[hider=Revised Cooperative] [center][img]https://orig00.deviantart.net/3d81/f/2018/255/8/c/cooperative_symbol_by_zoppadoppa-dcmp8nh.png[/img][b][h1][hr]The cooperative[/h1][/b][/center][hr] [h2][b]GENERAL INFORMATION[hr][/b][/h2][h3][b]Faction Overview[/b][/h3] The Cooperative is a civilization descended from rogue peacekeepers who rebelled against the terrans. Characterized as a highly centralized, highly hierarchal domain founded upon the belief in the human spirit with the grand sovereign’s guidance. The Cooperative as a civilization is one built around two sets of beliefs, that of a transhumanist hierarchal order that is viewed as a form of maturation within the meritocratic cooperative society. It is also built on the conception of a common human spirit that borders on theocratic even as AIs and Cyborgs run everything. The humanistic regime has a several other peculiarities, such as how their elite at times seems to view the common, non-augmented people like tending to a garden. The meritocratic ideal is built on the idea that those common people will advance and mature into cyborgs who are viewed as superhuman in nature. This gardener mindset comes from a strong natalist streak within the cooperative’s elite circles that has led to Cooperative space being flooded in people created through factories of artificial wombs. Of whom the common cooperative citizen comes from that if they work hard enough get to be cyborgs. [h3][b]Territory Overview[/b][/h3] [b] Notable Worlds [/b] [u]Diagones[/u] Diagones is a warm earth-like world colonized due to being in the habitable zone of Opiuchi C and with a gravitational pull similar enough to that of Earth’s. Diagones has dense jungles and large mountain ranges with deserts dominating the equatorial region. The polar regions are the most habitable for humans, with the weather cycles on Diagones from a near perfect 0 degree tilt. Diagones also has a small sterile moon. In the current Cooperative age, Diagones is the most densely populated planet of the entire cooperative with over 27 billion people crammed into arcologies either on the world itself or in one of the dozens of orbital cities. The moon meanwhile hosts various super computers and cyborgs. Diagones was the only world that was easily colonized in the 36 Ophiuchi system and got its name during the early 21st century. It orbits near the star 36 Ophiuchi C, which is the most stable star in the system (Opiuchi A and B are extremely close binaries with highly elliptical orbits meanwhile). [u]Atlas [/u] Atlas is a barycentric world found at the center of the entire 36 Opiuchi star system. It is a massive terrestrial world with over five times earth’s mass that consists of aggregated material from an earlier epoch. Atlas orbits the barycenter of the Ophiuchi system instead of any of the stars. It is the site of a space elevator that was hard to set up due to the gravity well, which was why the space elevator was made in the first place. Atlas is used as a mining center for cooperative activities due to the massive shores of rare earth minerals hosted in the highly pressurized, noxious depths of Atlas. [u]Long Step[/u] Long Step is the homeworld of the Tikali. It is found in the Alsafi system. Long step has lower gravity than earth and less air pressure than Earth with sprawling planes of magenta colored bacteria. Long Step shifts in color over the seasons, from Violet to Magenta and back. There is an absence of polar caps due to the greenhouse effect, leading to a more carbon rich environment than on Earth. Their world has more homogenous temperature than earth, but there are still amazing amounts of variation thanks to the nutrition poor soils. The white hard growths of the salty swamps would allow for the depth of time to enable the natively developed Tikali to spend millennia killing each other over very ridiculous reasons when they weren’t digging out canals and overpopulating massive rafts of hard growth to expand their agricultural output. Long Step has all matter of critters, such as segmented worms with 2-way gut systems slinking or flying about, floods of eusocial invertebrates who dwell in the mega organisms on the ocean floor who absorb the dead and various higher order organisms including the Tikali themselves. The agriculture the Tikali cultivate from their world is diverse, such as their cultivation of gametes for food or the cultivation of growing building material. Or the cultivation of all matter of sea critters they farm on a regular basis with the drilling of canals. All matter of indigenous engineering was employed to sustain a quite massive Tikali populations in large trade networks that the Cooperative encountered. Long Step is populated by 15 billion people, 9 billion of which are Tikali as the Cooperative allowed colonies to develop despite the well-established Tikali population on the rationale the Tikali control the seas more than the land. [u]Janssen[/u] Janssen is a world so pressurized and hot that there is a diamond mantle. Janssen’s ash covered, supercritical surface where volcanoes erupt clouds of diamond crystal particles didn’t keep the Cooperative from using the world as a test bed for all matter of research projects including the Diamond Breaker armor systems or the Tide Breaker Frigates. Janssen is mainly populated with orbital cities, as the surface is so hostile to life it makes Venus look