February, 2025
The Alliance dispatches its two Constructor class ships to the warp point to Alpha Cephi to begin assembling humanity’s first jump gate. One Constructor will remain in the solar system to assemble the gate on that side, while the other will jump through to Alpha Cephi with the assistance of an Explorer class starship to begin work there.
March, 2025
The Alliance finally completes R&D on the systems needed for its next-generation missile defense ship, the Hero class Escort Cruiser:
Hero class Escort Cruiser 7000 tons 658 Crew 1499 BP TCS 140 TH 560 EM 840
4000 km/s Armour 3-32 Shields 28-375 Sensors 44/0/0/0 Damage Control Rating 13 PPV 22
Annual Failure Rate: 130% IFR: 1.8% Maintenance Capacity 1402 MSP
Magazine 155
Gen Atomics MP Drive (7) Power 80 Efficiency 0.60 Signature 80 Armour 0 Exp 5%
Fuel Capacity 250,000 Litres Range 107.1 billion km (310 days at full power)
Republic DS Delta Class Shields (11) Total Fuel Cost 193 Litres per day
Triple 12cm PD Ultraviolet Laser Turret (1x3) Range 128,000km TS: 16000 km/s Power 12-12 RM 4 ROF 5 4 4 4 4 3 2 2 2 1 1
Gerard Systems Mk 2 PD Fire Con (1) Max Range: 128,000 km TS: 16000 km/s 92 84 77 69 61 53 45 37 30 22
Stellarator Fusion Reactor (SM) (1) Total Power Output 12 Armour 0 Exp 5%
Sprite AM Missile Launcher (5) Missile Size 1 Rate of Fire 10
Gerard Systems AM Missile Fire Control (1) Range 5.0m km Resolution 1
Sprite AMM (155) Speed: 24000 km/s End: 52.1 minutes Range: 75m km Warhead: 1 MR: 10 Size: 1
Gerard LG AM Active Sensor (1) GPS 224 Range 2.2m km Resolution 1
Cyberdyne Class A Thermal Sensor (1) Sensitivity 44 Detect Sig Strength 1000: 44m km
ECM 10
The Hero class is based on all of the lessons learned by the Alliance since the dawning of the trans-newtonian age, and reflects the Alliance’s growing concern about the Reich’s overwhelming focus on missile combat. The original design concept was very ambitious, including a maximum speed of 5,000 kps, a larger sensor suite, and heavier defenses. Unfortunately, the design team was forced to make several compromises to keep the new class within the maximum allowed tonnage, and this design was the result.
See the post entitled “The Reich Incursion”
May 9, 2026
The main Novaran Fleet arrives at the warp point to the Solar System. The fleet is composed of sixteen 7,850 ton cruisers, and twenty-two 5,000 ton destroyers. For now the Novarans seem content to sit at their assembly point just over a million kilometers from the warp point as their representatives work with the Reich officers to teach each other their languages. The fact that both know Russian helps, but it is still a time consuming effort.
Not long after the Novaran fleet arrives, the Alliance jump ship Drake arrives at the solar system side of the Russian warp point. Shortly thereafter Alliance warships begin transiting into the Novaran system and the Alliance makes contact with the Novarans.
Meanwhile, the USSR, which is reeling from its defeat in Novara and the recent disclosure of that defeat, resulting in the loss of the potential alliance with one of the two superpowers, finally gets some luck. The Russian exploration group has been painstakingly exploring the Psi Serpentis system, located on the far side of the Leningrad system (which is located through the solar system’s innermost warp point). The Leningrad system is an uninteresting binary system with only two planets, one of which is 11.5 billion kilometers from its primary, and thus relatively inaccessible. No resources were found on the innermost planet or its moon, but the Russians had performed a grav survey in the hopes of finding something beyond the system. Their hopes finally paid off. The Leningrad system contained only one additional warp point, leading to the Psi Serpentis system, which had three planets in the 3-4 colony cost range, and one moon in the 5-6 colony cost range. Russian geo survey units found several minor resource deposits, but this week they made a major find. Psi Serpentis II, Moon 6 was found to have deposits of eight different trans-newtonian minerals, in moderately large amounts. Even better, none of the deposits were present at less than 0.5 availability levels, and the highest, duranium, was present at 0.9 availability. This was the opportunity that the Russians had been looking for! A jump ship was immediately dispatched back to the home system to inform the political leadership of the find.
June 24, 2026
The Soviet jump ship bearing the news of the discovery in the Psi Serpentis system arrives at Earth and causes a stir at the Kremlin. The USSR has become increasingly isolated from the other nations as the import of their actions have sunk into the other nations. The Russians started a war of conquest against an alien race, which could have brought an alien fleet to the solar system to rampage through humanity’s far flung outposts. They could even have attacked Earth. While none of the other nations are willing to go to war over this situation, none of them are very happy with the Russians either.
