Here's another batch of rolls. Will make some more rolls soon (if I missed you then sorry; just keep mentioning me please, it's hard to keep track when I'm being asked by so many people in so many different places)
Anyways, I'll aim to have the nation sheet template up tonight as well.
Territory Size: 3. Your nation is smaller than average but there's still plenty of territory to work with. While the lack of endless farmland might prove an issue, you do at least enjoy the benefits of relatively small and easily defended borders. Population: 4,000,000 (about average) Urbanization: 2. Aside from your capital and perhaps one or two urban centers, you have a very highly rural population. There is likely some system such as serfdom, in which knights or other minor nobles inhabit estates that oversee a region and its people. Government Type: 1. Your nation is ruled by a theocracy. Perhaps you have a secular king is nothing more than the puppet of a powerful church, or perhaps your king is the head of the religion and acts as more of a high-priest than an administrator. Or perhaps the clergy rule as an oligarchic caste. In any case, deus vult! Political Stability: 5. You enjoy the benefit of having a serene and peaceful nation. There's barely any crime and you don't have a rebellion brewing, so rejoice!
Economy
Overall Wealth: 1. Your nation is very poor. Perhaps you've been ravaged by constant war or plague, or perhaps your people lack the resources or drive to create the foundations for a solid economy. In any case, homelessness and hunger are issues for many people. At least your people are used to this sorry state. Government's Primary Means of Generating Income: 3. Your various churches regularly gather money from those in attendance (for some reason, under this system church attendance tends to be mandatory) and then the temple passes some along to the government. In this way, your clergy essentially act as tax collectors. Technology: 4. Technological Parity; you're keeping up with the rest of Albion pretty well. Agriculture: 2. What your nation lacks in the way of farmland is made up for in the sheer bounty of its wilderness. Fishing, hunting, and plant gathering support your population. Unfortunately, this system doesn't support quick population growth or large food surpluses, so gathering food is always something on your peoples' minds. Natural Resources: Tin, lead, coal and peat, alum (a type of mineral useful for dyes, medicines, and a lot of other stuff)
Military Military Size 7. Relatively large noble warrior caste. Very effective, quick to mobilize, and fairly numerous, but difficult to replace if they suffer heavy losses. Military Focus 2. Poor navy; a good army with a very heavy focus on cavalry, a few magic users for battle. Military Leadership 5. Generals are somewhat competent; competitive; mixture of hereditary nobles and of soldiers that rose to the rank through battlefield exploits Military Reputation 6. Considered indifferently domestically; considered very intimidating and formidable by foreigners
Hrm. Yes, I can work with this. Not what I anticipated, but I can make plots and schemes for this just nicely.
GM, to what extent may we re-roll or adjust our rolls? Can we decide to take a hit in one area to do better in another? Or does accepting a reroll in one spot neccessitate knock-on changes in other areas?
Not asking for rerolls right now, need to brainstorm some nation concepts before deciding if thats needed, but would be nice to know for reference.
Within the next few hours I intend to deliver completed rolls to those of you that have already asked. Still writing up all the options and their flavor texts.
Interested in playing. Not sure whether to break out my species of fuzzy kobold industrialists or Elven magitech innovators yet, will await OOC and more setting details, but ready to hop in. i like the idea of a more rigid nation game and want to give it a shot.
Concepting nation idea of a industrial world under occupation, but with a subset of humans with goals in alignment of local alien independence. How much of a human civilian/imperial/military presence would be likely on a world well-suited for being a superheavy industrial powerhouse?
A question of a concept, would it be plausible that the Empire of Humanity allows xeno kingdoms to have an "export-model" modular cruiser design. Seemly sturdily built, modular and scalable from light cruiser to line cruiser to heavy cruiser to even being overloaded with weapons to make a pocket battlecruiser with a relative minimum of complexity. But it's riddled with ingrained design sabotage to make the heavier versions prohibitively maintenance-intensive, and its not as good as purpose-made designs. Nonetheless, it's in production by several conquered kingdoms and minor human provinces for want of other options and to avoid the expense of building navies from scratch.
My industry-type rebel faction would have a mobile shipyard capable of limited production of these ships, or retrofitting ones that can be acquired or stolen. Their initial focus is to fix the ingrained sabotage and acquire more industrial assets to build and refit them en masse to take advantage of how many are in circulation in second-line roles. A heady plan to turn the products of the Human Empire upon itself, but execution remains ambiguous.
