A Brief Galactic
Situational Report
By Human account,
it is the year 3030. For our Milky Way,
it is a time of great troubles. War plagues
the safety of civilized systems, and pirates
prey on those weakened by such wars.
The Kataan and
Tassk fleets have been eroding one another
for the last 20 years and have finally begun
to exhaust their vast resources. Though
large scale battles are now infrequent,
skirmishes near industrial centers and civilian
installations are common as each side tries
to cripple the other’s capacity to recover.
The Faciree Royal
Navy, though small and underdeveloped by
normal standards of the day, is now the
largest known standing fleet in the galaxy.
They could greatly influence the tide of
the battle, but they are involved with their
own problems of Rend infestation and fending
off smaller pirate fleets.
The Noble Yullarians
desperately try to use this lull in the
battles to give diplomacy another try, while
their Rover brethren have begun smaller
mercenary operations. The demand for Crag
services has never been higher. And as expected,
some interests are profiting greatly from
the war.
The Vespulans
have seen the least impact on their day
to day activities. The planets they inhabit
are completely undesirable to other races,
and their ships are little more than c-drives
with hauling rigs. Their naturally isolationist
politics are weathering this storm well.
The greatest impact to the Vespulans so
far has been piracy in the Orca Flagella
where their dust mining operations are most
profitable.
Xanthophi colonization
projects have ceased growing, but worlds
they have colonized are seeing a big increase
in activity as work orders and refugees
pour into their new economies.
Humans, the newest
race to step onto the galactic scene, have
much to offer. Their geographic isolation
protects many of their interests, and they
are filling many needed roles abandoned
by the destruction of industrial power houses.
With the addition of humans to galactic
trade a new age of information systems has
been born. No other race besides humans
has developed the computer to the extent
that Humans have. It is common for navigators
on alien ships to use slide rules and numerous
conversion charts as they plot their courses
through C-Space. Innumerable other applications
of computers give humans a competitive edge
that a newcomer to galactic trade and politics
can exploit to great advantage in these
times. Humans have also harnessed the power
of the atom, and have defended themselves
with nuclear weapons. This development has
made humans the least desirable targets
for piracy and invasion. Compared to humans,
other races are pretty far behind on a technological
scale. If not for the utter lack of dust
on their homeworld, they would have achieved
super C speeds and interstellar travel a
millennia earlier. The Ordina vessel that
crash landed on Terra was the spark would
elevate humans onto the interstellar plateau.
The An’Laran observe
all this from enlightened, but decadent
eyes. Possessing technology on a scale that
seems magical to even humans, they are dependent
upon no one. Self absorbed and scarce in
number, the An’Laran are somewhat isolationist
by disposition, but not necessarily by policy.
No one has really figured them out…sometimes
they get involved, and sometimes not. Their
motivations are a complete enigma.
It seems that
the Galaxy itself holds its breath, waiting…
Technology
Level
Spaceships and
how people get around:
People typically
ride shuttles from the surface of a planet
to a space station. From there you can begin
your interstellar travels by taking a shuttle
or C-Space capable ship to a Minimum Safe
Jump Point which has beacons to indicate
distance and location. No ships are known
to be able to enter C-Space travel while
in the presence of a G slope greater than
a certain amount, so jumping engaging the
DC Drive on a ship generally fails if you
are too close to a planet, star, moon, large
ship etc. See the C-Space Travel document
for more technical details.
Any elevated world
has at least one space station with a C-Comm
repeater for FTL communications. Unelevated
worlds may still have space stations on
a case by case basis, and they are annotated
on the map with an alphanumeric name based
on its characteristics instead of the name
given to it by its inhabitants. When a planet
stops responding to C-Comm, it’s given name
is removed and it is updated with an alpha-numberic
name. This is the case with the Qima systems,
formerly inhabited by the Faciree.
Intra-planetary
travel is done by mostly mundane means,
depending on the planet itself. Some examples:
A technologically advanced planet may have
a well established public transportation
system. Planets without atmospheres won’t
have aircraft.
Alien ships are
huge! Alien DC-Drives are huge in proportion
and maintenance. Supporting the DC drive
usually takes half the crew of any non-human
space craft. Alien ships are usually large
and inefficient, mostly due to their lack
of computers, which hinders the mathematical
capabilities of alien engineers. A common
engineering practice is to over-engineer
for a given requirement, when that requirement
is difficult to quantify. Thus structural
elements are bigger and heavier than they
may need to be. The lack of computers also
means that many more personnel are required
to man a spacecraft, and therefore the habitat
requirements of alien spacecraft increase
dramatically.
