Ruins of Alien Suns: Research and Exploration

Overview

Exploration

Remnants

Standard Remnants

• Scrap/Bits/Glimmers: Discrete non-functional objects which are expended when subject to reverse-engineering research.
• Salvage: Remains of alien or advanced human technology which can be made partially or fully usable. They can be wielded as normal or subject to reverse engineering. In most cases (roll a 1d10, 10 is a pass), attempting to pick these relics apart will destroy them.
• Limited Sites: Semi and non-functional ruins with a scale that makes their relics exhaustible. Limited Sites have a rating that determines the number of successful yearly tech results each can yield, demonstrated as 'Limited Site (X)', X being the number of techs it holds.
• Active Sites: Mostly functional ruins which provide nearly inexhaustible advancements to states that research them.

Unusual Remnants

• Artifacts: Devices of unexplained or unexplained (Solarian vernacular, paracausal) power or function. Alternatively technological wonders from the peaks of fallen civilizations, improperly documented and created under such rarefied conditions that they are impossible to reproduce. Examining such devices provides further secrets as to their function, but they can never be reproduced.
• Bracewell Probes/Mimics: Civilization hijack devices left behind hostile alien species. They provide powerful technologies which guide the development of sentients in order to win internal conflicts and ultimately replicate the biology or sociology of the creator species, or function as beacons to signal the harvest or destruction of the target species at a pivotal moment. The difference between a Bracewell Probe and a Mimic is primarily one of scale: the latter can consume civilizations while the latter is a ship-eating menace at worst.
• Guidestones/Rosettas: Uplift devices left behind by benevolent aliens, which provide 'keystone' technologies that open entire new avenues of physics or engineering. The difference between Guidestones and Rosettas is primarily one of effort: Guidestones lead their finders to hidden caches or lost battlefields, Rosettas simply provide an inter-period bridge to new fields of understanding. The MERLIN Device found by the ISA is a typical Guidestone, while Quon Archives from a dynastic Interregnum gave much of humanity access to the practical principles of plasma and antimatter weaponry.
• Survivors: Actual functional alien technology in the hands of those who created it, minimally patched with 'modern' engineering to make it useable. Quon PAVs, and much of what was stolen from Havuon by humanity after the sack, as well as the great hosts of Quon warriors who have begun to trickle into various Verger armed services are survivors. Their equipment can be decommissioned to be researched, in which case it's treated as Salvage and will most likely greatly annoy their original possessors.

Research

Fields

Starship Construction

Affects build times and hull designs and fusion torches.

Example Targets: [Ship Class], Escorts, Capitals, Build Time, Build Cost, New Hulls

Energy

Affects Directed Energy Weapons and Reactors.

Example Targets: Improve [Existing Weapon], Lasers, Reactors, New Directed Energy Weapon

Kinetics

Affects railguns and mass drivers.

Example Targets: Improve [Existing Weapon], Railguns, Autocannons, New Payloads, New Kinetic Weapon

Ballistics

Affects missiles.

Example Targets: Improve [Existing Weapon], Standard Missiles, Standoffs, New Missile

Sensors and Computers

Affects sensors, C3 improvement, and interacting with alien systems.

Example Targets: Improve [Module], Sensors, C3, FCS, Labs, Survey Systems

Materials

Affects stealth and armor and hulls.

Example Targets: Improve [Module], Stealth, Armor, Base Hulls, System Micronization, New Armor Types

Art of War

Better ground troop and misc systems.

Example Targets: Improve [Unit], New Unit, Special Forces, Aerospace

Civilian and Industrial

Better developments, ground facilities, etc.

Example Targets: Improve [Development Type], Improve [Development Class], Transportation, Medical Technology, Entertainment

Discovered Fields

Antimatter

Exotic armor-piercing weaponry, antimatter torches, advanced reactors.

Example Targets:[Existing Weapon] but Antimatter, Propulsion, Reactors

Plasma

Improved fusion torches, plasma weapons and exotic defensive fields.

Example Targets: [Existing Weapon] but Plasma, Propulsion, Reactors, Exotic Particles

Mind-Machine Interface

Improved ground forces, special forces, transhumanism, aerospace and ship interfaces.

Example Targets: Interfaces, Backups, Cybernetics

Artificial Intelligence

Highly illegal.

Example Targets: [Existing Unit] but AI, Automation, Big Data, Network Warfare'

Advancements

Physics

Blue sky research into particles, high-energy phenomenon.

Output: Typically unlocks new fields, new exotic reactors or extremely powerful energy weapons.

Biology

The stuff of life.

Output: Powerful slotless upgrades for ground and aerospace, medical technology, useful developments, very rarely unlocks new fields.

Engineering

Labs dedicated to solving practical problems, often in impractical ways.

Output: Significantly powerful materials, greatly improved new hulltypes, enhanced industry and new fields.

Alien Artifacts

Glimmer and Salvage unlock single minor techs that resemble humantech with some deviations or additional changes. Other Remnants give powerful but difficult to-advance technologies. Big-A Artifacts simply provide expanded functionality or explanations of their origins, but will never give clues as to their reproduction.

Labs

Standard Labs

• Spare Network Cycles: 'Temporary' labs, typically a Great Power reward or the result of a random event. Useable for one research roll or exploration mission. Cost: 1 Prestige
• Labs: The maximum amount of computing power that can be linked together on a single network based on limitations set forth in the Berlin Treaty, and enclosed in basic netwar protections like a faraday cage and 24/7 overwatch by a specialist. Cost: 5 Prestige
• Safelabs: Research blacksites or specialized laboratories in otherwise inhospitable areas. Safelabs are immune to 'corruption' from ambient Titan or SoV levels and have double effectiveness if used to protect technologies on XX and XX missions. Cost: 10 Prestige

Illegal Labs:

• Hyperlabs: Any particularly large computational bloc that goes over Berlin compliance limits. Hyperlabs are typically not airgapped in order to steal clock time from civilian networks and self-fund by mining cryptocurrency, folding proteins for designer medicine for the wealthy and other onerous brute-force applications of processing power. Many contain a single or entire groups of noncompliant self-aware artificial intelligences. Depending on their scale they may have names like Matrioshka Brain, Jupiter Brain, Hyperbrain- or pejoratively: Skynets. Cost: Created by 'burning' 1d10 Labs and 1d3+1 Stability, guarantees a yearly tech strike in a field in addition to whatever is rolled. The cost cannot be refunded after declaring Hyperlab construction. Good luck.