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VitaVitaARThe Valerius Federation
The Federation
Major Belligerent
General Information
Overview
The federation is a very old and very large democratic nation. It is split into many small semi autonomous units of varying size all collectively organized, but not contled, by a central Congress. Its citizens consider themselves a post-species people as a result of generations of genetic engineering, biological modification and hybridisation. They lost territory during the great war, but are still a cultural and economic force to be reckoned with.
History
The feds are an old staple of galactic politics, perhaps one of the oldest in existence, that was initially formed as a trade, free movement and mutual aid agreement between various smaller nations in their corner of the galaxy in an attempt to curtail local infighting and promote economic growth. The power and influence the central board in charge of coordinating that agreement slowly expanded over the course of generations as the treaty gradually accepted new members to ranks and the federation’s individual nation’s cultures, populations and economies slowly bled into one another. Eventually the central board, its members now democratically elected by its member’s citizens, transitioned into the official central government of a new nation known as the The Valerius Federation.
The multi species nature of the feds was key to their initial success, pooling together the knowledge and skills of different races and utilizing their ability to thrive in a diverse set of environments to exploit their various world's resources with greater efficiency. Advances in affordable and wide scale genetic engineering further enhanced this versatility even as automation gradually made it redundant. The federation has gradually shifted its labor focus from resource exploitation to one that focuses on the design and production of consumer goods, media, art and scientific advancement for the purpose of internal consumption and external sales.
The federation settled into its current political structure roughly 1200 years ago and had been steadily chugging along since then until the Ashtar arrived. Being physically dominated and “conquered” by these upstarts horrified the federation, yet at the same time the federation has never gone to war easily. During the endless debates on what to do others took the brash action the federation was loath to do. It did not take long for tales and then footage of the consequences of defying the galaxies new overlords to circulate around the galaxy and find its way into the federation’s hands. No one was suicidal enough or angry enough to try to fight after that. The feds swallowed their pride, dumped water on the slowly rising embers of war and started looking for ways to take advantage of the new state of affairs.
In the end the Feds liked effects of the Ashtar’s era of galactic domination, even if they were not too fond of having it forced upon them. Peace was good for business and the Federation saw a significant degree of growth during the Ashtar period as they welcomed new members into their ranks, free of the concern of military retaliation from local space empires. There was also an active drive from many within the federation to liberate previously conquered nations using pacifist resistance techniques and the supplying of aid to oppressed peoples. This painted something of a target on their backs later on. A lack of push back against the Ahtar and an acceptance that they were simply the new norm left the feds somewhat unprepared for their disappearance. The old federal military was in disrepair, with its equipment mothballed or retrofitted for civilian use and it’s soldiers laid off due to a lack of funds. Only the black ops wing of the central military, it’s funding unable to be cut because almost no-one knew it existed, and a few privately funded groups of military enthusiasts really had any significant weapons stockpiles on hand when the Ashtar vanished. The spread out nature of the federation’s governmental structure resulted in dozens of different responses to the situation, but the most notable was a near immediate forming of local militias, be they beefed up corporate security, local government conscription for planetary defence forces or armed community watch groups all haphazardly armed with improvised or rapidly printed equipment. Attempts to stifle this buildup for the sake of diplomacy failed and the feds ended up feeding into the military buildup feedback loop that caused the war despite having no collective desire for it.
They did rather poorly in the post Ashtar galactic war, fighting using an army heavily reliant on the initially formed militia and fleets made up mostly of retrofitted trade ships. The federation where on the defence for a lot of the war, either protecting of their own territories or those of their many smaller trading partners. Their prior economic prosperity did provide funds for acquiring mercenaries and their industrial base that was rapidly turned to the task of churning out the instruments of war, but ultimately they only survived due to the sheer size of the pre war federation and from the success of a few make or brake spec-ops missions that turning the tide of a few key battles/conflicts.
They enthusiastically took part in the following peace talks, having been pushing for said talks since the moment the Ashtar vanished. They were one of the Treaty of Detente’s main advocates at its inception and subsequently one of its primary enforcers. The return of peace time economics was a great boon to the feds, so they are unsurprisingly distraught by the current, seemingly inevitable, trend towards war. Federal diplomatic envoys across the galaxy are working overtime to attempt to maintain peace or, at the very least, trying to create a coalition to squash any rablerouses before they ignite chaos that will engulf the stars.
They are better positioned for war this time however, as some groups within the feds have been hard at work preparing for the breakdown of peace since the day the treaty was signed. One of these is their current ground presence on Agdemnar, a “rouge” scientific expedition that just so happens to have brought a metric ton of prototype weaponry, mercenaries and “guards” along with them.
Major Holdings
Argitarius One: The seat of the Central Congress was once a neutral backwater planet chosen because at the time it was of no significance to anyone but it has since blossomed into the political heart of the nation. It is defined by its single solitary megacity that spans an entire continent, all focused around the Congress itself, a truly colossal structure capable of seating the thousands of representatives that work there every day.
Argitarius One point One: The capital’s moon, home to the central military’s logistics department, the Congress’s support AI‘s massive mainframe and, presumably, the black ops hq. These three departments help turn federal policy into a reality in one way or another.
The Magunhyan sector: The secor closest to Agdemnar and the primary sponsors of the “scientific” expedition currently entrenched upon its surface. They have a loose coalition with a number of other sectors, generally those who are near the borders of aggressive foreign nations, who are all gearing up for war and attempting to convince the rest of the federation to do the same.
Vardone four: A planet that is effectively a massive movie set. Host to incredibly diverse and stunning terrain its cities all have a unique architecture style copied from various time periods/nations. A great deal of Federation cinema and tv is produced here which makes the planet an incredibly lucrative source of income for the federation. It more or less imports everything it needs to sustain itself because the only farms and factories on it are used predominantly as set dressing.
