@Terminal Could you please translate what @Senor Herp said? I realize the irony where my (whether failing or pretentious) attempt at the appearance of higher etiquette or otherwise, that I am not catching everyones' 'big words.' Words I do not use, my brain tends to erase for more useful things

I'm glad it was enjoyable. Looking back over it, there's apparent formatting problems that ought to have been ironed out, but I was working too quick and giving no mind to proofreading then or after. Sloppy. And 'Celestian' used instead of 'Celestial,' don't know how I garbled that, maybe poor memory plus its sounding sufficiently space-y. I technically cannot use the sheet, since the slots are full, but I suppose I can talk theoreticals. Or theoreticals of theoreticals, since a timeframe would have to be worked out; the OP post mentions that the civilized have ruled 'for centuries,' but that seems to be more comparing the ARG to past rulers than a statement of the length of the shared-FTL period, which seems quite recent. Armor vignette mentions two years of relief work, but this is all working concept stuff, I can't say when there was a war or even if there was a war unless the Claw were cleared, again technically impossible under the current limit, and it were approved that they had unsuccessfully engaged in preventative decapitation strikes before suffering retaliation by a coalition. It's essentially a pilot sheet.

On the Fourth Staff, the window for them to enter is a bit narrow, yeah. Closed society with a strict ordering of things, not quite a command economy, but staunchly protectionist. Jingoist, xenophobic, although at the moment full post-Black Ship Japan in terms of rapidity of westernization, while on the level of 30's Japan in terms of military oversight, which is to say a fair bit. There's embassies, well-policed interstate research bases and relief/galactic integration headquarters, but while it's certainly not on the level of full on Sakoku, there's probably only so many spaceports that accept foreign traffic. Christoffel is written, more for sake of drama than any practical/gamey desire to go full bore with security, as an exception to the general rule of true espionage agents being rooted out. Especially ones trying to escape with ultra-rare exotic elements. So the infiltrators are likely to be pretty badly stuck on the level of physical listeners and informants. Hard to break into places guarded by four-meter tall lizards with chunky green-beam photon guns. Easy to get bugs on things in a place running on '50s-'60s sci-fi tech and therefore '50s-'60s' electronic security, hard to keep it from frying in the radioactive environs. What you'll probably end up with is a very large network of smugglers moving relatively few items in, more for sake of establishing presence than anything else. Recall that section from Tales of a Road Junky where the author ends up selling counterfeit garbage and dollar store items as a street peddler for the mafia, just like that, but in irritating and constantly dispersed bazaars full of weird aliens who occasionally manage to smuggle an item of some note out in bits and pieces.

In regards to gaser/graser pinching, the problem with pinching it is that it really is a rather hazardous technology to softer life, and as stupidly simple as written. Bomb-pumped xasers and nuclear shaped charges for gaser projection & tungsten-plasma propulsion, with a reuseable construction from exotic matter breech & barrel assembly. There's really nothing to easily purloin for direct snatching from the weapons project for other things, rather something to copy for further weaponizing, and more pointfully various other supporting gadgets that CAN be eventually lifted. The design could be refined, made more exacting, and more shielded, but you'd still need either the element or a synthetic replacement, and bomb fired lasers aren't at all constant enough for efficient power transfer even if one has very exacting standards as to each rounds' construction. But there's still potential aid the Claw can provide, willing or otherwise, in the Consortium's own fusion beamer project.

The main application and manifestation of gaser nonsense is simplistic and to some degree dead-ended by its miracle material dependence, but otherwise the science is sound in-game. The Claw've got a serious understanding of the atomic and of the exotic matter(s) endemic to their system, so what really would prevent them from moving forward from this design and developing anything more wieldy is that they don't have the computers and haven't had the time to conceive of such a thing as the Consortium's own project fully, only a rough space-60's tech equivalent. You could pinch various doohickeys, they've already got unsubtly industrially directed singularities & microstars for making cast homogenous steel out of the otherwise sillily unmeltable and unbreakable, plus I was thinking they'd use mostly inertial confinement fusion-type nuclear pulse propulsion & energy generation as I said, but another source might be in the Claw themselves. Put one behind a solid-state or better computer and he might have a less jury-rigged answer to the problems of the fusion beamer, if he's amicable. Or he might not, because one might have problems going straight from mechanical & early electronic computers to solid-state or quantum nonsense as far as practical application of untested theory, and adjustment to the new computational capacity might take a while.