like the garden of eden. These orbital cities are some of the most numerous around any world, with over 300 of them just orbiting Janssen hosting over a billion people. (More to come) [b]System Roster[/b] (Major population center) 36 Ophiuchi (tikali home system) Alsafi (Location of Janssen) 55 Cancri [Accessed via hypergate] Hypergate ID is V729, it is in orbit of a brown dwarf. [h3][b]History[/b][/h3] The birth of the Cooperative comes from the private security forces of one of the major space corporations that formed during the third cold war as one of the main competitors to SpaceX. The early Cooperative was running very unlike most businesses in that the Cooperative had a culture where integrating their employees and workers into the inner workings of client governments was considered an imperative as was spreading the general ideal of pan-humanist individualism. As a business, the ideological fervor for a liberation of humanity seemingly overrode common sense desires for profit or growth, taking on multiple times major losses for dubious projects of varied levels of success. Where they were successful however, they were able to gain an edge- and that edge would be in the social engineering they pulled off on Diagones. The Cooperative’s CEO, Francis Midgley with his board of directors had based their business on Diagones and with their economic influence and clout spread their vision of the world alongside large commissioned private peacekeeping forces made with the intention of dealing with pirate dens who hid out in the asteroid fields and dwarf planets between Ophiuchi C and Opiuchi AB that regularly terrorized those who passed through the region. The Pirate Wars between the Cooperative Peacekeeping Space Force would ensue, with minimal help from the UINE at the time and these Pirate Wars would be what secured the power of the Cooperative within the 36 Opiuchi System and secured Francis Midgley as one of the most powerful individuals on Diagones. Cooperative medical and nursing units also would help with various troubles caused by the harsh conditions of the world they colonized. The world governors would become more deferential to him as well, if only out of fear of vanishing in the dark of night. It was at this time the Grand Sovereign originated. It was initially a joke of sorts, a mind uploading system that could hold multiple personalities in a large tank to come to conclusions. The Sovereign Project was deeply controversial, but little was done as Francis managed to assure people it would have little impact on people’s day-day lives. Little did even Francis know that he would end up being a volunteer to his own invention. For a group of senators who feared the grasp Francis has attained on their world's politics plotted the assassination of Francis Midgley. They saw no democratic means to remove him due to how most of the senate answered mostly to the Cooperative. The assassination attempt occurred during a public outing by Francis Midgley where he was showcasing various power suit models that the local engineering corporation Judgement Manufacturing had built. Little did the crowds know that one of the power suits was manned by the obtuse minded Mangler, who assaulted Francis Midgley during the presentation, smashing his chest in and breaking all his legs. The powersuit ran out of juice before it could crush his skull in and Francis Midgley was immediately sent to the secretive Sovereign project in a last-ditch effort to save him as the blood loss was terminal and he had already lost consciousness. They uploaded his mind to the Sovereign successfully. Thus, Francis Midgley died and the Cooperative was born. Immediately after Francis died, there was mass rioting n in the streets. The senators were sent into hiding while the Mangler was killed by crowds. The anarchy and chaos of this time would be just the instability the Peacekeeper admiral Marian Kusnetsov needed to initiate a military coup known as Restabilization. The Restabilization sought to remove from power all those who opposed the cooperative's agenda and conspired to murder the well loved Francis Midgley- who gave security and peace befoe it was stolen away by corrupt senators who terrorized the public. The opposition was a minority by this point in Ophiuchi and those who had been viewed as conspirators in the assassination of Francis Midgley were hunted down and executed. Once the purging was complete, Marian initiated a directive to rebuild what was destroyed in the riots. These two policies were controversial outside of Diagones, but within Diagones gave the much-needed popularity for Marian to be elected multiple times as world governor. Later Marian would become part of the Grand Sovereign Marian’s rule was general viewed positive and was stable despite initial tensions with the UINE military, with efforts into research expanded upon into fields previously underfunded or otherwise not touched upon. Fears would appear on the potential of UINE encroachment on their research initiatives, and so after a couple decades of Marian’s governing a referendum was held to leave the UINE that succeeded by 64%. An exodus of UINE loyalists took place and the Cooperative found itself needed to grow their populations. Old artificial womb designs from the biotechnology experiments during third cold war era were brought back into use as were the Birth Protocols. The