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Old 08-07-2017, 08:05 PM   #51
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Default Re: [Game] Generate a military sci-fi setting

Answer 37
Mars

The red planet is not a red as it used to be, while the atmosphere is in general too thin to support human life plants exist in abundance. Human settlements are packed in at the lowest elevations where the air is more dense. The steriotypical Martian settlement is built in one of the many impact craters left behind from the earlier stages of terraforming. Excavated for depth and ringed with cooling fins to improve air density and encourage circulation the crater's walls are lined with residential structures and most craters feature a central lake at the lowest point.

Around the equator farming and organic production dominates the middle altitudes, domes and greenhouses produce food that is exported across the system.

Mons Olympus is in the center of large region of volcanic activity that the terraformers are actively stimulating to thicken the Martian atmosphere. This and other efforts to increase the air presure on Mars generate a large amount of CO2, to make the air mix friendlier to terrestrial life all that surplus carbon needs to be absorbed. The majority of the surface is covered with a thick layer of lichen like moss that serves as a growing medium for genetically engineered trees. Vast almost silent forests dominated by conifers and other alpine species stretch from one polar region to b the other.

The small amount of surface water is generally less pleasing to the eye as it is densely populated by algae tough enough to handle the high acid levels caused by the CO2 and sulphuric compounds in the air.

The deeper cities have enough atmosphere for an unmodified human to breathe unaided, most however require people to be either modified for the conditions or to wear breathing equipment. Only very heavily modified individuals can work on the middle altitudes without cybernetic or mechanical breathing equipment.

Social outcasts and other dispossessed individuals have begun forming communities in the old magma tunnels around the Mons Olympus volcanic zone where the air is thicker dispite the risks.

Question 38
How politically unified are the various human habitats?
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Old 08-07-2017, 11:09 PM   #52
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Default Re: [Game] Generate a military sci-fi setting

Question 34, rewritten
The more conventional Caseless, cased and ETC slug throwers are having increased difficulty dealing with the advances in armour made possible from reverse engineering Arc technologies. What changes and advancements are being implimented to counteract the increased efficiency of armour.
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Old 08-08-2017, 02:54 AM   #53
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Default Re: [Game] Generate a military sci-fi setting

Quote:
Originally Posted by ericthered View Post
The number of species is unspecified, though the number of "Civilizations" is: 8 of them are certainly in, and there are 4 more you can debate about whether or not they are civilized.
Just to be clear, in the original question (#12), I meant "civilised" to mean roughly that the race was sociable and tech using to the extent that they'd be a part of the milieu. They'd have integrated into the population somehow and could be communicated with, although that could also cover outsider/enemy races too (such as the Cicads, I guess). In other words, could they be PCs?

Feel free though to include other interpretations, such as how well they get on with other intelligent species (or if they can use a knife and fork?)

By my definition, "uncivilised" species would be animal species, intelligent non-tech using species, or species that have space-faring tech but are otherwise completely isolated from the setting- perhaps they've sequestered themselves in their habitat pod; or they escaped to build a hidden civilisation at the bottom of the oceans of Europa, where they lurk waiting to play the role of surprise-enemy-of-the-week.

ETA:
Quote:
Originally Posted by TGLS View Post
Each species taken on board had a large habitat similar to their homeworld constructed for them, as well as a selection of animal species. Only one species, the Chekta (AKA "fuzz rabbit"), had any viability as an uplift species.
Quote:
Originally Posted by ericthered View Post
Chekta are not uplifted for sure, only possibly, and they wouldn't count as a civilization by themselves. So that drops our civilization count down.
I'd read that to mean that "we tried uplifting various candidates, and the Chekta proved to be viable."
IOW- The Chekta have been uplifted, and are running around in the setting. There's still the question though of whether they're politically and socially independent or still closely tied to their patron species. Either way, they should be fine to be on the civilisations list, even though we don't know anything about them yet.
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Old 08-11-2017, 07:21 AM   #54
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Default Re: [Game] Generate a military sci-fi setting

Answer 34:

Grenades are a key supplementary weapon. Your grenade launcher lets you place smoke screens, attack around obstacles, fire large armor-piercing rounds, hit enemy positions with SQID and if they're dumb (or poor) enough, drop eyes of your own in enemy territory. But SQID actually has led to guns replacing the old grenade throwers: war used to be an elegant game of placing grenade sized drones every where and playing around with jamming. Now its devolved into archaic fire fights.

