I suspected something similar. don't worry about that, it's fine. I just felt it'd be better if you give it another look. Pardon me if my reaction felt negative.
Replicators have never been in a RP I have GMed, because they cause way to much trouble. Matter transformers I could allow, but they need to be very small scale and expensive to use.
Really? I am pretty sure Stardust to Stardust had them in both incarnations. I admit I haven't participated in most of your games so my claim was kinda lacking in support.
As for fighters, I am putting anything above 50 meters in length is a fighter. Lets not go with W40K estimates shall we? That universe is a bit ridiculous as is. I guess I am fine with the Beehive warheads, for now. I am going to say no to neutronic matter.
Well, I feel that 50m would be a bit too large if you really don't want to get to W40k side of things. How about the high en being just slightly larger than a real world fighter? Granted, this may disqualify quite a few bomber and space gunship concepts even though they tend to be the heavier hitting alternatives to space fighters. So yeah, perhaps you're right with the 50m cap. On the other hand that pretty much makes my lightest Escort ships into space fighters, see:
Name: Halifax-class Light escort Classification: Light Escort, Anti-Starfighter Corvette Crew: 14 Dimensions: length: 36m, width: 18m, height: 12m Standard Mass: 14,745 metric tons (prior to mass-compensation) Powerplant: WIPG-Z110C Compact Zero-point Energy Extractor, WIPG-F222 Cold Fusion Reactors x 3 Propulsion: Impulse Engines x 2, Central Gravity Drive, Auxiliary Gravity Drives x 8 Interstellar Travel: Foldspace Engine (integrated to the ZPEE) Speed: 0.5c (STL cruise), 0.90c (STL combat), 25c (hypercruise) Armor: 16mm Durachrome Composite-S (reinforced by integrity fields) Sensors: Foldspace Radar, Foldspace sensory package, GADAR, Hypertelescopes, backup sensors Other Systems: AECM, Fold Jammer, Holographic Stealth Defense Systems: - Structural Integrity Fields - Higgs Shield Emitters - Lightwave Barrier - Compact Gravity Deflector
Halifax is the smallest escort vessel within the WSF fleet. It's light and cheap, mostly equipped to deal with light vessels or raiding starfighters.
This is an escort ship as it was designed to move together with warships and provide them support. On the other hand they're well within your parameters for fighter size. Granted my largest escorts are 80+ meters long and basically are pocket warships.
As for making planets valuable, thats why theres a system limit. Realistically your only going to have two habitable planets for a few systems, with most having one. Population would also be concentrated more on the Capital World and those that were first colonized, thus making a situtaion where loosing a planet may not hurt you, but loosing a core would.
I feel it differently. While limiting empire sizes are fine the fact there's just way too much space that are inexplicably are completely empty is an issue. I don't want super densely packed systems where every habitable planet has the ownership flag of some civilization. But this feels like the opposite end of it.
There is going to be a limit of three races per a minor civ, and 5 systems per a minor civ. Putting that out there now, there tech also must be limited.
Okay that's helpful. So assuming 20-30 civs that means circa 60-90 species at best. Alright, that's enough fun, I guess. Assuming 3 systems as the average that also gives me similar number of star systems to visit. I think I won't get bored with that for a long time.
I'm finally not the one doing really long posts to discuss things with the GM!
Well, you worded it right. I intend this to be merely a discussion and not an actual argument. I am not confronting Duck but asking if certain things are permitted. That and I tried to give him an idea which would reconcile the low species count with the vastness of space. Basically to host the game in a smaller field. There would be no physical boundaries preventing you to go elsewhere but given the capabilities of FTL drives (by making them slow and less reliable for longer distances, especially without waypoints) it just wouldn't worth it. With smaller "playfield" you have less planets and everything would be far less dispensable, AKA every planet counts.
Anything above a fighter in size counts towards the ship coubt unless its a unarmed
You haven't changed my mind on on ground units having no antimatter.
As for the hundreds of civilizations. Hundreds imply well over a 100 which is not what I want. There is still a high number, in the 60s, but the other is to high to handle.
