Hello!!!
This is me starting up a thread on my new campaign... I'm currently running a test version of that campaign and I do have the back story for it ready. I will wait for Steve to release his version 6.40 and perhaps wait and see so there are no major bugs in it. After that I'm going to start this rather massive campaign. It will start with nine separate faction and will most likely grow as the game limp along. I will warn anyone that it will become a very long game and I will not be able to present it all in detail. I have not really decided on a format yet either, it all depend in how much spare time I will have to write my story. But, without writing the story this game will not be very fun.
I'm not going to make this into a sort of community game, but suggestions on actions you think are reasonable or fun for factions to take can be welcome given the information you are all give during the presentation of the story here.
So... let's jump to my little back-story.
Into the Stars!World historyIn the early 21st century there was a continuing and increasing friction between the dominated christian but secular nations and the hard Islamist and fundamentalist factions and states.
2019Israel made a preemptive strike against Iran just ours after they tested their first nuclear weapon.
In secret Israel and USA had developed and deployed anti ballistic satellites in space and as soon as Iran made their first nuclear tests Israel launched a heavy strike with their air-force and special forces. Through precise intelligence gathering prior to the attack all of the installations for creating nuclear weapons in Iran were more or less totally wiped out within a few days of air-raids.
There was a huge outcry in the world but no immediate action was taken by any of the major nations. The actions by Israel was backed by the US and UK on the political arena, even if only cautiously.
The aftermath of this aggression just fueled the Islamic world even more and a huge wave of terrorist attacks was the result. The majority of these attacks were directed at Israel and the US, but even Europe and to a lesser degree Russia and China received some incidents. All whom the Islamic factions felt had not backed them up was targeted.
2021-28A huge economic crisis was now a fact in the US when the political parties was landlocked in the decision of raising their dept ceiling and as a result the country was forced to start restructure their economy, the main reason was lack of faith in US treasury bills in the surrounding world. This led to a nearly 20 year long mild depression and would see the US foreign politics become less expansive (influential) as a result when the protectionist forces took over.
The crisis in the US obviously had a huge effect on the world economy that also took a nosedive, but by 2023 most of the countries had started their recovery and a new economic model had replaced the old dollar as a world reserve currency.
In the wake of the deep world recession in 2021-2023 the Islamic factions in the Arab peninsula and middle east had overthrown the dictatorships or emerging democratic nations, this was an aftermath of the attack on Iran. Most of the power and influence was now in the hands of influential Iranian religious leaders whom was viewed as heroes and martyrs by the new political powers in the region.
During this time a coalition between Israel, US and UK continued to attack potential installations in the Islamist controlled areas to thwart their tries of acquiring nuclear weapons. All NATO forces was withdrawn to bases surrounding the areas controlled by Iran and it's satellite states.
Most of these actions were done while countries such as Russia and China rhetorically protested, but overall they ignored the situation and allowed the attacks.
In 2028 there was an official cease fire between Iran and the Israel, US, UK coalition. Iran agreed to let UN inspectors conduct investigations into their nuclear program and dismantle it.
2031South American nations and mainly Brazil had started economic aid to the US, mainly in favorable trade agreements in trade for military and other technology. By the end of the 2030th US had started to recover from its depression.
UK withdrew from the European Union due to economic and political problems, but it was also fueled by UK's rather hostile foreign politics.
2032-35Civil unrest was sparked in Russia after a huge corruption scandal that spread like a wildfire on the internet.
This soon led to an armed conflict with national Russian military units on both sides. China more or less openly supported the nationalistic forces while EU aggressively supported the new “Democratic Alliance Party” (DAP) who officially formed in May 2032 and who initially operated from Warsaw. China accused EU for conspiring against Russia for harboring terrorists on their soil.
By 2033 the conflict had escalated into a war between EU and China with Russia caught in the middle. Combat actions had so far been contained to within Russia or in some cases to former soviet nations borders. But in June 2033 a Chinese submarine fired on a French Aircraft carrier that sank and killed nearly 800 French sailors. This sparked an outrage in Europe as well as in the US. Although US citizen was mostly in favor of military action the current depression and political power in the US was not. They would not enter into a conflict unless they were attacked, but they would support Europe with intelligence and economical and moral support. This obviously made the European Union immediately break of their ties with the NATO pact, which they now saw as useless.
By the end of 2033 a huge air and naval campaign by the European Union had completely broken the technologically inferior Chinese/Russian alliance. In the winter of 2034 EU and DAP had militarily and morally beaten the Russian nationalistic forces.
China had to see themselves beaten and a peace treaty was signed in February of 2035 where DAP was given control of all the former Russian territories.