Birth Protocols was a set of protocols made to facilitate the growth of Cooperative populations and expansion as a newly independent society. The Cooperative would expand their reach towards the Barycenter of the Ophuchi star system, taking Atlas as theirs and in general building up their fleets, infrastructure and populations on a mind-boggling scale. This was the Golden Age of the Cooperative, and it would lead to the discovery of the V199 Hypergate that led to 55 Cancri where the research world of Janssen was founded. After Marian’s rule, the Sovereign’s power grew considerably in scope as the world governors proved increasingly reliant on the guidance of the Sovereign and those who are part of it. Increasingly ideological governors would be elected on the promise of advancing humanity further and further, without much in the way of constraints or ethics as the promise of a humanity first society filled the media and indoctrinating fervor filled the populous. Cyborgization became incredibly widespread in the Cooperative as did the increasing need to manage more and more people, machines and worlds due to the constant building of new projects commissioned by the sovereigns and world governors. The Silver Net would be developed as a management apparatus for the Cooperative to deal with the difficulties the rapidly growing population gave the cooperative’s system. From these points the cooperative’s hierarchy came increasingly into focus with public objections to cyborgized people having and raising kids with in built advantages leading to the usage of artificial wombs being promoted as an equalizing force- though in practice the hierarchy continued to further entrench itself over the decades. The silver net would never state that of course, the humanity first attitude the cooperative was born with continued to be espoused as gospel even as cyborg elites accrued increasing power. Eventually the institution of world governor was scrapped entirely, in its place the lesser sovereigns and the grand sovereign who together acted as the supreme governing force of the Cooperative. With mind uploading and AI technology hitting a revolution within the Cooperative, the Sovereigns expanded their powers greatly as the ancient, wise ones who have the memories of the founders with them still along with those idealized as the best of the Cooperative’s society. Around the same time, Cooperative Expeditionary forces contacted the Tikali in the star system of Alsafi, finding clever, but technologically inferior alien life that had managed to dominate their whole world despite being adapted to the sea. These Tikali disgusted the Grand Sovereign of the Cooperative, who wanted them exterminated due to their appearance. The lesser sovereigns however overruled the grand sovereign thus ensuring the Tikali would be technologically uplifted by the Cooperative begrudgingly. As more of the Cooperative’s population becomes augmented and cybernetic, the inability to hold grand power in the Cooperative dismayed those with high ambitions but lacked the favor of the Sovereigns. Internal unrest also had regularly plagued the Cooperative as many people fail to advance to becoming cyborgs or due to acts of violence against Tikali colonies by locals. Of which the Lesser Sovereigns do little about with the Grand Sovereign encouraging it. These troubles have led to the wealthiest, most powerful cyborgs acting increasingly autonomously despite the Sovereigns being in theory the highest power of the Cooperative in recent times. Concerns of stability from the increasingly delirious, but increasingly revered Grand Sovereign or the ambitions and machinations of the prime cyborgs plague the cooperative in a time of increasing uncertainty. With outside contacts of interstellar empires flooding in and ongoing tensions with the other two human powers making the situation worse. A future that once looked so bright now only seems to look like a descent into the abyss. And those part of the Cooperative now find themselves struggling both with the structural failures of their society and numerous outside threats posed by forces both human and alien. [h2][b]SOCIETY INFORMATION[hr][/b][/h2][h3][b]Demographics[/b][/h3] There is one Grand Sovereign of the Cooperative. There is around a dozen lesser sovereigns who act as local administrators for the various worlds controlled by the cooperative. About 10% of the population are full body cyborgs on some level with copies of themselves backed up in data archives. 12% of the population is Tikali. 60% of the population are humans of some sort. 9.6% of the population are uploaded minds with sapience or advanced AIs of some sort 6% of the population are various species of uplifted animals The total population of the Cooperative is around 74 billion registered sapients. [u]The Tikali[/u] [img] https://orig00.deviantart.net/ed91/f/2018/121/e/7/another_tikali__by_zoppadoppa-dcaesqi.png[/img] The lore on them is really overdeveloped, look at this article if you want the long version (be warned it references the tikali that got to higher levels of tech than the tikali of this RP): [url=https://github.com/Insculpo/Sandbox_Galaxy/blob/master/Stellar_Abyss_Setting_Bible/2_Sapients/Tikali.md]The Tikali[/url] The Tikali here didn’t get past the iron metallurgy by the time the Cooperative found a species of aquatic creatures who managed to