A Sea of Stars
The year is 2674, and humanity has spread itself across the stars, stretching themselves across light-years and onto hundreds of planets. Humanity flourishes in a golden age of technology, with uncounted trillions of men and women living their lives in the greatest era of human history. Robots serve humanity in ways never before thought possible, managing the hardest and least desirable tasks with impressive efficiency, freeing massive swathes of humanity to innovate, create, and pursue happiness in all its forms. Medical technology has progressed in leaps and bounds, with humans able to live for centuries, given favorable conditions. Culture develops at a staggering pace, with communication and exchange of ideas possible through revolutions in communications technology. A unified government controls Space, with its borders expanding slowly, year by year, waves of humanity radiating from Sol, and the tiny blue speck of humanity’s origins. The last century has been one of peace, and with that peace came a very welcome massive reduction in military size and spending.
This progress has not come without a price: a century and a half ago, self-improving, self-replicating machines waged terrible, incomprehensible war on their creators. The causes of the Uprising are still unknown, but Humanity bears the scars to this day, with the images of whole planets being destroyed etched into the collective consciousness still. Dozens of wars have been fought over ideology, race, creed, planetary independence, etc., and though Humanity has stayed united through all the tribulations, and have been blessed with peace for the last century, the political upheavals have drastically changed the government, for better and worse. Perhaps the greatest tragedy is the solitude of Humanity: throughout all the Age of Expansion, the human race has yearned to find companionship in the universe, and to this day has found none.
In these times of peace, the brand new 4th Fleet makes its way from the shipyards of Sol to the Corewards edge of Human space, on a mission to link up with territorial elements and help defend commerce from an increase in pirate activity. You will play as one of the officers of this fleet, be you a veteran or a fresh recruit, you will have a great deal of power and responsibility in your specific role to command the fleet and make a better galaxy for Humanity.
Setting
[The setting for the game is fairly soft sci-fi, so try to bear that in mind as I try to handwave science away.]
Government
The Sol Republic has been the ruling establishment of Humanity for over six centuries, tracing its origins directly back to the Earth Unification Treaty in 2031, the Sol Republic is a constitutional democracy characterized by free markets and a strong focus on quaternary industry. The economic and social policy favors capitalism and personal liberties, with the Parliament having direct control over international policy and the military. The Sol Republic believes in personal liberty in all things, and as such attempts to stay out of the lives of its people as much as possible, therefore it does not provide many of the services that other nations do, [police, healthcare, transportation etc.], and as such taxes them appropriately.
Spacefaring Technology:
Spacefaring technology, being a new and integral field of engineering development has obviously seen the most impressive progress in the last few centuries. Faster-than-light travel is possible, practical and free of time-altering effects thanks to developments during the early expansionist period, with ships able to move at anywhere from one to four light-years per hour, depending on the engines and the mass of the ship. Hyperspace engines are massive and highly energy-inefficient, and therefore are not viable on small ships, with interstellar travel for the masses done by huge transports, akin to modern ferries. High-impulse engines with inertial sinks make piloting craft easy for the layman, and high-speed travel within systems is safe and convenient. Spacefaring vessels have been becoming both bigger and smaller, with private corvettes being no bigger than a yacht, and giant superfreighters dwarfing even military battleships for interplanetary trade. Interplanetary public transportation is easily accessible, and space elevators make entering and leaving the atmosphere easy. Humans are no longer constrained by suits when in zero gravity, having adapted with the help of medical science to be very well-suited to weightlessness. Artificial gravity without the use of linear acceleration or centrifugal force has not been developed, and changing effective gravity is something experienced spacers get used to. With the discovery of non-orientable wormholes, antimatter is easy to come by, and fuels most of the power needs of Humanity.
Medical: Medical technology is second only to space travel in its progress in the last centuries. Old age has become very rare, with the natural cap on human life expectancy well over 200 years, with most people living healthy and youthful until dying by some external means. Diseases are eliminated every day, with the bevy of vaccinations given to newborns increasing in scope and potency every year. The last true pandemic was decades ago, though medical science is still wary of the constant evolution of undiscovered diseases on distant planets. Trauma surgery has become incredibly sophisticated, with tanks of cloned organs at the ready to save lives, and clone replacements for lost body parts at the ready. Medical science has been fighting an uphill struggle of trying to create new clone body parts that are significantly better than the original without user difficulties or full-on body rejection, but progress is being made. Many religious people see this practice as against god’s design, and as such have been fighting the advances tooth and nail. Populations of settlements are always fixed by governments: seeing as death is much much slower now, and humans have not become any less procreative, certificates for childbirth are in great demand, and are a major source of government revenue.