Demographics
Population
It is rather difficult to track species populations within the federation due to gene modding, and the federation itself does not keep track as the species section was removed from census criteria by popular mandate long before the Ashtar arrived. A federation citizen’s internal and external biology is functionally limited only by their brains, which need to fit inside their body, and the laws of physics, which demand their bodies can actually sustain themselves. In practice however it is also limited by common sense. While extremely bizarre bodies do exist things like having hands, personal locomotion and the ability to fit through doors are generally considered important.
If you were to attempt to classify the citizenry you might attempt to start with the only non modified component, the brain. Examination of this feature is rather taboo, but if done it would show that the citizenry are a diverse mix of many if not all species in the galaxy who are not wholly insuler (as the Ashtar where). You would also find the brains most commonly found likely belong to those who founded the federation. Small populations of those races, or evolutionary off shoots of them, can be found scattered across the galaxy, but most have subsumed into the post species mass within the federation..
They are/were:
The small reptilian Rateran who looked like a cross between kobold and a velociraptor. Evolved in a labyrinth of caves below the surface of a planet whose surface was a left a blasted watland by a long forgotten nuclear war.
Best described as a vaguely humanoid squid, the Orngar evolved beneath the thick ice of a on a volcanically active ocean moon. Discovered by the early Rateran space program while trapped in an inescapable the bronze age they were subsequently uplifted by their discoverers. They ended up colonising a great deal of the federation's oceans before genetic modification gradually eroded the rare oceanic specie’s monopoly on sea based resource extraction.
The Lonoxi were an insectile race of squat infertile drones, slender princes and hexapedal queens. Remaining populations have two opposed yet equally strict caste system that either has the royal drones and queens rule over enslaved workers or has the collectivist workers use the breeders as nothing more than baby factories. Where they exist these two opposing systems war with one another constantly.
The Sethhanide were serpentine beings to whom a lot of coastal dwelling citizens likely owe any amphibians adaptations they might have. A Lot of federation genetic science can be traced back to developments made by the Sethhanide. Their greatest pre federation achievement was the “solving” of the Lonoxi’s biologically based class warfare by re-enabling the drone’s reproductive capabilities. Snake motifs are common among geneticists even today.
The grey skinned Xetonds where a weak and diminutive race all of whom had weak psionic abilities. They mainly used these to make up for their frail physique, scaring off or control weak willed predators using their minds. The federation was founded on the basis of a peace brokered by them between the often at war Sethhanide-Lonoxi and Rateran-Orngar nations.
A number of other minor races where absorbed into the federation before the current post specise trend took effect, including a sizable human population. Races added recently are either much harder or much easier to identify depending on how much they have assimilated into the genetic soup of the federation.
Percentiles:
Post species citizens: ~85%
Citizens with no drastic modifications or hybrid ancestry: ~15%
Society
The federation is both incredibly diverse and simultaneously deeply homogeneous. The reason for this is simple, the federation is both very old and very big. Hundreds of years of free movement between planets have mixed together the cultures of its founders and early members just as much their populations, resulting it what could either be described as a rich cultural blend or a barely coherent mess. Simultaneously its semi regular integration of new members means that different sectors and planets can have widely varying local flavor sourced from their former nationalities. This variety is more common at the fringes and gradually dissolves the closer a place is to the center.
Generally, Democracy, cooperation and rampant hedonism are the core components of Federation society.
Federalists are incredibly proud of being the oldest, and in their opinion the greatest, true democracy in the galaxy. They also enthusiastically engage in the democratic process and turnouts for referendums held by all levels of the government remains consistently high despite their frequency. These democratic principles are applied not just to politics but also to many if not most other areas of their lives. Most notably nearly all corporations are democratically controlled by their workers and even the various militaries have their command staff elected by their soldiers.
Cooperation is also of vital importance to federal citizenry, as it is more or less the only thing holding the legally decentralized federation together. The federation only really works because its people and their many elected officials work together to maintain the federation, by occasionally putting aside their own immediate prosperity for the good of the whole Federation.
Federal citizens are personally invested in the federation, having shaped it with their votes in ways, large and small, that they can tangibly see and are affected by on a daily basis. To them the federation is not just a government or a region of space they happen to live in, it's a monument, a shining beacon of hope and freedom in a cold uncaring universe. It is a bastion against tyranny that has stood the test of time only because in times of strife its people have come together and decreed that this thing they have built together is worth protecting.
All this rhetoric would be pointless if the federation was not actually somewhere pleasant to live. Generations of research on the topic have resulted in Automation and AI taking over, or at least optimizing, a lot of the more tedious labor needed to maintain a society. This has left the citizenry a great deal of time to invest in making it a society worth living in. A lot of them are in some way involved in the creation of art, be it music, holo-film, games, vr or body modifications for internal and external consumption.
The most immediately notable aspect of federation culture is the pervasiveness of genetic engineering and biological augmentation. Initially used for medical and efficiency purposes this technology is now more often than not used for fashion purposes. Citizens can and regularly will radically alter their appearance to suit their individual tastes or to follow current fashion trends. This can be anything from simply changing their hair or eye colour to replacing body parts with ones from other species (such as getting a pair of Vit'azny ears), adding an entirely new parts like additional limbs, tails or wings or even extracting their brains and placing them in entirely new bodies. These biological modifications can be combined with holographic projectors that allow them to change their appearance on the fly to suit their current mood.
While the federation is as a whole highly materialist it does tolerate religious practices and so followers/practitioners of nearly all faiths can be found somewhere within their borders.
Economy
While the federation do have a relatively thriving industrial economy thanks to its many worlds, divers citizens able to exploit their natural resources and refined automation techniques its most distinct source of wealth is its culture industry. If the galaxy has an equivalent to hollywood it can be found here. From holo films to clothes, music, designer pets and luxury civilian spacecraft, the federation produces and exports vast quantities of consumer goods to all corners of the galaxy. They also host sports and competitions like the galactic prix, the gravity ball cup and the Federal-vision song contest, that are braucast far and wide and pull in trillions of watchers every year. They also have some of the best cosmetic surgeons in the galaxy and produce a large variety of designer drugs.