In short, yes, the Claw could probably have a hand in assisting that project, if the Fourth Staff could keep at it for a very long time, if the Claw were willing or if they could somehow be duped. Considering they're likely to start chafing at some point under the present order, written explicitly for it, and also long for the sublight colonies lost within their own system, there might be common ground as allies of convenience once they start getting disgruntled. Although, I am not really certain how openly the Consortium and CE are at odds and how deep the enmity is. I believe Cale mentioned them being viewed essentially as insurgents and therefore treated as enemies of the state, and reflected that in the Shields vignette, but I might be misremembering. Definitely not a status-quo faction with terms like New Hegemony, though. I don't think I got it wrong, but correct me if I did.

@Silvan Haven Had the thought myself. The only difference between majors/minors is that, barring player subsidiary organizations, even the majors are in single systems, just with pre-colonized worlds. Galactic scale or any significant fraction of it just seems inconsistent with the rest.

@Cale Tucker I posted my work-in-progress sheet for others to peruse, in spite of the lack of an available slot. Didn't want the writing to go to waste, severely unpolished though it is, so I wanted there to be some kind of entertainment value for others to derive from it simply by having it in the open while I mull over whether to make a corp of privateers.

@Cale Tucker I posted my work-in-progress sheet for others to peruse, in spite of the lack of an available slot. Didn't want the writing to go to waste, severely unpolished though it is, so I wanted there to be some kind of entertainment value for others to derive from it simply by having it in the open while I mull over whether to make a corp of privateers.

Wait, so this will not actually be featuring in this RP?

Darn. I almost got excited there for a moment.

Unless there's some kind of exception made, no. It's purely a what-could-have-been as far as I'm concerned.

Unless there's some kind of exception made, no. It's purely a what-could-have-been as far as I'm concerned.

Well, if you were looking into making a privateer Corp, Enlil's fourth staff always has feelers here and there looking for qualified unaffiliated parties looking for a bit of wealth with their opportunity. I'm not suggesting a permanent relationship, but their patronage could get your organization off the ground, so to speak.

@Cale Tucker A quarter of the galaxy is still several orders of magnitudes more then you will ever need for this game. At absolute most you might need a thousand systems if this thing gets super popular and you get hoards of players.

Chances are good that the game will die before you need more than a hundred systems. If you do in fact run out of space and you don't want people fighting over land you can just say that recent advances in FTL have opened up a new star cluster and add another map.

Most of the games I played had maps and it's always better to follow the K.I.S.S. principle.

@Silvan Haven I love your optimism and Terminal-level technicals.

Well Senor Herp has an interesting way of writing things... I've been reading countless books, and roleplaying for years and I've never seen anything described the way he did. He should get a medal for non-friendly, obtuse, technical term filled paragraphs of eye plague. Mind you this is referring to his first post describing his faction which I think I would have to go through again to catch everything that was said exactly. But I understood most of it XD.

Anyways I want to roll in as an minor faction just wondering if there is a slot open?

Also just wanted to comment on the Rp's system a little bit. These are suggestions so take them as you may.

-Please define the FTL EVERYONE will be using. How far it can travel, travel time, energy cost. What is the mode of travel this FTL tech uses? How often can it be used, once in a blue moon? Only outside the influence of an star system? Or can you use it ALL the time rendering sublight useless prematurely?