Communications:
Instantaneous communication has existed for the last century, with it being perfected recently. This dramatic upgrade from lightspeed communication has made humanity even more interconnected than it was when it only inhabited Earth. Almost every human in Settled Space is connected on the multi-net, a dramatic, expanded internet, and the Net permeates every part of everyday life. Holographic technology has been perfected, and has revolutionised entertainment, and virtual reality is on the return, though still under the same stigma and scrutiny that all invasive, mind-altering technology is after the AI War.
Entertainment:Holographic technology has enhanced the way people view entertainment media, but the real advances are developing in the transmission of data directly into brains via Feelies, specially formulated media that places you directly in the situations. Feelies, though being an expesive and experimental new technology, are predicted to overtake all other forms of entertainment in the coming decades. The internet is even more important than it is, and has appropriated all other means of entertainment distribution.
Military:
Military technology has seen the least overt development, due to the centuries of relative peace. Infantry are the only humans on today’s battlefields, supported by remote-controlled armor, aircraft and land drones. Space-to-ground support is extremely dangerous and therefore not used by militaries due to the prevalence of surface-to-orbit weaponry. Soldiers are issued with rifles and pistols which fire incredibly thin, long penetrators at very high velocities with minimal recoil. The size of these projectiles allows hundreds to be carried in one magazine, and are highly effective when fired en masse. Small thin penetrators are not accurate over very long distances, so marksman rifles and dedicated sniper rifles have become even larger caliber, firing large explosive rounds to compensate for new armor technology. Advanced scopes are able to do all the calculations for the shooter by itself, reducing the required skill of the shooter and making soldiers much more accurate and reliable shooting over distances. Squad support weapons include anti-armor, high-impulse launchers, which fire massive, deadly projectiles. Man-portable grenade rifles are used to flush enemies from cover with timed airburst explosives. Combat is highly survivable due to new advances in easy-to-apply first aid, dispensed by fearless, durable robot companions. There are no energy weapons in the Human armies, as power generation has not been miniaturized to such a degree as to be a viable replacement for ballistic weapons, however space ships and UAVs bring large laser emitters for point defense and medium-range anti-materiel purposes.
Space combat is going to stick to the soft sci-fi Nelsonian large fleet battles, with small fighters and bombers launcher from carriers supporting battleships and destroyers of all sizes, from a few dozen meters long to half a kilometer or more. Space engagements between humans occur at visual range, within a few dozen kilometers, due to massive advances in jamming technology. Most weapons are either large-caliber railguns, or banks of nuclear-tipped missiles. Fields that absorb kinetic energy punish small, fast projectiles, so modern military ships have been forced to move to bigger and bigger calibers of gun for ship-to-ship combat.
You will be playing the commanding officers of the 4th fleet, and with that comes a great deal of responsibility and power. This game will not all be action - politics, intrigue and mystery are all part of the modern commander's life, and managing the well being of thousands of people is no mean feat. The players will work as the Command Staff, centered around an Admiral and his Rear Admirals, though there are plenty of positions that need filling in a large scale fleet.
Character creation is very open, seeing as there are trillions of humans from all walks of life. The military is almost entirely merit based in the Sol Navy, though the territorial forces are a mixed bag, depending on the culture of the area. I'll wait for interest before I give out a solid list of available roles, or an order of battle, etc. .the 4th fleet is a collection of hundreds of ships, I'll get exact order of battle down soon. Anyways, you will be playing the High Command for the fleet, and so the only role we REALLY need is the Admiral, the character nominally in charge of the whole operation. Normal fleets are split into three sections during battle, with two Rear Admirals commanding two parts and the Admiral commanding the last, so some Rear Admirals are important too, but that is not the only roles open: there are advisers, adjutants, marine commanders, scientists, diplomats, quartermasters etc. tied to the fleet's command, but who knows who else will be on the Flagship: I would be happy to see reporters, authors, stowaways, criminals, or even common soldiers in the game, though be warned the focus will be on the bigger picture of the fleet, not individual ships or individual heroes.
