United Federation of Terragen Species
Free Planet's Alliance
Faction Overview
The United Federation of Terragen Species is a bureaucratic mess of God knows how many independent nation states, stretching across a vast area of space. There is technically a centralized government, a High Council meant to represent the interests of all the Federation. Each nation sends a delegate, and all delegates get a number of votes equal to the total population of their nation, mainly because there wasn't anyone willing to do the math to bring the number of votes down to a reasonable number. This system was meant to provide equal representation to all peoples in the Federation, however, things got complicated when the humans (whom founded the Federation) uplifted and created other Terran species, all of whom had wildly different mindsets.
The Dolphins, for instance, didn't consider anyone not part of their working population to be a person. Some other primate species ended up counting domesticated animals as part of their population, and the Elephants kept insisting that their dead still counted as people. Then there was the fact that countless intelligent bird species were split over whether or not eggs should count as part of their population, as were uplifted marsupials on the subject of babies developing in the pouch.
Eventually, these problems were solved over the course of a mere century, thanks to the absolute clusterfuck that is Federal politics. At this point, the humans had begun to field ships made to support multispecies crews, including aquatic and land species together. Human crew members were horrified to continually find murdered dolphin newborns floating in the water, and even more horrified when the fact that this was a perfectly normal dolphin mating ritual became common knowledge.
Then, of course, old human servant genetic constructs kept on being accused of being nothing more than human puppets. The problem of whether or not people who put their very consciousness into a planetary network should be counted as a person became a serious problem as well, along with the question of whether or not extinct species should be resurrected and brought into the Federation. Inevitably, they were, and now nobody knows what counts as human because all the hominids kept having sex.
Even worse, nobody has any idea how many nations there are in the Federation. Some delegates just don't show up at meetings, despite seats being reserved for them. Others walk in wearing an official-looking suit and claim to be a delegate. Generally, these claims are accepted and denied based off of how many votes their claim to have. This resulted in an awkward situation in which a new dolphin delegate showed up and said he had twice the number of votes of any other dolphin nation. Turns out it was completely correct, and no human knows why because they make it a point to not ask about dolphin reproduction. Ever.
Wars are generally only declared if a core nation is attacked, because otherwise, nobody will know anything happened unless they happened to know the delegate of some nation that hasn't shown up in a few months. An entire nation could be wiped off the map, and nobody would care because the humans were holding their something-or-otherth annual some-kind-of-spot tournament.
Despite being a giant mess, the Federation has generally noble intentions, and there is surprisingly little direct internal conflict (until we get to the sexual assault laws and the humans and dolphins almost go to war five times in one week). When the Council actually gets something done, it's usually something good. They usually try to help other nations, and they usually get nothing more than a gold "You tried" sticker, but at least they can wear that sticker knowing it's 100% true.
How many species are there in the Federation? Go and count, because nobody keeps records. Every nation is constantly genetically engineering new species to do stuff for them, and those genetically engineered species are constantly getting freed by all the other nations in competition with that nation. Even the original members are hard to count, since "Things with wings" and "Things with arms" don't exactly count as species.
Over the centuries (or maybe eons, or some amount of time, the council keeps terrible records), the core nations (Which form the majority of the military) have adopted similar ideologies, usually based off of the human one. They generally consider all members of all species equal, and will always step in to help other nations if they believe that they are being unjustly oppressed. In these core nations, the different species tend to accept their differences instead of hating each other for them.
These core nations also happen to have the highest population, highest GDP, highest population density, highest Sentient Development Index, etc. Being the most stable part of the Federation, other nations tend to view them as the Federation itself, ignoring the thousands of tiny states on the outskirts of Federal space. What we're trying to say is that they more or less own the Federation entirely in every conceivable way.
