My faction concept thus far. @LloydTurquoise let me know if this faction fits in with the tech level and scale of gameplay you have in mind or not.
Faction Name: Chekov’s Factory
Faction Flag/symbol:
Faction Type: Barony
History:
Andrei Chekov was an immigrant to Lousiana fifty years ago, an unusual Slavic immigrant to a Franco-American colony world, but welcome nonetheless for his singular genius in robotics and technology, particularly the Task-Intelligence matrix that made his robots uniquely adaptable and efficient within their specialized field. Within five years, his robots were being made in factories across the colony and was popularly considered one of the techno-economic pillars of Lousiana against the coreworlds. Respect and awe equated to incredible freedom of R&D and funding for his increasingly secretive work. Though Chekov gradually slipped out of the public stage and blackboxed his technology beyond reverse-engineering, everyone assumed his stipulations of secrecy were merely to protect his rightful intellectual property and paid him little mind as the robots kept coming.
What no one suspected of the inventor was his hidden desire to break the one rule of robotics: the creation of sentient AI. Silently fuming against the restriction on artificial life and capabilities, Chekov came to Lousiana to finalize his dreams of creating life by his design away from the prying eyes of the Coreworld corporations and governments.
The Collapse was no setback to Chekov, who responded to the increasing degredation of the Republic by consolidating the bulk of his technology and work into a single factory complex in Bayonne City to at last pursue his work unfettered. As the dynasties arose and baronies were constructed, Chekov became a fortified city-state unto himself apart from any faction or dynasty, buying his neutrality by continuing to sell industrial products and renting his robots as mercenary troops to any barony that would pay.
Presently Chekov continues to pursue sentient AI, a goal perhaps still years in the future despite his continued refinement of Task-Intelligence systems. But practical problems in maintaining his Factory as well as problems besetting Lousiana once more force him to start interacting with the outside world for what he needs to continue his secret research.
Goal: Chekov seeks to create a fully sentient AI. In more immediate goals that translates into survival, recovering parts to repair his hydroelectric power plant, and recovering pre-Collapse research data to accelerate his efforts, in that order of priorities.
Territory: A factory complex on the riverside of Bayonne City, built up into a fortified complex.
VIPs:
Chekov, the enigmatic inventor and genius. Authoritarian ruler of the Factory and it’s army of machines loyal only to him. A pale and withered old man even with three rounds of longevity treatments and soon to be confined to a wheelchair or exoskeleton, his mind is no less sharp than ever as his rate of invention and development has only increased since the Collapse. Never seen outside his workshop and command center in the depths of the Factory, and never gives personal audience to anyone besides his machines.
Clockwork: Industrial Task-Intelligence, controls and directs most of the industrial systems of the Factory. It’s body is the Factory itself, or rather the parts with robotic limbs and working automation. For everything else it has to boss around humans. A gruff and not terribly nice robot even by their standards, but Chekov doesn’t care so long as it maintains quotas.
Cowboy: A six-foot service robot wearing a duraflex poncho and a wide-brimmed solar cell hat over a body previously used as a waiter, Cowboy is a reprogrammed social unit that acts as leader for trading and scavenging expeditions, as well as a mobile long-range radio set that can link to Chekov directly when he needs to directly talk to other humans. For noncompliance or customers refusing to pay, it has a pair of heavy six-shooters. The cowboy aesthetic and personality matrix was Chekov’s attempt to play to the American culture of the colony for emotional connection. Most people wish he hadn't bothered downloading a sterotypical cowboy chatbot persona into a robot.
Behemoth: A 15-foot mobile humanoid heavy mech section leader, anthropomorphizing one of Chekov’s line of development into human introspection by possessing twin “irrational” and “logical” TI-cores linked together. While not fully sentient, it’s capacity for adaptive logic and introspection (debate between the two cores cores) can fool a undiscerning human while enabling reactive complex multitasking. Unlike most robots, it possesses a full onboard hydrogen fuel cell system that can power itself for weeks, alongside heavy armor and wrist and shoulder hardpoints for weapons to protect itself and function as one of Chekov’s primary combat leader units. Due to expense of creation and maintenance, it remains a one-off design and reserved for putting down serious threats to the Factory.
