This RTD is heavily inspired by Arms Race games. 5 players, all designers. Physics are soft and squishy.
Humanity has ruled the galaxy for thousands of years. Empires have risen and fallen with each warp collapse.
First was Humanity United. They disintegrated as hyperspace vanished and our hyperdrives failed. We learned to go faster than light by warping physics. Eventually the rules of the universe rebelled, and activating a warp drive created an uncontrollable black hole. Once again, every system was isolated. Then we discovered node travel, and our ships sailed with node drives. They weakened over time, needing to be rebuilt ever bigger. Nodespace stabilized when huge stations could support them, flinging our starships relatively short ranges.
One day nodespace became inaccessible. We eventually created our own copy, though synthspace was a poor imitation. For the next thousand years, we could directly connect people with miniature ground-based synthspace stations, but could not build them large enough for anything bigger than a fighter jet, and space engineering atrophied. And then our synthspace stations all exploded at the same time, and could not be rebuilt.
This time, it took barely a generation to rediscover FTL.
This time, it is actively dangerous.
A) Immaterium travel - We've discovered what seems to be a bizarre variant of hyperspace. Or we will have in thirty years. A large warship appeared in a trinary system one day, apparently from the future. We reverse-engineered their engines and figured out how to build more. The Immaterium hurts to exist within or look at, and ships keep going missing. Some blame demons.
B) Nodespace Rippers - We've re-opened nodespace, and can make our own node lanes. They're much easier to travel, but tend to collapse. Our crews feel very uneasy in Nodespace, like something is constantly watching, annoyed and biding its time.
C) R'lyeh Drives - A fanciful name, by a brilliant but slightly mad physicist. We understand nothing about how it works, but it appears to teleport ships directly and instantly. Occasionally crewmen vanish after activation, or strange symbols and mundane objects appear in the ship.
Write-in? Must be similarly exciting.
The King of Thaddeus III is worried about nearby polities mobilizing, and has started rebuilding the military.
The planet has always kept an extensive collection of obsolete ships for historical preservation. You are all expert level specialists in archaic starship technology and engineering. You're the closest the planet has to starship engineers, and have been hired or conscripted to lead your own design teams.
Each of you have made one major design already, and it's in production now. You don't know what the FTL method will be, and may have to retrofit these ships to use it later.
To emulate an initial ad-hoc fleet, PM me your starting designs and specialties. I will ensure that there aren't duplicates for roles, but there may be similar roles -- a fighter and a long ranged interceptor are allowed together, but not two interceptor designs. If your design relies on another role, such as a carrier(strike craft) or boarding shuttle(marines), and nobody designs one, a scrap-quality variant will be provided.
Each player will submit 1 starting design, and either 1 primary + 1 secondary specialty, or 3 secondary specialties. Narrower specialties are stronger, while something as broad as "weapons" will only negate the unskilled penalty.
Feel free to make up fluff for your design, and include the armament, ship's intended role, and if it has any particularly notable systems, such as an oversized shield generator. It may be entirely new, cobbled together from old designs, or just a rebuilt old design you've found and fixed up.
Starting designs will be pretty good, but the goodness might be spread thin if you try to put too much on -- If you have too many different useful systems and weapons on your battleship, you won't understand them as well. This might cause problems with using them on different designs, and they'll probably have various flaws.
Physics are soft, but don't start too exotic with your designs. You're around the laser and plasma portion of the tech tree, not the black hole missiles and living psi-ship era. You may start with such advanced specialties, but it will take time to redevelop functional and practical designs off of it. Building advanced designs early would likely be limited run vessels built around devices pried off ancient hulks and renovated with make-shift spare parts.
Your actions will be slightly stronger than revision actions in a traditional arms race. A player should spend a full turn for a new type of weapon, or might try to resize a Rockbreaker Cruiser as a frigate, with weapons upsized from Fighter IX. Multiple players may work together on a design, either to help on a single design, or to design a ship using a component that another player is making this turn.
To sign-up, post your character name and vote on FTL. Remember to PM me your specialties and design. If you write character fluff that hints at your specialty, please wait to post that fluff until I post the starting designs.
Author
Topic: Scrapyard Engineers of Thaddeus III (PvE Arms Race) (Read 6100 times)