You may want to read my post again. Not as if I'd be set to start an argument here but I feel you only skimmed through my post.
An what counts as a fighter? I mean on low end we have the tiny TIE Fighters from SW that are 6-10m in dimensions while there's the Fury starfighter from W40k which is 70 whole meters long. Many of my escorts would fit for the latter. Then there's the Xeelee Nightfighter with wings IIRC 2000 meters long. Scale can vary a ton. Just like the previous discussion about ship classes, the distinction between escorts and fighters seem rather arbitrary.
Granted with the reduced size of White Corps I probably barely even a tenth as many starships than before.256 warships and say 1208 accompanying escorts should be enough. BTW, how many civilizations am I allowed to be in contact with? 20-30? More? 60 appears to be the maximum number of civilizations you wish to consider. But how many alien races that would mean? Many civs unite multiple races and this is why I am asking this. It's important for maintaining the variety within my staff. More alien races means the more diverse and fun my company staff could get.
Speaking of scale this is a constant problem with space NRPs. The galaxy is just too huge. If you worry about having too many races I beleive the best approach would be to reduce the playground to begin with. Instead of making FTL engines extremely good, make a rule that they are relatively slow. No need to mention hard numbers just say that crossing the galaxy is nearly an impossible venture and focus everything to just a specific part of the galaxy, say a 1000x1000x1000 lightyear section. I know I am not the GM and can't just tell you what to do. It's just an idea of mine. People worry about making things too big while dropping people in the ungodly vastness of the Milky Way Galaxy. Of course things get like that. What you need is to limit the playing field in accordance to what kind of game you want, IMO.
Anyways, I don't quite mind the ban on antimatter weapons for ground warfare. I don't even remember trying to convince you much besides explaining why I have them. I already thought of a much more amusing idea just now. BTW, are we allowed to mess with neutronic matter (like the stuff found in the center of neutron stars, ungodly dense and just as unstable). If yes, I go with plan B and extend this to starship weapons, too.
On the other hand I didn't hear you commenting much on my quantum forging tech, because I DID try to convince you there:
<Snipped quote by duck55223>IIRC, many of your previous space NRPs had replicators as a nearly standard tech. What caused the turnaround now? If you are worried I may abuse this like grey goo, instant ship construction or as free factories on infinite loop then there's nothing to be afraid of. Quantum Forging isn't anything as convenient. True it can allow creating matter out of energy but even in this futuristic world power won't be free, neither truly inexhaustible. Assemblies for vehicles or mining raw materials are still very prevalent. I don't wish to portray replicators as something which makes economy or industry meaningless.
That being said if even with these restrictions you don't wish to deal with replicators then fine, I'll remove them. As an alternative is it fine to have "transmuters"? As in devices which can turn one type of matter to another? My replicators are already mostly working by this mechanism because they're such power hogs so this could let me keep my tech while closing off any loopholes.
tl;dr I was saying to switch replicators to matter transformers which can turn compressed storage of metastable matter to smaller objects. For example it can be used in place of an ammo clip for guns or transform poison into breathable air for environmental suits. Things like that. Would that be a fine alternative? It erases any fears of me abusing the tech while most of their equipment remain functional.
Also are my Beehive Warheads fine after I clarified a few things with them? Namely that they don't just instantly expand to cover the area but require to be from sufficient distance away from the target. thi is why enemy fighters can dodge the pellets to begin with.
Don't know whether to decide for a shrunken unified EU or a Fourth Reich.
The picture shows Brussels as the capital, so that's the EU one.
Personally i find the Fourth Reich a more interesting option, but damn if it would trigger anybody.
You may also try to think of a less typical idea. Both the EU and Fourth Reich are overdone, IMO Given that you mostly control Germanic territories you could establish something with that theme. A Neo-Barbaric nation could be fun, too.
I'd like to reserve the island of Sardinia if that's okay with everyone. Oh and @Willy Vereb, would it happen you know a website where I can get a good overview of the moon at its named regions? I want to get a Helium-3 colony on the moon.
