@duck55223 Mind if I make all my soldiers wear hi-tech power armors with plethora of features. In a way inspired by the protagonist's suit from this game:
Because White Corps specializes in miniaturizing tech and small-scale conversion reactor and gravitic technologies are pretty much the norm it means they can equip their soldiers with advanced suits which mostly makes conventional vehicles an unneeded surplus. It doesn't mean I've got an army of tanks, though. I just have a different doctrine. Sieges and all out heavy warfare aren't White Corps' cup of tea anyways.
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 numerous 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 nearly a million companies, owning thousands of daughter firms and spread out in dozens 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 it 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 27 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 superiors. 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: 47 (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 other people 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 over a hundred species and even more diverse set of cultures. Curiously enough over 32% 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. Albeit they are strictly non-confrontational and they follow the laws and customs of the nation their holdings are. 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 2.5 billion employees and the Cygnus System has over 100 million employees total (500 million if we include their family members and other citizen not strictly aligned with WIC).
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 82 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. About 25 years ago the second Keith White passed away. He lived the extraordinary amount of 134 years and left the company to his barely 22 years old son Keith White (the third). The third Keith White made steps to expand their area of influence, extensively searching for new civilizations. His efforts managed to double 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: More accurately called as quantum-forging it's a method which transforms matter down to the quantum level. It can technically allow to turn energy into matter but such procedures are way too wasteful to be effective. Instead they use already existing matter and conversion reaction methods to practically transmute matter into another. The method is rather effective on comparatively small scale but on industrial level mining raw materials is far more cost-efficient. Replicator is a common nickname for the technology inspired by the ancient human TV show recently rediscovered and its remastered version becoming a cult hit in over 50 star systems.
- Metastable Matter: Strange arrangement of matter with large quantities of pseudo mass. Its discovery revolutionized quantum forging technologies and made them into the replicators we now know. Metastable matter is in a strange state of metastability which makes it easily accessible to quantum-forgers to transmute. In addition the psudo-mas turns into real mass as the metastable matter consumed. Altogether this allows creating compact and light matter storage for quantum forges which also weighs much less.
- 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.
- 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: Pressed Particle Arms. It generates and unleashes a long and often nanometer-thick stream of hyperdense particles like a spear to pierce through a range of different kinds of protection. Because of the extreme concentration of particles in a tiny surface this weapon can be ideal to defeat armors at low energy cost. The expansion of the unstable hyperdense matter helps to increase damage on the target which would otherwise be just a negligibly small hole. PPAs are powerful but the compression process takes time thus they are rather preferred against enemy armor and fortifications. Starships also carry a fold.enhanced variation of this weapon.
- 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.
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 hundred thousand WSS Units in the galaxy with 74.8% of them employed by White Corps and its daughter firms. White Security Services Employees: 17,221,742 Active Soldiers: 2,500,000 Reserves: 3,212,810
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 0-12 escorts (including crew, space docks, support staff and other personnel). WSF has 256 Fleet Units total and more ships in reserve. White Security Starforce Employees: 1,880,128 Active Crew: 183,296 Reserves: 418,800 Warships: 256 Escorts: 2048 Mothballed Ships: est. 5000 (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.)
@Sep This isn't Star Empires, do not listen to Wilson. A lot of the problems attributed to it and its sister roleplays can be put in part to Key's method of GMing. I GM very differently then Key, and I do not let numbers get ridiculous
@Willy Vereb Anything bigger then 40mx40mx10m then.
Then that includes my corvettes. Not like they are any better than fighters, the heavier fighters are actually better in anything but protection.
Probably gonna look for somewhere else to sort my NRP requirements then...
We are talking about a different game and how space based NRPs tend to burn out and then immediately replaced by a new game. Well, the jinx shouldn't last forever.
@Sep We've never had a long-term, consistent Star-Empires series (Since the original and the first two or three reboots were Star Empires by KeyGuy on the MCForum) because: A) A very key person dropped out (Such as the Nouvellians whom everyone was involved with, and no one was as involved with anyone else) B) We all got to Galactic Superpowers and wars were a war of numbers, for example, thirteen bloody trillion ships with superdarkmatter guns versus fourteen bloody trillion ships with supermagicshields, or one solar-system-sized ship versus everyone else, etc C) We all got tired of each other because it was the same BS, and lost interest
Hopefully we'll be more political, but idk.
That sounds like some tightly corked bullshit. I can see why you guys are so exhausted with numbers now. How long your game went? I mean it's almost like an universal rule that Space NrPs eventually turn into text-based 4X games. Explore, Expand, Exploit and Exterminate.
@Willy Vereb I would help but it seems that either my PMs are not reaching you, or you are making fun of me :P
I can assure you I am not. I'll check your PMs because it's possible that i had missed something, even if I am not sure what.
EDIT: Nope, you got answers to most things you questioned by the start of the OOC thread and people submitting their profiles. The remaining parts (RP sample, other details) are something not even I am sure when exactly I will put them up. ETA is also fickle. I'd need to evaluate the factions, accept the army composition, put their mark on the map and discuss some things with co-GMs. After that the IC can finally kick off with my opening post/intro.
@Willy Vereb 20m length, 20m width, and 5m height. Thats after increasing the size of the droid gunship from Star Wars, which I find is one of the bigger in star wars. I think that height limit should suit us.
That doesn't work at all. Even something as typical as a modern F-15 is larger than that. In all honesty I am not sure if you even need to set down hard limits for fighters. Just tell people what you consider that and what you don't. Although technically i am not sure what separates my light corvettes from gunships. It's only the amount of armor and associated crew that is really different. The weight is just the simple product of super-dense materials being super-heavy. Otherwise the ship would onl weight some hundreds of tons.
I like all these submissions but honestly, there's one huge issue. I can only confidently mange 3-5 players or a bit more. I would require a few co-GMs to really make this game work. I mentioned this in the interest thread but I realized I forgot to say it here. So yeah, who are willing to assist me with this game? At times like this I wish there would be a thread for people asking help with larger RP projects.
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salamimike
Durandals