Question 39: the Khorchon have been mentioned as a savage but intelligent species prone to eating foes and slaughtering children. What do they actually look like? what density is the medium they breathe? tell us what you can about their Physiology!
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Old 08-11-2017, 10:14 AM   #55
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Default Re: [Game] Generate a military sci-fi setting

Regarding some of the aliens, it struck me as very fatalistic, suicidal even, or perhaps lazy and freeloading, for some races to choose to go into hibernation and wait for a "better situation" to arise. But, that concept gave me an idea for a couple of extra races:

Race #6- The Kusegu
The Kusegu are a created servitor race. Their creators, generally referred to as the Kusegu Masters, were taken on board the Ark several millennia ago, and instead of a pitiful existence trapped in a confined habitat pod, soon decided to wait out the journey in cryosleep until suitable circumstances arose for them to be revived. They created the Kusegu to watch over their cryopods, safely transport them to a new world, and build it in their image of paradise before waking them.

Thus, the Kusegu share a common purpose and always act for the benefit of their community, whose whole purpose is to create their masters' paradise. Anything Kusegu do is planned to somehow benefit this goal in the long-run. If you find a mercenary crew of Kusegu, their ulterior motive might be in researching military methods of the current war theatre, or understanding the tactics of possible future enemies. If the Kusegu start a corporation, it could be to amass a fortune to put toward building their masters' habitat, or for researching appropriate terraforming methods. Any time Kusegu happen to speak of their purpose or their masters, they do so in hushed, revered and fanatically tinged tones, as they are genetically programmed to think of the masters as like gods.

Physically, Kusegu have features that remind many of slender waterbirds- a long neck, beaked head and compact torso, but are otherwise somewhat humanoid. They stand between 4 and 6 feet tall and have a coloured, bushy, feather-like covering. Their colourings reflect their caste and rank within that caste, so that learned observers can easily identify an individual's status.

The Kusegu are a caste-based race. Generally, only three castes are encountered, their Thinker, Warrior and Builder castes, but early encounters with their habitat pod when it arrived gave rise to reports of Governor, Attendant and Reproductive castes, while others are also speculated. Warrior Kusegu fit the image of a genetically bred warrior race, being large, tough, strong, agile and imposing. Thinker Kusegu are uniformly on the smaller side and are generally considered to be scarily cunning. Builder Kusegu are fairly meek and non-communicative, yet intensely observant, and are physically sized midway between Warriors and Thinkers.

It's rare to find Kusegu operating individually, and they generally get around in teams of least 6 members. Any team of Kusegu will have a mixture of all three common castes and generally Warrior Kusegu fill the leadership role, but exceptions have been noticed. Kusegu have built a stable economic base for themselves, so their members are able to afford the latest and best weapons, ships and technology.

The Kusegu are found throughout the Solar System. They don't have any single public habitat or polity of their own, but try to integrate into other human countries and societies where possible. This is except for their Ark Habitat Pod, but this is now hidden in a secret location. Observers have deduced that Kusegu also operate out of a variety of secret bases located around the Solar System to provide them with a measure of security, and to act as decoys to protect the current location of their original pod. Presumably this still contains the cache of their masters' cryopods, but again these may have been distributed around the Solar System to secure locations.

Secret Kusegu Plotline #1:
To help coordinate their revival, the Kusegu have revived one of the masters, who is being waited on like an emperor. He could be plotting devious and savage plans to hack out a corner of the Solar System for his race, or designing a reconstruction of the Ark to move on to a more likely star system, or hedonistically enjoying his position as lone monarch with a whole race doing his bidding.

Secret Setting Changing Plotline #2:
This one is completely optional, as it would affect a lot of other themes of the setting-
The Kusegu Masters are actually humans collected on the Ark's last visit to Earth a number of millennia ago. They could be the Lost Tribes of Israel, Ancient Egyptians or Vedic Hindus- explaining a lot of ancient astronaut folklore. This could also explain why the Kusegu have an Earth birdlike appearance. It would mean that the Kusegu are ultimately focussed on occupying the Earth for themselves once its environment has settled down, and they would be spending a lot of effort on attaining usable terraforming technology, as well as enough military might to defend their paradise against the mass of modern day humanity that are seeking to re-occupy the Earth. In this scenario, it's also possible that it was the Kusegu who sabotaged the Ark as it approached Jupiter, as part of their plan to reclaim the Earth.
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Last edited by Daigoro; 08-11-2017 at 10:39 AM. Reason: extra bit on technology and sabotage
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Old 08-11-2017, 10:47 AM   #56
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Default Re: [Game] Generate a military sci-fi setting

The second cryosleeper race:

Race #7- The Morlay
The Morlay are a squat, humanoid, bear-like race with a short, spiny covering that varies between silvery white and deep olive hues.