The ship in question:
Plausible concept or needs reworking? I'm still on the drawing board, so I'm open to edits.
Signing in from the interest check: The Northstar MegaCon state. Focusing on shipping, station-building, multimedia, and military exports (security contracts and weapon/starship/android soldier sales). They also prefer to dress up their ubiquitous android workforce as kemonomimi (anime-style people with animal ears and tail). And yes, that is supposed to be a very odd quirk to outside observers by design.
But don't let cutesy PR and free anime/manga/VR fool you. They are among the lowest in MegaCons in morals. Humans are just another asset with a distinct market value.
Still tinkering with the history, especially with Keyguyperson's history to consider, but heres the gist of what I'm going for.
Faction Name:
Northstar Mega Conglomerate State. A.K.A. “Northstar MegaCon”
Faction Government:
Corporate state, ruled by a Board of Directors and all it's citizens determined by how much company stock they own.
Territory/Claims:
Northstar is a megacorporate-state headquartered in Fairhaven station in the asteroid belt with tens of thousands of space habitats, outposts, ports, and trading houses across the belt colonies and inner planets bearing the Northstar brand. It is estimated Northstar owns direct sovereign domain over 15% of the asteroid belt’s habitats and space stations, with significant “soft” influence over another 25% of habitats and mining colonies associated or dependent upon Northstar to varying extents and allied to it’s corporate agenda as subsidiaries, loyal allies, proxy-combatants, or debt-holdings (slave-states in all but name).
More abstractly, Northstar claims a significant trade and shipping fleet to the point of being considered another population demographic in it's own right.
Culture:
Northstar is a hardcore corporate state. The entire corporate-state is one massive megacorporation divided into a dizzying array of subsidiaries, contractors, subdivisions, and cartels, with all inhabitants employees of Northstar one way or another.
Northstar’s internal worker-culture retains holdovers of previous Pan-Oceania corporate (America, EU, Australian, Japanese, etc) influence, but is largely home-habitat grown corporate culture in it’s own right as well. In Northstar, everyone has a definite value as tracked by the amount of debt they owe to the MegaCon or their respective subsidiary division, and how much and what kinds of stock they own within the MegaCon representing their contribution and degree of ownership. These factors and what ratio they are in determine a person’s place and status with the system-spanning MegaCon. Most underclass citizen-employees have single-digit or double-digit stocks at most. Middle-class have thousands. And of course the executive tiers have many millions or billions of stocks in their name and under their thumbs. Those without stock value are little more than company property, and those without stock and high debt can sink to being property of even a near-broke underclass citizen-worker (often referred to as "furniture")
Northstar’s underclass citizen-workers are organized into three loose tiers based on stock, debt, and position.
“Specialists”- Underclass that somehow after decades of hard labor achieve a measure of stock value, pay off most of their mandatory debt, and specialized career success can escape part of their menial labor to achieve comfort on some level in this day and age. While still committed to hard work, people with money can at least buy a cheap last-gen android assistant or leverage rank into getting less arduous work gigs. Very, very few worker-citizens can rise to this rank, but Northstar doesn’t actively obstruct careerists and lets those who can succeed despite the class strife of the solar-age rise.
“Worker”- The vast majority of Northstar’s worker-citizens are people with little to their name but their debts from mandatory basic education, med-treatments needed to grow up in low-g to company near-Earth standards, and a single stock declaring their citizenship within Northstar and the right to advance up the corporate ladder. The micro-career ladder of the workers is a microcosm of the Northstar system as a whole. A struggle for a apartment built out of a shipping container you only have to share with four others, to get someone else to run the waste-management gig this week so you can attend a skill-seminar, to afford a subscription to Millie-Taki’s latest multimedia collection, to fight to pay off the debt interest and avoid falling down the social ladder, to maybe one day meeting a pretty partner and having a kid. Billions of workers live, struggle, toil, rise, and fall every year. Such is life within the MegaCon.
