@TerminalI practically finished my NS. I will add some bits like detailing my ships and infantry equipment but that's just flavor text. Is it acceptable?
@MihndarI have an extreme multicultural corporation with hundreds of different species which was used to be a galaxy-spanning enterprise.(now reduced to a single star system, the only section of space White Corps truly owned)
Terminal has yet to say anything about it but if my civ is allowed, so would be yours. Coincidentally Keyguy's civ has four species already and I think that got accepted. Four or Six. I doubt it would make a difference.
How would the elves respond to Tin sending over a few more hordes to the islands? Would they see elevated military presence and then immediately go to war?
Nobody would "just" go into war for that. They would raise their alert level and perhaps even ask for reinforcements. Given the talks with Avalia and PRK I think they might even see that as a good excuse for making the preparations for war, though. Zanshir currently has about a hundred thousand soldiers, unusually high for a colony/province but given the presence of vaguely hostile elements it was a well-founded precaution. Still, if Yllendthyr ever wishes to fight Tin they need far more than that.
Still waiting on Skepic and/or Willy and/or Raijinslayer. I'd positively love to post, but that's a roadblock right there.
Hey, Voltus, want to do some interaction?
Your last post in that council talk has nothing I can use so you are pretty much waiting for @Skepic here. If it's an issue we can detail other events like posible further attacks in Zanshir. I also have a subplot to tell in a post which I have been delaying for over a week now.
@Beach BurritoBy any chance were you inspired by Doctor Who? I mean the sentient fat part. I can vaguely see other inspirations but overall this is a quite unique species to play as. Must be a challenge to play with them, though.
I always had the feeling that July 20th was a sorts of typo on Terminal's part. In the OOC he always talked about the Monday of the following week (which is this one).
Pretty much done my NS, just have to put in a bit more on their history and do their outlook. That and explain why their ships implode when their reactor is breached.
How about using controlled mini/micro singularities as a power source? Because of the methods that keep it stable remain for several seconds even after the engine's destruction the black hole consumes your own ship and then to whatever warp/hyperspace mechanim it simply pops out of existence instead of violently evaporating. Or you can use some more abstract kind of singularity which pops out of existence and dumps the ship's material along with itself to hyperspace/subspace/etc as part of its natural mechanism. Said exotic singularities are easier to control (once you know what you are dealing with) thus preferred over any kind of black hole engine design.
In spite of the fact you usually only find black hole engines in ridiculously powerful things for sci-fi, they are actuall quite tame and a reasonable method to power warships in the future. Actually the essence of how black holes evaporate makes massive black holes as the power source rather impractical unless you use plenty of space magic/handwavium.
Alright, I actually found a way to include White Interstellar Corporations even in this setting. It's amusing even though it also gives me a HUGE handicap in the process.
White Interstellar Corporations
General Overview
White Interstellar Corporations (WIC or White Corps) was a megacorporation that existed in a distant galaxy far, far away. It had no racial or national ties and instead it was a pure privately owned enterprise with holdings all over the galaxy. Thousands of companies from hundreds of different civilizations belonged to White Corps and dealing between these variety of customers made it an ever-booming business. There wasn't a single economical or industrial sector without White Corps' involvement. They were the most popular face of capitalism and only the most rural residents of the galaxy didn't know them. That was until the so-called "True Vacuum Disaster".
If you have to measure the damage caused to civilizations by the True Vacuum from 1 to 10, White Corps's situation was 11. In short order White Corps and a good portion of their employees found themselves in a completely alien world with the communication to anybody else suddenly going dead. Billions of people from hundreds of species suddenly found themselves without a home. Any trade connections the enterprise had were now gone. Thanks to the direct intervention of White Corps' director the anarchy and chaos was successfully prevented yet their situation was bleak regardless. On the other hand Keith White didn't despair and even saw this as a great chance. With swarms of new discoveries and a fresh list of clients White Corps could be soaring again. Dozens of fleets left the privately owned system of Cygnus, searching for new life and also hoping to contact their former homeworlds once again.
Territories
White Corps is a huge interstellar enterprise which used to own almost a million daughter companies spread across the galaxy. Yet during the True Vacuum Disaster most of their holdings didn't transfer along with them. Only their galactic headquarters and privately owned star system Cygnus were found after the catastrophe. White Interstellar Corporation was practically reduced to be an armless giant. In spite of that the company and their employees are determined to start it all over.