The news that a vast new deposit of easily available resources is available is exactly what the Soviet Union needs. Plans are made for the exploitation of the new find as soon as possible.
July, 2026
The Alliance construction ship at the Alpha Cephi warp point finishes assembling humanity’s first jump gate. The jump gate on the far side of the warp point won’t be ready for almost two months, but the Alliance is well on its way to establishing the first two way link to another system. Almost immediately after the announcement of the gate’s completion the Alliance government is approached by the Ambassadors from the Japanese Empire and the USSR, inquiring as to the Alliance’s policy on allowing ships of other nations to transit through their jump gates. The Alliance government tells both Ambassadors that it is currently developing a policy, and that it will let them know as soon as they have come to a conclusion.
August 2026
The Reich officers and the Novarans in the Novaran system finally complete work on direct German to Novaran translation, eliminating the need for translating from German to Russian to Novaran, and back.
The Reich officers, at the direction of the Kaiserin, offer the Novarans what amounts to a Non-Aggression Treaty. The Novarans immediately agree.
The Indian government announces an agreement with the Soviet Union under which the Indians will purchase duranium from the Soviets. The Indian Republic has been suffering from a shortage of duranium lately, as mines have been transferred from their cometary outpost to the Gliese-754 system.
Late in the month the Alliance achieves full communications with the Novarans. The Alliance offers the Novarans a non-aggression pact as well, which the Novarans decline. The Novarans are becoming concerned about the multiplicity of human states, and the fact that none of the other human nations seem to be able to guarantee that the Soviets will not attack them again.
August 29, 2026
The second Alliance construction ship completes work on the jump gate on the far side of the Alpha Cephi warp point, giving Alliance ships two-way access to the Alpha Cephi system.
The Alliance immediately begins colonization efforts on Alpha Cephi IV, which the Alliance Senate votes to rename New Boston. The first shipment of infrastructure leaves the next day.
November, 2026
The Reich launches three jump gate construction ships, and immediately dispatches one to the Sol-Hamburg warp point to begin assembling a gate.
Later in the month the Japanese Empire completes work on its first jump ship, the Nagato. The Japanese ship, along with an escort of warships, is immediately dispatched to the Russian warp point to make contact with the Novarans.
December, 2026
The Alliance government, at the direction of the Senate, completes the formation of a new department, the Department of Colonial Affairs. This new cabinet level agency will coordinate all colonial activities, and make sure that the directives of the Senate and the President are followed on the extra-Solar colonies.
Late in the month the Alliance finally agrees to the Reich’s proposal for an international summit to discuss extra-solar exploration and the exploitation of new resources. The Japanese Empire quickly agrees, as does the Indian Republic. The Russians refuse to attend, and the African Union continues its self imposed isolation by ignoring the invitation to attend. The Kaiserin decides to invite the Novarans as well, in the hopes that including them will educate them about humanity, and possibly head off any future problems between the human nations and Novara. The summit is scheduled for June, 2027.
Intelligence Report, December 2026
Alliance
The Alliance Senate was the primary proponent of the alliance with the USSR, mostly as a means to legalize the outright seizure of entire solar systems and the warp points associated with them. The Alliance Senate has been under intense pressure from the various major industrial combines to secure new sources of vital resources, and the “exclusion plan”, as it was called, seemed to be the best way to secure unrestricted and exclusive access to any resources found by Alliance exploration teams. The situation within the Alliance is very complex, as the major industrial combines are seen by the government and the citizens as the Alliance’s primary strength, and their continued health and dominance is seen by most as a guarantee of the health and dominance of the Alliance. The industrial combines, in particular the heavy manufacturing corporations of North and South America, were the primary proponents of the colonization strategy for Mars, which has come under some criticism lately because of the strategy’s ultimate effect of turning Mars into a large “mining town” with only a limited number of employers and a distorted economy. When compared to the Reich colony on Venus, which has a much more balanced economy that includes a significant manufacturing capability, the Alliance Mars Colony appears anemic or unbalanced. Worse, the Alliance government has been slow to come to the realization that with all of the nuclear weapons on Earth, Mars and Venus might be the last refuges of the human race. Should this grim future come to pass, the Reich would have a significant advantage because of the balanced nature of their colony.
While the Senate has been grappling with the basic nature of the Mars colony, it has taken steps to ensure that this problem will be exported to the stars. Once again under pressure from the heavy manufacturing combines, the Senate has passed the Colonial Affairs Act, authorizing the creation of the Department of Colonial Affairs, and laying out the framework for the governance of any new extra-solar colonies. Even as the Mars colony is on the verge of gaining home rule and a place within the Alliance Senate as a full state, the Senate has ensured that the very scheme which created so many problems on Mars will be continued elsewhere.