2041In 2041 a team of scientists in England recovered a piece of technology that impacted earth and landed in the northern part of Scotland.
They were very excited when it turned out to be some form of sensor probe, more or less intact and operable. It seemed to be very old and advanced beyond human comprehension, it was also made by materials completely unknown to them.
It took about six years of secret studies to just understand the material it were made of and the basics of how the electronics worked.
2042Information about the probed leaked out to a few other countries intelligence agencies. The US approached Great Britain to get access to the device, but were met with a cold hand. The British had no intention to share in this until they analyzed it for themselves.
2044A group of scientists in the British research organization leaked most of the data and research to the internet which turned in to a storm of astonishment and awe by the world. It was, after all, proof that humans was not alone in the Universe.
Some obviously refused to believe what is was and called it a hoax or conspiracy, some believed that an alien invasion was imminent. Obviously both of these extremes were wrong. Scientific research eventually showed that the probe was nearly 36000 years old, so there were nothing for humanity to worry about, at least for now.
There was, however, a huge pressure for Britain to release the devise to the wider scientific community and a year later scientist from all over the world were invited to join the studies in London. A huge research and education center quickly developed outside of London. Within just ten years nearly 20% of the Earths scientific community lived and worked in London. The research practically affected all scientific and engineering fields and huge leaps in advancement was made in electronics, biology, astrophysics and material engineering.
2054By now every major nation was rushing to start their own space program. The countries in the lead was of curse UK closely followed by their close partner US. After them there were China and Russia but also countries such as Brazil, Japan, Germany and France was not far behind.
2063A joint US/UK program constructed the first naval space yard and started the construction of the Voyager class survey vessel.
2065USS Voyager was launched and with the HMS Newton only a few month left before launching. By now China, Brazil, Russia, Germany and France all had constructed their first Naval Yard in space. The UK had also started production on their own independent yard.
Even Japan and India had now developed the means to launch orbital space crafts en mass and had now also started construction of their first naval yard in space.
House rulesIndustrial efficiencyIndustrial production can only be changed by 5% (per project) either at the end of the project or at the start of each year.
New projects can always be started by applying a maximum of 5% to them and there are at least one project with 10% or more of industry dedicated to it.
Any production over this 5% will go into the industrial waste pool who can be reduced by 5% each year by apply it to any current project and add up to 5% to any number of new projects.
New industry that are deployed to a planets without any previous industry can have its project distribution set in any combination, but once decided follow the same rules as any other planet.
Construction engineers is a special case and is not affected by these rules unless they are on a planet with other industry.
Industrial projects must be long term, but any project at 5% is more or less always possible and available to do. There will never be any industrial production waste if you have twenty projects running at the same time. Although, it is wasteful in and of itself to have too many projects.
Research efficiencyLabs will always be dedicated to a specific field, labs can be moved from one field to another but for every two labs moved one lab must be destroyed.
After each research project is finished all the labs must be equally divided among two new different projects. If no researcher is available 1/3 (rounded up) of one of the halves is destroyed and the rest applied to any projects in the same field.
At the start of each year 10% (rounded up) of the labs may be moved from one project to another, within the same research category.
This way you can never concentrate research into one area and research becomes a long term strategy.
EconomyIn order to reduce the effectiveness of storing wealth 10% of a countries wealth is eroded from their total each year, this will also include negative wealth but will instead be +5% negative wealth to make it even worse.
National GuardEvery 25 million population will give a world 1 Garrison brigade (National Guards) unit. This unit may not be moved and these brigades will be adjusted up or down based on how much population a colony or world has. After a war and losses to such garrisons they will re-spawn one new brigade each year until it has one per 25 million again.
ColonizationI will go with a gravitational range for colonization at only 0.4 points. That means no colonization of Mars for example and the only planet in Sol that we can colonize without underground infrastructure will be Venus, not the best planet to colonize though. My reason for this is that I don't think it is realistic for human to colonize planets like Mars in any meaningful way due to low gravity, at least without some new science that will offset the low gravity effect on our bodies. There is no problem with limited colonization, but I can't see families raised in such places.
Missile DesignSince distances is so huge and all missiles need communications with fire-control all missiles that are suppose to be guided need an EM passive sensor equal to EM sensitivity technology in million km per 0.1MSP of EM in a missile. So if a faction has an EM technology of 6 and they want to fire a guided missile at a range of 18m km that missile need a guidance module of 0.3 MSP of EM electronics. This will represent all the necessary guidance and communication electronics needed to give instruction to a missile at huge distances. The electronic and sensor equipment can also be used to home in on large EM signatures as a bonus.