Cygnus is a dual star system with 9 planets that orbit around the twin stars Cygnus-Alpha and Cygnus-Epsilon. Alpha is a yellow dwarf type main sequence star while Epsilon is a neutron star. Because Epsilon is more massive its gravity gradually consumes Cygnus-Alpha, generating a stream of plasma and even antimatter. This is what made a lucrative deal for the White Corps to own this system.
In addition out of the 3 planets surprisingly 3 of them are habitable: Cygnus-III, Cygnus-IV and Cygnus-V with IV being the enterprise's official headquarters. Cygnus I is a Hot Jupiter type planet and important mining center while Cygnus II is a lifeless rock planet with little value. Cygnus VI and Cygnus VII are gas giants while the last two planets are cold rocky planets. Due to its unusual proximity to the stellar asteroid belt Cygnus IX also has importance for mining and guiding starships.
Government
White Corps was used to be a mega enterprise at galactic scale with many thousands of daughter firms and associates from hundreds of different civilizations. After the True Vacuum Disaster this wondrous enterprise was reduced to the holdings within the Cygnus System. Regardless, with only 4 weeks after the catastrophe White Corps is retaining most of its former structure. Each economical, industrial and management sector is its own department and lead by an Archon (ie: Archon of Uranium Mining, Archon of Human Resources). These Archons of course have their representatives and branching tree of subordinates, many of the key people luckily were in the Cygnus System during the disaster. The Archons periodically meet within the Council to share information and decide on the enterprise's actions in the future. The system is different yet in a sense it does resemble what is the Parliament for a typical government. Ultimately the Council and the whole enterprise is owned and lead by the Director, currently Keith White (the third). Due to a certain custom the director is always the descendant of the first founder Keith White and they even share his name. This and many other specifics about the actual leadership structure are shrouded in mystery.
Name: Keith White Aliases: Big Boss, The White Snake Gender: Male Species: Unknown (similar to Homo Sapiens) Age: 37 (birthday is on the eleventh day of the twelfth month) Height: 6'2"
Charismatic and mysterious man whose person was synonymous with his galactic enterprise. A well-dressed gentleman who could be the posterboy for rich businessmen. He's a calm, collected individual and a great talker who frequently attempted public events thus he used to be quite popular. Luckily he was in Cygnus during the True Vacuum Disaster and his skills and direct involvement were the key to prevent the remainder of White Corps from collapsing. Unlike most people Keith is hopeful about the future and sees the disaster as a chance to build an even greater enterprise in the future. Keith mostly spends his time in Iacolo Maximo, his insanely luxurious private villa and starship which is essentially like a traveling castle.
Culture/Species
White Corps was an interstellar mega enterprise and as such it employed people from hundreds of civilization and species. Curiously enough almost 10% of WIC are considered human. Said "humans" are practically proof of the theory on parallel development. Given matching conditions life eerily akin to that of Earth could develop, including the birth of a different human civilization in a galaxy far-far away. Aside from humans the White Corps has employees from many other species, humanoid and non-humanoid alike. Visiting a place belonging to the Main Branch is like a kaleidoscope of multi-cultural experience. White corps in general supports tolerance to any culture, religion or species. They won't stick to this policy at all costs, though. In their subsidiaries the White Corps generally followed the laws and customs of the nation/civilization the company originated from. White Corps follow no ideology and remain true to their roots as a gigantic organization doing business. Their chief motivation is always to make profit.
People can be employed by White Corps to various degrees. They can be mere workers connected to one of the daughter firms, executives directly reporting to the Archons, staff directly employed by WIC, management branch and so on. After the True Vacuum Disaster the White Corps lost everything save for what was found within the Cygnus System. As a result the employment structure is in a relative chaos. In contrast to the more diverse system currently the only people WIC has are the ones directly employed by them. Direct employees, be it mere staff or an executive, enjoy salaries and living conditions considerably above the average. They have free insurance, including advanced medical plan. Thanks to cutting edge inoculations and other measures White Corps' employees practically never get sick. Currently the White Corps has 2.5 billion employees and the Cygnus System has 8 billion inhabitants total.
History
Many parts on the past of White Interstellar Corporations is shrouded in mystery. There are several foundation stories like Keith White the First made a law firm, stock broker company, junkyard, etc. There's only one uniting fact, they all tell how his business succeeded and in less than a decade grew into a corporation uniting multiple industrial sectors into one. Roughly 211 years ago White Interstellar Corporations came to exist. It was the first Keith White who made the foundation and shaped much of the megacorp's structure the way it is now. Keith White died at the age of 112 but not before nominating his son Keith White (the second) his successor. With material sciences are on the dramatic rise it became apparent that in this new age technology was the best selling product. As such Keith focused on acquiring, developing, exchanging and selling tech to other civilizations. White Corps in general became the ever-popular midman for science and technological exchanges while the megacorp itself also eagerly welcomed any promising minds. Then just 15 years ago the second Keith White passed away, with his barely 22 years old son Keith White (the third) taking his position.The third Keith White made steps to expand their area of influence, extensively searching for new civilizations. In just 10 years his actions managed to quadruple White Corps' client base and they were well on their way to become a gigantic galaxy-wide enterprise. That is until the True Vacuum Disaster which changed the future of White Corps forever.
