and capable of holding a staggering four hundred standard doppels inside their enormous hangars, there are so far only two of these massive vessels in service. Each one makes up the centre piece of one of the Federation's outer system fleets. Currently the Asia patrols near White Rose Space, while the South America watches the League border. Widely seen as a clear sign of Federation strength, opinions on these incredibly expensive ships is sharply divided inside the Solar Fleet itself - unfortunately for those who might prefer a more sane fleet organization, the Federation seems committed to building no less than five more.
Cost: $300
Mecha Bays: 100
Federation Assault Carrier
Combining the power of a battleship with the airwing of a fleet carrier, the Atlantic-class assault carrier is a fleet flagship built only in small quantities. Bristling with anti-capital and anti-suit ordnance, this ship is designed to survive even a full squadron's attacks.
Cost: $125
Mecha Bays: 15
Federation Battleship
The SFN mainline battleship is designed for leading smaller fleets and providing a heavy anti-capital ship strike capability. It was built to take into account modern mobile suit tactics, and thus carries more anti-suit weaponry and superior targeting compared to the previous generation of battleships, at the cost of only marginal increases in firepower. Combined with its large air wing, the standard battleships are tough targets for even an elite suit squadron.
Cost: $60
Mecha Bays: 6
Federation Cruiser
The smallest vessels in Solar Federation Navy used to carry fighters or mecha, these ships are the core of the SFN fleet. Though capable of limited independent operations such as leading anti-pirate forces, they generally serve as battleship escorts. They have been mass-produced, and the design has been extremely refined. Examplified by the Rio De Janeiro (or 'City') class, Federation cruisers have few weaknesses, but no true strengths.
Cost: $20
Mecha Bays: 3
INTACT Strike Cruiser
Vessels such the SFS Calais (famous for the final strike on the Chessmaster headquarters) are strike cruisers designed for long-range unsupported operations. They have large stores and fuel capacity, as well as a scaled down version of the battleship drive system and weapon emplacements. These ships also have superior sensors and ECM system compared to the rest of the fleet, as well as large suit hangars. Unfortunately, the armor these ships is fairly weak for its size, and they must rely on ECM and superior range to survive a capital ship onslaught.
Cost: $40
Mecha Bays: 4
Neo-Jovian Warships
Jovian warship designs were almost all efficient single-purpose designs, intended to be operated in integrated task forces. Much of the success of the rapid Jovian design process was thanks to the use of standardized modules and design components such as bridges, hangar bays, engine clusters, etc. These allowed for new warship designs to be drafted almost lego-like and production flights to be changed in process without significant disruptions. Even today there are some who believe the Federation is coasting on derivatives of war-era designs and has failed to match Jovian techniques more than three decades old.
Supercarrier Defiance Dolos-class
Only three of these monster warships were completed by the Space Independence Alliance during the war; two (including the original Entebbe) were destroyed near the end of the war and the third, the Defiance, jumped out of Sol to an unknown destination. The Defiance reappeared during the First Neo-Jovian War but again managed to escape Sol. There are intermittent reports of its movement over the past decade, though no INTACT task force has been able to track this ship down.
Cost: N/A
Mecha Bays: 46
Jovian Command Carrier
Built to act as command and control nodes for Jovian fleets, with the exception of the Defiance supercarriers these ships were the largest ships to be built during the Solar War. No two are exactly identical, though they all share a general gangly, overly-long profile bristling with all manner of electronic exotica, secondary turrets and air defense artillery, while several long-range turrets allow them to provide a degree of fire support from outside the range of even battleships. During the war, the command carriers typically operated all manner of elite, specialist and support squadrons - mobile armors, AWACS, recon, jamming golem and stealth hunter-killer 'hitman' units.
Cost: N/A
Mecha Bays: 20
Jovian Battleship
Jovian-built battleships earned a fearsome reputation as gunfighters during the Solar War and even today outclass anything but a modern Solarian battleship. Their weakness, if they have one, is that their air defense outfits can be spotty - some that saw progressive refits during the war (or afterwards) have large batteries of linear flak cannons, while those operating on the frontiers never saw these upgrades and are rather more vulnerable to attack craft and mecha.
Cost: $50
Jovian Heavy Cruiser
While the Jovian shipyards produced many Los Angeles class multirole cruisers, that famous type was hardly the only ones built. More in line with conventional Jovian design doctrine, these heavy cruisers could handily defeat Federation cruisers in a one-on-one duel. Time and time again the Federation would have to rely on its mecha to achieve victory - a successful strategy, but one that always cost the Federation pilots and machines.
Cost: $20
General Warships
The following warships are found, in various individual classes, across much of known space.
Light Carrier
The Space Independence Alliance moved very rapidly towards concentrating mecha operations on dedicated hangars once war broke out in earnest, building large numbers of these compact cruiser-sized carriers. The boxy, inelegant ships were designed to mothership two full squadrons of mecha, though often operated in overload conditions for many battles. Many were captured at the end of the war and sold off, while others sailing the black are new builds.