“Drones” "Furniture" "Tools"- Those with no stock do not even own themselves, consigned by crushing debt and misfortune to be little more than corporate property even below Android workers (who technically are company stock incarnate). While this also includes immigrants to Northstar who must earn their first unit of stock, at least they aren’t burdened by debt like worker-citizens that fall down the corporate ladder and unlikely to get back up. Debt blocks opportunities, education, and is a stigma of irresponsibility. Enough debt to be a drone is enough to be a slave to the company for the rest of your immortal life if you aren’t mulched on the high-danger job.
A couple of non-standard “perks” of being a Northstar worker-employee are mandatory growth treatments for low-g maturity and longevity (which are folded into a citizen's mandatory debt just for being born into Northstar, but at least mean they can live within normal-g conditions) and the enshrined and ironclad-enforced right for all worker-citizens to have basic access to the medialink network for free, with persocomps and VR displays offered for almost nothing to ensure workers get to partake in the “free” media, anime, and games of Northstar, and potential access to higher levels with the right subscriptions. This serves to both guarantee underclass participation in the highly addictive consumerism of Northstar entertainment and anime, while also tranquilizing them from their hard daily toil for the company without actually obtaining the true worth of their labor. Bread and circuses in the 24th century, and Northstar has plenty of both to offer to its highly consumerist internal culture.
Middle-class citizen-workers, sub-executives, and talents live in penthouse suites with a wide range of luxuries and attended to by a minimum of two android servants, with most of their life spent in the VR strata of Northstar’s networks in extensive immersive VR simulations for their play, shopping, and most social interaction. While Northstar doesn’t give a flat basic living stipend, the dividends and automated stock portfolios the middle class have enable them to self-fund their own luxury in perpetuity, while leaving some wiggle room of status within the class for the illusion of upwards or downwards movement. Unusually for most modern factions, a sizable percentage of the middle-class do “work” in an indirect sense, taking up part-time teleoperations gigs folded into VR simulations akin to a 21st-century Farmville or civ-dictator simulator. While still a minority, its nonetheless a shot in the arm for Northstar's bottom line outside of the usual cultural, entertainment, and philosophical products of the idle middle-class.
The trillionare and quadrillionare ultra-elite of Northstar’s Executive, Director, and Founder positions are said to live lives of unimaginable luxury. Some live in personal space-palaces attended to by armies of android servants, hidden in the void between worlds. Others live within the highest strata of the Quantum network, utilizing entire asteroid planetoids as quantum server farms to live centuries as gods in private VR pocket-universes for every minute in realspace. But not all of the Directors have departed from the real world, with the Board of Directors being a definite and real presence within the MegaCon and far from an idle circle of rulers.
AI android servants are a commonplace sight in Northstar habitats, from public utility workers to embodied office-worker level AI’s, to the harems and small armies of servants accumulated by the upper class and the legions used by SecFor. Most Northstar worker-citizens have gotten used to these animal-eared demihumans, but plenty within and without Northstar detest the “kitties” “kawii-kis” “furries” for taking job opportunities and possibly beginning to crowd out regular humans on Northstar stations. Most kemonomimi function as conventional working middle-class, doing office-work and skilled labor while roleplaying a facimilie of regular consumerist life. Why these androids are allowed to act so.....human is a judgement only known to the Founder that first made them. But Northstar isn't terribly concerned with an AI-revolt given their corporate loyalty programming and practical benefits to Northstar AI's sticking to the systems by their own choice (if they are even capable of realizing such a choice exists in the first place) clearly having worked for centuries. It is even rumored that a AI is one of the Board of Directors, but there is no definitive proof of that.
History:
[WIP]
Today, Northstar is a sprawling megacorporate nation-state. While nominally built around merchant shipping, education, multimedia, androids, and manufacturing starships and space habitats, they are effectively a self-sustaining nation state unto themselves that exports all the neccessary components for other habitats to function, including strategic defense.
Technology:
Citadel Stations: Northstar’s latest and greatest of space habitat designs, the Citadel-class habitat is a rotating space city in the stars, produced with the latest cutting-edge technology and evolution of human psychology within tight spaces in mind. Some are configured as industrial platforms, others as luxury stations devoted solely to producing a self-contained VR universe for their inhabitants, plus a usual run of labor platforms that can hold a unprecedented number of underclass with a across the board improvement in creature comforts and standards of living for even the lowest common worker. Several quantum-servers hosting construction recruitment websites crashed less than a day after declaration of their entry to mass-production from the sheer number of applicants from across the system, eager to buy their way into a Northstar Station under the immigrant-labor programs allowing old and new worker-citizens to earn a place with sufficient labor to offset their entry fees and berthing.