Both Google and Wikipedia can help you massively in that, no need for anything else. Pardon me for responding this late but our mention didn't show up as an alert. Anyways, I think it'd be a bit too much to ask people to pick places which are well-suited for mining. I mean given the limited Moon landings not even scientists working with the space program should know this exactly.
Oh and AFAIK if you want "cheap" Helium-3 you gotta visit the Jupiter. That's why I have a small installation over there with the Carpathian Union.
Need to do a few things first so I am just skimming, but I can already say that even if there just escorts, 10208 ships is way to much. Mothballed ships also needs to be turned down. I also feel that a Megacorp should have quite a few less then 2000 ships.
Given the size of the megacorp 2000 ships seemed like a reasonable amount to protect their interests. Albeit given your response in the "full review" that may change. As for my escort count, why is that even an issue? I don't remember you putting up a hard cap for fighters, land vehicles and soldiers. You only limited warships. Escort vessels are between fighters and warships in size with the expected decrease in fighting power compared to warships. Fact that 8 escorts (if not more) roughly equal to one warship is telling already. Albeit if we go by math and convert escorts to warship equivalent count then I suppose I went a little over the limit (3000+).
Oh well, I reduce my fleet size anyways so this issue is most likely void.
Replicators are an absolute no in my eyes, and you will need to remove them. The power of the beehive missile needs to be turned down, and one of your weapons mentions use of antimatter in weapons for ground units, this is also a absolute no in my eyes.
One more minor thing, besides ship count adjustment which I already mentioned, is that again, we dont have hundreds of civilizations. While it is extremely minor I dont want a new player to read your app and see that, and thus get the wrong idea.
IIRC, many of your previous space NRPs had replicators as a nearly standard tech. What caused the turnaround now? If you are worried I may abuse this like grey goo, instant ship construction or as free factories on infinite loop then there's nothing to be afraid of. Quantum Forging isn't anything as convenient. True it can allow creating matter out of energy but even in this futuristic world power won't be free, neither truly inexhaustible. Assemblies for vehicles or mining raw materials are still very prevalent. I don't wish to portray replicators as something which makes economy or industry meaningless.
That being said if even with these restrictions you don't wish to deal with replicators then fine, I'll remove them. As an alternative is it fine to have "transmuters"? As in devices which can turn one type of matter to another? My replicators are already mostly working by this mechanism because they're such power hogs so this could let me keep my tech while closing off any loopholes.
Beehive type missiles are really just fridge brilliance. In the age of nanoscale forging it isn't difficult to create nanometer thick pellets and since this is a space opera style NRP that means acceleration is easy/cheap, too. Creating a relativistic KKV is easy. I just did that and added the feature to spread massive amounts of pellets to generate a large screen. Basically I just used my head. That being said Beehive warheads aren't all that superior. They work the best when there's still quite a distance between the ship and the targets to intercept. Beehive missiles require some time to accelerate and they need to spread their pellets from distance. As you can expect to get them spread to 1000km radius I'd need to detonate the mini charges some thousands of kilometers in front of the enemy, sometimes much more. Furthermore deployment of the Beehive's pellets depend on the projected distance of the enemy. Say the charges detonate 4000km away to make formation with 1cm wide gaps. If it hits from 2000km distance then the pellets would be 0.5cm away and cover the radius of only 500km. If it hits from 8000km away then the gaps would grow to 2cm and the "cloud" radius to 2000km. This may not matter at times or even allow a degree of flexibility but the heart of using Beehive warheads is good planning and sufficiently long engagement ranges. Besides it always bothered me how close ships/fighters stay to each other in most media. What's the gain in that? At least my opponent would get a good reason to put their fighters in a looser formation here.
Antimatter weapons are similarly just "common sense" in a setting like this. Where ships casually expend tons of antimatter or its equivalent then the same force should be able to spare a few grams or micrograms to their ground troops. And how do you make an anti-vehicle weapon compact yet powerful? Give them something truly energetic to throw at the target. That's the antimatter projector here, the nightmare of vehicular armor. I can throw these out if you want but as I said it was just common sense to have something like this for my ground troops. But without anti-matter projectors I have to use the plain-old anti-tank missile concept which is honestly boring.