Ship to Ship communicationsIn order for one ship to communicate with another ship and transfer large amounts of data over secure data-links they will need very advanced and sensitive communication devices.
Civilian "Communication and Navigation" sensors are normally between 0.1-0.5HS resolution 100 but can be up to a maximum of 1HS (C-class NavCom electronics).This sensor is deemed unsecured and can easily be tapped into and listened to by sensitive military equipment. In general the EM sensitivity of both scanner and listening device decide at what ranges one can intercept signals from a civilian ship.
Military ships can use "Communication and Navigation" sensors (M-class NavCom electronics) in sizes from 0.1HS and up. Smaller crafts with limited capacity can use as small as 0.1 HS sensors but these are limited to very short ranges, they also lack from good EM recievers. Resolution 1 communication sensor is deemed as secure and will be almost impossible to tap into. The range of these communication devises are much shorter than civilian sensors.
The receiver antenna are the highest of either the strength of the NavCom sensor or the ships EM value.
Civilian stations exist where there is at least 10.000 population and has a sensitivity of one level of DSTS, ans a sender strength of 1/10 of that.
Military stations equal the value of any DSTS but the sensitivity is half and the strength is 1/10.
C-Class NavCom Electronics
The range is NavCom strength * NavCom sensitivity * receiver EM value (or NavCom strength)
M-Class NavCom Electronics
The range is NavCom strength * NavCom sensitivity * receiver EM value (or NavCom strength) / 10
If two ships or station need to communicate they need a double direction connection which can only be made by the one with the weakest link.
Ex.1
A civilian ship has a 0.5HS NavCom with a strength of 6 and sensitivity of 6 which is a sending range of 36 million km. A station in the system has sensitivity 250 and sender strength 25 which is a sending range of 6.25 billion km. The ship can send 36m km and the station has a sensitivity of 250 so can receive that transmission at 9 billion km. The ship can receive a transmission with its sensitivity of 6 at over 36 billion km.
As you can see, even at low technology a normal civilian ship will be able to communicate with any population in the system at 9 billion km.
Ex.2
A Destroyer with an 0.5HS M-class NavCom at strength 6 and an EM of 18 can have a full datalink with its surveillance craft that has a 0.2HS NavCom at strength 2.4 and an EM of 6 at...
Destroyer sending: 22m km
Scout sending: 26m km
So their maximum distance for full communication is 22m km.
Graviton communication arrays can be sent through graviton field jump points and gates can amplify signals. Although all signals amplified through a gate is unsecured, thus military communication between star systems is not possible, but civilian communication is.
In order for one ship to provide targeting data to another ship (active spotting) they must have a secure data-link with the ship firing a missile. This will normally not be a huge problem, but there might be instances where it is. Links may bounce between ships any number of times. So a high EM ship in a group can usually share incoming data from a remote scout.
In general ships MUST have double direction communication with their command structure to function properly, it is more involved than just receiving targeting information, normally there is need for feedback or connections might break or become corrupted. There are no way for the sender to know if information is actually being successfully received and so forth, often systems need double directed connection to even function properly since they both rely on information from each other.
Any operation outside proper command and control connections should be in special cases only.
An important note is that this form of communication is directed communication, not a broadcast like radio waves. In order for communication to initiate both parties must know the others location. Either through a transponder, active sensor coverage or an active data-link. If a ship looses the data-link it must somehow be spotted through an active scanning or by turning on their transponder. Turning on a transponder will reveal that ship to anyone in that system, although it does not say anything about what ship it is if it is a military ship.
NavComs may not be used to target enemies in combat with the exception of fighters. I will allow it on fighters for the sake of making them somewhat more effective with space preservation.
This is a rule I have introduced to make communications more interesting in the narrative of ship combat. I might also introduce some limited form of electronic warfare at a later stage.
Sensor EquipmentActive sensors in this universe are really power hungry components and they will require special power plants to operate. To simulate that sensors should not increase in a linear fashion a sensor will need as much power as its active strength divided by 20 times the components size. So a 1HS strength 10 active sensor will require 0.5 power to operate while a 2HS strength 20 active sensor will require 2 power to operate. If power on a ship is destroyed sensors will shut down, easy enough to account for in a campaign where I as the player control all sides.
Civilian and commercial ships obviously don't need any power plants for their "Communication and Navigation" sensors. Their basic power generators is enough for these small sensors to work. Military ships on the other hand will need power to all their sensor equipment.
Fire-controls also have sort of an active part, but they are so concentrated in a specific area that the power they need don't have to be taken from huge power plants.
This means that active sensor range are going to be less overall and will encourage ships to spread out more to cover a larger area in a more cost efficient way. Smaller ships are forced to carry smaller sensors suites than what larger vessels can.