A lot of the federation’s raw resources are imported. Food, raw ores, basic mechanical components and more are often purchased rather instead of being produced locally. The feds will trade with anyone, but prefer to engage with smaller nations rather than buying primarily from its equals/rivals in order to spread out their supply chain and avoid reliance on any one nation or part of the galaxy.
Government
The federation is a federalist representative democracy. It has 5 tiers of authority within it who are answerable not to each other but to the voters who elected them.
Local: A mayor who is elected to govern a city or small region.
Geographic: Representatives who control areas roughly corresponding to the size of a primitive nation state.
Planitery: A local word government.
Sectors:Unites many worlds under one governing banner and facilitates cooperation between them.
Federal: the Central Congress, occasionally referred to as the Board or the CC, is the supreme assembly of the federation which governs national policy and facilitates national level projects and cooperation.
Each of these levels is elected by the people living under their jurisdictions, however there are no elections, but rather each citizen has an online profile which they can use to vote at any candidate at time for any and all positions they are eligible to influence. Changed votes have a brief delay before they go into effect to allow politicians time to counter whatever shifted public opinion of them, to allow time for votes to be delivered via couriers and to facilitate a smooth transition of power if it is to take place. Along with this they can take part in frequent referendums, opinion polls and discussion forums to directly voice their opinions on various topics. These poles are often rather superficial in nature (what kind of holographic art the town center should display this month is a common local poll) but they keep political engagement up and make sure that when important matters do arise the people know that their voices can and do matter. The online voting system has cyber security that puts some nation’s militaries to shame to prevent malicious tampering.
Power in the federation is rather divolved, with individual sectors, planets and even geographic regions having high degrees of influence on how things are run at a local level. They only real thing the central government dictates is forghin policy, macro scale economic matters, high level legal decisions and funding for federation wise social programs. As a result, even laws and military organisation is done at a more local level in all but the most important of matters.
Who holds power in the federation is in constant flux, but there are, ostensibly, two major groups vying for control over the federation. Colloquially known as the party of peace and the party of war they stand for the two main public opinions on the matter of the coming conflict: To hold onto peace as far as possible or to seek out revenge and to reclaim what was lost in the great war.
A nation or even planets can join the federation if they so desire. Doing so involves a lengthy investigation process where the federation attempts to determine if the applicant is economically stable enough to be a valued addition to the federation. Due to its decentralised nature the perks of joining the federation aren't exactly life changing, with the main draws being use of its currency, freedom of movement to other parts of it and a small say in the macro level decisions of the federation. Unusually, leaving the federation is rather easy, as any sub division of power can vote themselves out of the federation if they so desire. This is somewhat rare, the cultural assimilation the federation engages in is its main counter to such independence movements, but individual planets, continents and even cities that have left the federation can be found within it, and occasionally small sectors on its periphery will leave either in protest or of a genuine desire to reclaim independence. The federation is often more that happy to wait a generation or two for them to come back.
Technological Information
Major Techs
Hardlight Fields: Physical holograms. Usable for artistic and construction purposes, they can also act as force fields that physically block incoming attacks. Most if not all federation spaceships rely heavily on these defensive fields to protect themselves from harm, as do a lot of their terrestrial forces. Hard light fields are either created by a central generator or can be maintained by numerous networked units distributed throughout their structure. The former is used for shield generation, the latter for things like clothing, architecture and other projects where redundancy is more important that overall durability. Ships always have multiple shields, often specialized for different purposes (propulsion, passive/reactive shielding, cloaking, etc.) for the sake of redundancy.
Holographic cloaking: the use of holograms to either disguise a vessel or person as something else (generally terrain or other craft) or to project images of what is behind it to render the user almost invisible to optical sensors. When combined with conventional anti radar and anti thermal detection methods some advanced federalist equipment and vessels can be functionally invisible.
Engine tech: Federal ftl is rather standard affair, dropping their ships down into slipspace inorder to make long distances far shorter. Propulsion is generally facilitated by the shielding system generating and then releasing energy from the internal powersource somewhere along their radius which visually takes the appearance of a green glow unless it is being deliberately hidden for stealth purposes. While not the fastest propulsion method, the ability to point the power of other ship’s main engine in any direction grants superb maneuverability. The disk like shape of most federation vessels is meant to take advantage of this, allowing the vessel equal ease at rotating in any direction by generating maneuvering thrusters anywhere along its flat top and bottom, while main drive thrust can be instantly sent out from any part of the ship.
Auto Lasers: Rapid fire laser guns that usually take the place of automatic weapons. While the federation uses non viable spectrum and tight beams that would make the lasers invisible to the naked eye, auto lasers can activate a tracer rounds mode where 10% of the beams are the more expected bright visible beams of light.
Laser cannons: Slow firing laser cannons used for long ranged accurate fire. the amount of energy in these beams means the air is visibly distorted where they pass though.
Plasma cannons: super-heated globs of plasma that generally explode on contact with their target. Accelerated via meg rails and further forced out via a laser cannon mounted at the back of the cannon. the plasma itself is a spinning disk with a magnetic core at the center that helps keep the non solid projectile in once piece until it hit's it's target. Artillery variants have higher volumes of plasma and their progectile's are stable for far longer.
Plasma auto-cannons: Slower firing that auto lasers, they fire smaller but more frequent blasts of plasma than the regular cannons.
Plasma/laser Beam Cannon: Fire continuous streams of either lasers or plasma.
Cosmetic Biological/genetic Modification: Federal scientists can functionally change any and everything about a person’s biology down to the genetic level. Species boundaries have long been broken down and rendered redundant as regular citizens decide exactly what they look like, be it minor adjustments to their birth bodies or complete remodeling of their physical makeup to take on the appearance of an existing or entirely invented race. This is mainly done for the sake of fashion (reptilian traits are in this season) and getting a new body is equivalent to getting your haircut in a different style. This tech originated from modifications for military and environmental adaptation modifications and, while it is still sometimes used for those purposes, it has become as commonplace and ubiquitous in the civilian sphere as computers are in the 21st century.