Despite the publicity of their construction, outside observers note the proportion of labor being drafted to build them is disproportionately low compared to the number of stations spotted being built. Some of them very well off the traveled trade lanes and without any external labor, with no questions answered of what they are for or why there are active SecFor patrols guarding all routes in and out of their build zones with shoot-on-sight orders.
Kemonomimi Android Lines: Northstar makes extensive use of complex robotics and automation from industrial robots to domestic servants to near-wholly automated starships. But their most visible product lineage are Kemonomimi domestic androids. Designed to be adaptive yet obedient task-centered AI servants, Northstar labs can custom-tailor these AI’s to suit the desires of their buyers in appearance, personality, skillset, and degree of independence with unrivalled precision. To distinguish androids from humans, Northstar primarily styles their product lines as Kemonomimi (humanoids with animal features and anime styling for deliberately not-quite human look in a attractive way), a early design choice that has led to enduring success across the solar system even as other android servant trends ebb and flow (cat-types remain a perennial favorite, followed by dog-types). Most Northstar middle-management and office-worker level AI’s are embodied in kemonomimi to keep them personable and grounded in human-like psychology, and they are exported by the millions to stations and factions that desire obedient underclass servants.
Unlike many other factions, Northstar has few qualms of mass-producing robots and AI androids of distinctly sub-human quality en masse for civilian, industrial, or military purposes. It is rumored that several newer habitats and shipyards recently built have their underclass replaced with compliant android labor in increasing percentages. While the Board of Directors haven’t begun actively phasing out human labor on their existing habitats, they have fewer reasons to keep using humans on their newer stations. And for some reason, Northstar's faith in their AI's has been rewarded with compliance, without even hints of AI rebellions other nations fear.
Military Kemonomimi: Combat-grade kemonomimi for Northstar SecFor are a far different breed than the cute, sexy, and obedient civilian models. Underneath the skin is kineticweave armor, diamondate skeletons, combat-reflex programming, micro-quantum computer cores running adaptive combat programming, weapons integrated into limbs. Company-level command units have built-in quantum communicators, enabling them to be remote-controlled by off-site tacticians (Specialized AI or human) to provide higher coordination than their individual task-intelligence systems.
Units expected to go into the heaviest of fighting or special ops work drop the pretense of being pretty humanoids, adopting more beastial forms like werewolves, multi-limbed spiders, mechanized dogs with built-in weaponry, or wholly robotic walking tank weapon platforms. Shedding human inefficiencies for combat lethality.
Northstar also exports military kemonomimi to other factions and corporations, either with SecFor on private military contractor agreements or downgraded last-gen export models bought outright. As the per-unit cost of android troops drops below the upkeep of human infantry (food, water, air, time in gravity and exercise, training, etc), its a hard question of how much of a place humans will have on the battlespace in the next century.
Dog-o-War: Short, petite dog-types rarely standing above 4”6. Designed as cheap, disposable, and low-impact cannon fodder for cramped habitats and slum-fighting, DoW’s are always used and deployed en-masse to put down threats with submachineguns or micro-lasers. Not terribly smart nor tactically adaptive, but numbers and the immunity to vacuum and zero-g make them useful in their own right. Recently there have been experiments in mass-networking into wolfpack formations.
Grunts: A catchall for a general range of standard infantry units based on any kind of K-type. Besides the body underneath being synthflesh covered mechanisms and warbot, they are equivalent to human troops in armament, armor, and operational role. Minus the weaknesses of needing air and gravity, or fearing going into combat. While perhaps lacking in initiative and creativity, numbers and reduced logistical upkeep compared to human troops is a fair tradeoff in Northstar’s point of view as they cram them into boarding pods like Old Earth sardines.
Bodarks: Elite Werewolf-types specialized in special forces work, large and powerful 6”2 machines with wolf-faces while wielding powered armor loaded with a wide range of armor and operations loadouts (corridor-assault, stealth, zero-g maneuver, etc). Northstar bends many of it’s own AI regulation protocols to make these beasts the most lethal killing machines they can be, giving them a considerable capacity for adaptation and creativity, but also requiring careful handling to keep them from the same instabilities human spec-ops are prone to when abused.
