The Meknik Union spans 87 solar systems and 28 natural garden worlds, along with a large number of mining and industrial colonies scattered among less-habitable or hazardous worlds and asteroid belts in almost every system. However this comes with caveats as many worlds are occupied minor races or have been wracked by war still being cleaned up. Nine homeworlds of their enemies are under lockdown, with orbital platforms in place holding WMD’s over the heads of their former enemies as a precautionary measure to ensure compliance.

All told, the Meknik Union has a total population of approximately 350 billion beings, not all of them welcome to the idea of Meknik hegemony but forced to live with it regardless.

The Mekniks are a short furry species evolved from canines on their tundra-temperate homeworld. Standing on average 4”4 tall, they are below galactic averages of strength and size. Mekniks have extremely active metabolisms, making them energetic, require little sleep, and quick to heal, but also makes them eat a lot for their size and have short 40 terran-year lifespans without medical intervention (which can stretch it to 80-100 years before invasive cybernetics). In addition, they possess extremely hardened immune systems capable of shrugging off a number of diseases, bioweapons, and limited degrees of nuclear radiation without any other shielding.

Mentally, Mekniks are wired....oddly. While not overtly psychic, Mekniks have a pseudo-group gestalt intelligence. Essentially the more Mekniks in a given space the smarter they act and become, finishing each other's sentences and sharing ideas and concepts with perfect accuracy. Large work crews become extremely coordinated and efficient with a minimum of oversight or verbal communication, while military squads become close-knit battle brothers. This groupthink methodology lends itself better to problem-solving than inspired thinking however, resulting in most Mekniks leaning towards physical sciences and activities rather than theoretical sciences, and limits the number of great leaders or masterminds.

Meknik’s come to rapid sexual maturity in 9 terran-years, and breed in litters of three or four pups that need to be nursed into maturity. Polygamy is the norm among Mekniks both ways, and relationships are played fast and loose rather than get stuck into long-term relationships, although exposure to aliens has led to various forms of monogamy also occurring.

The Meknik Union was born out of the ashes of a long global war on Prime, the Meknik homeworld, only ending after nuclear bombardment and decades of grueling trench and siege warfare. A home planet largely cinders and atomic ash was swiftly abandoned with the development of FTL, with thousands of colony ships assembled and launched in a massive exodus. Primitive, hastily built, divided by factional squabbles, and sent blindly to every neighboring star, the Mekniks were still able to spread like wildfire across their dense local star cluster. In the process running into several stellar neighbors and trespassing on their colony sites.

Disputes between Meknik colonists and alien settlers rose, while the colonies were contacted by a resurgent Prime that had rebuilt and sought to unify the scattered Meknik worlds.

As unification began, disputes turned into conflicts and all-out fighting between colonies on disputed worlds. Skirmishes began breaking out regularly, while “pest-control” actions of exterminating Meknik colonies were matched by Meknik’s building and deploying nuclear weapons en masse to wipe out aliens. Unapologetic for the actions of its colonies, and rallying around the cause of a “us or them galaxy”, the Union entered full-scale war with the Coalition of alien powers around them.

The war was a bloody awakening for the Union, as the fragmented tactics and doctrine used against eachother and frontier colony garrisons proved inadequate for facing a combined opponent not just able to match them in fighting will but with superior technology as well as the Coalition’s external neighbors funneled weapons and support to blockade the Mekniks. The Union was seemingly paying for all its sins at once as an entire stellar cluster of races banded against them to halt the Meknik’s expansion, surrounding them on all sides by aliens known and unknown marching to their absolute destruction.

Unwilling to surrender or negotiate even in the face of a surrounding military force coming seemingly out of nowhere, the Union merely sacked its intelligence personnel unable to predict this and proceeded to order militarization and mobilization of the whole of the Union to defeat the Coalition and everyone else that dared stamp out the Union. Individual colonial forces were sublimated into a combined fleet, weapons were standardized and improved, conscription was put into effect, the philosophies of Admiral Petrov adopted fleetwide, and the Meknik’s geared up in preparation for a decades-long war to the knife, believing their alien foes would grant no quarter or mercy.