Human spaceships
are much smaller, faster, use dust more
efficiently, etc. due to their incorporation
of computers in every ship-board function.
Hurting People
and Blowing things up:
Default Alien
tech consists of projectiles and missiles.
Sustained laser beams don’t actually work
so well in space and even if they did, they
are less efficient (at the moment) than
rocket motors and gas propelled projectiles.
There is an equivalent to a “blaster” in
the form of Charged Particle Projection
Gun, which fires bursts of deadly ions but
they are about as effective as human made
projectile weaponry in terms of armor penetration,
lethality and collateral damage. Blasters
are not permitted on human ships due to
the collateral damage to computers caused
by large magnetic fields, current arcs and
ground problems that occur when blasters
are discharged.
Naval Ships feature
an array of weaponry. The Kataan favor their
large reliable low maintenance projectiles,
while Tassk hit and run tactics favor blaster
turrets. All races use missiles featuring
simple HE or application specific warheads.
This is not to say a Kronin vessel will
not have blaster turrets, but is just an
indication of the norm. An alien ship’s
main defense is its thick armor, redundant
systems and sheer size. Human vessels tend
to rely more on speed, agility and electronic
countermeasures for defense. State of the
art human ships now feature extremely high
velocity projectiles. Their Magnetic Induction
Gaussian Cannons, or MInG Cannon make use
of human dust magnets to generate huge stores
of electricity and propel a projectile with
a magnetic field. The Kataan experimented
with this, but their war fighting philosophy
has pushed them back towards gas propelled
projectiles. Standard munitions are more
effective against a diversity of alien ships.
For example, putting holes in a Vespulan
ship is hardly useful unless you are damaging
critical mobility or offensive systems,
where as putting a hole in a human ship
typically means you are hitting something
important. Humans still have a bit to learn
about fighting alien spacecraft.
There are no “force
fields” on space ships that are capable
of deflecting projectiles. There are E-field
generators which can help to decrease the
damage of blasters, but these are typically
only found on ships fighting the Tassk due
to the expense. Communication and Coordination
is also more difficult when a ship turns
on its E-field projector as communication
that relies on the electromagnetic spectrum
(radio waves, microwaves, light etc) no
longer functions.
Note that An’Laran
ships follow none of these rules. Their
weapon systems leave few survivors so information
pertaining them is extremely limited. Hitting
them would also be quite difficult due to
their superior agility and miniscule cross
section. After you hit them, you have to
get through their considerably powerful
force fields which also deflect projectiles.
Shots that manage to connect and get through
the force field are somehow rapidly repaired
by the crew.
Personal Armor
Personal armor
can range from a simple ablative vest to
sleek top secret human-made bionic exoskeletons
capable of absorbing tremendous damage.
Ranged Weapons
These weapons
typically fall into one of two categories:
Slug Throwers or Blasters. Other weapons
systems are available, but they are rare
and usually application specific. Scramblers
or EM Scramblers, previously obsolete due
to their limited damage and range are now
gaining popularity among pirates who wish
to attack human vessels because of their
devastating effects on human electrical
systems.
Melee Weapons
Common melee weapons
will never go out of style. A club to the
head or a dagger in the back are just as
effective against soft targets as
their advanced counterparts. To take on
hard targets (targets with advanced
armor), powered weapons are preferred. Mono-wire
blades weapons can practically bypass conventional
armors; vibro weapons have a similar effect,
but require more power. Intelligent weapons
are finding their way into frequent use
as well: examples of this are more common
with bludgeoning weapons. You’d be wise
to take the Crag with the impact hammer
seriously. A Kataan Uglauti master with
a mono-wire or vibro-setti will leave a
trail of dismembered bodies in his wake.
All mundane melee weapons will have the
reduced penetration limitation applied to
them to simulate the ineffectiveness against
advanced armors common in the campaign.
Healing:
The Xanthophi
have a high degree of skill in pharmaceuticals,
and they are the chief manufacturers of
“medipacks.” These kits have a wide variety
of stimulants and other medical implements
that can stop bleeding, quickly splint limbs
and awaken an injured comrade. Humans have
the technology to manufacture such items,
but they lack the centuries of xeno-biological
research possessed by the Xanthophi and
other alien races.
On the extreme
end of medical technology, the An’Laran
have the ability to somehow capture a persona
and identity and put that into another body.
Resurrection, switching bodies and having
multiple clones are all part of this campaign,
but you have to know the right people. An’Laran
technology can also stop people from aging,
but oddly enough, once anti-aging tech is
administered, these individuals are never
seen again.