Despite their mastery of the body there has been little success in artificial psychics due to a lack of people willing to volunteer their (living) brains for invasive and extensive alteration.
These modifications are done within life support tanks, which sustain the brain no matter how much of the body is striped away and replaced in any one surgery. This surgery itself is done by a swarm of insect sized biomachines that add and remove parts at the behest of either the person being modified or by a professional body artist.
Virtual Intelligence Neural Enhancer (VINE): A lattice of microscopic computer hardware that is intertwined with a person’s gray matter. It is grown, rather than built or surgically added and thus allows some of the advantages of cybernetic augmentation without any of the risks of brain damage or dramatic personality alteration. While mostly by civilians as a glorified smartphone in their brains it is also an important part of the federation’s id system, as in a culture where a person’s appearance and even their dna can change regularly a hard coded Hash Key nestled deep within their cerebral cortex becomes one of the few ways of verifying some is who they say they are. There are multiple military applications such as power armor, vehicle control, local comms system, combat enhancement software, etc. .
Companion AI: Helpful self developing AI systems that mold themselves to the needs of their owner. At a governmental level they help turn political policies into reality, for individuals they act as personnel secretaries or companions. Sometimes installed into drones to improve their performance (military personnel often have armed versions of these) but most often run on an individual's VINE.
3d Printers: multipurpose manufacturing units ranging from the size of a briefcase to the size of a factory capable of constructing a vast array of equipment out of a variety of materials. While they will never be as efficient as dedicated manufacturing units the ability to read a damaged ship, vehicle or armor’s blueprint and then rapidly produce replacement parts on sight partially alleviates the logistical nightmare facing the federation’s decentralised military.
Retrofitting: less a technology and more a skill, the engineers of the federation have a great deal of experience and literature dedicated to the art of turning a hunk of junk into a military craft and back again. Learned first from decommission a lot of their military once the Ashtar proved themselves unstoppable and from rapidly weaponizing and deaweponising blackops craft for stealth missions it came in great sue during the great war. They have similar skill when dealing with non federation ships and have developed special Ai capable of rapidly understanding most conventional ships put in front of them at least well enough to get them running again. Somewhat used to convert captured vessels it was mainly developed so that federation service yards could work both on mercenary/auxiliary craft and deal with whatever modifications or straight up new designs some other parts of the federation had come up with without informing them.
Military Information
Military Overview
The military structure of the federation is rather disparate, with individual sectors all raising their own armed forces for local protection purposes. Some are more interested in this than others, and indeed having a standing military is not mandatory, but those located near aggressive neighbours often have substantial militaries, either of the standing or reserved variety. These forces can be anything from temporary conscripts to professional soldiers, part time militias, military companies or hired forighn troops.
Tying them all together is the central military which has two branches, logistics and black ops.
The logistics arm has the unenviable job of coordinating the dozens of smaller militeris found within the federation: keeping them supplied when they are out of their own sectors, sorting out the chain of command, coordinating their movements on a grand strategy level and so on. It consists primarily of bureaucrats, engineers and supply ship crews. It has no standing military of its own, as it has no worlds to draw from, and instead it’s only actual power comes in the form of mercenaries. Be they private military contractors, pirates, militaries of forgin nations or federal sectors, the logistics arm has the funds to pull in the firepower they need to support the defence of whatever the federation as a whole deems valuable.
The Black ops wing is the federations offensive problem solvers. Small, elite and the stuff of myths and legends rather than policy, the black ops branch is pointed at problems, given funds and then told to make the problems disappear by whatever means necessary. No one likes to think about this branch, and in fact it's rare that an elected politicians even know it exists. Instead they take their orders from the companion AI’s helping run the government who see it simply as another tool that gets the job done. It is unclear exactly where it originates from, there certainly is no record of a vote to form it, nor is it possible to trace its operations history back to a founding specific date. It has no employee lists, nor any officially recognised leadership. The Black ops division are, for all intensive purposes, a black box. Their input is problems that need solving, and their output is death.
Fleet/Navy
Doctorin:
The federation has two primary space formations that it generally selects between depending on the ratio of strong shielded ships vs cloak able ships in a fleet.
Bastion tactics involve massing a clump of vessels with strong shields together to protect both another and weaker specialist ships from enemy fire. Ships will rotate to and from the front line, absorbing fire form the enemy before falling back to recharge their defences as another vessel takes their place. Weaker ships stay in the center where they can safely unleash their firepower.
Maneuver warfare involves swarming the enemy fleet with a number of independently operating vessels that use the federal ships superior maneuverability to their advantage to avoid enemy fire by presenting many erratically moving targets. Cloaking is especially effective in this, as federal vessels can periodically hold their fire and vanish from view, only to reappear once the enemy's attention is elsewhere. Requires a great deal of coordination and or improvisation to pull off, particularly in larger engagements.
The two can, naturally, be combined, with escort ships engaging in maneuver warfare while the core fleet sets up a bastion.
Dreadnoughts:
Victory/vengance guaranteeing vessel (VGV) “Trident”: The central disk is a Mothership (a battlecruiser described below), onto which two fins full of fighter bays and two massive plasma artillery cannons have been bolted. Crude, but quite deadly, particularly to others of its class that it was designed to beat on a budget.
Battleships:
Federation Liberator Vessel (FLV) Mk XIV “Black Snooty”: the original liberator was a massive array of weapons hammered onto the front of a popular cruise ship design. It served remarcably well thought the great war, going through numerous iterations to improve its weapons array and make the civilian portion considerably less civilian. This process continued even after the war. The latest version’s update involves ripping out the old, Detente conforming, Libirator’s ‘nose’ off and replacing it with a much, much larger array of guns. Many of the liberators still in operation can trace their service record,or at least names, back to the great war, even if, like the ship of ulysses, almost none of their original components still remain. The captains and crews of particularly distinguished vessels can be a rather stuck up bunch as a result.