The Establishment War would be a bloody conflict for all parties involved, as hordes of Meknik armies and warships went up against a coalition armada of a dozen races armed with technology and weapons beyond their imagining. Casualty rates of ten Meknik cruisers for every plasma-lance armed coalition ship, and forty conscripts for every shielded and armored xeno trooper were the norm, driving the Union to increasingly desperate and despicable measures to endure the enemies at the gates and strike back as more and more aliens joined the coalition and assaulted the Union on all sides. Flash-cloned cannon fodder, usage of unstable anti-xeno bioweapons, widespread nuclear devastation, genehacking soldiers into short-lived shocktroopers doomed to insanity or slow death if not killed on the battlefield, launching hundreds of deep-run colony missions into the dark void in hopes of setting up armory colonies to continue the war in the future as the threat of invasion of the core worlds became feared and then reality while the Union remained unable to keep up with it’s neighbors technologically.

In the end after fifteen terran-years, the war was won not by strategic genius or radical technology or individual heroism, but out of the economic and political exhaustion of the Coalition as their arms race broke their economies and opened vulnerabilities the Union used to begin a nuclear carpet-bombing campaign of exterminatus on all their foes. By the time the fragmenting coalition’s pleas for surrender and diplomacy were heeded, over half the world's surrounding the Union were rendered into rubble or radioactive ash.

Armistances and annexation treaties were signed, and the Union now stands victorious and having achieved everything it’s conquering founders and expansionist ancestors desired. But at the cost of billions dead, an empire wrecked by war, a fragmented frontier rife with piracy and rebellion, and an uncounted number of black ops programs and armory colonies now without targets and in many cases beyond control when their only documentation and means of contact were destroyed in lightning raids on the core worlds.

“The war is over, now what?” is the guiding question of the Union as it once more begins to look up to the stars with wonder and inquiry. Needing to expand once more, but unable to afford further conquest as it cannot avoid the burdens of consolidation. And they also have a lot of black ops projects to clean up in the meantime.

Meknik’s are a very work-hard, play hard materialistic race that enjoy simple pleasures. Good food, good alcohol, sports equally grand and violent, holo-actionpicts, and VR-vacations are all they need to be happy. Meknik culture may lack the high philosophy or morality or structured religious thinking (there is no national religion), but they are certainly the partyers and

Meknik society as a whole considers suffering and happiness to be a matter of tradeoffs instead of trying to minimize hardship. A line-work is expected to work long hours, put up with high surveillance, and endure the whims of their leaders, but is equally offered cheap and cosy housing, plentiful food, and all the holo-entertainment they want off-duty. Workers in hazardous or high-level positions have even higher expectations and are equally compensated.

Masks are a major aspect of Meknik culture, as filter masks and respirators were first commonly worn by the large industrial worker and hazard-colonist population of the early Planet Rush era. A culture began to evolve around the masks as symbols of solidarity and comradeship between even disparate populations of Mekniks, which took particular root as arcologies were put under siege during the Establishment War and everyone wore masks to protect from fumes, bioweapons, and industrial hazards. While now mostly just a social symbol, its rare not to see a Meknik have a mask at hand, and a gift of one is considered a mark of trust and friendship.

The Union Army is built around the doctrine of Deep Battle, advocating destruction of the enemy not just at a single point of contact, but across the breadth and depth of a battlefront. Individual ability or victory is not enough, victory must be won on multiple battlefronts in parallel or series and to achieve multiple objectives at once to keep the enemy off-balance. Defense is to be conducted in inverse, with defenses to be performed in depth at each strongpoint and for no defensive line to be dependent on the holding of any one position so to exhaust the enemy before reserves are committed in counter-offense.

Thus the Meknik Army is geared towards heavyweight attrition warfare, with mass conscription and mass deployment as the norm. Trench and siege warfare backed by heavy armor is their preferred way to win battles and wars, bleeding their enemies try and hammering them into submission. But conversely, they lack mobility and strategic initative, as well as being very logistically intensive if they break out the heavy armor instead of relying on infantry hordes.

For when a more precise approach is needed, cybernetically-enhanced shocktroopers with powered armor and special weapons are used to key points or VIPs to enable the rest of the army to smash through. Their rarity means they are carefully used when and where needed, especially as the Establishment War has effectively wiped out most other special forces units the Union has.

