<Snipped quote by Fingal>
Fantastic. How much am I allowed to world build? What is set in stone? Do we have FTL? Will we be mainly on the Intrepid or exploring alien worlds?
Yes, we have FTL travel. I expect there will be some stories that are entirely set aboard the Intrepid, but some stories will involve exploration of alien worlds. Players are allowed to worldbuild as much as they like, though I will need to check it before declaring it canon.
Some basics:
Space Weapons: The primary weapon in interstellar engagements is the humble railgun. Powered by an electromagnetic coil and a pair of charged "rails," these powerful weapons are the primary armament for most ships of the line in the late 2200s. As directed energy weapons are prone to refraction even in the emptiness of space, these projectile-slingers have come to dominate the battlefield. Guided missiles, better known as "torpedoes," are also common, although their effective range is significantly shorter as they rely heavily on fuel to correct their courses. They are vulnerable to autocannon and laser point defenses, as are starfighters, a new and relatively untested innovation of the past few decades, but both are capable of far more damage than railgun slugs. In addition, gravitic shields act as "armor" in engagements, but they are much more important than simply that - they are necessary for FTL travel, as they protect vessels from the rigors of Slipspace. If an enemy vessel drains or cripples your shields, your ship will be unable to flee into slipspace - or for that matter accelerate to any meaningful speeds without being torn apart by the tiniest pieces of space debris.
FTL: The Helliwell-Braun Slipstream Drive has not changed much since its inception in the mid-1900s. First put into practice by German aerospace engineer Wernher von Braun and British astrophysicist John Brian Helliwell, the drive rips a tear in reality in front of the ship, allowing passage into "Slipspace" - a realm of reality to which the normal rules of space and time do not apply. Slipspace has its dangers, however - without specialized "gravitic beacons" left in star systems by explorers and colonists, it is nearly impossible to find the system you are looking for thanks to the mind-bending nature of Slipspace - and while space is very empty, getting too close to the gravity well of a star can have destructive (and often horrific) impacts on an unwitting ship. For this reason, exploration tends to be slow and steady - specialized "lighthouse scouts" jump to close-by star systems, drop gravitic beacons, and proceed onward so they don't lose their way. For this reason, less than 1% of the galaxy is explored by human powers.
Communication: The "Slipgram" is the most common form of interstellar communication. Small data packets are beamed through miniscule Slipspace rifts, which are deciphered by a "reciever" on the other end and translated into usable data. The drawback is that bigger messages require more power to send, and there are diminishing returns as more power is committed; the "Marconi limit," the maximum amount of data in bytes that can be transferred via Slipgram, currently stands at 200 terabytes, or 200 trillion bytes.
Gravitics: One of the most valuable and ubiquitous technologies is that of gravitics. From this basic manipulation of the very forces of reality comes such advances as artificial gravity, shielding, reactionless propulsion, Slipspace navigation, certain kinds of terraforming, and any, many more. However, physics dictates that gravity cannot simply be created from nothing - so gravitic plants require neutronium, a densely-compressed substance that scientists more commonly refer to as "quark-gluon plasma:" the same substance found in the core of neutron stars. Even a tiny spoonful of the stuff is enough to create a localized gravity well, which is what gravitic plants use to generate and manipulate gravity. Neutronium is hideously expensive to produce and contain despite its ubiquity, however, making it one of the most valuable substances in the galaxy.
Computer Technology: In this world, unlike ours, reliable transistors were never developed - vacuum tubes remain the primary means of controlling electrical current, even as advanced as they have become, and as a result computers in the Weltraumflotte world are huge room-sized banks accessed by terminals. That said, they have immense processing power, and the size is less of a problem when they can be dispersed throughout a warship.
AI: Largely an anathema to human society, artificial intelligence was banned at a special session of the Hague International Convention on Galactic Warfare after the "ACIE" intelligence created by the US Navy went rogue and destroyed a mining colony by seizing control of the defense grid. Nonsentient "Gestalts" serve in the purpose of AIs, but they are still far to rudimentary to serve the same purpose - thus requiring large human crews even in this day and age of automation. As seen above, there is also a limit to how "smart" gestalts can be due to the size requirements of the computer banks.
Land Weapons: Coilguns are the standard infantry weapon of the 22nd Century, thanks to their cheap construction and stopping power, although lasers are often used by special forces for their silence, and masers are used in larger-scale weapons systems. Most armored vehicles these days are propelled by gravitics, making them incredibly fast and maneuverable; even "tanks" in the modern day are capable of limited flight and surprising feats of agility.
Kaiserstahl/Royal Steel: Known by a number of names, carbon nanotubes are primarily known as "Kaiserstahl" in German-aligned states and "Royal Steel" in the British sphere. Incredibly light and very strong relative to its thickness, Kaiserstahl is primarily used as armor plating in everything from body armor to starship hulls. Reactive variants, using powered fullerenes, are rarer but not uncommon, often issued to special forces and heavier combatants.