Battlecruisers:
Militery Resource Transporter (MRT) “Mother ship”: A Great war BattleCruiser that is functionally a massive cargo hauler retrofitted for war. Half its internal storage is converted into hangers, and the other half where filed with generators to power its shields and massive guns that were more or less painted on the side. It’s primary armament is the red strip running across its front that is in effect what happens when you staple a strip of leds something and then run millions of volts through them to try and make laser guns. The result is surprisingly versatile, individual segment of the strip can either fire independently at small targets or all unify to fire a massive V shaped beam at enemy vessels.
While mostly decommissioned at this point, both the cargo haulers and the mothballed equipment to turn them into military vessels are still laying around, ready to be reunited if things go south.
Decicated Beam Weapon (DBW) “Target”: A Detente
Vessel that runs counter to the standard federal pilots desire to always present the edge of the disk to your enemy. The DBW’s central plasma beam cannon requires it to present its top inorder to fire. The elaborate framework design allows the ship to remain relatively maneuverable while still coming under the treaty’s mass requirements. As it has a low shield capacity for its size, a flimsy structure and only a few defence turrets complimenting its core cannon it is inconceivable to use this craft without other craft helping to protect it.
Cruisers:
General Purpose Brawling Cruiser (GPBC) “Halibut”: A straightforward design, made to be able to engage multiple enemy targets. It has a 180 degree firing arc in front of it from its nose mounted cannon and 6 bar lasers while its rear is guarded by 8 vertically aimable laser cannons. Most were sold off after the war to smaller allies, only for them to show back up in the federal army as auxiliary mercenaries this time.
Multi role escorc cruiser (MREC) “Gladius”: a narrow profile fits poorly with the standard federal propulsion system, but can massively reduce the vessels profile and lets multiple vessels of this kind hide behind larger craft. MERC’s are armed primarily with a high hanger capacity and vertically mounted swarm missile launchers. Their core purpose is to provide strike craft screens for other craft, as well as shooting down enemy strike craft with vollies of several dozen homing missiles.
Destroyers:
Stand Off Artillery Craft (SOAC) “Pointer”: A civilian vessel with its heart ripped out and replaced with a massive palma artillery cannon. Gaining its nickname from its distinctive central “finger” their conversion process meant they could not be converted back after the great war, and so they have remained in service as the fed’s primary space based artillery craft. The wider front section creates rear facing surfaces that can be used to better rotate it from side to side and thus aim better with its fixed cannon.
Close Range Demolition Craft (CRDC) “puncher”: a modern take on the SOAC’s finned structure that serves the exact opposite purpose. Equipped with 3 sets of plasma cannon turrets it is designed to get in close to either engage multiple targets at once or focus fire on a single weak point of a larger ship.
Frigates:
Planetary reinforcement Craft (PRC) “Dropper”: another retrofitted cargo ship that was originally designed to “fire” a payload of fighter craft at an enemy but was never used in this capacity because of how terrible being launched into a fight with no method of retreat was for the moral of fighter pilots. Rather than scrape the design for rapidly launching small craft it was instead repurposed as a manner to rapidly deploy reinforcements to a besieged world.
Craft are arranged in racks within the ship and are then led into two magnetic accelerators that “fire” the ships towards a planet's surface. These can either be proper shuttle craft, space/atmosphere hybrid fighters, aircraft protected by a single use re-entrys shield or rugged drop pods. This allows the PRC to jump into a system, rapidly unload additional defenders to a besieged world and then get the hell outta dodge before any of the besieging forces have time to intercept it. Being launched to relive their fellow federalists was a much easier sell to the troops, and so the RPC saw major use in the Great War. Despite the “defence” its name the vessel is equally useful for planetary invasions or surgical strikes against high priority ground targets.
Very Fast Frigate (VFF)”Hammerhead” An unusual design for the federation, the long spine contains an oversized ftl engine. The hammerheads weapon systems can all retract, hiding the black cracks and transforming it into seamless silver travel form. The nubs on the bottom of the ftl drive let it magnetic dock with other craft in order to act as a supplementary engine (for both realspace and slipspace) for slow or disabled craft.
Corvettes:
Border Reconnaissance Vessel (BRV) ”Brave”:: small and lightly defended the Brave’s main purpose is as a carrier for the massive sensory disc that it more or less tows behind it. Used to detect enemy vessels approaching from unexpected angles the Brave almost never engages what it detects, but instead runs off to get help from others at the first sign of trouble. Did its job well enough that it never needed to be replaced.
Spec Ops Craft (SOC) “Spook”:: Rarely seen, the spook is craft used to deploy/extract spec ops teams to/from their mission areas. Incredibly expensive to produce it can render itself nearly undetectable to enemy sensors. It can out gun most other craft in its weight category using its experimental underslung laser lance, and can outrun anything heavier than it. Supposedly the Black Ops division uses an even more advanced version of this craft.
Rapid Response Unit (RRU) “ramjet”: A recent and unconventional design thats is effectively a dedicated engine strapped to an oversized gun and a set of torpedo tubes. Packs of these ships are launched from defensive stations to reinforce key locations or friendly forces. Once there they charge whatever their target is, hopefully from an unexpected angle, while relying on heavy front armor to survive. Once close enough they fire their torpedoes, which can either be explosive or be boarding craft filled with warbeasts, before attempting to jet/jump/sneak away from the, hopefully, devastated hostile.
Strike craft:
Old war Fighters and Bombers:: Old style strike craft that use laser auto cannons and plasma cannons respectively. Originally piloted by conscripts during the great war they have been retrofitted after the war to be flown by the brain of a type of alien bat that has been modified by biological tampering and a Vine interface. They aren't the most advanced craft, nor do their animal/ai hybrid fliers have the best piloting skills, but the feds do still have a lot of these laying around in their hangers.
Shield Drones: hard light field generator units with AI corse attached, these drones can replace fighters and bombers in hanger racks to add additional defensive capabilities to a ship, be it directional shields or adding cloaking capabilities to a ship.
multi role strike craft: Modern saucer strike craft flown by federal pilots. Considerably more maneuverable thanks to taking full advantage of the federal thrust system (although also harder to fly as a result) they can be equipped with many weapon system that can be “slotted” into the front gap on their disk.