Similar to the Kusegu, they found life on the Ark to be too onerous to deal with in the long term, and likewise planned to go into cryo-hibernation. Likewise, they were paranoid enough not to trust the Ark pilots to nurse their race's frozen population, but their caretaking approach is somewhat more self-dependent than the Kusegu's method. That is, a fraction of the Morlay population remain awake and look after the rest of their members while they remain in cryosleep. The problem, however, is that Morlay are a somewhat short-lived race, so the cadre of guardians serve out a 20-year shift before returning themselves to hibernation and awakening the next generation of guardians. The hope is that even though aged, when they awaken they will still have a few years of old age left to enjoy their eventual homecoming.

Morlay don't have the advanced technology, economy or manufacturing base that other races have built up, so they generally rely on aged and worn weapons and tech used by previous generations of guardians.

The Morlay only awaken younger males to perform guardian service, keeping their women, children and older members of their race in hibernation. Unfortunately, this is precipitating a looming population crisis, as they are close to exhausting their stock of suitable young males. Therefore, the Morlay must consider whether to prematurely awaken their whole populace and settle here, as the chances of moving onward are slim, or to awaken a portion to breed and repopulate, but to continue to preserve the bulk of their population for a better world.

Morlay that are encountered in the Solar System are generally desperate and doing odd-jobs and dirty work to try to build a more secure financial foundation for their species. A minority are rebels who recognise their race's plight as futile, and have abandoned their service as guardians to live out more individualistic lives with selfish aims. Needless to say, these rebels are seen as deserters by the main Morlay populace.
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Old 08-15-2017, 01:30 AM   #57
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Default Re: [Game] Generate a military sci-fi setting

Answer 32

Mars has three main factions, oddly while internally they are almost in a state of cold war they do manage to usually present a united front on major issues relating to the planet as a whole. It is not unknown for them to run proxy wars in out of the way corners of the solar system.

The newest political power is the United Martian City States (UMCS), the terraforming process dotted the northern lowlands of Mars with many smaller craters. Once the initial bombardment was complete many smaller space bound groups began settling. This has resulted in the UMCS essentially being a collection of smaller independent states who only co-operate in the broadest sense. Bound together by a loose constitution, internal politics is the major focus of it's leaders. The sixty or so city states that make up the UMCS represent a wide range of political views and they are all willing to bend the rules as far as possible for their own advantage. It is worth noting that the UMCS is currently a very wealthy nation partially as a result of the resources distributed by the impacts of the terraforming strikes.

The Second and oldest faction on Mars is based around the Valles Marineris. The earliest major settlement on the planet they have been devoted to terraforming for the last two and a half centuries. Known as the Mariners this faction has been shaped by it's devotion to the dream of an Earth like Mars. This dedication has resulted in a unification of purpose that is called communist autocracy by their detractors. An industrial powerhouse that suffers from being slightly behind technology wise they are a leading manufacturer by volume of mechs and power suits. They are ruled by a council whose members hold office for exceedingly long terms. The current chairman is Gregory Yang a charismatic and younger man who is a born and engineered Martian.

The last of Mars' major factions is located within the crater at Hellas Planitia. This is mankind's largest single population center in the entire system. Some one hundred million people dwell in this mega city and operate under corporate governance. There are pronounced differences between the haves and the have not's with the poorest living in squalor while the elites want for nothing. The Incorporated Democratic Martian State is a political and commercial giant second only to the O'Neil belt as a center of political power. This crowded mega city is where a huge number of mercenary contracts are signed and supplied. The head quarters of the Ares network is based here and they have representatives in the highest level government committees.

Question 40
What was the last major conflict in the system?
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Old 08-15-2017, 07:40 AM   #58
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Default Re: [Game] Generate a military sci-fi setting

Answer 38:
The human habitats floating in space have a sense of brotherhood, but politically they're organized into a series of confederations. Most habitats have a strong local government, and then a trade and military alliance they belong to. External power is mostly in the hands of these alliances. The alliances very widely in size, both in distance and populace. Some have habitats spread across the system, though most have a concentrated core somewhere.