Outlook: The disaster hit White Corps as a major shock, crippling their trade and making all employees of White Corps without their homeworlds. Fortunately most WIC employees were staying in Cygnus with their families thus averting great amount of personal tragedy. Regardless without the efforts of Keith White the situation would've rapidly led to the destruction of White Corps entirely. With the ultimate catastrophe averted White Corps focused their effort on two things: 1. Discover the true nature of the anomaly, 2. Explore this new world for sentient life to establish fresh trade relations (and perhaps hoping to meet some familiar civilizations along the way) With the time being only four weeks after this "True Vacuum Disaster", the status on either are still very much in progress.
Technology
Before the True Vacuum Disaster the White Corps prided themselves as pioneers in science. They were sharing technology and discoveries with hundreds of civilizations and employed the best minds money can buy. Just as the second Keith White envisioned, trade of advanced technology became the White Corps' greatest source of income. While original research was encouraged the enterprise preferred to use their trade connections to attain new technologies from other civilizations, reverse engineer them and then develop these even further. This isn't an exaggeration to say thus that White Corps held the technological developments of the entire galaxy. When the True Vacuum Disaster happened the databanks on Cygnus kept all information so aside from the various research institutes found outside the system White Corps managed to keep its technological capacity.
White Corps technology is sophisticated, compact and often combines multiple functions. Miniaturization is often their trademark. They have highly advanced material science, swarms of power generation and emitter methods, multiple interstellar travel mechanisms and so on. As a company that collected scientific developments throughout the galaxy they have variety and experience with different sciences in spades. Unless there's an obvious gain though their tech tends to use the more standard tried and proven methods so the more exotic sciences are often only found in experimental devices. Because their technological edge was used to be White Corps' lifeblood they also equipped most of their products with through anti-tampering mechanisms, often including a self-destruct system that vaporizes the key components upon such attempts.
- Replicators: Also referred as quantum-forging is a method to transmute materials and even turn energy into matter. This technology revolutionized industry and seemingly bridged the differences over matter and energy. Still, due to its massive energy requirements the world has yet to grow free of all material needs. Mining and collecting resources is still important on large-scale. Replicators of course also brought many new developments into material science and even medicine. Using replicator technology to literally reconstruct the body is possible, albeit rather expensive.
- Metastable Matter: A development which made replicator technology far more accessible. It's an unique state of matter which is relatively stable and dense with energy. Can be useful for batteries (though even more efficient methods exist) but first of all it's used as an intermediary matter for use in replicators. It allows replicators to work while consuming far less energy. The obvious downside is of course that there's only a limited amount of metastable material thus the system can actually run out of matter. In addition creating metastable material can be expensive and generally this is only used for small replicator machines. Replicators connected to large power sources can keep making matter straight from energy.
- Fold Drive: Standard and reliable FTL method which manipulates spacetime to raise the apparent velocity of the vehicle beyond the speed of light. It has relatively low power consumption but comparatively slow speed and other inherent issues. Still, it's relatively cheap and has many alternative applications. Fold Accelerators for example can accelerate projectiles and vehicles at faster-than-light apparent velocities even if, without "fold sustainers", they revert to sublight speed after reaching a certain distance.
- Farcaster: The common long range interstellar travel method used by White Corps. In basic terms it works similar to your standard Hyperdrive. It punches a hole in reality to the higher mathematical dimension of the hyperspace to allow faster-than-light travel. It consumes great amounts of energy to travel and the ships have special capacitors for this role. On the other hand the same method can be modified to transport smaller objects and Farcasters are one of the most popular and energy-efficient methods of teleportation. The only downside is that Farcasters are rather difficult to scale down thus unless there's a similar device around the teleportation is usually limited to one way trips.
- Impulse Engine: Standard sublight engines used by White Corps. Their mechanism can vary (gravitic, spatial and others) but generally they require nothing but an energy source to function.