A notable danger of fighting Mekniks on the ground is their extreme willingness to use WMD’s to achieve strategic objectives. Dial-a-yield nuclear weapons are regularly issued to battlegroups with little hesitation in their use if the situation demands it. If an objective cannot be taken, it will be denied by nuclear fire. If a fortress stands in their way, it is more likely to be nuked than besieged. The strength of Meknik NBC protection and their ability to cleanup fallout has made them callous to usage of these weapons of mass destruction, and the technological inferiority of their conventional troops means they see it as a necessary evil and leveling factor.

The Union Fleet is based around the philosophy of Petrov’s Prism, dictating offense on many fronts while concentrating defense at singular points, and is applied on tactical, operational, and strategic levels. On a tactical level, Mekniks strive to attack in overwhelming force with superior numbers from many angles, whilst utilizing E-war and heavy armor to force enemies to concentrate their fire to leave them unable to attack the whole fleet. On a operational level, the Mekniks strive to conduct multiple operations simultaneously to engage the enemy on many fronts at once, whilst funneling them into being only able to strike at fortified strong points via supply line raids or misdirection. On a strategic level, the Mekniks maintain a broad range of grand war-goals to be achieved together than separately, while reducing the number of objectives the enemy can achieve.

More informally, the Union Fleet also adopts a policy of mass-deployment. If a problem needs a battleship, send a whole battleship task force, escort flotilla, and full-court supply train to make sure it STAYS down. While this means a reduction in total deployable assets in contravention of Petrov’s Prism, the Mekniks learned the hard way during the Establishment War why penny-packeting their fleet is counterproductive when against enemies that can wreck their individual ships.

Strength wise, the Union Fleet is composed of five thousand ships divided into seven main fleets and several smaller task forces raised as-needed forin a state of explicit and open war that can’t be dealt with otherwise. specific operations or duties. It should be noted however that while the Union Fleet is vast, it has a considerable amount of territory to protect and cover from all sides. Coupled with economic and logistical post-war burdens, the actual amount of deployable assets it has is limited, with the majority of the navy being stuck in drydock and simulators unless under conditions of open war and logistical supply chains are set up beforehand.

The Mekniks favor the “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” philosophy when it comes to weaponry. Which for them means a trifecta of railguns, torpedoes, and lasers. While primitive and clunky, everything counts when built and deployed in bulk.

The standard Meknik starship weapon are large railgun batteries propelling large barrages of kiloton explosive ordnance at enemies. While lacking in absolute accuracy or range, they are more than capable of saturating defenses and armor, while also able to utilize exotic or specialist ammunition when needed. Ammunition expenditure is a serious issue for Meknik ships however, causing reliance on tight supply trains and careful employment of barrages.

Railguns are backed up by torpedoes. which are considered a short-ranged support weapon meant to provide a hard-hitting knockout punch with nuclear or plasma warheads. Laser weapons are kept as point-defense batteries, as the Mekniks haven’t figured out a workable energy weapon design that meets their standards and doctrine.

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On the ground, the Mekniks favor low-tech, high quantity solutions involving “good enough” weapons in the hands of hundreds or thousands of Mekniks at once. The average Meknik grunt is equipped with a neochemical-based slugthrower assault rifle and a grenade launcher attached to a powered exoskeleton, with squad-level support weapons on a backpack mount. The exoskeleton is not a meaningful strength-enhancer, instead meant to be a load-lifter and means to turn off-the-street Mekniks into workable soldiers on short notice with need for less basic training.

The most experienced or luckiest survivors of the Meknik Legions are organized into shocktrooper groups, given proper powered armor and heavy weapons, including experimental or tech stolen or salvaged from their enemies such as plasma guns and tribarrel automatic railguns. Such formations are rare, and deployed only as needed. They are a resource not to be squandered needlessly, and are often granted cybernetics and limb-replacements to keep them in service.

Besides mass-deployment of infantry, the Mekniks make extensive use of heavy armored tanks, multi-legged mechs, and bombardment artillery for broad-front sledgehammer assaults. Most certainly compensating for Meknik’s short stature and physique compared to other races. However the core weakness of heavy armor is logistics, as maintaining and supplying complex mechanized forces over interstellar distances is a hard burden even for the industrialized Mekniks and measures taken to improve field-endurance.

Mekniks are also notorious for their extensive usage of tactical, operational, and strategic nuclear weapons that are regularly issued to battlegroups. When against a fortress, the Mekniks are liable to nuke it instead of lay siege. When faced with a city resisting occupation, the Mekniks could use a nuke as an EMP-disrupter or to blast a hole in defenses and morale before following up with ground troops. In retreat, usage of nuclear mines as a rearguard element rigged to radios, hardline, and clockwork timers is frequent. While hardly their go-to option, when push comes to shove Meknik commanders will not hesitate to drop the Atomic. Resulting diplomatic fallout be damned.