There are of course exceptions to this. There were bound to be, with so many habitats.

Question 41: What are earth's most notable uplifted animals? or does it not have any?
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Old 08-16-2017, 04:02 AM   #59
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Quote:
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The drive generates a lot of heat at high acceleration, so it really is only useful for combat maneuvers at 3g.
It occurs to me that ships might need a bit more oomph to get out of stronger planetary gravitational wells.

Quote:
Originally Posted by sir_pudding View Post
Q33: Tell us about a mercenary company that would be a suitable employer for the PCs.
In addition to (E)'s six groups, two more companies:

Further Mercenary Groups
Blue Stranger
Blue Stranger is the name of both this light cruiser and its mercenary company. This is not a standard combat mercenary group, however, their specialty being various forms of electronic warfare and cyberwarfare. They may operate alone or in conjunction with larger combat groups, acting as the EW/ECM/ELINT element for the group.

The ship itself is a decommissioned military comms/sensor support cruiser from the Imperial Danish Guard Hussar Fleet, which has been extensively retrofitted with advanced cyberwarfare systems and SQID countermeasures.

The company is commanded by a man calling himself Massimillio Salamandro, a suspected former hacker for the Mariner nation's military intelligence unit, Directorate R. Salamandro cannot leave the life support floatation chamber he lives in, as he has spliced the majority of his motor nerves into cybernetic controller ports for his EW server complex. The rest of the crew comprises flight operations, a remote EW unit, and three physical incursion squads for when remote ops are infeasible.



Brimstone RawDogs
The Brimstone RawDogs are high-tech version of a paratrooper squadron, specialising in orbital drop insertions and HALO operations. The have a permanent base in the clouds of Venus and deploy on a carrier/command vessel, carrying two combat drop-insertion shuttles and six fighter escorts.

The RawDogs pride themselves on their reckless bravado and blood-thirsty ferocity. Their initiation ceremony is to "dive a High20," doing an unprotected freefall dive through the upper Venusian atmosphere between the 70km and 50km altitude marks, equipped with a breather, goggles, wings and parachute, but no mask or flying suit. Members therefore all boast a similar, acid-scarred appearance- the scars of their fiery baptism burn away the marks of their previous life. For combat operations though, they will be more appropriately equipped, but their particular training means they are able to dive in with minimal equipment and sensor cross-section when necessary.

The squad's emblem is a bald, barechested soldier, armed with pistol and grenade in each hand, combat knife in his teeth, in a flying pose, surrounded by a comet's fiery halo.

Question 42
What level of cybernetics is available?
How common are complete cyborgs or even any kind of cybernetics?

Question 43
How common are AI's?
What level of intelligence do they have?
Do they run on large supercomputer installations or smaller mobile platforms?

Question 44
Which manufacturers are known as the best for different classes of weaponry and armour?
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Old 08-16-2017, 05:59 AM   #60
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Default Re: [Game] Generate a military sci-fi setting

Answer 42, Cybernetics
Cybernetics are very common, generally they are simple implants that do not replace any critical functions. In many cases using wearable tech is seen as the preferred option as it can be removed if it fails. SQIDs have caused a decline in heavy cybernetic augmentation among military personnel. Many civilians and by extension militia members have undergone complete cybernetic replacement, low-G health problems and the ability to survive in a vacuum provide enough reason for many to choose to give up their flesh bodies despite the risks relating to SQIDs.

Wear and tear as well as power requirements soon diminish the advantages gained by cybernetics in a military environment. Each individual who chooses to enhance themselves with cyberware must decide at what level they feel the risks begin to outweigh the benefits. A dedicated sniper might decide that "Damsin" telescopic eyes are a worthwhile investment. A vacuum combat operative may choose to have a full cybernetic replacement that features less benefits than a civilian model to attempt to mitigate the risks relating to SQID technologies.

Cybernetic replacement of damaged limbs and body parts is a common medical procedure as organic replacements can take several months to grow.

Among the alien races the same does not hold true, the Jardbwi for example are essentially a race of cyborgs who also incorporate silicon based organic biotechnology into themselves.

The Delta facility on Luna has perhaps the widest range of cybernetics available for sale and implantation.

Question 45
Aside from the splicing of alien DNA is there any other way a human might gain Psi abilities?
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