- Gravitics: Electromagnetics in White Corps were long replaced by gravitics, devices that move objects around with the force of gravity. While inherently gravity is a weak force there are countless known mechanisms to amplify them. Gravitic actuators, accelerators, propulsions are all commonly used by the megacorp.
- Hypercomms, Hypersensors: A family of devices that use known FTL methods to gather or transmit information rapidly over long distances. Their mechanism can differ by type with each having its own set of advantages and disadvantages. Hypercameras and Hypertelescopes for example gather the tachyonic shadow of visible light to allow the crew that up to a certain distance it could see events regardless of light-lag. Another common hypersensor is the Foldwave Radar which is rather self-explanatory.
- Quantum Link: By using quantum-entanglement one can connect two objects regardless of distance. This is generally used as a form of communication between friendly units, allowing to contact employees anywhere within the galaxy. While the link is instantaneous, establishing this would require to find the target by other means first. The True Vacuum Disaster also rewrote some of the universe's mechanics thus all Quantum Links had to be readjusted. This gave the estranged White corps employees a linger of hope that their peers are out there and just unable to contact them.
- Conversion Reactors: The most common method of power generation. They can be practically found everywhere, be it in factories, cars or even cell phones. Conversion reactors are the ultimate result of nuclear research and could be said to be the distant relatives of fission and fusion energy. Thanks to their degree of sophistication the conversion reactors are actually fairly safe and incredibly easy to use.
- Zero-Point Energy Extractor: The ramscoop of space-time, this complex device allows harnessing vacuum energy which makes it ideal for warships and other power-hungry machines. The device requires lot of power to run and difficult to scale down, thus they won't replace conversion reactors anytime soon.
- Compressed Vacuum Cells: Just as space itself can be used to harness energy it also turns out to be the best method to store power. Compressed Vacuum Cells and ZPEEs are virtually the same technology used for different purposes. In effect vacuum cells are Zero-Point Energy Extractors that are deliberately inefficient. For this reason they can be made more compact and many military equipment is relying on these. Actually, the White Corps is working on the means to make vacuum cells even more popular and replace other alternate batteries. Its advantages over the other means are weight savings, far higher capacity and even safety. When destroyed the spatial compression within the cell ceases and space expands around the unit. Anything caught within its area of effect is simply ceases to exist. Yet space holds massive energy densities thus the failure of a vacuum cell only results in minuscule expansion. Even for the most massive starship batteries it fails to erase the entire vacuum cell. Thus ironically vacuum cell technology is both the safest and most destructive power storage mechanism White Corps knows.
Military
White Corps is technically a megacorp, not a nation. In official terms they don't have an army yet in effect their private security branch White Security Services very much fills out the role of military. WSS was famous for their skilled personnel and high-tech equipment. Their services were requested throughout the galaxy. As such during the True Vacuum Disaster roughly 95% of WSS were gone, leaving the White Corps with only the personnel who in or near the Cygnus System during the sudden shift. This included soldiers in reserve and the thousands of mothballed ships orbiting Cygnus. As such half of the fleet is currently in the process of retrofitting while most of the active duty ships are exploring the reaches of space.
- Durachrome: The most common military grade armor are made of durachrome. It's a hard, densely packed yet relatively light material family with its variants used both for ground troops and starships.
- Structural Integrity Fields: Special field which generates bubbles of fake mass to further reinforce the toughness of material.
- Higgs Shield: An extension of structural integrity fields this kind of protection forms layers of fake mass generated by the field emitters which can act like a regenerative extra armor.
- Lightwave Barrier: A rather peculiar type shield which contrary to its name actually traps tachyons in a limited boundary around the vessel. It deflects massless and low-mass particles like light and radiation the best while nearly useless against heavier projectiles. Starship-based lightwave barriers also have some other properties to compensate for spatial effects.
- Gravity Deflector: The various gravitic devices can also produce a shield of gravity around the ship. These tend to extend pretty far, up to dozens of kilometers and activated only during combat. The gravity shield's main purpose is to intercept, disrupt and disperse incoming attacks instead of directly stopping them. The weakened attack would be then handled by the rest of the defense systems.
- IGP: Intelligent Gravitic Projectile. Highly sophisticated ammunition created for various GAWs (Gravitic Accelerator Weapons). They are equipped with miniature sensors, AI, transceiver, multifunctional warhead and even a limited gravity drive system. It's an intelligent projectile capable of filling many roles and has means to make slight corrections to the wielder's aim. There are many different IGP ammunitions, including the less advanced types shipped to other nations. The power of each projectile can be adjusted between many different parameters and using pin-point focus of its gravity drive reserves it can even break through armor and shields to some extend. Its multifunctional warhead could range anywhere from inert to tiny matter-antimatter explosives, airburst fragmentation to shaped explosives or even tiny bomb-pumped lasers depending on what the user sets. Ammunition is often regenerative via compact replicator technology.