Boarding torpedo: Strike craft that ram enemy ships, cut their way into them and then divulge a living payload inside. This payload almost always consisting of warbeasts (unless the target is very small, the team has an exit strategy or there is a VIP onboard), as the boarding party is not expected to disable the ship but rather to simply cause chaos that will distract the crew. The creatures are normally specialised for fighting/living inside ships and will at the very least become a major pest infestation if not dealt with. Usually fired near the start of an engagement for maximum irritation or at the end as a final salvo from a retreating federal force to entalge their pursuers. The torpedo or may not be cloaked, it generally depends on how expensive the boarding party is.
The federation has two primary space formations that it generally selects between depending on the ratio of strong shielded ships vs cloak able ships in a fleet.
Bastion tactics involve massing a clump of vessels with strong shields together to protect both another and weaker specialist ships from enemy fire. Ships will rotate to and from the front line, absorbing fire form the enemy before falling back to recharge their defences as another vessel takes their place. Weaker ships stay in the center where they can safely unleash their firepower.
Maneuver warfare involves swarming the enemy fleet with a number of independently operating vessels that use the federal ships superior maneuverability to their advantage to avoid enemy fire by presenting many erratically moving targets. Cloaking is especially effective in this, as federal vessels can periodically hold their fire and vanish from view, only to reappear once the enemy's attention is elsewhere. Requires a great deal of coordination and or improvisation to pull off, particularly in larger engagements.
The two can, naturally, be combined, with escort ships engaging in maneuver warfare while the core fleet sets up a bastion.
Dreadnoughts:
Victory/vengance guaranteeing vessel (VGV) “Trident”: The central disk is a Mothership (a battlecruiser described below), onto which two fins full of fighter bays and two massive plasma artillery cannons have been bolted. Crude, but quite deadly, particularly to others of its class that it was designed to beat on a budget.
Battleships:
Federation Liberator Vessel (FLV) Mk XIV “Black Snooty”: the original liberator was a massive array of weapons hammered onto the front of a popular cruise ship design. It served remarcably well thought the great war, going through numerous iterations to improve its weapons array and make the civilian portion considerably less civilian. This process continued even after the war. The latest version’s update involves ripping out the old, Detente conforming, Libirator’s ‘nose’ off and replacing it with a much, much larger array of guns. Many of the liberators still in operation can trace their service record,or at least names, back to the great war, even if, like the ship of ulysses, almost none of their original components still remain. The captains and crews of particularly distinguished vessels can be a rather stuck up bunch as a result.
Battlecruisers:
Militery Resource Transporter (MRT) “Mother ship”: A Great war BattleCruiser that is functionally a massive cargo hauler retrofitted for war. Half its internal storage is converted into hangers, and the other half where filed with generators to power its shields and massive guns that were more or less painted on the side. It’s primary armament is the red strip running across its front that is in effect what happens when you staple a strip of leds something and then run millions of volts through them to try and make laser guns. The result is surprisingly versatile, individual segment of the strip can either fire independently at small targets or all unify to fire a massive V shaped beam at enemy vessels.
While mostly decommissioned at this point, both the cargo haulers and the mothballed equipment to turn them into military vessels are still laying around, ready to be reunited if things go south.
Decicated Beam Weapon (DBW) “Target”: A Detente
Vessel that runs counter to the standard federal pilots desire to always present the edge of the disk to your enemy. The DBW’s central plasma beam cannon requires it to present its top inorder to fire. The elaborate framework design allows the ship to remain relatively maneuverable while still coming under the treaty’s mass requirements. As it has a low shield capacity for its size, a flimsy structure and only a few defence turrets complimenting its core cannon it is inconceivable to use this craft without other craft helping to protect it.
Cruisers:
General Purpose Brawling Cruiser (GPBC) “Halibut”: A straightforward design, made to be able to engage multiple enemy targets. It has a 180 degree firing arc in front of it from its nose mounted cannon and 6 bar lasers while its rear is guarded by 8 vertically aimable laser cannons. Most were sold off after the war to smaller allies, only for them to show back up in the federal army as auxiliary mercenaries this time.
Multi role escorc cruiser (MREC) “Gladius”: a narrow profile fits poorly with the standard federal propulsion system, but can massively reduce the vessels profile and lets multiple vessels of this kind hide behind larger craft. MERC’s are armed primarily with a high hanger capacity and vertically mounted swarm missile launchers. Their core purpose is to provide strike craft screens for other craft, as well as shooting down enemy strike craft with vollies of several dozen homing missiles.
Destroyers:
Stand Off Artillery Craft (SOAC) “Pointer”: A civilian vessel with its heart ripped out and replaced with a massive palma artillery cannon. Gaining its nickname from its distinctive central “finger” their conversion process meant they could not be converted back after the great war, and so they have remained in service as the fed’s primary space based artillery craft. The wider front section creates rear facing surfaces that can be used to better rotate it from side to side and thus aim better with its fixed cannon.
Close Range Demolition Craft (CRDC) “puncher”: a modern take on the SOAC’s finned structure that serves the exact opposite purpose. Equipped with 3 sets of plasma cannon turrets it is designed to get in close to either engage multiple targets at once or focus fire on a single weak point of a larger ship.
Frigates:
Planetary reinforcement Craft (PRC) “Dropper”: another retrofitted cargo ship that was originally designed to “fire” a payload of fighter craft at an enemy but was never used in this capacity because of how terrible being launched into a fight with no method of retreat was for the moral of fighter pilots. Rather than scrape the design for rapidly launching small craft it was instead repurposed as a manner to rapidly deploy reinforcements to a besieged world.