The Alliance Navy has instituted two new construction programs over the last two years, the Hero class Escort Cruiser and the Orbital Defense Base. The Hero class is intended to counter the Reich’s perceived superiority in missile combat, while the ODB class is intended to balance the African Union’s numerous orbital bases. In addition, to improve their capabilities in the area of missile combat, the Alliance completed an ambitious research program aimed at improving all aspects of their missiles. The newly developed missiles were also intended to include the Alliance’s revolutionary ECM technology, however, initial design studies revealed that the new technology was too bulky to include on the Alliance’s Standard anti-ship missile. Only the Valkyrie planetary missiles were large enough to incorporate this technology, so the Alliance Navy has decided to accelerate its plan to build its next generation combatant. This new ship will be larger than the current battlecruisers, but may not be as large as the Reich’s Hessen class battleships, and will be a missile combatant utilizing the Alliance’s new Javelin class missiles. Prior to building this new class the Navy intends to complete work on more efficient reloading technology for the larger launchers to reduce their cycle times.
[attachment=1:216pveaa]Alliance MSL.gif[/attachment:216pveaa]
Once the development work is completed on the new missile launchers, the Alliance R&D resources will be turned towards development of the next generation of power and propulsion systems based on Tokamak fusion reactor technology. Beyond that massive undertaking, the Alliance’s current plans are to refine their jump drive technology, although that is several years down the road and may be postponed or accelerated depending on developments.
The Alliance’s survey efforts have been directly largely towards surveying the three systems beyond the Alpha Cephi system, the site of the Alliance’s first extra-solar colony. New Boston currently has a population of 310,000, and this total is expected to increase rapidly now that the jump gates are in place.
Although the Alliance’s focus has been largely on exploring the system’s connected to the Solar System and the Alpha Cephi system, the international situation is, as always, a major concern. The impending alliance with the USSR has been derailed by the Reich’s revelation of the existence of the Kingdom of Novara and the USSR’s war with that race. Regardless of the way that war started, which differs depending on which nation you listen to, the fact that the USSR concealed a potential threat to the human race and used the Alliance to perpetuate the concealment has thrown the Senate into confusion as rivals blame each other for their humiliation. While the possibility of a formal alliance with the USSR is now gone, there is no love for the Reich within the Alliance government, which most view as having acted out of self-interest and with the intent of embarrassing the Alliance government.
The Alliance government has accepted the Reich’s invitation to attend a summit in June, 2027. The summit has the goal of developing standards for interstellar exploration and exploitation that all nations can agree to, and has been nicknamed by the press the Interstellar Council, now that the Reich has proposed that the Novarans be invited to attend. The Alliance government had previously declined to attend the Reich’s summit, as its stance was simply that the Alpha Cephi system, and all other systems located through warp links located beyond Alpha Cephi, belonged to the Alliance. The Reich’s position was that while planets, moons, asteroids, and comets could be claimed by individual nations, entire systems and warp links could not, and should be freely traversable by all. While both nations have the same stated goal of reducing friction between nations and potential points of conflict, the Alliance feels that its position is the best way to eliminate destructive competition over the same resources. Further, the Alliance Navy has taken the position that the Reich’s position is unrealistic and would lead to conflict rather than reducing its possibility. The Alliance’s position has been weakened by the Reich’s revelation of the USSR’s irresponsible behavior, thus, the Alliance has agreed to the summit and is reconsidering its position on the system sovereignty question.
The Novarans continue to be problematic, as they have steadfastly refused to understand the fact that humanity has a multiplicity of sovereign governments, and that the non-aggression pact they signed with the Reich is not binding on all of the other human nations. Worse, Alliance negotiators recently discovered that the Novarans consider the treaty they signed with the Reich binding on the Russians, in spite of the fact that the Russians had no part in the formulation of the treaty. The Russians have been very reticent about their future plans and have been busily expanding their shipyards in their effort to rebuild their fleet. This situation has the potential to be very bad, and the Senate has been considering whether or not to inform the Reich of this potential complication.
The Reich
The Reich has focused on achieving interstellar capability over the last several years, and this focus will likely continue. The Reich Raumarine is currently undergoing a massive refit intended to improve its sensor and targeting capabilities, particularly in the area of anti-missile combat. There is an increasing pressure to divert shipyard resources towards civilian ships such as freighters and colony ships to support the Reich’s new interstellar empire, but for now military refit programs are dominating the shipyards.
The Reich’s R&D assets have been devoted to developing the new sensor systems now being refitted into
Raumarine ships. R&D facilities are currently focused on developing improved jump technology for inclusion within a new class of combat jump ship. The new ship was scheduled to be initiated before now, but planning came to a halt when initial design studies revealed the fact that a jump drive capable of transporting the proposed 16,000 ton heavy battleship design through a jump point would be larger than a Scharnhorst class missile frigate and correspondingly expensive and difficult to design. Rather than undertake such a project the Raumarine decided to continue research on more efficient jump drive technology, which promises to reduce the required tonnage by approximately a third, with a commensurate decrease in expense and time required for R&D. This will delay the introduction of the new heavy battleship design by at least six months and perhaps longer, but the savings in money and effort will be significant.