- ISFP: Intelligent Space-Folded Projectile. Launched from Spatio Accelerators and Fold Accelerators, these projectiles work by a different mechanism yet otherwise share man similarties with the IGP. Compared to IGPs the ISFP only has very limited maneuverability but its apparent superluminal deliver speeds can compensate for that.
- PPA: Particle Projection Arms. It generates and unleashes a long and often nanometer-thick stream of particles like a spear to pierce through a range of different kinds of protection. The particle stream often has antimatter or antimatter-catalyzed fusion mechanism to cause more widespread damage upon penetration. PPAs are common anti-armor equipment for foot soldiers but they are also scaled up for various vehicles and even starships.
- Missiles, Torpedoes: White Corps employs myriads of different kind of missiles. These are basically small space vessels that can carry various warheads and cause damage by many different mechanisms. Thanks to on-board replicators each missile's composition can be altered just before the launch thus generally eliminating the need for carrying different loads. This flexibility is the only reason missile launchers are still relevant in space combat. There are two categories: missiles and torpedoes. Missiles are generally smaller and incapable of superluminal travel (albeit may get external assistance for it via farcast mirrors). Torpedoes are much larger and often accelerated by a gravitic system to great speeds as well as often capable of superluminal travel. Missiles are commonly used for lighter targets, interception or sometimes massed bombardment. Torpedoes are much more powerful and employed against ships and space fortifications.
- Conversion Warhead: Missile containing an overclocked conversion reactor which converts any nearby material into energy. Since conversion reactors cannot convert more exotic types of matter they are mostly useless in space combat. Instead their main role is demolition and planetary bombardment where they can be orders of magnitudes better than any other missile.
- Hawking Warhead: Missile containing a micro black hole in stasis. They are dangerous and only armed prior to launch. When it detonates the black hole instantly evaporates into Hawking radiation (hence its name). They aren't more powerful than any antimatter or nuclear warhead. On the other hand this mechanism allows them to dump all their energy under a minuscule fraction of time, which is essential when attacking warships moving at high speeds. There are shaped charge (Hawking-A) and even black hole pumped laser variants (Hawking-B). Torpedoes can even have fold-accelerated particle mechanism pumped by the black hole's decay (Hawking-F) which makes them well-fit for intercepting hypercruising vessels.
- Spatial Warhead: Warhead which uses a crude ZPEE mechanism for offensive purposes. It concentrates incredible density of energy to a 2-dimensional plane and effectively tears through the target by spatial distortions. It's an effective breakthrough weapon but requires direct hit. In addition the spatial distortion doesn't last for long which makes layered defenses effective against it. Without the spatial effect the missile is nothing more than just a big mass at relativistic velocities. Spatial Warheads are often closely followed by different type of missiles that can immediately abuse the gap caused by the weapon.
- Kinetic Rod: Missile which sports reinforced durachrome core to penetrate the targets by its sheer momentum. Alternatively called "Relativistic Ramrod".
- Multi-Kinetic Rod: AKA the Multi-Ramrod. More common variant which spreads out into multiple thinner penetrators to cover a wider area. It can range from a few sub-munitions to millions of wire-thin durachrome strands. The latter variant is largely superseded by the Beehive type warheads.
- Beehive: Also called the Space Shotgun. This warhead contains precisely calibrated gravitic charges surrounded by microscopically small (diameter below 1 micron) durachrome sub-munitions. When reaching optimum speed and sufficient distance from the target it disperses into a gigantic cloud of tiny projectiles with the average distance between each durachrome ball is only 1cm. Still with literally quintillions of sub-munitions this cloud extends to thousands of kilometers, practically sealing off any kind of escape. Disrupting the cloud is extremely difficult because the energy density of each projectile is the same as a large kinetic warhead, even if their kinetic energy is only a tiny fraction of that. For the latter reason though the Beehive is largely ineffective on well-protected targets but damaging warships was never the warhead's role to begin with. Attention and timely avoidance may help starfighters to escape the onslaught albeit more often than not Beehives are launched in swarms to provide absolute coverage.
The only part that confuses me if we can choose our battlefield out of 5 then how can our characters even meet in a fight? Also roughly how large each these blobs/coins are in comparison? What's the distance between each ring?
Member
salamimike,
ivoryrolland95,
Durandals