etch their way inland for lots of resources impossible to find in the salty swamps/mangroves and coasts they normally lived in. They colonized the oceans as well using raft cities and had a wide range of clan-oriented societies and all matter of other social systems upon contact with the Cooperative. The Tikali filled a niche comparable to the terran cuttlefish, with lots of spines due to being both a predator and prey species. Tikallian society was deeply impacted by cooperative contact as they both found liberation and oppression from their new guests. A large share of those in power in the Cooperative generally looks down upon them (often dismissively or with derision) despite allowing them to colonize multiple cooperative worlds due to how they live in oceans like Earth’s just fine and quickly set up to get aquatic resources humans otherwise would have a harder time getting. Despite these contributions, they usually don’t get much for their rare earth resource gathering from the cooperative and incidents have happened due to the near lack of communication the human colonies have. Despite objections by the grand sovereign, there are cyborg factions who have put illegal funding into accelerating tikali reproduction. [h3][b]Cultural Overview[/b][/h3] The Cooperative is organized into a centralized force where the grand sovereign holds unilateral dominion over most human affairs. The cooperative’s presence for the common folk is that of a seemingly prevalent burning sensation with many people existing very insular, culturally desperate existences as if they were test labs even with the freedom of movement they can have... in theory. In practice, movement freedoms usually are limited by the standards system that acts as the universal value metric all people are judged by mainly through having to show their capacity for greater things through all matter of arbitrary testing by those in power who act as patrons to those lesser in the cylindrical habitat. The sub societies in the cooperative tend to be built on frame works created by lesser sovereigns and AIs who act on a freer plane where space travel and commerce is the norm. [h3][b]Government Overview[/b][/h3] The Cooperative has been mostly dominated by the grand sovereign, of whom being part of is viewed as of the highest honor. For to be part of the grand sovereign is the highest position attainable within the cooperative. Lesser sovereigns exist in the cooperative as well, and those who become part of the grand sovereign usually come from lesser sovereigns in practice. Lesser sovereigns not part of the cooperative or think tanks have been utilized by organizations part of the cooperative for ages. Indeed, the cooperative originated as a peacekeeper force ran by what by this point would in modern times be viewed as a lesser sovereign. The cooperative’s political developments have shifted over time with the grand sovereign being less direct a force as cyborg oligarchs take on much more direct roles as the cooperative’s elite with their ideological and experimental outlook- with a sense of nihilism caused by copies of their minds already being uploaded many times over so they fear their own annihilation far less, though the threat of data purging is often held over some to keep them in line. The general hierarchy of the Cooperative goes as follows from greatest to least power: The Grand Sovereign Lesser Sovereigns Primes AIs, Cyborgs Humans, Honored Tikali Tikali Uplifted animals, other aliens The Grand Sovereign acts as the central commanding unit for the cooperative while the lesser sovereigns act as provisional enforcers and advisors for the grand sovereign. These sovereigns are small groups of uploaded human minds who come to a census on what to do and act as gatekeepers for critical cooperative functions- be it handling Jensson or dealing with automatic warships that glitched up. The lesser sovereigns can override the grand sovereign if most them object to a decision made by the grand sovereign. One notable incident would be when the grand sovereign wanted to kill off the Tikali with an orbital bombardment that was overridden by an override veto including 9 of 12 lesser sovereigns. The Grand Sovereign’s minds can be overwritten by lesser sovereign minds should the grand sovereign be viewed as having become corrupted or too dysfunctional from age. That has yet to actually happen thus far. The Grand Soverign has members who were alive during the secession still. Or because of… reasons. The lesser sovereigns and the grand sovereign co-own the main peacekeeping fleets. Than you have Cyborgs and uploaded minds. The uploaded minds and cyborgs are viewed generally as the wealthier and better off parts of cooperative society, as while they in theory defer to lesser sovereigns, in practice the cyborgs internally have their own pecking orders as well. People of these augmented ranks can transfer to the status of lesser sovereign if they prove themselves great enough for the task. The boundaries between AIs and Cyborgs tends to be tenuous, which is why they are viewed in equal respects. Cyborgs tend to do all matter of administrative functions and heavy duty dirty work, such as spaceship manufacture or asteroid mining. The higher cyborgs and AI, the primes are another class in the convoluted system of the Cooperative that consists of cyborgs who accrue large amounts of power