-A few things with the Tech tree, firstly their should be an added consideration for Sub-light tech. However as with the other techs remain vague as to allow the users to describe their nation's unique drive systems and travel methods.

Examples include, Orion systems IE throwing nukes out the back door(Senor Herp's mode of transport I think), NERVA(Fission rocket), Fission Fragment drives(Slower than Nerva more efficient), Fusion(Alot of methods including types similair to Orion), VASMIR, ION engines(Really slow who wants to use that when we have FTL?).

The list can go on forever not to mention fictional methodology. So for lamens terms on the techs heres what we can have. Chemical(Hyrdrogen+Oxygen, Kerosene+Oxygene stuff like that used today), Plasma IE-VASMIR(Plasma electric drive alot more Delta-V but longer burn times), Fission(Includes all methodologies, great thing about Fission is the reactor cores if built right can last for hundreds of years, when you get into recycling systems that have accompanying breeder reactors it can go on, and on but its heavier altogether.), Fusion(All methodologies, great thing about Fusion is light fuel, lighter engine cores ALOT of Delta-V potentail, problems include Huge fuel tanks, Deadly radiation thats not to friendly to passerbys(Think neutron rays).

Thats the top off of my head for Engines really sorry if the techno babble gets to anybody right now I'm just sitting here enjoying myself feeling all smart, when in reality to most people I'm just shooting words out of my mouth. XD

-Finally some issues with existing properties in the tech tree.

-Biological Weapons are a big weird science hand wavy thing. Like first of all, Plasma? What type of plasma? Plasma for blood? Thats biological.. but not harmful. What I think you are referring to is, a large ball of heated particles. Plasma weapons exist IRL in HEAT(High Explosive Anti Tank) that shoot a shaped charge of copper plasma to penetrate large amounts of armour. Also in space, Nuclear detonation's effective kill radius is greatly reduced to two things, the force of the blast including the plasma ball(if the said nuke isn't a shaped warhead) and all that nasty NASTY radiation.

The point is Plasma balls IE heated particle death thingies shot out of a cannon are really energy inefficient and cool too quickly to be accurate or effective. Especially when referring to distances seen in vacuum. Yes plasma will definitely BE in the future, but in the form of shaped charges and nukes. There is probably a few other inventive ways it'll be used in warfare too when it comes to it.

Also acid is weird too, being able to bypass ALL types of Armour is silly. Even STRONG acids would have problems getting through a warships hull if it had the LIGHTEST type of armour plating available. Plastic,steel, ceramic all easily defeat acids. Soft targets, IE civilians might have problems in their economically minded freighters and transports, say hull breaches chewed up wires and stuff like that after a few minutes of exposure to REALLY REALLY nasty acid.

Other than that I LIKE the idea of Biological/kill the ships crews weapons. X-ray beams have the nice effect of Neutron activation on metal plating which will give the crew a nasty case of radiaton sickness. Some particle beams may have effects similar; or you can just use Gamma rays and the other ships crew will fry within a minute or two after seeing the Cherenkov effect. Neutron bombs are great too, hmm not much else to think of but their is alot of possibilities their for fun weapons.

-Gauss is an uneeded category. As all the weapons included(exluding Mass Driver since that may as well be an Propulsion system for cargo rather than an weapon. But definitely can be used as an said weapon.) are in fact KINETIC in nature. They throw things at high velocities to hit other things and put big holes in them.

So maybe rename the category to Electric Kinetic systems, or Electrically propulsed Projectile Weapon Systems, or something of that nature. Since the over arching theme is Electric+Magnetic throwing of ferrous slugs around space. Also Gauss systems are highly unfeasible IRL but could be MAYBE be a thing in the future, if you have a butt loads of power and not a care in the world Gauss might be for you. Although Gauss does have the GREAT plus of an non-wearing barrel so less maintenance. Whilst Railguns have way shorter barrel lifes, require highly durable/costly materials and still eat up quite a bit of electricity even though it may be less than Gauss guns ROFL.