MAWLR: Centaur-types built around a mechanical lower body of four heavy legs and a upper body loaded with heavy artillery ordinance, laser cannons, missile launchers, or all-around coverage of machineguns. While situations that warrant such a walking tank are rare, and they are unable to traverse most human-sized internal tunnels and corridors, Northstar retains a considerable cadre for rock-hopping campaigns, planetary assaults, or clearing hanger bays for landing troops while immune to most small-arms. Why Northstar feels the need to also give them a external humanoid torso and head is a mystery for the ages, because they are totally redundant.
Military:
Northstar Security Force (“SecFor”) was originally just a customs and patrol task force, little more than corporate rent-a-cops. As Northstar expanded and interplanetary piracy took off, rent-a-cops became a full police force, then a gendarme as worker riots and warfare became possible, which then morphed into a security fleet for hire as other factions found themselves unable to survive and raise a military from scratch to defend themselves. Security and anti-piracy patrols for client-states would morph into military defense agreements for member-habitats effectively Northstar in all but name and logo.
Today SecFor is a dominating military force in the solar system. While not the strongest per-ship and crewman, nor the most cutting-edge or loaded with the most exotic hardware, nor the most tactically brilliant or inspired, it is both among the largest space forces in the solar system and the strongest in logistical support power within the Belt. Both of which more than make up for a litany of flaws.
Part of Northstar’s incredible depth in numbers stems from extensive automation and usage of kemonomimi androids whenever recruitment incentives fall short of quota, a not uncommon occurrence as manufacturing of new starships has surpassed the training pipeline. Where a human needs years of training and on the job experience to become skilled at their job, kemonomimi androids can download skills and abilities as needed and go through hundreds of simulated drills within minutes with enough Q-comp support while performing ship operations.
An unusual asset of Northstar Security is the ability to mobilize a sizable percentage of their otherwise unproductive middle-class as part-time teleoperations tacticians for robotic soldiers (averaging 3% to 5% depending on scale and marketing). A joint technological-logistical-societal breakthrough under the umbrella meme of “War as a Hobby”, Northstar’s available tactical command assets can be bolstered exponentially with the right incentives and marketing. The greater the challenge or enemy, the more thrill-seekers at the ready to remote control attack drones over commlinks while separate from the battlespace. While not the same as professional tacticians or full-time troops on site, being detached from death, fear, and morality of troops makes for potent equalizers and/or distractions to help real soldiers or perform raids. Its also led to instances of usage of excessive force and a few atrocities to rebelling workers by gamers detached from the real world, but Northstar waves them off as the usual risks when events escalate to open warfare and primarily the fault of the enemy to force them to escalate to such levels. Surprisingly, the risk of death should enemies home in on the hobby-commanders is just considered another part of this "hobby" for the thrill-seeking.
Admittedly, Northstar’s numbers and multitude of ways to bolster their manpower and command abilities are deceiving in a sense. SecFor is stretched out thinly across the asteroid belt and Northstar's trade lanes to the core worlds, and even the mightiest of warmachines operates a careful edifice of deployment and limited assets available at any given flashpoint. A mighty battleship fleet doesn’t matter much when it’s on the wrong side of the solar system. Yet strategic breadth and depth matter as well, and while Northstar might lose skirmishes and battles, nobody has come close to really waging full-scale war against Northstar as a whole or being able to inflict lasting crippling strikes against such a decentralized logistical infrastructure that can replace lost shipyards and habitats and ships with ease.
Space Forces Details
Northstar SecFor is a sizable naval presence in the solar system. Though not the greatest nor most advanced or tactically brilliant, it's size and logistical power means it maintains a consistantly high force readiness and resupply level.
Northstar’s logistical strength means their forces can be more loose with ammunition expenditure than other powers. Not only can battleships fire off hundreds of nuclear torpedoes, thousands of smart railgun grounds, and tank heavy damage without concern to the corporate bottom-line, there will most certainly be ammunition, fuel, and repair ships tailing behind every Northstar task-force to resupply on-site. A luxury few other nations can claim.