One more minor thing, besides ship count adjustment which I already mentioned, is that again, we dont have hundreds of civilizations. While it is extremely minor I dont want a new player to read your app and see that, and thus get the wrong idea.
I had to repeat this paragraph to check I am not just seeing things. Excuse me what? The galaxy has 300 billion stars and roughly billions of habitable planets yet apparently there aren't even a hundred places where sentient life managed to develop? What happened? Did the "precursor civilization" mentioned in the OP systematically murder most of the other races?
Actually, this is the most major change for my faction of all. white Corps has contact with hundreds of civilizations but that's by no means all of them. Evidenced by the fact Keith White III managed to quadruple his client base in 10 years by actively searching for new civilizations to make contact with. Similarly this means I don't have literal hundreds of amusing alien race types I can just invent for the entertainment of the readers (none of them are really powerful... just different). In addition of course if there aren't anywhere near to hundreds of civilizations then the size of White Corps decreases considerably. That means I pretty much need less of everything else which is good. But it also makes me feel less like a galaxian capitalist as I wanted Keith White to be.
Aside from me, it's also sad for other players. I mean they can't have random encounters with new and different species because literally most of the alien races will be just other players. Well, interacting with a player is better but people like me tend to prefer more variety.
Alright, I think I'm pretty much done with the profile. The only thing is left for me to detail some military units in the future.
White Interstellar Corporations
General Overview
White Interstellar Corporations (WIC or White Corps) is a megacorporation spread over much of the galaxy. White Corps has no racial or national ties whatsoever, it's a purely private enterprise owned by the White family. White Corps was founded over 200 years ago by the late Keith White the First. Over the years it gradually grew into large megacorporation owning thousands of different firms from hundreds of civilizations covering all industrial sectors. In spite of their large net of influence White Corps pursues no ideology or political agenda. If they believe in one thing; it's the profit. Indeed for their pure money-grubbing attitude White Corps shares both galaxy wide fame and infamy and some people also dub them as "Capitalism Without Borders".
Territories
Rumors say that the White Corps owns over 1% of the entire galaxy's economy and that might be no exaggeration. White Corps is a huge interstellar enterprise holding shares in millions of companies, owning thousands of daughter firms and spread out in hundreds of civilizations across the galaxy. The exact numbers are unknown to anyone but the highest leadership. In spite of their large net of connections though White Corps is a private enterprise thus technically he doesn't own any territory like nations do. Although thanks to their influence the buildings and land owned by White Corps sometimes have such degree of autonomy it constitutes a country on its own. What happens within the lands of White Corps stays with White Corps. The megacorp is well-known for its secrecy and this makes many people suspicious of them. Some allegations say White Corps secretly has entire private planets in backwater system where they're free to conduct various shady businesses. Whether such accusations are true or not is yet to be determined but it's true that several decades ago White Corps bought the entire Cygnus System, a yet uninhabited twin star system politically not belonging to any civilization. Ever since then Cygnus grew to be a thriving system of commerce and rapidly became the headquarters of White Corps. Cygnus is a binary star system of Cygnos-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 distorts and cannibalizes Cygnus-Alpha, a process which generates high quantities of antimatter. Among others this lucrative exploit made the Cygnus system so charming for White Corps to buy off. In addition 3 out of the nine planets are habitable, these are Cygnus-III,IV and V with Cygnus-IV is where White Corps established their 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 is a mega enterprise at galactic scale with many thousands of daughter firms and associates from hundreds of different civilizations. 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, a confusingly long chain in command where often the subordinates only know their direct superior. 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 constant 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 is synonymous with his galactic enterprise. A well-dressed gentleman who could be the posterboy for rich businessmen. He's a calm, collected, sociable individual and a great talker who frequently attempts public events to further boost his popularity. Nowadays Keith spends most of his time in Iacolo Maximo, his insanely luxurious private villa and starship which is essentially like a traveling city/castle. He's stupendously rich and isn't afraid to show it. While popular with certain circles others view Keith as the vile devil of capitalism and would be happy to see him dead.