Craft are arranged in racks within the ship and are then led into two magnetic accelerators that “fire” the ships towards a planet's surface. These can either be proper shuttle craft, space/atmosphere hybrid fighters, aircraft protected by a single use re-entrys shield or rugged drop pods. This allows the PRC to jump into a system, rapidly unload additional defenders to a besieged world and then get the hell outta dodge before any of the besieging forces have time to intercept it. Being launched to relive their fellow federalists was a much easier sell to the troops, and so the RPC saw major use in the Great War. Despite the “defence” its name the vessel is equally useful for planetary invasions or surgical strikes against high priority ground targets.
Very Fast Frigate (VFF)”Hammerhead” An unusual design for the federation, the long spine contains an oversized ftl engine. The hammerheads weapon systems can all retract, hiding the black cracks and transforming it into seamless silver travel form. The nubs on the bottom of the ftl drive let it magnetic dock with other craft in order to act as a supplementary engine (for both realspace and slipspace) for slow or disabled craft.
Corvettes:
Border Reconnaissance Vessel (BRV) ”Brave”:: small and lightly defended the Brave’s main purpose is as a carrier for the massive sensory disc that it more or less tows behind it. Used to detect enemy vessels approaching from unexpected angles the Brave almost never engages what it detects, but instead runs off to get help from others at the first sign of trouble. Did its job well enough that it never needed to be replaced.
Spec Ops Craft (SOC) “Spook”:: Rarely seen, the spook is craft used to deploy/extract spec ops teams to/from their mission areas. Incredibly expensive to produce it can render itself nearly undetectable to enemy sensors. It can out gun most other craft in its weight category using its experimental underslung laser lance, and can outrun anything heavier than it. Supposedly the Black Ops division uses an even more advanced version of this craft.
Rapid Response Unit (RRU) “ramjet”: A recent and unconventional design thats is effectively a dedicated engine strapped to an oversized gun and a set of torpedo tubes. Packs of these ships are launched from defensive stations to reinforce key locations or friendly forces. Once there they charge whatever their target is, hopefully from an unexpected angle, while relying on heavy front armor to survive. Once close enough they fire their torpedoes, which can either be explosive or be boarding craft filled with warbeasts, before attempting to jet/jump/sneak away from the, hopefully, devastated hostile.
Strike craft:
Old war Fighters and Bombers:: Old style strike craft that use laser auto cannons and plasma cannons respectively. Originally piloted by conscripts during the great war they have been retrofitted after the war to be flown by the brain of a type of alien bat that has been modified by biological tampering and a Vine interface. They aren't the most advanced craft, nor do their animal/ai hybrid fliers have the best piloting skills, but the feds do still have a lot of these laying around in their hangers.
Shield Drones: hard light field generator units with AI corse attached, these drones can replace fighters and bombers in hanger racks to add additional defensive capabilities to a ship, be it directional shields or adding cloaking capabilities to a ship.
multi role strike craft: Modern saucer strike craft flown by federal pilots. Considerably more maneuverable thanks to taking full advantage of the federal thrust system (although also harder to fly as a result) they can be equipped with many weapon system that can be “slotted” into the front gap on their disk.
Boarding torpedo: Strike craft that ram enemy ships, cut their way into them and then divulge a living payload inside. This payload almost always consisting of warbeasts (unless the target is very small, the team has an exit strategy or there is a VIP onboard), as the boarding party is not expected to disable the ship but rather to simply cause chaos that will distract the crew. The creatures are normally specialised for fighting/living inside ships and will at the very least become a major pest infestation if not dealt with. Usually fired near the start of an engagement for maximum irritation or at the end as a final salvo from a retreating federal force to entalge their pursuers. The torpedo or may not be cloaked, it generally depends on how expensive the boarding party is.
Army/Planetary forces
Troops
Professional soldiers are generally equipped with atmospheric sealed power armor customized to their body type and partially controlled by their VINE, making it close to a second skin that can enhance reflexes, improve agility and increase strength. Made of a combination of metals and hard light each suit is wholly unique to the wearer which means they need to carry the blueprints for the armor around with them in order to avoid this policy driving federation repair crews insane. Armor is always at least lightly shielded but can have heavier shields or cloaking functionality added at the expense of cost and weight. Professional soldiers have access to more dangerous/enhanced bio modifications that would be grossly inappropriate for civilians to have. They get to keep them even when not in service, making such augmations an added selling point of military service.
Local militia forces meanwhile, which make up the bulk of the federation's actual military might, make do with whatever level of equipment they can get using their self elected budget. Armor is generally light to non existent while guns are usually higher quality to ensure they can actually hurt invaders. As almost all federal citizens have VINE implants, they can operate with a higher degree of cohesion than most armed civilians thanks to quickly installed combat assistant routines run by their companion AIs, which do their best coordinate the mobs of armed civilians and make sure they actually hit their targets. Combat drugs are also relatively common.
In between these two groups you have mercenary units, be they wandering federal MCs or externally recruited troops. Their equipment ranges from high end power armor and energy weapons right down to kevlar and ballistics.
Finally there are the warbeasts. Warbeasts are augmented or manufactured animals that act as disposable troops, attack dogs or bioweapons. Their development was a post war development spawned from a desire to not suffer the same massive casualties the great war inflicted. To create the program a few eccentric scientists traveled the federation to gather together the most dangerous creatures they could find and then further enhanced them with bioengineering, cybernetic enhancements and the installation of VINE tech into their brains to control them. Results have been mixed and are largely untested in battle but they have found a niche for clearing out buildings or damaged spaceships of hostiles during small scale operations. Gene modding means it’s sometimes hard to tell beast and soldier apart.
Companion drones are a staple of the federation military. Small robots, generally on unarmed hover units or attached directly to a user armor but sometimes installed in proper war bots, onto which an individual's companion ai has been installed, granting it increased processing capability and the ability to physically assist their users. Used for reconnaissance, group coordination, radio operators, supply carriers or simply to add additional firepower to the squad.
For firepower, federation troops generally use small scale lasers and plasma weaponry. These can either be heandheald weapons that draw their power from rechargeable energy packs or built into/onto their armor and drawing power directly from its own power source.