Cost: $10
Mecha Bays: 6
Solar War Cruiser
Much of the fighting during the Solar War was done by these cruisers, hybrid designs intended as the first class of new, modern Federal ships to supplement and eventually replace the disparate classes inherited from over a dozen major pre-Federation space forces. The fact that both sides of the war built them in large numbers caused no small number of friend-or-foe issues.
Cost: $16
Mecha Bays: 2
Frigate
Frigates were one of the primary power projection ships before the Solar War and the resulting mass militarization of human space - today, they have been relegated to a more secondary role in that regard but still have the advantages of low cost and respectable mecha hangars.
Cost: $10 (if purchased with Scrounge, they cost half as much)
Mecha Bays: 2
Attack Ships
Essentially the classic 20th century destroyer in space, attack ships are typically armed with a few large-caliber pulse cannons or autocannons to defend against mecha or other light attack ships, while their torpedoes still pack a real punch. Enormous numbers of them were churned out by both Federation and Alliance shipyards. Deemed obsolete by the victorious Federation, more recently it's been mooted that selling them off by the hundreds as military surplus was maybe not the brightest idea.
Cost: $4 (if purchased with Scrounge, they cost half as much)
Mecha
The four-unit Element or Fireteam has been standard for centuries, dating back to pre-space Earth. Also, as mecha technology has advanced in leaps and bounds during and after the Solar War, Mecha also have a quality value. This is, and their base cost multiplier, is listed below:
*Old (x1 cost) - old designs dating to the Solar War, or low-cost models that have been built since. Due to be ubiquity of these mecha, if purchased via Scrounge they cost half as much.
*Current (x1 cost) - Various relatively current mecha models, generally no more than two decades old though a small number of limited-run high-spec units from the Solar War would quality.
*Elite (x3 cost) - The cutting edge of what is reasonably mass-producible, the cost of these mecha sees them limited to special operations groups and proven pilots.
*Special (x9 cost) - The bleeding edge of what's even possible, these are singular expressions of the mecha-designer's will and inevitably the titular mecha for whichever season of Solar Soldier Doppel you happen to find yourself in.
Doppel Team
All-purpose bipedal battle mecha, suitable for any environment that isn't horribly unsuitable for human life. Most have at least some ability for aerial operations in a gravitated atmosphere, though they're hardly fighter jets.
Cost: $2 per team
Heavy Doppel Team
'Heavy' doppels were introduced by the Jovians midway through the Solar War, their thick armor making them tough targets for Federation doppels and for a period upended the usual Federal mecha superiority over the rebels. Only the hurried introduction of megaparticle rifles broke the four-month 'Carolean Summer'. Today, heavy doppels still find use in tasks where survivability and firepower are at their most important.
Special Rule: A heavy doppel team takes up 50% more space than standard doppels.
Cost: $3 per team
Deviant Doppels
The Solar Federation builds doppels of quality second to none, but they are also - normally - fairly conservative in some respects. Other groups are not nearly so bound by priors however, with the so-called 'Deviants' being a catch-all term for various strange and unusual doppel designs. Many of them are assymmetric, idiosyncratic or simply weird - almost all of them are babby's first gunpla kitbash.
Special Rule: A Deviant may be built as a Type Prototype at a 2x cost, which gives a type (eg [DAN-69 Hammurabi]). The first time Deviant doppels of that type are deployed into combat they are super-effective as opponents have to figure out just how to fight a seventeen meter mecha-clown armed with a yellow-sound parsnip and crab-fists.
Cost: $4 per team
Mobile Doll Team
The League of Outer Stars is well-known for its expertise in unmanned mecha; the Raptor series is cheap and widely produced to be used in overpowering swarms of killbots. Efforts by the Solar Federation to outlaw autonomous weapons have met a cold reception.
Cost: $1 per team
Mobile Armor
The first mobile armors were built by the League as large and powerful but nonhumanoid mecha; among the first and still most common role was acting as a command-and-firepower node for Raptor swarms. Unlike doppel teams, mobile armors are purchased and operate as individuals, though they take up the space of a normal doppel team.
Cost: $3 each
Special Units
Aero-Doppel Team
The Solar Federation has introduced several models of 'waverider' doppels, capable of transforming from a standard humanoid mecha to an arrowhead silhouette for significantly improved atmospheric performance.
Cost: $3 per team
Psycho-Doppel Team
A recent development by the Seraphim, the Psycho-Doppel is the first type to feature mass-production psychically controlled remote gun drones. While these are not as effective as earlier - but substantially more expensive - types that first saw field use during the Chessmaster Conflict, they are still a significant capability.
Cost: $4 per team
Hunter-Killer Team
During the war, the Jovians developed a series of low-observability doppels to engage in various clandestine tasks ranging from sniping to assassination to sabotage/covert strike. While most were destroyed by the end of the war, every so often one Neo-Jovian group or another managed to cobble together a handful.
Cost: $8 per team (may not be scrounged)
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