Meknik technology generally comes off as crude and below the galactic average, designed with more foresight into mass-production and ruggedness than ergonomics or aesthetics. This is primarily influenced by Mekniks primarily being engineers and industrialists than theoretical scientists or philosophers. Nonetheless, Meknik technology is very reliable and good at what it does. Due to limited automation and computerization, Meknik technology is very manpower intensive and their ships and factories are overcrewed by other species standards.

Urban development is a well-refined area of Meknik technology, with the vast majority of Mekniks living in massive arcology complexes where billions live, work, breed, play, and are recycled after death in megastructures miles high and miles underground. Generally these are not dystopian slums (although massive surveillance is in place for safety and security), as food, water, and air are plentiful and decent Meknik standards of communal living are maintained.

Hazardous colonization is another area Meknik’s are surprisingly able in. Besides the rare garden worlds and inhabitable planets of the galaxy, the Meknik’s also endeavour to colonize more dangerous or less hospitable desert, ice, and barren planets of the galaxy for more resources and breathing room. While perhaps not on the scale of properly habitable worlds, no planet’s industrial assets are out of reach for the Mekniks.

The primary weakness of the Meknik Union is logistics. While their extensive industry and transportation systems enable smooth logistics, their fleets and armies and tech-base is dependent on a constant flow of spare parts, energy, and personnel. Long-range interstellar supply trains are carefully managed edifices that can more readily bring armies to a halt than any major frontline battle. While efforts to fix this are ongoing with forward supply tenders and depts, Meknik primitive tech is fuel-guzzling and always in need of spare parts.

Meknik computer systems are also notable weak point for the Union, being less adaptive and flexible while their programmers less inventive. To counter, the Meknik's keep their networks partitioned to deny hacking attempts and utilize cyber-jacked personnel to be living supercomputers and dynamic network defenders, if at risk to their lives when hack attacks hit them directly. Meknik's also tend to distrust AI, preferring to use cyberjacked Marshals to direct hives of drones than let robots operate on their own at any level after the Establishment War. Despite these measures, Meknik ships and systems are vulnerable to serious cyberwarfare attack that while unable to completely disable them are a hinderance.

The Meknik Union isn’t broke, but is hardly in a ideal economic state either as it has only just shaken off the last of it’s former total war mobilization and is dealing with serious fallout of wartime policies and economic collapse of its stellar neighbors.

In short, the Union needs new resources, new markets, and time to stabilize their economy in the post Establishment War era. While no longer willing or able to conquer, they look out for trade and chances to colonize new worlds.

Korax frigate, Strahab cruiser, Sovereign carrier

Korax-class Frigate
Hull: Frigate
Size: 200 meters.

The Korax is actually a refitted megafreighter design, formerly a armed freighter before the general hull pattern was upgraded into a proper warship. Despite inherent fragility, the Korax is simple and mass-producible, with any colony being able to produce components and hulls while proper shipyards can crank them out by the dozen in a matter of weeks. To compensate for their weaknesses, Koraxes are always deployed in complementary three or four ship formations to concentrate their torpedo and railgun fire.

Recently large numbers of Koraxes are being upgraded with a undercarriage capital particle-beam cannon and a shoehorned heavy duty-reactor to power it. While still doing little to alleviate their fragility, it suits the Meknik philosophy of killing the enemy before being killed.

Strahab cruiser
WIP

Sovereign-class Supercarrier
Hull: Capital Carrier
Size: 1.6 km

The Sovereign is a massive fleet supercarrier, with ten hanger bays loaded with hordes of strike fighters, torpedo bombers, ground-attack gunships, or assault landers. Furthermore the Sovereign is also equipped with considerable heavy gun batteries. While their weapons are primarily intended as a deterrent to enemy attacks, they are no less deadly when pressed into a fight or orbital bombardment roles with enough firepower to rival a cruiser battlegroup. The primary weakness of the Sovereign is logistics, depending on a considerable supply train to function and oftentimes only in pairs at most when on long-range deployment. More often they are kept in drydock and their crews in constant simulator drill for when they are needed.