Culture/Species
White Corps was an interstellar mega enterprise and as such it employs people from hundreds of civilization and species. Curiously enough over 17% of WIC are considered human or indistinguishable from them in appearance. Aside from them the White Corps has employees from many other species, humanoid and non-humanoid alike. Visiting places 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 to avoid confrontation with the law of any nation. 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. 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 25 billion employees and the Cygnus System has 700 million employees total (3 billion if we include their family members).
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, etcetera, etcetera. 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 middleman 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 are well on their way to become a gigantic galaxy-wide enterprise.
Technology
White Corps prided themselves as pioneers in science. They are 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 prefers to use their trade connections to attain new technologies from other civilizations, reverse engineer them and then develop these even further. White Corps technology is sophisticated, compact and often combines multiple functions. Miniaturization is pretty much 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. In spite of that White Corps prefers tried and proven tech over exotic sciences unless there's an obvious gain. It doesn't stop them to research these sciences and develop various experimental devices. But such equipment are generally kept only in labs and testing grounds. Because their technological edge is the 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 any attempt to pry their secrets.
- 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 mechanisms known to White Corps to amplify them. Gravitic actuators, accelerators, propulsions are all commonly used by the WIC or its associates.
- 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 up to a certain distance to see events in real time 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.
- 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 (WSSS) very much fills this role. They are a well-trained and well-equipped force which often welcomes ex-soldiers from other civilizations. WSS is both a private military corporation and a security firm thus so long somebody has the money for it they can be in service of any faction. Still their priorities lie with the White Corps which is their founder, main sponsor and most important employer. White Security Services is organized in "units", small groups numbering between 8-128 soldiers and associated support. In effect each unit is a separate PMC and can be hired independently. Very rarely WSS forces belonging to different units even fight each other. Altogether there are almost a million WSS Units in the galaxy with 64.8% of them employed by White Corps and its daughter firms. White Security Services Employees: 172,217,421 Active Soldiers: 25,000,000 Reserves: 32,127,108
White Security Starforce (WSF) is the spaceborne branch of WSS. Their common duty is to escort civil vessels and protect them against pirates and other hazards on route. Like WSS, the ships of WSF are also hired in 'units'. A Fleet Unit is usually composed of 1 warship and 0-8 escorts (including crew, space docks, support staff and other personnel). WSF has 2048 Fleet Units total and more ships in reserve. White Security Starforce Employees: 18,801,286 Active Crew: 1,621,122 Reserves: 4,188,900 Warships: 2048 Escorts: 10208 Mothballed Ships: est. 28,000 (of various type, both escorts and some warships. These are aged ship models that were replaced by whole new classes. They remain because scrapping them costs more than they worth.)
- 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.
As you can guess I pretty much just re-wrote White Corps' profile from the True Vacuum RP. For this reason I am slightly afraid that my technology level could be a little too OP. Oh well, it's up for the GM to decide. I'm cool with toning down whichever tech Duck requests me to change.
I mean, first, this megacorp would have to originate from somewhere- likely being a corporation within a pre-existing nation. When there is enough trust between multiple nations that have made contact with one another, then they would have to try and branch out to other nations, would could be taken as a sign of aggression, politically and economically. That, and nations would be uneasy with a foreign corporation sticking its nose in and buying up everything to sell it to everyone else- it could either greatly increase economy, or greatly hinder it, while giving the corporation significant power if it becomes successful, because then they'd have a large part of the economic system.
That, and you'd have to create some kind of UN to create either a galactic currency, or to agree on a currency exchange that is suitable for all involved parties.
A megacorp in the early contact-and-establishment part of the roleplay wouldn't be logical. Unless someone is foolishly trusting of others, then getting a foothold in other alien nations and integrating into their economy would be problematic and difficult, especially with nations that have only one race- they might be xenophobic on a whole.
This is, of course, what I think, not the truth or the word of law.