within the cyborg class that were never liked much by the sovereigns. And so, they instead focus on power politics in their level due to the near impossibility to advancing to sovereign status. Below the transhumanistic class of uploaded minds and cyborgs are humans and honored tikali. Humans in the cooperative tend to live decent lives despite the dense crowds and difficulty in advancing upwards caused by how only some humans get augmented to the degree of the cyborg class. The cyborg class it should be noted, refers to a class of people who live as full body cyborgs- humans who just have a robotic arm don’t qualify for the cyborg class. These humans tend to either content themselves with the musings of virtual spaces, often piloting drones or causing pointless drama. A large share of them don’t even need to work and exist only due to the artificial womb factories and the obsessive desire to cultivate people among the cyborg class. There are than the Tikali, who are equals to humans sometimes (the “honored” tikali), other times as lesser to humans. The Tikali in the system rarely get to the cyborg level and there are numerous structural biases that cause that. Many Tikali are just content using human ships to find other worlds to colonize, within or outside cooperative space. Below even the Tikali are uplifted animals and other alien species who if they immigrate aren’t allowed to move up in the hierarchy at all for the first several generations and are usually loathed. Uplifted animals have it even worse, often just living at the fringes of cooperative society as a product of various experiments. Few in the cooperative like them, even tikali loathe them. They often get hunted by humans due to the challenge of hunting a smart chimpanzee or a smart elephant. [h2][b]TECHNOLOGY INFORMATION[hr][/b][/h2][b][h3]Tech Overview[/h3][/b] The Cooperative has managed to achieve great strides in cybernetic augmentation, AI, Missiles, artificial wombs and Fusion while proving relatively weak in the fields of nanotech, particle based weaponry and FTL systems [h3][b]Notable Technologies[/b][/h3] [u] Fusion Batteries [/u] The bulk of cooperative tech is fueled by the usage of fusion batteries, especially their electromagnetic weaponry and multitudes of power suits. [u] Artificial Wombs [/u] Artificial womb tech is the backbone of Cooperative expansion, for pregnancy is viewed as an affliction of lesser life forms and thus, it is standard practice for would be parents to buy an artificial womb for their baby or send their gametes to a public baby factory. Pregnancy is on some worlds outlawed entirely, being viewed as a form of abuse there. On most worlds pregnancy remains widespread and not much is actually done about it in practice. Genetic modification is often paired with artificial wombs, with designer babies being very common. [u] Cyborgization [/u] Cyborgization is the process of becoming increasingly augmented with synthetic body parts and mechanical parts as one grows and upgrades. This can mean replacing everything short of the brain with a synthetic substitute over time, with citizens in the cooperative having many varied degrees of augmentation. [u] Power Suits [/u] Power suits are used often in the cooperative as a force multiplier for heavy duty tasks such as building modular apartments, spaceships and whatever infrastructure is needed. Such power suits have of course, found military application by lesser human militias repurposing them for military usage. [u] The Silver Net [/u] The Silver Net is the primary virtual network of the Cooperative and it is used to house virtual life forms, uploaded minds and all matter of cyberspace marketplaces. The Silver Net is regionalized to the local planet in practice, with low traffic lanes between worlds being used mainly by AIs. [h3][b]Industrial Overview[/b][/h3] One of the most prized and exotic sites of research in the Cooperative is the Janssen Research Center, the site of numerous developments in energy weaponry and all matter of diamond-based technologies that have found usage throughout the cooperative. Indeed, Janssen has been viewed as the ‘will’ of the Cooperative for how much research has been done on this boiling hot super earth. Factory complexes in the Cooperative are often based in asteroid belts or in the orbit of dwarf planets, such factories are found all over cooperative space with local provisional subordinates privately owning said factories. Cooperative population centers are most concentrated at the multiple star system of 36 Ophiuchi, where over half the cooperative’s population lives. This is due to there being multiple rocky planets close enough in mass to earth to paraterraform along with one world so much like earth making artificial ecologies wasn’t necessary. These populations planet side are densely situated in craters or valleys where covering them is easier with magnetic rail transit systems linking them across the desolate surface for larger freight and airports for orbital access. Space elevators have been created on 4 worlds throughout cooperative space- the Tikali Home World of Long Step, 2 Ophiuchi worlds and one world in 55 Cancri. An attempt to make a space elevator for Placing a space Elevator to access Janssen was tried, but it ended with a couple thousand people dying from the instability the smoldering heat and raining molten rock caused. Orbital