-One last thing I saw in the bonus techs something called stealth. Check out the laws of thermo-dynamics. THERE is no stealth in space. Any ship in vacuum is easy to pick out 99% of the time through passive(cameras/infared) sensors. Active sensors may have a problem such as LIDAR, Radar, etc. IF the vessel is built to conteract detection through those very signals.

However Stealth in space is FEASIBLE, but it require alot of ingenuity and you are never invisible ever, the distances traveled are so long when in sublight that if you are doing an planetary transfer the simplilest telescopes that we have on earth would pick you up in no time before you reached earth.

This is not to say surprise is not possible to, since FTL is a thing you could jump into an blind spot if you are lucky and avoid sensors long enough to get the first shot off at somebody.

Wow ehhh thats all I have to say for now. I think I just pulled an Senor Herp. Sorry. ^_^

My apologies. I did not mean to say that the RPG was doomed to die quickly or anything. It's just that every RPG will only last for so long before it kicks the metaphorical bucket.

I was trying to avoid being too technical in my post, I guessed I messed up. Suffice to say that a map that shows any significant portion of the galaxy is going to have too many star systems for you to realistically use. That's why I suggested a star cluster, it keeps things somewhat more contained and prevents numbers from getting out of hand.

Simple, not complicated. The more complicated, the more unknown, the more loopholes. I will answer one queation/suggestion. When you want to engage your FTL (since we aren't traveling from system to system) you want to travel anywhere in the known galaxy, you get there. This gives more time for, well anything you need to do, instead of pit stops, flushes, etc.

I am prepared for the inevitable rebuttal, but my response will always be the same; simple, not complicated.

Many have liked this answer, many have not. If the majority wants complicated, my system was never prepared for that, which would mean at the very least Terminal would have to replace me, ending my future ideas to keep interest.

So if it would make everyone happy for the roleplay to become incoherently complicated, the roleplay would require a complete redo in how it works, a trashing of my system, people will more than likely try to use scientific technicalities and argue with good points as to why their weapons are better.

You all figure out what you want, I'm taking a break from repetition

Simple is great Cale, I like it, allows for diversity. I was just stating what I thought. Maybe I shouldn't have framed it into suggestions. Simple allows for all mediums to come to one place, melting pot RPS can be great! As long as others are willing to tolerate eachother's differences in style and writing which I'm certainly up for!

Just one last thing to ask Cale... Open slot? Also I've seen that alot of people have given their own suggestions on how things should work. I'm sorry I was the lastest on that long list! I'm sorry if I came off snobby. But I was just having fun writing out my thoughts I couldn't help it!

For the moment, I'm gonna go work on a first post, yeah?

@CowboyCommando Unless Cale decides to allow more Nations, the current slots are full. There are, however, Corporation/Organisation slots.

If someone really wants to play as a nation, I'll be willing to play as a Corp/Org as long as the person who takes over my spot has the Ryukyuan homeworld within their claims in some fashion, I'm rather attached to them :<

Well I'm going to keep my nose out of this one. I think it best to drop a post in interest check instead. Seriously though, good luck guys! I hope you manage to have fun.

May as well post my WIP Nation Sheet, at least

Ah, good, activity!

And aye, we can give you some tips and such :b

@greywolf375
Okay, I haven't even read it, and there's a problem.

You don't post stuff in the Character Sheet tab if you haven't been accepted. That means if it's WIP, and yet to be approved for all changes and everything that'll be, it should not be in the Character Sheet tab.

I'll edit this post once I've read it if there's anything else wrong.

@WilsonTurner My apologies, relatively new to forum RPs and their etiquette.

This Nation is very much still in the making, i have a couple ideas kicking around, but have yet to put them down. Input is appreciated, as is wether I can use your species, as they are meant to be a collective, nomadic, fleet in space.

So, anyone wanna make a first post?

Mine is a heavy WIP, but if needbe, I'll finish it up tomorrow.