Population: 1,049 humans. 6,500+ robots
Society:
Life in the Factory is austere and regimented, with Chekov’s followers treated just above the machines they tend to and operate. Chekov places little regard towards comfort or aesthetics, and it is reflected in the Factory’s utilitarian layout and infrastructure, seeing to the needs of it’s people without much regard for their comfort outside of communal recreational facilities. Everyone lives by the shift clock, and all are expected to contribute to the Factory or be expelled from it’s walls.
Still, Chekov does recognize that his “human resources” operate best when granted more than survival, and maintains a uniform rule of law within the Factory for reliable justice while still respecting freedom of speech and expression (insofar as it does not impede the operations of the Factory), and maintaining several Medialink nodes that contain recreational data surviving the Collapse. Hard toil during the day is rewarded with time-allocations to watch movies, play video games, or review historical archives without the censorship or authoritarianism other Baronys often apply to such media, again insofar as it does not detract from operation of the Factory.
Main Settlement: The Factory. A former advanced robotics complex, now turned into a fortified city-state unto itself.
Food Production:
Besides food imports from other Baronys, factory farming is the predominant food supply in Chekov’s territory. Hydroponics, mycoprotein vats, factory ranching, and such are one of the Factory’s external annexes in a consolidated urban agri-plant. The average diet consists of filtered water and condensed nutrient ration bars, which leads to foodstuffs being a predominant import of Chekov's human followers.
Electricity: The Factory is built upon a hydroelectric dam, with a backup solar and wind farm that has been expanded since the Collapse. All three supply Chekov considerable sums of electricity, but recent malfunctions and unreliability from the hydroelectric station has prompted rationing primarily turned to manufacturing, hydroponics, and military purposes over civilian use. Should the power be unplugged for any reason for long, is is likely the Factory will shut down for good.
Essential Production: Nutri-bars, Machine tools, ballistic ammunition, spare parts.
Specialist Production: Robots, bots, mechs, high-density power packs, solar cells.
Defences:
The Factory is surrounded by a 15-foot concrete wall studded with watchtowers, barbed wire, and autoturrets at the gates. The standard shift rotations are handled by flying camera bots and a few squads of robots marching the walls. In alert scenarios, reserve bot companies and heavy mechs operating on tethered power can be mobilized to respond to situations, although due to power expenditure this full mobilization state cannot be maintained for long without shutting down other parts of the Factory.
Military numbers: 324 human militia/scavengers/traders. 2,306 combat bots.
Military assets:
Chekov’s primary military edge is combat robotics, retaining a number of automated infantry and heavy mech designs in active production to terminate threats to his domain, alongside reserves of refitted civilian bots and "dumb" support drones. While nowhere near as smart or adaptable as experienced human survivors or fighters, Chekov’s Task-Intelligence matrix combined with the fearlessness, durability, and capacity for heavier weapons make his robots comparable opposition regardless. The primary weakness of most of Chekov’s robots is power, as even his best batteries don’t last more than a day, and combat-level operations drain them within hours. This often leads to his bots marching with solar-cell hats and improvised hydrogen fuel cell backpacks to supplement their batteries, or operating off tethered power supplies in friendly territory or in conjunction with heavy mechs with charging ports for their smaller comrades. But the most common solution is to simply kill before running out of power.
To capitalize on combat robot’s durability and limit power expenditure, bot-infantry are often deployed by APC’s refitted for bot’s and able to serve as mobile recharging stations, or in high-level operations are airdropped by cargo VTOLs that serve as deployment racks and mobile command nodes. Chekov has limited stocks of either vehicle type and personnel to operate them, so long-range deployments are reserved solely for when Chekov needs to put a enemy down hard.
In terms of weaponry, Chekov has domestic capacity for manufacturing ballistics-based weaponry, typically preferring to build to human proportions and calibers while vastly upscaling ammunition storage beyond human load-lifting ability, with the intent of compensating for poor aim with deep magazines and fewer reloads (easier to build self-reloading warbot guns than program a gun-reloading warbot). Still, ammunition expenditure is a problem, so Chekov isn't above buying weapons from other baronys.
The relative handful of human fighters Chekov has are primarily used as face-men with other human colonies, handling actions his robots can’t such as diplomacy and trade, as well as providing battlefield direction to simpler machines as appointed bot-marshals.