cities are common in the Cooperative, it’s hard to find any major celestial body in the Cooperative that lacks an orbital settlement. The more colonized worlds often have hundreds of them. [h2][b]MILITARY INFORMATION[hr][/b][/h2][h3][b]Military Overview[/b][/h3] The Cooperative’s origins as a peacekeeping force gone rogue has given their military a strong civilian role within the cooperative, with even members of the main fleet often carrying out charitable acts and handling various local disputes. The fraternal culture of the Cooperative military creates a community mentality that pervades the whole institution as the military directly has provisional control over local law enforcement in both the virtual and real space realms. The Cooperative military as a force is also known mainly for being incredibly sleek in design- with favored futurist designers commissioned by engineers make beautiful whatever they make as ugly technology is looked down upon by a lot of those in the middle and upper echelons of the cooperative’s hierarchy. This is because for those who are augmented, the technology is a part of them and thus, it must be beautiful. Rusty tech, crude tech and such they view would negatively affect the character of whoever wears it. Sleek, clean technology is much more preferred. That attitude transfers to their military as well. While they are advanced, the costs associated with making their advanced military hardware often mean that they cannot afford significant losses and so often will buffer themselves with drone swarms or human militias. The main military is however, only a small fraction and there isn’t nearly as much of them as their overall population would imply. Most cyborgs don’t like to volunteer for the peacekeeping forces in practice and the human militias tend to make use of crude 3D printed weapons or antique weapons from pre-secession times that get made still. [h3][b]Army Overview[/b][/h3] The Cooperative Army makes used of a combined arms approach to warfare, with their armies of augmented brigades usually having sky probes and a lot of supporting machines that they feel they can never go without. Even the militia humans will often have support automations helping them and very often some simple exosuit atop of their relative lack of a combat skin. In terms of weaponry, miniaturized missiles and nuclear weaponry are at the forefront along with energy-based weaponry and plasma throwers. In general, the Cooperative’s R&D has focused mainly on the most showy, loud and intimidating weaponry supplemented with AI controllers to ensure that it will hit. Their small arms are made with intended usage with power suits, exosuits and cyborgs and so they tend to be on the heavy side. Even the more rustic weapons used by the common people in their militias can be rather heavy. Their primary arms include electro lasers, railguns, micro-missile rifles (or gyrojets) and plasma throwers along with micronuke cannons. [b] Weapons [/b] [u]Micronukes[/u] Micronukes are miniaturized nuclear arms that can be used by infantry units to irradiate chokepoints, disrupt machinery and blow up infrastructure. The micro-nuke’s radius is small- only 50-100 meters with some powersuit wearers being able to survive being within a few meters of a blast and exceptionally resilient defenses being able to shrug one off with only some radiation burns. They come in longer range and shorter range formats along with micro-detonators that have been a huge security risk for the cooperative and anyone who has a terrorist organization that gets ahold of one. Heavy micro-nukes exist for vehicles and spacecraft. [u] Micromissile projectors [/u] Micromissile projectors are deadly for they are swarms computer guided missiles that swarm their intended to target to overwhelm their interception systems with many small, but explosive payloads. Micromissiles have been used by infantry units as well in their gyrojet rifles. Drone swarms with explosive payloads are a common feature of cooperative militaries. Even militia humans used them. [u] Plasma Throwers [/u] Plasma throwers are an arcane device used mainly to cut through defenses more than to kill, as plasma throwers can rip through steel and bone without really much effort. They can even cut through rocks. The main drawback of plasma throwers is their limited range and being massive energy hogs to the point where they’re not standard use. Some hunter killers use them to break into bunkers. [b] Vehicles [/b] [u]Exojets[/u] One of the prized advancements of the Cooperative is their exospheric jets, which have been used in civilian infrastructure to make low gravity worlds easy to leave and in the military for low orbit combat and domination of airspace. The standard cooperative exojet system includes ion thrusters, gauss turrets and micromissiles. They are meant mainly for flight around orbital infrastructure and the upper atmosphere of a planet, with shuttle variants able to go from surface-orbit. [u] Diamond Breakers [/u] Diamond Breakers are a specialized military apparatus that is the star of military research from Janssen, as their armoring and plating is a specialized, but non-standard alloy of multiple layers and coolant that has been able to survive the extreme pressures of Janssen. Diamond Breakers are worn by shock troops to bust into the most hostile regions of a battlefield or planet