Armor
X7J Science walker These are what where used to capture the federation’s warbeasts. It is armed with a front mounted laser beam cannon for anti everything, and tentacle mounted claws and auto lasers for anti infantry. Capable of traversing any terrain and often cloaked or heavily shielded they can easily compete with more conventional tanks despite their unorthodox design.
Fedral Squire A 3 meter tall mech, its left arm has a hard light unit used to generate a directional shield while its right has quad linked plasma autocannons. Generally acts in an infantry support role.
Fedral Knight the squires big brother. 6 meters tall and armed with 2 arm mounted plasma cannons and 2 torso mounted auto lasers.
P7 battle tank A pair of twin linked plasma auto cannons mounted on a pair of tracks. Old and outdated the guns are still as deadly as ever. Fairly cheap to manufacture these are more commonly found in militia gerisions.
Q2 Hovertank the P&-2 replacement. Utilizes a hover drive system and has multiple anti personnel auto laser turrets in addition to its main plasma cannon.
Mobile hover artillery an unmanned weapon’s platform carrying a massive plasma artillery cannon. Remotely controlled either by its escort, central command or front line troops to rain devastation on the enemy.
Airforce
Federation in atmosphere craft have the ability to switch between sleek travel forms and deployed combat forms. Starting at the top right and moving clockwise are the twin-linked autolaser armed air superiority fighter, the tri-linked plasma autocannon armed gunship, the laser cannon and AA missile armed fighter bombers and the plasma cannon armed strategic bomber.
Oceanic navy
Naval warfare of the old variety still has its uses. The feds are particularly fond of large mobile floating command centers.
Professional soldiers are generally equipped with atmospheric sealed power armor customized to their body type and partially controlled by their VINE, making it close to a second skin that can enhance reflexes, improve agility and increase strength. Made of a combination of metals and hard light each suit is wholly unique to the wearer which means they need to carry the blueprints for the armor around with them in order to avoid this policy driving federation repair crews insane. Armor is always at least lightly shielded but can have heavier shields or cloaking functionality added at the expense of cost and weight. Professional soldiers have access to more dangerous/enhanced bio modifications that would be grossly inappropriate for civilians to have. They get to keep them even when not in service, making such augmations an added selling point of military service.
Local militia forces meanwhile, which make up the bulk of the federation's actual military might, make do with whatever level of equipment they can get using their self elected budget. Armor is generally light to non existent while guns are usually higher quality to ensure they can actually hurt invaders. As almost all federal citizens have VINE implants, they can operate with a higher degree of cohesion than most armed civilians thanks to quickly installed combat assistant routines run by their companion AIs, which do their best coordinate the mobs of armed civilians and make sure they actually hit their targets. Combat drugs are also relatively common.
In between these two groups you have mercenary units, be they wandering federal MCs or externally recruited troops. Their equipment ranges from high end power armor and energy weapons right down to kevlar and ballistics.
Finally there are the warbeasts. Warbeasts are augmented or manufactured animals that act as disposable troops, attack dogs or bioweapons. Their development was a post war development spawned from a desire to not suffer the same massive casualties the great war inflicted. To create the program a few eccentric scientists traveled the federation to gather together the most dangerous creatures they could find and then further enhanced them with bioengineering, cybernetic enhancements and the installation of VINE tech into their brains to control them. Results have been mixed and are largely untested in battle but they have found a niche for clearing out buildings or damaged spaceships of hostiles during small scale operations. Gene modding means it’s sometimes hard to tell beast and soldier apart.
Companion drones are a staple of the federation military. Small robots, generally on unarmed hover units or attached directly to a user armor but sometimes installed in proper war bots, onto which an individual's companion ai has been installed, granting it increased processing capability and the ability to physically assist their users. Used for reconnaissance, group coordination, radio operators, supply carriers or simply to add additional firepower to the squad.
For firepower, federation troops generally use small scale lasers and plasma weaponry. These can either be heandheald weapons that draw their power from rechargeable energy packs or built into/onto their armor and drawing power directly from its own power source.
Armor
X7J Science walker These are what where used to capture the federation’s warbeasts. It is armed with a front mounted laser beam cannon for anti everything, and tentacle mounted claws and auto lasers for anti infantry. Capable of traversing any terrain and often cloaked or heavily shielded they can easily compete with more conventional tanks despite their unorthodox design.
Fedral Squire A 3 meter tall mech, its left arm has a hard light unit used to generate a directional shield while its right has quad linked plasma autocannons. Generally acts in an infantry support role.
Fedral Knight the squires big brother. 6 meters tall and armed with 2 arm mounted plasma cannons and 2 torso mounted auto lasers.
P7 battle tank A pair of twin linked plasma auto cannons mounted on a pair of tracks. Old and outdated the guns are still as deadly as ever. Fairly cheap to manufacture these are more commonly found in militia gerisions.
Q2 Hovertank the P&-2 replacement. Utilizes a hover drive system and has multiple anti personnel auto laser turrets in addition to its main plasma cannon.
Mobile hover artillery an unmanned weapon’s platform carrying a massive plasma artillery cannon. Remotely controlled either by its escort, central command or front line troops to rain devastation on the enemy.
Airforce
Federation in atmosphere craft have the ability to switch between sleek travel forms and deployed combat forms. Starting at the top right and moving clockwise are the twin-linked autolaser armed air superiority fighter, the tri-linked plasma autocannon armed gunship, the laser cannon and AA missile armed fighter bombers and the plasma cannon armed strategic bomber.
Oceanic navy
Naval warfare of the old variety still has its uses. The feds are particularly fond of large mobile floating command centers.
Hyperdread
Revolutionary Ultimate Stealth Engine (RUSE) ”the Project”
A truly massive yet seemingly defenseless saucer the RUSE represents the pinnacle of federation hard light technology. Utterly filled and covered with hard light projectors, this craft can either cover entire fleets with its shielding or cloaking capabilities. It can also weaponize the normal propulsion systems of federal craft to fire beams of plasma from anywhere on the surface of its shields, including a devastating death blossom that hits everything around it.