Faction Name: Chekov’s Factory
Faction Flag/symbol:
Faction Type: Barony
History:
Andrei Chekov was an immigrant to Lousiana fifty years ago, an unusual Slavic immigrant to a Franco-American colony world, but welcome nonetheless for his singular genius in robotics and technology, particularly the Task-Intelligence matrix that made his robots uniquely adaptable and efficient within their specialized field. Within five years, his robots were being made in factories across the colony and was popularly considered one of the techno-economic pillars of Lousiana against the coreworlds. Respect and awe equated to incredible freedom of R&D and funding for his increasingly secretive work. Though Chekov gradually slipped out of the public stage and blackboxed his technology beyond reverse-engineering, everyone assumed his stipulations of secrecy were merely to protect his rightful intellectual property and paid him little mind as the robots kept coming.
What no one suspected of the inventor was his hidden desire to break the one rule of robotics: the creation of sentient AI. Silently fuming against the restriction on artificial life and capabilities, Chekov came to Lousiana to finalize his dreams of creating life by his design away from the prying eyes of the Coreworld corporations and governments.
The Collapse was no setback to Chekov, who responded to the increasing degredation of the Republic by consolidating the bulk of his technology and work into a single factory complex in Bayonne City to at last pursue his work unfettered. As the dynasties arose and baronies were constructed, Chekov became a fortified city-state unto himself apart from any faction or dynasty, buying his neutrality by continuing to sell industrial products and renting his robots as mercenary troops to any barony that would pay.
Presently Chekov continues to pursue sentient AI, a goal perhaps still years in the future despite his continued refinement of Task-Intelligence systems. But practical problems in maintaining his Factory as well as problems besetting Lousiana once more force him to start interacting with the outside world for what he needs to continue his secret research.
Goal: Chekov seeks to create a fully sentient AI. In more immediate goals that translates into survival, recovering parts to repair his hydroelectric power plant, and recovering pre-Collapse research data to accelerate his efforts, in that order of priorities.
Territory: A factory complex on the riverside of Bayonne City, built up into a fortified complex.
VIPs:
Chekov, the enigmatic inventor and genius. Authoritarian ruler of the Factory and it’s army of machines loyal only to him. A pale and withered old man even with three rounds of longevity treatments and soon to be confined to a wheelchair or exoskeleton, his mind is no less sharp than ever as his rate of invention and development has only increased since the Collapse. Never seen outside his workshop and command center in the depths of the Factory, and never gives personal audience to anyone besides his machines.
Clockwork: Industrial Task-Intelligence, controls and directs most of the industrial systems of the Factory. It’s body is the Factory itself, or rather the parts with robotic limbs and working automation. For everything else it has to boss around humans. A gruff and not terribly nice robot even by their standards, but Chekov doesn’t care so long as it maintains quotas.
Cowboy: A six-foot service robot wearing a duraflex poncho and a wide-brimmed solar cell hat over a body previously used as a waiter, Cowboy is a reprogrammed social unit that acts as leader for trading and scavenging expeditions, as well as a mobile long-range radio set that can link to Chekov directly when he needs to directly talk to other humans. For noncompliance or customers refusing to pay, it has a pair of heavy six-shooters. The cowboy aesthetic and personality matrix was Chekov’s attempt to play to the American culture of the colony for emotional connection. Most people wish he hadn't bothered downloading a sterotypical cowboy chatbot persona into a robot.
Behemoth: A 15-foot mobile humanoid heavy mech section leader, anthropomorphizing one of Chekov’s line of development into human introspection by possessing twin “irrational” and “logical” TI-cores linked together. While not fully sentient, it’s capacity for adaptive logic and introspection (debate between the two cores cores) can fool a undiscerning human while enabling reactive complex multitasking. Unlike most robots, it possesses a full onboard hydrogen fuel cell system that can power itself for weeks, alongside heavy armor and wrist and shoulder hardpoints for weapons to protect itself and function as one of Chekov’s primary combat leader units. Due to expense of creation and maintenance, it remains a one-off design and reserved for putting down serious threats to the Factory.