Another example of Northstar logistics and their disregard for AI-danger is the extensive use of attack drones, self-guided remote-controlled or AI driven mini-gunboats operating at speeds and g-forces that would kill humans loaded with short-life railguns and antimatter munitions. Relatively cheap and expendable compared to real starships, particularly in expensive personnel training bills, they are used and expended with ease by any ship with a external hardpoint or hanger. While easy prey for a starship’s precision weapons or point-defense arrays, they don’t need to live long to bring antimatter torpedoes to bear from a dozen different angles a regular starship couldn’t, and that can decide the course of a battle easily.
Northstar’s prized battleships and fleet carriers aren’t as active as the multimedia machine makes them out to be, as they are usually kept in secure dock and their crews in constant simulator drills, leaving the bulk of patrol work to corvettes, escorts, and cruisers. Even for a MegaCon, the expense of outfitting and supplying them across interplanetary distances isn’t something even they easily stomach or do on a whim. But when the situation warrants heavy metal, Northstar isn’t one for half-measures, considering any situation that warrants a battleship should be put down by three with a full-court press support and escort train. So far Northstar has only had to go all-out against another solar-power this way seven times, four times ending without a shot fired and three times ending with the utter destruction of the opposition. This does however leave SecFor’s battleship corps relying more on sims than actual experience though. Destroyer and cruiser crews handle most of the heavy lifting on a day to day basis.
Northstar also possesses considerable reserve forces within their massive civilian trade fleet in form of Auxila: civilian ships with underlying military-grade reactors, engines, and hull characteristics. In peacetime freighters haul cargo, passenger liners provide comfort and luxury to travelers, couriers run hardcopy messages and executives, and mining ships serve as bases for mining drones. In times of sufficiently serious war however, a sizable fraction of the merchant fleet can be returned to shipyards and be refitted within a few weeks with destroyer-grade weaponry, supplemental defenses, and onboard complements of military kemonomimi androids. While nowhere near as hardy as real warships, they can mount and support the same railguns, missiles, and attack drone complements of real destroyers and can operate behind the main line of warships to add more guns to the firing line, or perform independent raiding ops with a field commander onboard (where most War as a Hobby players end up). Unfortunately, this also means a quarter of Northstar trade ships are also ideal grabs for wannabe pirates, who only need a shadow port, a good hacker, and some spare weapons to bolt on to turn them into ideal raiding ships.
Tinker, tinker, tinker, I tinker. When will it be OOC time?
Downscale of QEC's is annoying, I will need to rework "War as a Hobby" sub-doctrine a bit then. But fine, i don't want any risk of a OP power. Glad to see the solar system filling up, gives me more ideas for structuring Northstar.
Thinking of adding planetary trading houses to Mars and Earth so Northstar has stakes there too. Or not? Hrm. Choices.
@Skylar so my Corp is shaping up to be one of the major players in the shipbuilding industry. They're a bit more ethical than North Star (Okay a lot more ethical) but it doesn't mean that they wouldn't have mutual interests. The way I've set them up they have small slips or yards on most stations and asteroids big enough to house them as well as free floating yards in and past the belt, which would mean it's very likely that our two companies would interact out of necessity.
Your company needs a way to keep its ships flying, my company needs ships to fix to stay in business. We both need to turn a profit.
So what I'm asking is if you would mind having some sort of a business relation with my Corp, not an alliance or anything but just allowing me to have holdings on your stations (but not all of them). Strictly business.
Also we build ships so come to me if you need 'em.
Logistics, ship maintenance subcontracting, and building merchant ships for Northstar all sounds good to me. Meanwhile Northstar provides business, habitat-building, possibly cheap manpower or android kemonomimi exports, potential security contracts, and usual access to the Northstar multimedia machine.
Northstar by itself has a very broad shipbuilding base, but not a exceptionally great on a per-ship basis. NS-SecFor or some of it's remote-control Tacticians may come to you for the kinds of specialist ships you can build versus the generic ones Northstar makes on their own. Stealth ships, refitting auxila into pocket-warships, artillery craft
As for the ethics question, Northstar doesn't see it as a ethics question. Its just a matter of supply and demand, and the supply of human labor far exceeds the demand for it, ergo the per-unit value of human life by default isn't high and must be earned through their own effort. However other companies treat their human resources is their business, but Northstar's method has worked in getting workers to pay for their own fare instead of depending on handouts they haven't earned.