with a surface to flush out garrisons or bunkered troops. The Diamond Breaker apparatus is so resilient that they can be within a mile of a nuclear detonation and survive. Such hyper resilient apparatus isn’t invincible, but it can take tons of punishment before it breaks down from wear and tear. The wearer’s strength is also enhanced greatly due to how the apparatus can by simply not yielding break through all matter of materials and the wearer is often a cyborg to begin with who is usually given an arsenal of explosives, railguns and heavy gauss rifles. There’s only a couple hundred diamond breaker apparatus in existence thus far, with research efforts for lighter, more standardized apparatus still in the works. [h3][b]Space Force Overview[/b][/h3] The Cooperative space force is one meant to protect the cooperative from outside forces primarily, while also existing as it did in the past- as a force for keeping the peace. The peacekeeping fleets of the cooperative date back to the secession and continue to as they did in the past act as a means of keeping marauders from wrecking civilization or deviants from undermining the grand sovereign. The main peacekeeping force is owned by the grand sovereign itself and is the public space fleet. Meanwhile, the twelve lesser sovereigns of the elite privately own their own militia fleets for local and rapid response initiatives. Or more often in practice, to settle disputes between other regional leaders over who controls what asteroid. The tactics used by their space force often orient on two doctrines- shock and awe strikes to intimidate and the liberal use of reconnaissance information gathering so the tacticians can craft their master plans. [u] Virgo Class Light Frigate [/u] The Virgo is a scouting craft that is a standard issue light frigate used primarily by the cooperative in their fleets as a scouting vessel and a fast response system. The Virgo class is a heavily relied upon vessel due to its rapid pacing, rapid construction and so on. Virgo scouting frigates usually come with multiple electromagnetic projectors and a modular missile pod along with a defensive plasma barrier for self defense as the Cooperative based Judgement Manufacturing Collective likes to claim. Electromagnetic projectors have the first and primary purpose of being Both an interceptor and a shield breaker, for they spew forth millions of pea sized chunks of metal at incredible velocities which makes them in many regards blur the line between a gauss weapon and a particle weapon. They are regularly used by humans mainly due to their blunt force and their preference for shield breaking. [u] Hunter Killer Cruisers [/u] Hunter Killer Cruisers are a specialized anti-infrastructure space vessel. These vessels have a history, being modified from the peacekeeper Hunter Cruisers once made to track down and destroy pirate settlements in asteroids to a more aggressive application beyond just unruly scrappers. These cruisers come with many probes meant to scan and find any settlements within asteroids or small planets that would otherwise not be detectable by radar. Hunter Killers also come with many homing mines they are supposed to place strategically in places where a retreating force may be unable to deal with them or around choke points. Hunter Killers also make use of chemical missiles and bunker buster missiles that can drill through 12 kilometers of stone to get to their targets. Buster Missiles can be used against capital vessels as well, but they’re usually interceptable and are limited in their speed and payload by the need to carry a drill with them. [u] Tide Breaker Frigates [/u] Tidebreaker Frigates are highly specialized frigates who handle a wide range of information warfare operations- mainly in subverting enemy drones, launching micro-nukes to disrupt enemy nanotechnology and distorting communication lanes to make it harder for enemies to understand what is going on. What gives the tide breakers their name however, is in their authorization to create shield barrier fields that block smaller projectiles such as particle beams or gauss projectiles that extent out over a hundred kilometers if allowed to. These fields can mess with targeting systems for those in the fields however, making those in the fields often utilize missiles instead. [u] Automatic Warships [/u] Automatic Warships are patrol crafts placed around no-go zones with catalogs of whitelisted cooperative members. They automatically after two warnings fire upon any unauthorized intruders. Automatic Warships are often classed into the frigate range and act as hives for many smaller drone fighter crafts that get launched at the unwanted guest. The warship itself hosts a wide array of energy-based interceptors to block missiles from hitting the drone hive itself while the smaller ships will attack with kinetic projectiles until they run out. Should a drone run out of kinetic projectiles or run low on fuel, said drone will attempt to crash into the enemy spacecraft like a missile. Automatic warships can at times glitch and attack indiscriminately, which is why a shutoff key held by the local lesser sovereign usually exists. The gatekeeping on shutoff keys does mean the occasional ‘grey’ incidents that occur can take longer than expected to deal with due to the red tape involved in getting a shutoff key from a local lesser sovereign. [/hider]