Ah, the Fulares system. You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy...
Just kidding. It's pretty much completely undeveloped at this point, which means there's infinite potential for you to turn it into what you want it to be (Terms And Conditions Apply, offer void in some areas, sponsors hold no liability for any and all Actions, Events, and Circumstances encountered or undertaken by any affiliated or unaffiliated entities).
Still, if you and your paymasters agree, if nobody gets too much in your way, and if the stars line up just right, you might just be able to turn this place into something you can be proud of, be that a shining utopia of enlightenment for all or your own personal moon-sized space-mansion.
You are a semi-free agent with important ties to important things, and therefore the experience and connections to organize and carry out major projects. However, you are not yourself powerful or wealthy enough to do any of this on your own- you need the backing and support of other major entities, which usually means on some level that you're working for them rather than the other way round.
Within these limitations, however, you are likely to have an exceeding amount of control and room for personal entitlement. So long as your requirements are met, your bosses typically won't mind you pursuing side projects or skimming off the top. On a related note, exact "ownership" of said projects can be somewhat fuzzy; it's usually more useful to talk about who has what rights or entitlements to certain aspects or products than it is to speculate on who "owns" a colony or even ship outright.
Players may join at any time. However, the game will only last until Turn 10, so latecomers will have somewhat less time to help develop the system. On the bright side, late arrivals do tend to have more of established players' efforts to draw technology and materials from.
This game is largely a technobabble space opera. Trying to use realistic particle physics to accomplish tasks is unlikely to grant any particular bonus, and may even fail when it shouldn't.
Technobabble, on the other hand, will typically succeed where it relies on or establishes internal consistency. "Rerouting tachyons through the proton manifolds" is unlikely to do anything on its own, but inventing tachyon reactors or proton manifolds in the first place might be entirely valid.
Technology, materials, demands, and so on tend to be loosely available where needed, especially if some example of them is located within the current system. More specific solutions to these issues will result in better, more concrete results. For instance, it is generally assumed that you have some armed forces of some kind, and that they are armed with weapons. The details are largely assumed to be ad hoc and not terribly efficient, however- police or security guards wherever they crop up, whatever weapons they could buy, and so on. Researching or manufacturing weapons for them explicitly, or raising or founding coherent police or military units, will make them more efficient and concrete.
Similarly, if you intend to focus on mining, trading, leisure, or anything else in particular, it might behoove you to make sure your particular patch of space is well-equipped to handle that sort of thing. Tourists riding Malk-4 Pleasure Yachts tend to have a better time than tourists riding whatever transport was available.
To really get a project going, you'll need a Charter for it. A Charter consists of three fields.
Sponsor: Who's paying for all this.
Location: Where this is going down.
Purpose: What everybody's hoping will happen.
All three fields are rolled for separately, so if you try to get, for instance, a Charter to build a brutal prison colony on a frozen planetoid for a grim and unforgiving empire, a bevy of 1s might result in an offer to let you make a tourist resort on a tropical world for the government of a cheerful and utopian planet. Odd rolls in different places might result in a brutal prison planet on a tropical paradise for really very friendly people, a tourist destination on a frozen deathtrap, or other oddities.
Charters may be discarded if undesired, but remain available for others to snatch up should they feel so inclined. Attempting to utilize the benefits provided by a Charter while completely ignoring the Charter's mandates will typically see you blocked or removed from your position before you can do substantial damage. Relevant preliminary work and side projects once a Charter's core functions are online tend to be perfectly fine. Building a vacation spot on a mining Charter is likely to fail, perhaps disastrously so, for instance, but building a vacation spot for an existing mining colony on that same Charter would likely not raise any eyebrows.
Claims are similar to Charters, except that they are smaller parts of the same general operation. Pursuing two different Charters means working on two separate projects, for the same organizations or otherwise. Pursuing a Claim within a Charter means working within your original Charter, but in a different area or under different conditions. A mining Charter to extract Cordobalizitite from a certain rocky red moon could be supplemented by Claims to begin work extracting Livarium from deposits elsewhere on the same moon or branching out to a different source of Cordobalizitite, for instance.
Claims are primarily necessary when it isn't clear that a desired location, resource, or demand exists. Building a tech lab on a residential colony wouldn't necessarily require a Claim, because there's obviously space for it and some possible justification for putting it there. Adding extensive industrialization for commercial frigate construction probably would, because it's relying on a consumer demand that might not exist.
Filing for a Charter or Claim is generally a free action, but players are advised to do so sparingly. Possible Sponsors are likely to be thoroughly unimpressed by someone who routinely applies for Claims and then refuses or seems unlikely to complete them.
Every round, each player gets three actions:
Construct: Build a colony, installation, series of factories, or something else on a large scale.
Manufacture: Build a spaceship, order of toys, military regiment, or something else on a small scale.
Research: Research a technology of some sort, be that better cupholder alloys or a new model of handgun.
In addition, any military forces or other free-roaming assets the player has may be ordered about as a free action.
Action Density is an important concept with regards to actions, especially Research. Simply put, the smaller your action is in scale, the more intense it is within its area of impact. Researching "better weapons" is likely to lead to vague, nonspecific increases in general weapon effectiveness. Researching "handheld laser cannons that work like Star Wars blasters in that they're not actually lasers but really just energy bullet things" is likely to give your troops a concrete supply of weapons with distinct qualities, and therefore a distinct impact on their performance should you try to use them for anything.
In general, it's recommended you keep your actions to the scale you most care about. If you simply want people to inhabit a planet, "colonize a planet" is a viable action. If you need the people on that planet to have any attributes whatsoever beyond existing, a more detailed, smaller-scale action might be required to get what you want. Overreaching on broad, vague actions and then trying to rely on the fruits of your labors is a recipe for being very disappointed by marginally better bullet alloys or scattered settlements of isolationist hicks.
To join, post your desired initial Charter along with a name and description of your character. Signups are always open, regardless of game progress or current player count.
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Topic: Ten Turns to Develop Space RTD [Turn 0: A Lot To Take In][Dead Space] (Read 3856 times)