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[Rolepgeek]

One or two more human factions, or alien factions of existing alien species, might be nice. Maybe a 'new kid on the block' faction, with an utterly different approach to combat, for even more options and a storyline apart from what we've already done relating the Kai and whatnot?

[Ross Vernal]

Let's say each side gets 30% bonus to distribute.

Terran Alliance: +20% Missile damage, - 15% cost for ships equal to or above Battle cruisers, +5% cost below
Special: Missile Pods (Once per battle/deployment, Missile damage and to-hit doubled)

Galactic League: +10% Missile, +10% Energy,  - 15% cost for ships equal to or below Heavy Cruisers,  +5% cost above
Special: Armed Freighters (Faster, tougher, secretly armed merchant ships)

Kai Dominion: +30% Energy, +10% Marines, +10% Ship Cost
Special: Infestation (Can enslave other forms of life)

Merope Formation: +30% Energy &  Missile,  - 10% HP, +20 Ship cost
Special: Strength In Numbers (cumulative boost based on nearby friendly)

Synthetic Civilization: +20% Speed, +20% HP, +10% ship cost
Special: Sentient Ships (Cost x4, HP &  Weaponry x2)


I'd say that the Fleet could be a mix of any of these, honestly. Rouge Kai do exist, synthetic logic does not always lead to universal conclusions, etc, etc.

You can feel free to add in a few more. It's a big galaxy, after all!

[Rolepgeek]

Rift Conglomerate: +10% Speed, -20% Ship Cost for Cargo Ships, Carriers, and Frigates and Below, +10% Electronic Warfare, +10% Light Cruisers and above cost
Special: Rift Drive: Incredible Hyper capability

Octav Hegemony: +15% Range, +20% Missiles, +15% Accuracy, -20% HP
Special: Grav Cannons: Extremely long range but slow spinally mounted 'artillery' weapons, requires specially built ships, only one per ship.

Reluctant about this next one, but...

Coalition of Monarchies: +10% HP, -10% Ship Cost(all), +10% Energy, +10% Defensive Systems, -10% Speed
Special: For The Kings/Queens: Ships retain large amount of effectiveness even when heavily damaged

and, eh, why not,

Red Star Empire: +20% Marines, +20% Energy, +10% Cost
Special: Infiltrate: Either ability to board even while in large fleet actions, or ability to cause ships to mutiny/bonus to sabotage. Not sure which. Possibly just the ability to have stealth, if that requires a special.

These are all just ideas, by the way.

[Ross Vernal]

This is certainly going to offer players a huge variety of ship choices. I think the rolls for Captains will be d12 + d6 x 10 for starting money.

Also, we'll just round costs like...

1.70< rounded to 2
1.69> - <1.30 rounded to 1.5
1.29> rounded to 1

Give me a bit to work on weaponry.

[Rolepgeek]

Do you mean 1.29?

Also, d12+d6x10? So between 11 and 72?

[Ross Vernal]

Yes, I do mean .29.

Rephrase: (d12+d6)x10. From 20 bc to 180bc.

Spoiler: Weapons (click to show/hide)

Missile up top energy down below. I'm thinking about reducing the costs a bit, but weapon systems ARE expensive and this includes software, hardware, training, etc etc.

[Rolepgeek]

Ah. I'm guessing the different colums are different sizes?

Will there be (cheaper, shorter ranged, weaker) fighter sized weaponry?

[Ross Vernal]

 :-XSmallest weapon size is for Fighters/Light Frigates, then Light Cruisers. Next size is Heavy/Battle, then Dreadnought/Superdreadnought.

We can shuffle numbers a bit so Bombers can actually *carry* missiles, of course...

Additionaly, give each side its own size modifications of, say, 10-15%. Alliance might have 10% smaller missiles and an additional 5% space specifically for missiles. Or something like that.

Edited for clarity

[Ross Vernal]

waller: 400
juggie: 640
megad: 1000

Q ship should carry 10+2 fighters
LAF should carry 8+2

35 ship types with 9 races to choose from. I believe that variety has been achieved.

Terran Alliance:
+20% Missile damage
-10% Missile size
+5% ship missile capacity (Missile weapons have 5% ship mass "free" space)
- 15% cost for ships equal to or above Battle cruisers
+5% cost below
Special: Missile Pods (Once per battle/deployment, Missile damage and to-hit doubled)

Galactic League:
+10% Missile
+10% Energy
+10% Weapon Capacity
- 15% cost for ships equal to or below Assault Cruisers
+5% cost above
Special: Armed Freighters (Faster, tougher, secretly armed merchant ships)

Kai Dominion:
+30% Energy
-10% Energy Size
+10% Marines
+10% Marine Capacity
+10% Ship Cost
Special: Infestation (Can enslave other forms of life)

Merope Formation:
+30% Energy
+30% Missile
- 10% HP
+20 Ship cost except for Carriers
Special: Strength In Numbers (cumulative boost based on nearby friendly)

Synthetic Civilization:
+20% Speed
+20% HP
+10% Missile Size
-25% Energy Size
+10% ship cost
Special: Sentient Ships (Cost x4, HP &  Weaponry x2)

Rift Conglomerate:
+10% Speed
+10% Electronic Warfare
-10% Component Size
+10% Light Cruisers and above cost
-20% Ship Cost for Cargo Ships, Carriers, Frigates and Below
Special: Rift Drive: All ships move 1 hyper band faster than they previously could.