Population: 1,049 humans. 6,500+ robots
Society:
Life in the Factory is austere and regimented, with Chekov’s followers treated just above the machines they tend to and operate. Chekov places little regard towards comfort or aesthetics, and it is reflected in the Factory’s utilitarian layout and infrastructure, seeing to the needs of it’s people without much regard for their comfort outside of communal recreational facilities. Everyone lives by the shift clock, and all are expected to contribute to the Factory or be expelled from it’s walls.
Still, Chekov does recognize that his “human resources” operate best when granted more than survival, and maintains a uniform rule of law within the Factory for reliable justice while still respecting freedom of speech and expression (insofar as it does not impede the operations of the Factory), and maintaining several Medialink nodes that contain recreational data surviving the Collapse. Hard toil during the day is rewarded with time-allocations to watch movies, play video games, or review historical archives without the censorship or authoritarianism other Baronys often apply to such media, again insofar as it does not detract from operation of the Factory.
Main Settlement: The Factory. A former advanced robotics complex, now turned into a fortified city-state unto itself.
Food Production:
Besides food imports from other Baronys, factory farming is the predominant food supply in Chekov’s territory. Hydroponics, mycoprotein vats, factory ranching, and such are one of the Factory’s external annexes in a consolidated urban agri-plant. The average diet consists of filtered water and condensed nutrient ration bars, which leads to foodstuffs being a predominant import of Chekov's human followers.
Electricity: The Factory is built upon a hydroelectric dam, with a backup solar and wind farm that has been expanded since the Collapse. All three supply Chekov considerable sums of electricity, but recent malfunctions and unreliability from the hydroelectric station has prompted rationing primarily turned to manufacturing, hydroponics, and military purposes over civilian use. Should the power be unplugged for any reason for long, is is likely the Factory will shut down for good.
Essential Production: Nutri-bars, Machine tools, ballistic ammunition, spare parts.
Specialist Production: Robots, bots, mechs, high-density power packs, solar cells.
Defences:
The Factory is surrounded by a 15-foot concrete wall studded with watchtowers, barbed wire, and autoturrets at the gates. The standard shift rotations are handled by flying camera bots and a few squads of robots marching the walls. In alert scenarios, reserve bot companies and heavy mechs operating on tethered power can be mobilized to respond to situations, although due to power expenditure this full mobilization state cannot be maintained for long without shutting down other parts of the Factory.
Military numbers: 324 human militia/scavengers/traders. 2,306 combat bots.
Military assets:
Chekov’s primary military edge is combat robotics, retaining a number of automated infantry and heavy mech designs in active production to terminate threats to his domain, alongside reserves of refitted civilian bots and "dumb" support drones. While nowhere near as smart or adaptable as experienced human survivors or fighters, Chekov’s Task-Intelligence matrix combined with the fearlessness, durability, and capacity for heavier weapons make his robots comparable opposition regardless. The primary weakness of most of Chekov’s robots is power, as even his best batteries don’t last more than a day, and combat-level operations drain them within hours. This often leads to his bots marching with solar-cell hats and improvised hydrogen fuel cell backpacks to supplement their batteries, or operating off tethered power supplies in friendly territory or in conjunction with heavy mechs with charging ports for their smaller comrades. But the most common solution is to simply kill before running out of power.
To capitalize on combat robot’s durability and limit power expenditure, bot-infantry are often deployed by APC’s refitted for bot’s and able to serve as mobile recharging stations, or in high-level operations are airdropped by cargo VTOLs that serve as deployment racks and mobile command nodes. Chekov has limited stocks of either vehicle type and personnel to operate them, so long-range deployments are reserved solely for when Chekov needs to put a enemy down hard.
In terms of weaponry, Chekov has domestic capacity for manufacturing ballistics-based weaponry, typically preferring to build to human proportions and calibers while vastly upscaling ammunition storage beyond human load-lifting ability, with the intent of compensating for poor aim with deep magazines and fewer reloads (easier to build self-reloading warbot guns than program a gun-reloading warbot). Still, ammunition expenditure is a problem, so Chekov isn't above buying weapons from other baronys.
The relative handful of human fighters Chekov has are primarily used as face-men with other human colonies, handling actions his robots can’t such as diplomacy and trade, as well as providing battlefield direction to simpler machines as appointed bot-marshals.