The future was not quite what we expected. Instead of flying cars we got rising sea levels. Instead of superintelligent AI we got superinclement weather.
At the close of 2030, preparations were being made to flee the earth in the face of an increasing number of hurricanes and "boil-outs", large patches of superheated water due to either solar winds or geothermal activity- scientists were too busy to research more deeply as dry land became more and more of a commodity.
By 2040, every able surviving hand was attempting to build either spacecraft or boats, depending on their level of optimism. Wealthy billionaires found their money and power rendered useless by simple factory workers who were more invested in building for themselves than for a wage. Ore, processing, design and fabrication operated off a simple barter system, with one thing of value to trade: Escape.
By the close of 2044, the mines supplying ore began to go underwater. In 2046, rogue weather tore apart the shed where parts were being fabricated. With families and homes being subsumed by the hour, a mass of humanity began piling into the rockets, the deserving and undeserving, those who bartered and those who just took. Eventually all spacecraft were full and the doors were shut, those left outside desperately attempting to gather up seaworthy scrap, or clinging to the outsides as the huge rockets engaged and sent the shuttles roaring into space, or at least most of them.
Following perhaps the only pre-determined and organised plan to do with the evacuation of earth, the shuttles were vaguely maneuvered together in orbit and bolted together (or at least most of them), before the final rocket stages were activated in order to leave earth orbit and begin the long pilgrimage. Perhaps to their doom, perhaps to a new home?This in a "vs NPC" arms race, set on a creaky and unreliable generation ship on its way out of the solar system.
Your job as the research and design department will be attempting to make the ship actually spaceworthy, on the fly, with limited resources, whilst preserving the lives of its belligerent and unhelpful populace.
I can't be bothered putting anything here now, but y'know. It's an arms race.
I'll be stealing most of Draignean's rules because they're simple, probably.
You'll get five dice per turn..
In the design phase you'll get to allocate them to designs in progress or spend a minimum of three to start a new design.
These three dice will be used to roll the Efficacy, Cost and Initial Progress of that project, respectively. It will also be divided into "time parts" based on the scope of the design.
"Time" is a misnomer, as it likely won't require turns but design dice to finish. Most won't require more than one extra dice put into the initial design, but monumental ones can potentially require up to a dozen dice. Completing only part of a design will still confer a partial benefit, and incur a partial cost.
Designs can also be "rushed" in order to implement them immediately, but at a dice disadvantage.
Rushed projects will never cost more than three dice, but big projects will almost certainly fail if rushed.
There will then be a revision phase where you get to allocate leftover dice to any designs in order to add modifiers to their rolls. Revisions put in place whilst a product is being designed are more useful than revisions tacked on a completed design, and revisions to boost poor rolls will be more effective than revisions to further increase the bonuses accorded good rolls.
Multiple revisions on a project will have diminishing returns, and likely cost resources
After the revisions phase, the Ship will continue degenerating and the next turn will begin.
Votes are most easily cast in a quote box, after a certain amount of time or landslide victory, I'll pick the most voted design/revision/s and continue the turn.
It's encouraged not to make frivolous designs or revisions which you have no intention of actually voting for, but there are no rules against it.
The ship is your lifeline, and the only hope of potentially humanity's survival. It is also rickety, underengineered, and prone to immediate failure at any moment.
Sections
The ship has a number of sections, every section has two ways in which it can fail. First, it has a failure clock. This ticks down every turn, when it hits 0, there's a major failure and some damage to the ship is taken. Secondly, it will make a dice roll every turn to see if it suffers a minor failure, at which point you'll either have a turn to throw a revision at it or take damage, or if you're unlucky damage will be taken straight up.
Generally the failure clock can be pushed back with regular revisions, whilst the failure die can only be increased with (successful) designs.
Getting the failure die for every section to d100 is a requirement for winning the game.
Resources
There's no ore in space, and little equipment to make complex equipment.
Ergo, there's only three resources with a theoretically infinite supply: Humans, Food and Power. Everything else will be very scarce and very important to manage effectively. Expensive components which may be great for the ship will likely need to be dismantled in order to allow for other designs.
Food, Water and Oxygen will be used by humans to survive, (food cannot be stored and takes up a lot of space, water can be stored and takes up very little, but is used to make food, and is first to go in a breach besides oxygen)
Power will be obtained from the sun, so is theoretically limitless, as long as the panels stay functioning. It will be used up by components and sections.
Steel and Electronics are used to make components. They can usually be brought 1/1 out by dismantling components, or can be slimmed down via revisions.
Civilians and Specialists are what you're doing this all for. Civilians are relatively easy to replace, happiness driving a breeding instinct just as much as mortal danger, whilst Specialists will never be grown without some way to convert Civilians. Try not to airlock any, or you'll find yourself losing design dice.
Lastly is Morale. Humans are humans, and even with the yawning void all around them, they're still quite happy to tell you any time things are going poorly. Low morale will lead to sabotage and insurrections, and may result in the surprise development of independent projects, whilst high morale increases productivity and acceptance, but may cause inattentiveness and accidents.
This is a survival horror. It is bleak, and difficult, and if I'm pushing you as hard as I should be, you will absolutely lose people.
This is not a hero fantasy. This is You, as you are now, when the world suddenly starts undergoing an extinction event.
You're not "Beijing 1", chock full of scientists and supersoldiers. You're "The Latvia", when the country began a space race at the same time as Estonia went underwater.
There isn't a surplus of military-grade handiwork. There is, however, a reasonable amount of spare equipment which particularly selfish refugees brought on-board because a radio was more important than someone's father.
This is the result of people like you and me deciding they needed to live, convincing a steel mill or power plant that you could help everyone get away from a planet turned hostile;
or waiting on the outskirts of the project site because you know that if you could just get on board one of those rockets, they wouldn't have the time or muscle to make you leave.
You are not one of the hundreds of rockets which failed to exit atmosphere.
You are not one of the tens of rockets which had electrical faults, and weren't able to alter their course or had shoddy ameteur welding result in a hull failure.
You are one of the very few rockets which has some sort of a chance at life.
This game is incredibly hard, but if this was reality, you'd have already been insanely lucky many times over.
Some minds speculate this is a future which could happen to us.
Greenpeace seems to think this is a future which will happen to us.
When Earth starts turning into Venus, and the only salvation is the inhospitable void of space, the real question is whether you'll have the ingenuity (and luck) needed to survive.
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Topic: Orion Trail (Read 4963 times)