Well, the megacorp was established about 200 years ago albeit it's by no means connected to every nation. Unless we discuss otherwise prior I'll treat every player civilization as if I met them for the first time. Let's say the people who made White Corps used every means possible. Open corporate system when allowed, secret buy-outs and proxy entities when it was more problematic. As for exchange while free flow of money is preferable there are many other means by which you can get profit through trade. This is actually the reason why the White Banking Company began to expand their horizons and now they are practically involved with every industrial sector.
As for the company had to be founded somewhere, you are absolutely right. It's just that the proper origins of White Corps are covered in many mysteries. And yeah, given the countless challenges it almost seems impossible to form such megacorp, especially not under just 200 years. This is another one of the mysteries. There's technically an explanation to all these but telling it would be a spoiler. That and I haven't yet worked out the full backstory in detail. But if you really need some food for thought:
Keith White, the man who founded White Banking Company and by extension White Corps, was a scientist who originally knew absolutely nothing about economics or even how to direct a company. I think this is already giving you several theories how White Corps came to be.
EDIT: As for whether the activities of White Corps stimulate or strangulate the economy is a complex question to which would be very difficult to properly answer. I plan White Corps to have nearly 1% of the entire galaxy's GDP. In a way this can be interpreted as that I siphon out 1% of the entire galaxy's money from the civil and national treasuries. On the other hand I give them my wast resources, technical knowledge and overall support to the said nation. In this sense I am pretty much boosting their economy. Not to mention that in spite of owning 1% of the GDP it doesn't mean I just grubber up the money and sit on it all day with glee. White Corps invests the money and wealth in other projects so technically "what goes around, comes around".
This is kind of the same as letting foreign companies build factories and establish daughter firms in your country. Just turn it up to eleven.
These lands are mine. Halved France to distance my state from Nerevarine's.
I can't see anything. Did you forget to link your picture?
BTW, I am taking Carpathia and all countries near it. As for colonies the Carpathian Union holds the settlements and mining establishments in the Von Neuman crater on the Moon. Some mining establishments in the asteroid field and Jupiter also exists.
Why don't we just play it out? Everyone has their own ship classes, but when/if (More likely if) a sort of United Nations is formed, then they can go and vote or whatever on various propositions and bills. For example, a couple nations could communicate, draft up a firm galactic standards for ships, and then propose it in the Galactic Conference or whatever, where all the nations can say yay or nay, and then if it passes, the spacey-UN can enforce it among its member nations and try to put it on outside nations.
It's also quite possible that if my nation were to be in such a UN of sorts, other nations could draft up a no-slaves no-indenturedservants proposal, pass it, and then my nation would be forced to give up significant industrial power and economic efficiency, to 'free' and establish rights and fairer quarters/treatment for the former slaves. Then my own nation would be at a political disadvantage, because those alien races would still be under the Hocklyn flag, but could wield political power, and would probably outnumber Hocklyns as a whole, and take political, economical, and industrial power within the nation.
That's a quite plausible solution for late game. But until a truly United Galactic Nations Commune is formed we'd play out God knows how many first contact style scenarios. If we get to late game of course it's a possible idea to introduce an universal ship classification system. As such it'd erase most confusion.
Or wait!
”Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.”
“This is the fate that many nations faced, death came to them, and wiped them from the universe. Only a few traces of their once vast civilizations remained, most of it crumbling, to become dust. However as civilizations fall and life fades, so does new life rise and began to establish dominance once more. Civilizations spread out, grow, and become strong. Some are new, having come from their homeworlds and begin to reach out beyond their home. A few come from the, ruins of the old begin to rebuild, using what is left of their ancestors to rise once more. But in time, all shall become ashes.”
According to the fluff there was a vast galactic civilization in the past. What if by this civilization's influence most if not all civilizations we encounter are using the same or at least very similar means to classify their ships? Similarly we can say that the language of this ancient civilization remained and now forms the basis of the common tongue across the galaxy (dubbed as "Galactic Basic" or whatever). These two additions can solve many of our headaches.
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salamimike
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