It is also going to be allot more sensible to use more and different resolution scanner for range purposes than one single large lower resolution sensor. Say that you have a large Destroyer class ship who carries a resolution 1, 5, 20, 60, 120 resolution sensors all at size 3 with active technology of 12 these sensors will require a total power of 7.4. If you just wanted to use say a size 9 resolution 20 sensor instead of the three 20, 60, 120 you would need to provide 51 power... pretty insane.... so sensors will tend to be rather small. Dedicated sensor ships will be very expensive and rare and very difficult to refit and upgrade, but technologically advanced and powerful factions will be able to build them.
I can see that active sensor technology will overall make sensors smaller while better power technology will make larger sensors more economical while the sensitivity will primarily increase the range of sensors. If you look at how ships are refitted you will try to fit a new sensor that draw the same power as before so an increase in active technology will make that same sensor smaller for the same coverage, space that you now can use for something else, or of course make the scanners bigger but them you also need more power. A change in sensitivity technology will simply increase the range for the same size and power usage of a sensor.
Likewise will DSTS be equally difficult to build. A level 1 DSTS can be moved and have no restrictions. It in order to build more they must be build on site with local industry and for each level you need to build twice the amount of DSTS to increase a level. The rest will just be destroyed to resemble the fact that higher levels really require very sofisticated and delicate equipment to scan in deep space. Level 2 will need 4 DSTS to be built, level 3 need 9 DSTS to be built, level 4 need 16 DSTS to be built while level 5 will need 25 DSTS to be built.
Missile Launch RatesWhen looking at the restrictions on missile launch rates from a reality perspective it is not realistic to assume that missiles can be launched indiscriminately without effecting each other. It also is not realistic to assume that several NUCLEAR missiles can impact a ship at approximately the same time without simply destroying each other. Therefore missiles will need at least some distance between them in order to not interfere with each other at impact. The actual launch mechanism is not a big deal since missiles could most probably be programmed to fall in line and keep a certain distance, most missiles will after all spend a rather high amount of time in space. The irony is that the faster a missiles is or the more powerful they are the further distance they have to be from each other so they don't destroy each other on impacting the same target. So, the effect is that the larger the nuke and the faster a missile is the further distance they need to travel from each other but for practical purposes the rate at which missiles can hit a ship in a single 5 second turn will mostly be decided by the size of the ship. To make this easy one may not fire more missiles at the same targets in one 5sec turn than five missiles per square root of a ships mass divided by 10 and then divided by four (rounded down). I will use following list as a reference to make this very easy for myself...
500 ton or less = 1 missile
1000 ton = 2 missiles
1500 ton = 3 missiles
2500 ton = 4 missiles
4000 ton = 5 missiles
7000 ton = 6 missiles
12000 ton = 8 missiles
16000 ton = 10 missiles
36000 ton = 15 missiles
64000 ton = 20 missiles
100000 ton = 25 missiles
150000 ton = 30 missiles
etc...
This is the number of missiles allowed to be fired from a single location against one single ship. Different ships in the same spot is treated as two different targets since ships in the same spot can easily be hundreds if not thousands of km apart. This will also make CIWS and armouring missiles more important as a side effect.
I should also note that the above "limitations" are as much doctrinal as they are physical limitations, the rule can be broke if the situation demands it.
Starting nations and close allied partnersThe population that each faction has is not the "actual" population of that faction (including alliance/supporters) but the portion of that faction population cited are those that are educated or wealthy enough to contribute in any meaningful way to space exploration. People that are too poor and/or uneducated will simply not be counted. Therefore countries such as China and India will have much fewer population than they actual does. Only about 2.5 billion of a total of 8 billion people on Earth will be represented as being available to contribute to space exploration. People might be added as the game progress and as wealth and education are distributed to the Earths population, or perhaps the reverse if that happens.
All nations start with the following basic technologies (in addition to some faction specific ones as well)Trans-Newtonian Technology
Replacement Battalion
Garrison Battalion
Mobile Infantry Battalion
Assault Infantry Battalion
Brigade Headquarters
Divisional Headquarters
Cargo Handling Systems
Engineering Sections (down to fighter sections)
Magazine Ejection System – 70%
Missile Launcher Miniaturization (all)
Gauss Cannon Launch Velocity 1
Gauss Cannon Fire Rate 1
10cm Laser Focal size
Infrared Laser
Duranium Armour
Pressurized Water Reactor
Power settings up to x2
Active Grav Sensor 10
Beam Fire-control Range 10.000
Beam Fire-control Speed Rating 1250km/s
Geological Survey Sensor