Technology Overview
The United Federation of Terragen Species has one main focus on their weaponry: beam weapons. Main spinal weapons? Beams. Large turrets? Beams. Point-defense? Beams. Infantry weapons? Beams. Fighter weapons? Beams. Vehicle weapons? Beams. The most common weapon is the Quantum-Level Gluon Disturber. Which, aside from sounding totally awesome, creates a totally awesome blue beam
(or red if you happen to be an antagonist). It is one of the most versatile weapons known to the Terragen species, and can be adapted for nearly any size and role. Infantry weapons tend to be modular, with only the central firing unit being the same in all models. They can be adapted for nearly all species to hold, and quickly adapted for any role. Sniper rifles and be turned into assault weapons with a flick of a switch and a quick scope replacement. These weapons are extremely effective against armor and hull, but shielded ships tend to sigh in relief as the beams just bounce off. If the angle is right, you can get some pretty sick lightshows, with the beams bouncing off of shields until the energy dissipates.
For secondary weapons, the Terragens use missiles. Not big, deadly, fleet-killing nukes, mind you. More like small little warheads with engines. Thousands. Thousands of small little warheads with engines. Engines that happen to leave blue trails since they use argon plasma. These missiles carry payloads designed to tear down shields, since they already have enough "Breaking enemy ships into their elementary particles". However, sufficient flak defenses can take a toll on these insane and ridiculous missile swarms.
For defenses, the UFTS uses shields exclusively. They consider armor to be a massive waste of weight, and instead utilize superheavy shield devices. Capital ships have dozens of crisscrossing shield layers, grouped into different shield typed themselves. The first set of layers are the usual "Shoot enough and they go away until they can slowly regenerate". The second set of layers are the equally common "Shoot enough and they go away until they aren't shot for some amount of time, at which point they come back rapidly". Finally, we have the third set of layers, which is made up of "Conversion Shields", shields which convert incoming fire into usable energy for the shields itself. These are extremely durable shields, but when they're overloaded, that's it. If the overload is catastrophic, it may cause the shield units to explode, destroying the ship. Needless to say, if you happen to be able to bypass shields, then the Federal fleet is going to have to run. Not that they will. Terragens are either stupid, stubborn, or both (probably both).
Terragen military doctrine calls for giant capital ships designed to stomp all over enemy ships using extremely liberal doses of beam spam. Fighters are rarely used for offense, instead being used to defend the capital ships until they can fire their spinal beam weapons and vaporize, well, anything in the way.
Spacecraft Overview
this is where you post your Spaceship profiles. Fighters and other small craft also need their own profiles but you can cut a few corners on those.
Ship Profile Guideline [-]
(put the picture of your ship here if you want)
Name: (What's your ship called, likely the class name of this type of ship)
Dimensions: (if it's the typical elongated design it's enough if you just write down the ship's length)
Crew: (How many people operate this ship, ignore it for drones or one-man fighters)
Battle Points: (how many battle points this spacecraft costs? Leave it blank until the GMs decide this value)
(You can share many other info with us here but these are the basics, mass of the ship is a common info, for example)
Spacecraft Attributes
Hull: (How tough is your ship?)
Powerplant: (How much energy your ship has?)
Shields: (How good are your shields?)
Speed: (How fast your ships can go?)
Maneuverability: (How agile is your ship?)
Sensors: (How good are your sensors and how far they reach?)
(These stats range from 0 to 100 and their meaning are abstract. Somebody with 70 speed is faster than other ship with 50, that's all.)
Weapons
(You list the ship's weapons here, I'm giving you an example)
Main Gun (Name of the weapon)
Count: 2 (how many of these you have on the ship)
Power: 40 (how strong is the cannon, can be directly compared to Hull and Shields attributes)
Description: (Tell us what kind of weapon is this and what can it do)
Point-Defenses
Count: 12
Power: 10
Description: Low-energy pulse lasers to intercept missiles and unarmored ships.
(It isn't that hard, right?)
Other/Special
(You mention here whatever else you want to say. Special abilities or unique technology you wish to detail. FTL drives that can be used in combat are generally mentioned here, for example)
General Description
(Tell us about your ship. No need to write a novel but at least let us know how to imagine it.)
Known Fleets
The Federation is so disorganized that the only fleets the Council knows of are the ones that have done awesome, heroic things. Since the Federation hasn't done anything interesting in forever, nobody actually knows how many fleets the Federation has. Outlying nations don't even know if it has any.