Even as the Reich is establishing its first extra-solar colony in the Hamburg system, the Venus colony has moved to the forefront of the government’s attention once again. The Venus colony has been undergoing a massive labor shortage as its industries have expanded over the last several years, and this labor shortage has come at a time when the Reich government has begun seriously considering the advantages of moving some of its R&D facilities off of Earth, both to work on separate projects and to protect them if war should break out on Earth. Unfortunately, even though the colony on Nue Berlin in the Hamburg system now boasts 2.35 million colonists, it will be some time before it will have enough workers available to man multiple research stations, therefore the Venus colony is the only reasonable alternative, in spite of its manpower shortage. Therefore, half of the Reich’s colony fleet has been diverted to increasing the Venus colony’s population, and once the population has been increased to the point where excess workers available freighters will be diverted to transport R&D stations to Venus to begin work on new areas of research independent of the efforts on Earth.
The Reich is preparing to host the planned international summit in June 2027. The Reich government is planning on pushing for acceptance of its plan for an international organization that would act as a register for extra-solar possessions, thus reducing the possibility of “Claim-jumping” or similar behavior. The Alliance and the USSR have opposed this position in the past, but with the USSR humiliated and the Alliance reconsidering its position, the Recih now hopes that its position will be accepted by the other nations.
USSR
The People’s Navy has not fully recovered in the two years since the conflict with the Novarans. The cruiser force is currently composed of eleven cruisers, only three of which are the new Mark IV’s. Only five of thirteen destroyers have been converted to the Mark II version, meaning that the bulk of the USSR’s reduced fleet is still the older classes that were demonstrated to be ineffective in the Novaran system. On the other hand, the USSR now boasts one hundred and twenty planetary missile launchers on the Earth, insuring the safety of the State from any possible Novaran counterattack.
The USSR’s freighter fleet is currently occupied transporting automated mines to the Psi Serpentis system, to exploit newly discovered resource deposits. Ultimately the USSR intends to colonize the system’s third planet as well.
The Japanese Empire
The Japanese Empire has watched with interest as the USSR was defeated and humiliated by the Novarans. The crippling of the USSR’s fleet has placed the Japanese in a much better position by making them the clear leader in any military comparison between the two governments.
The Imperial Navy is currently occupied by a refit program aimed at its Akagi class beam cruisers. This is a major refit replacing the older dual purpose 12 cm visible light laser turrets with a more advanced 2nd generation dual purpose 12 cm near ultraviolet light laser turret. The second generation turret has a fifty percent longer range and half the recharge time of the older system, and the refit includes a new tracking system designed to fully utilize the weapon’s capabilities. The newer turret requires more power and is larger, and the tracking system is significantly larger, so the Mark 3 cruiser requires an additional engine to meet the required fleet speed standard, making this design 700 tons larger than the Mark 2.
Imperial R&D resources are currently focused on improving the Empire’s mining industry, and once that project is complete they will be turned towards an ambitious plan to modernize the Empire’s missiles.
The Empire is the last nation, aside from the isolationist African Union, to achieve interstellar capability. This fact has given the general staff more than a little concern as there is the very real concern that all valuable real estate close to the solar system may already be occupied. Because of this fact the Empire has been a staunch supporter of the Reich’s position that system’s and warp lines cannot be claimed, and the Empire was one of the first nations to agree to the Reich’s proposed conference.
Indian Republic
The Indian Republic has endeavored to remain above the political squabbles of the other nations, largely because it has devoted most of its limited resources to developing its civil exploration, freight, and colonist transport fleets rather than its combat arms. The Republic deliberately chose the system beyond the solar system’s outermost warp point to exploit on the theory that the other nations would be less interested in the system that was the hardest to get to, and so far that point of view has been proved valid as the other nations have shown little interest in the Gliese-754 system.
The Indian colony in the Gliese-754 system has swollen to over one million people, and six mines have been emplaced on the planet, along with a mass driver to receive resource packets from the forty-two automated mines emplaced on a moon orbiting one of the system’s gas giants. These automated mines were transferred from the Republic’s outpost on The Comet, which has largely been abandoned at this point.
The Republic is focused on improving its colonies in the Gliese-754 system.
The African Union
The African Union continues to be isolated from the rest of the world. The Union has focused on improving its defenses, and now boasts twenty-three orbital bases and thirteen PDC’s of various types. The Union has not taken a stance in any of the various international controversies, and has not responded to the Reich’s invitation to attend the upcoming summit.
[attachment=0:216pveaa]2026 Stats.gif[/attachment:216pveaa]
