National Updates Comment Thread

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

Invasion is probably best canon for the Kafer Invasion fleets (there were 3),  Kafer Sourcebook has some seriously cool background info as well to help with the er mindset? half mindset? er Kaferishness.  Actually one of the secrets in the Sourcebook would work really well in an Aurora version of Kafers.  Plus they are really the implacable, almost impossible to understand foes harkening back to the Arachnoids  that you dealt with in the olden days.

I've just downloaded Invasion and the Kafer Sourcebook from DriveThruRPG so I'll read through them.

incidentally I loved what you did with the Eben,  so very much like the Eber,  even down to the colonising of their homeworld!

Eben was actually a random name, despite the similarity

[BwenGun]

One of the reasons a 40K Terran Empire equivalent is appealing is that I can create a large and powerful enemy that doesn't research (although your ruins idea is a good one). So while humans may be initially outclassed, they can begin to overcome the gap. Otherwise, if I make the starting gap too large, the humans may never catch up.

True, it's a bit of a balancing act to achieve but an interesting scenario to play out. Especially as even if Humanity can unite and throw them back internal politics will be much more interesting amongst the human races in a way that wouldn't be the case if the fight was against a foe that advanced and kept pace with humanity. After all if they don't advance, or don't advance quickly once a technological advantage of a significant amount has opened there will be room for complacency and politics to creep into decision making with the supposed victors seeking to have their own faction win the peace.

[illrede]

It wouldn't have been even remotely cost-effective to start building Forced Labor units there, I suppose.

[boggo2300]

Kafer aren't really what you'd call research giants either,  theres a fairly specific way they get pretty much all their tech advancement in the 2300 canon,  and it doesn't involve Kafer Labs!

Kafer warships are also more advanced as well as larger than any Human ones,  though they are still hidden even in GM info on their exact techs,  all I know is it's impossible to build any Kafer ship using the ship design rules in Star Cruiser (those rules are pretty much only usable for Humans)

[Feralkoala]

I would like to see a race based on the Shaa and their philosophy of the Praxis from Dread Empire's Fall

[TheRequimen]

My vote is Imperium first, Kafer second, Galactic Empire third.

Imperium-(chance of uniting humanity: high) An ancient, vast, powerful, yet stagnant and corrupt empire that seeks to totally annihilate all Xenos. A empire that has vast fleets at its disposal, with large numbers of strong warships. Some of those warships are highly advanced, beyond anything humanity has ever seen, at or beyond the limit of current theory, yet the retrograde empire is no longer able to produce, or even in some cases maintain or supply the somewhat small number of these ancient vessels. Ditto ground forces. I'm guessing the economy aspects of the empire be nominally vast, but inefficient and nearly crippled by the weight of maintaining the ever increasing burden of the empire.

Kafer- (chance of uniting humanity: high) I don't know much about the setting, but I vote for it second because it looks like it would be unique, and seems to be a fairly popular choice. Any threat that is hellbent on destroying humanity is always going to be interesting and highly entertaining.

Galactic Empire- (chance of uniting humanity: medium) I imagine they would be stronger than any single human faction, but not the whole. They would be a bit more advanced than humanity, and would have the advantage of a strong, centralized government, military, and economy. Humanity would have its hands full with this threat. I'm not sure if you would give this faction internal problems, perhaps some rebel alliance that humanity could link up with. Of course, a rebel alliance could allow for a stronger Empire, and a more interesting war. (Empire mauls humanity, takes large losses, rebellion starts, forcing the Empire to shift its focus. Humanity gets breathing space, and doubles down on defeating the Empire.)

Just some of my thoughts on what these, "endgame" threats could be.

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

My vote is Imperium first, Kafer second, Galactic Empire third.

Imperium-(chance of uniting humanity: high) An ancient, vast, powerful, yet stagnant and corrupt empire that seeks to totally annihilate all Xenos. A empire that has vast fleets at its disposal, with large numbers of strong warships. Some of those warships are highly advanced, beyond anything humanity has ever seen, at or beyond the limit of current theory, yet the retrograde empire is no longer able to produce, or even in some cases maintain or supply the somewhat small number of these ancient vessels. Ditto ground forces. I'm guessing the economy aspects of the empire be nominally vast, but inefficient and nearly crippled by the weight of maintaining the ever increasing burden of the empire.

Kafer- (chance of uniting humanity: high) I don't know much about the setting, but I vote for it second because it looks like it would be unique, and seems to be a fairly popular choice. Any threat that is hellbent on destroying humanity is always going to be interesting and highly entertaining.

Galactic Empire- (chance of uniting humanity: medium) I imagine they would be stronger than any single human faction, but not the whole. They would be a bit more advanced than humanity, and would have the advantage of a strong, centralized government, military, and economy. Humanity would have its hands full with this threat. I'm not sure if you would give this faction internal problems, perhaps some rebel alliance that humanity could link up with. Of course, a rebel alliance could allow for a stronger Empire, and a more interesting war. (Empire mauls humanity, takes large losses, rebellion starts, forcing the Empire to shift its focus. Humanity gets breathing space, and doubles down on defeating the Empire.)

Just some of my thoughts on what these, "endgame" threats could be.

