OOC: So far we have 4 Major Nation Leaders selected and 7 Advisors that have signed up to take part in this game! ( Ongoing requests to join for advisors on the discord linked in OP ). All nations already have started plotting and planning their strategies and first moves in private channels.

With the game created here we have the overview of the starting policy choices from the nations:

( Prestige is a sort of relationship score with Federation of Nations )

That results in the following values:


Starting Military Forces are heavily weighted in favor of the protectionist Russian Federation:
The Russian Federation: 29 Regiments: 16 Garrison, 11 Infantry, 2 Armor ( +2 Invasion Fleets )
United Socialist American Republic: 15 Regiments: 8 Garrison, 5 Infantry, 2 Armor ( + 5 Invasion Fleets )
New European Union/Eurasian Union: 16 Regiments: 8 Garrison, 6 Infantry, 2 Armor ( +4 Invasion Fleets )
Pacific Commonwealth of Nations: 16 Regiments: 8 Garrison, 6 Infantry, 2 Armor ( +4 Invasion Fleets )

*Invasion fleets are a houserule limit to overseas troop movement.



The mineral distribution on Earth:


Moving on to take a look at nations and their background history in more detail shortly...

Hmm, that does give me an idea for my 1890 game... some sort of freebooter/buccaneer/privateer/pirate faction based on Pallas or Vesta.

I do remember reading some of that years ago, someone must have linked it here when it was only 1-2 years old.

Why Pallas and not Ceres? Because of the orbital inclination?

Wish I had time to participate but alas, I don't want to commit and then have to flake out in a month. Good luck!

Thanks!

Everyone is also welcome to join the discord either just to follow setup, chat and player debates, questions + RP more closely ( in case not all players post RP in all forums where I crosspost ), or after the 4 main players are selected you can also ask for a minor role to get involved with as much or as little time as you want. Currently most signed up are actually neither from these forums nor especially experienced Aurora 4x veterans so there will be a need for skilled advisors and ship designers for sure down the line!

I'll be announcing the 4 main roles on Friday so if anyone is still on the fence make your signup within the next 24 hours for it to be considered.

March 3:ed 2041, Colonel Silva, Astro Environment lab of VLT Atacama Desert, Chile
Julia Silva was on her fifth cup of coffee, The report was due tomorrow and she would personally fly to the Federation of Nations Headquarters in Dubai to deliver the speech in front of the leaders of the major nations that had gathered for the Peace and Prosperity Conference. Her Keynote was one of the few that was not exclusively about the new Trans-Newtonian (TN) materials research and their amazing properties, but it was still thanks to them that her team's scientific results had been possible to reach. Her thoughts floated away back to how the twist of faith had brought her here. Only a few years ago she was living a miserable life on the streets barely able to find food for the day, and now an established scientist doing important research for the FoN in a promising field in one of the few surviving research facilities in South America.  For the last 18 months she had been heading research on defining the need of human long term settlement on other bodies then Earth, something that the last years had gone from being almost impossible to almost something your average joe would be able to afford as soon as the shipyards and colony ships being planned would be finished. For this purpose she could wish for no better site than the Atacama Desert. Remote and devoid of life enough for studying settlement on say Mars or the Moon, while equipped with upgraded telescopes and sensors sensitive enough to study geography on the moons of Jupiter. In fact the Atacama desert had been one of the old space organizations top sites for field tests of rovers and equipment.



Longer term impacts on everything from atmospheric and oxygen requirements to gravity itself were now also possible to investigate thanks to some very exotic new TN technology. Julia and her team had worked closely with privately funded experts and companies from across the world that focused on testing and development of new duranium/mercassium based infrastructure habitat modules. Part of their mutual research was also about making such modules as light, compact and standardized as possible while still being flexible enough to be of maximum use in a wide variation of temperature and atmospheric pressures. She paused to watch the beautiful clear night sky overhead, so clear the milkyway could be seen by the naked eye. It was really something special out here with no artificial lights or cities for miles. A single light moved gracefully across the sky. Clearly one of the Orbital Shipyards under construction that would soon get to work cranking out new TN Spaceships to carry the modules she helped develop all over the solar system. What a magnificent thought it was indeed.

Report of Colony Suitability Survey of SOL System.
Summary:
In SOL system there are 8 bodies except Earth of types and gravity that can somewhat support human life if enough infrastructure is delivered to provide protection from temperature and provide a suitable atmosphere.

The Environmental Tolerances for Human Colonization of Space as established by this study:
Gravity between 0.1 and 1.9 times Earths.
Oxygen pressure between 0.1 and 0.3 times Earth's total atmosphere (Earth has 0.2)
Average Surface Temperature between -10 and +38 degree Celsius
Total Atmospheric Pressure between 0.33 and 4 times that of Earths.
Water availability of between 20% and 95%

All of the 8 bodies lack a breathable atmosphere and thus have 2.0 as minimum colony cost even if suitable temperature has a cost below this (the highest cost is always used).

They were divided into two main categories:

Feasible in near future:
Luna ( The moon ) 2.00 infrastructure units / 10000 inhabitants
has a colony cost of 0.33 based on -18 degrees C average surface temperature.
has a colony cost of 2.00 based on lack of Atmosphere
has a colony cost of 2.00 based on no water being available
has a capacity for 890 million population based on available land area

Mars 2.12 infrastructure units / 10000 inhabitants
has a colony cost of 2.12 based on -61 degrees C average surface temperature
has a colony cost of 2.00 based on lack of Atmosphere
has a colony cost of 1.00 based on 10% water being available (although frozen)
has a capacity for 3410 million based on available land area

Feasible longer term:
Mercury 3.21 infrastructure units / 10000 inhabitants
has a colony cost of 3.22 based on 424 degrees C average surface temperature
has a colony cost of 2.00 based on lack of Atmosphere
has a colony cost of 2.00 based on no water being available
has a capacity for 351 million based on available land area
 
Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto (4 largest moons of Jupiter) 6.30 infrastructure units / 10000 inhabitants
has a colony costs of 6.30 based on -161 degrees C average surface temperature
has a colony costs of 2.00 based on lack of Atmosphere
has a colony costs of 2.00 based on no water being available
has capacities for between 726 to 2047 million based on available land areas

Titan (largest moon of Saturn) 6.97 infrastructure units / 10000 inhabitants
has a colony cost of 6.97 based on -177 degrees C average surface temperature
has a colony cost of 2.00 based on lack of Atmosphere
has a colony cost of 2.00 based on no water being available
has a capacity for 1958 million based on available land area
   
There was actually one more potential body if massive investments are made, but Julia didn’t even mention it in the report more than in a brief passing as it seemed all but impossible to terraform or settle due to the extreme climate:

Venus 25.00 infrastructure units / 10000 inhabitants
has a colony cost of 24.53 based on 627 degrees C average surface temperature
has a colony cost of 25.00 based on crushing Atmospheric pressure
has a colony cost of 2.00 based on no water being available
has a capacity for 10805 million based on available land area

There were also massive numbers of smaller bodies that would be possible to colonize using specialized low gravity (LG) infrastructure that would need to be developed, and which would be probably at least twice as expensive as the regular one that they were working on. All of these had vastly lower population capacity than the larger moons and bodies with only Ceres and some of Saturn's moons having more than 50 million capacity while still not being so far from the sun as to being prohibitively cold.

Where humanity and the larger nations did choose to expand out in the solar system would of course also depend just as much on the availability of these precious TN resources as it did on habitability. She had worked hard to solve half of the puzzle she could, and if the report tomorrow was well received then who knows, maybe her dream of helping survey the planets could one day come true…