Octav Hegemony:
+15% Range
+20% Missiles
+10% Missile Capacity
+15% Accuracy
-20% HP
Special: Grav Cannons: Extremely long range but slow spinally mounted 'artillery' weapons, requires specially built ships, only one per ship.

Coalition of Monarchies:
+10% HP
-10% Ship Cost(all)
+10% Energy
-10% Energy Size
+10% Defensive Systems
-10% Speed
Special: For The Kings/Queens: Ships retain large amount of effectiveness even when heavily damaged

Red Star Empire:
+20% Marines
+20% Marine Capacity
+20% Energy
+15% EW
+10% Cost
Special: EW Specialists

The last steps aside from figuring out relations is modules. Mining, construction, additional HP, fighter bays, additional transport/assault shuttles, EW, counter-EW, repair, etc. I am going to declare that free space is going to be cargo bays for free.

[Rolepgeek]

Sweet.

That looks pretty cool. What are the second numbers for fighters? 2+1?

[Ross Vernal]

Second number is spare ships.

Let's see.

Life support base would allow for 10% of the crew to be evacuated. Each module would give 10%+10(level) with the standard 1% boost per size category.

Sensor base would be, oh.... a light-minute per system. I suppose EW would counter equivalent or be tricky at a certain rate within that range. If it scaled both with size and efficiency then sensor range would go up to 10lm max per sensor and each EW module giving another +1 to your stealth roll... Hm.

Fighter Bay includes repair capacity for the ships. We'll need an Ammo Module. Tractor beams?

Hm. I might be able to put in the defense modules as percent negative to-hit per module for missiles and reinforced sidewalls for energy weapons. Obviously going to have to be a limit, otherwise some joker will give a ship -100% to-hit with missiles and 140% tougher walls, which would present obstacles.

Oh yeah, a map.

[Rolepgeek]

You could make it work like EHP does in a lot of games, but for hit chance. You add stuff to a denominator, so that chances to hit become miniscule, and hit 0 if the missiles aren't super overwhelming numbers(every possibility to have point defense good enough to prevent all missiles, so long as you were bigger than opposing ship.)

I could try a map? I'd need a bit more info on the original factions and their general size and whatnot, though.

[Ross Vernal]

If we did a 2 by 2 with the Galciv numbers for a map, a fast courier would take 290.06 days at max safe hyper to travel from one end to the other in a straight line course. I think that's a good amount of space in which to play?

When I did the original time line, it went like this:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

- Merope contact humans
- Humans begin tech drive
- Kai invasion of humans and formation of Alliance
- Synthetic Civilization spawns as the result of a massive Kai-Merope-Mercenary space battle on the galactic fringes
- Human Civil War almost immediately after Kai beaten away
- League forms of outer worlds, Alliance from Core Worlds (Earth, Mars, etc), others go on diaspora to form their own star empires with blackjack and hookers
- Merope lose key forward systems
- Synthetics design Suncrusher weapon
- Kai Insurrection
- Humans take nearest Kai systems
- Synthetics and Tech Kai non-aggression pact
- Human Armistice; Uplift begins (I hope you guys have read this.)
- Synthetics/Tech purge Body Kai
- War Kai smash Synthetic Prime Fleet, Synthetics sell Suncrusher to Merope
- Merope take out loans from the Alliance and League, and go to full production
- Synthetic withdrawal, mercenary fleet sales
- Grand Fleet assembled. Merope and Synthetic Mercs assault League territory in exchange for Alliance concessions
- Suncrusher Fleet launch, Terran non-humans achieve 24th-century levels after Uplift
- Grand Battle; Kai solar system destroyed
- Alliance finishes Uplift programs and begins construction of Home Fleet
- Short war between Alliance and League due to political interference; Home Fleet's Earth Megadreadnought 15 "Gaia" vanishes on route to the then-current League Captial Designate
- Synthetic and Merope skirmishes
- Galactic Federation formed between non-Kai, mostly a trade organization but also establishes basic rules of war
- Semi-cold war between Federation members, including Synthetic protests about TechKai being excluded despite obviously peaceable intention and actions
- Collapse of the Federation; game starts roughly about here

With new civilizations, uhm... I'm sure we can fit them in. Yes, EMD15 is a ship that's going to show up in game, athough it's going to be very expensive to recruit.

[Rolepgeek]

Uplift begins?

Where can I read that?

Also, Rift Conglomerate is a Mega-Super-Hyper-Ultra-Corporation, with a near monopoly on high-quality hyper systems, CEO(s) are of varying races; profit knows racism not,
Octav Hegemony is probably similar in some ways to the Kai in that they take over and assimilate cultures, but far more isolationist and fairly content with keeping to themselves, since they have plenty of stuff already that they're trying to keep in line, also initially started by aliens(also musical references everywhere),
Coalition of Monarchies is human, bunch of like-minded star systems, almost all monarchical, some nice, some dicks, some only monarchs in name with parliaments being real power, some true dictators; Uneasy balance of power when at peace, but united in war almost entirely due to history and tradition
Red Star Empire is fairly new around, still grabbing territory, quite manipulative, mostly aliens and humans who originally made contact with them.

[Ross Vernal]

https://www.goodreads.com/series/41134-the-uplift-saga

Library, friendly local bookstore.

If I include a to-hit per weapon, it would work pretty well. Give me a bit and I'll come out with Weapon Chart 2.0 and some ideas for defense and modules.