I am currently leaning toward a similar priority list. The Imperium would make an ideal alien menace in this setting, although I am reading the Kafer sourcebooks at the moment so still chance to change my mind

[boggo2300]

Steve


Ylii



Interestingly TheRequimen almost everything you've written about the Imperium also applies to the Kafer,  well except the corrupt,  Kafer psychology is a bit to alien for that concept to work,  though the Kafer "Empire" IS very factionalised, (the only thing a Kafer leader trusts less than Aliens,  is another Kafer leader), which gives the same sort of effect, and Kafer are still capable of producing new, and even introducing new designs, but the procedure for that is kinda limiting,  I won't go into any further detail because if I convince Steve it would be major spoilerage!

[drejr]

One of the reasons a 40K Terran Empire equivalent is appealing is that I can create a large and powerful enemy that doesn't research (although your ruins idea is a good one). So while humans may be initially outclassed, they can begin to overcome the gap. Otherwise, if I make the starting gap too large, the humans may never catch up.

This idea is also very similar to the Vilani from the Traveller Interstellar Wars era.

[boggo2300]

Though by the stage the Vilani had stagnated technologically they were also not especially agressive

[Jakalo]

Imperium-(chance of uniting humanity: high) An ancient, vast, powerful, yet stagnant and corrupt empire that seeks to totally annihilate all Xenos. A empire that has vast fleets at its disposal, with large numbers of strong warships. Some of those warships are highly advanced, beyond anything humanity has ever seen, at or beyond the limit of current theory, yet the retrograde empire is no longer able to produce, or even in some cases maintain or supply the somewhat small number of these ancient vessels. Ditto ground forces. I'm guessing the economy aspects of the empire be nominally vast, but inefficient and nearly crippled by the weight of maintaining the ever increasing burden of the empire.

Actually Imperium does produce new warships. If it wasn't able to do so it would have perished long ago as its decline has been going on for thousands of years marred with constant conflict on all fronts. The problem is that knowledge to produce advanced machinery is confined to forge worlds or some hive worlds and there is almost no transfer of technology either due to envy between Tech Magos or because the act of production is more of a ritual than industrial production.

Imperium also has a kind of technological advances which is finding ruins (or STC  -standart template constructs). They are crazy about that and could be another reason for Imperium to go after Earth powers (as if they needed another one).

[Gyrfalcon]

Oh, they most certainly do, but one of the major themes from the Warhammer40K novels is that the technological level of the Imperium isn't anywhere near what it once was. STC warships such as an Ark Mechanicus deploy weapons such as black hole generators, chrono-cannons and vortex weapons that can suck the target into the Warp so they can have happy-fun times with the daemons.

It makes the slave-labor loaded macro-cannons, energy lances and even Nova cannons seem rather... simplistic after those weapons.

[BwenGun]

True enough, but it's often left ambiguous as to why that's the case. Part of it is due to highly localised manufacturing centres which can't or won't share that information as Jakalo said, but there are hints that another big part of it is due to Imperial Doctrine from on high and the Adeptus Mechanicus' habit of really hating to share the cool toys with the rest of the Imperium on the off chance that the Inquisition and others will take the opportunity to finally purge the Adeptus Mechanicus. Though the same can be said for the Space Marine Chapters who also tend to have a higher technological base (sometimes maintained since the Great Crusade) but tend to be conspicuously lacking when it comes to the spirit of sharing.

Of course one facet of that might not be politics so much as sheer cold blooded pragmatism. The Imperium gives the Navy and the Guard just enough tech to get the job mostly done, but never actually gives what they fully know because the chances of Guard or Navy units rebelling or becoming tainted by Chaos is always there and with more technological prowess that could make them a serious threat to the Imperium as a whole. Meaning that the Imperium really could have the capability to produce some of the older Crusade Era (and earlier) Warships but will only ever start putting them into production again over Mars if an enemy really starts pushing them back in a way that necessitates it. Which is unlikely to ever happen because the Imperium of Man is mind-bogglingly vast, able to absorb the loss of most of a sector with nothing more than some mild irritation.

[hubgbf]

As a fan of the rigellian's diary, why not the arachnid ?

A terran exploration ship has a malfunction and crash on a planet dominated by an arachnid hive mind.
The hive mind manage to retro engineer several key technology, and start expanding furiously. They could have a very high reproduction rate, a large range of colonisable planets, and a lot of productivity bonus. While unable to research, they would be able to retro engineer any captured technology very fast. This would be an incentive for the hive mind to hunt human ships, and planets.

Humanity has to unite to find and destroy all the arachnids before it's too late, but at first each power will hesitate, or try to use this threat to gain political avantages.

The arachnid will be a new faction, but it won't be too hard to manage like a huge WH40K imperium with hundred of worlds. It will also lead to a lot of roleplaying amongst earth factions. Some faction looking for revenge could also try to show the arachnid the path to their ennemy's most valuable world. Or desesperate ones can try to lure the arachnid fleet toward one of their neighbours which is avoiding to fight the arachnids, perhaps waiting to grab some chunks of the attacked terran power?

It could also be a recurrent threat : even after the eradication of their homeworld, who knows if an arachnid colonization fleet is not looking for a new home before expanding and coming back for revenge? Who will pay for the patrol fleet ? How long ?

If you like WH40K, there is tyranids too.

[JacenHan]

Stargate has a lot of aliens to draw inspiration from. The Ori or Goa'uld would probably be best, given that both the Wraith and the Replicators aren't really supported very well by Aurora's system.