Talk:Man is Dead: The Magnate War

General principles:

Only theta makes good FTL. Only ZOCU had that in quantity. The League had some, but was limited to painstakingly hand-crafted courier and gunboat-scale drives.

The magnates were motivated by conquest. Theta was important, but by no means the central purpose.

You can make bad FTL with first-generation drives. These take a month or more to recycle and are far from reliable.

Everyone has crappy tech. Apart from anything else, it's only 2160. If in doubt, assume you don't have it.

ZOCU is wholly responsible for inventing mecha. Sophisticated combat frames did not appear until the ZOCU war.

The Magnates invented Alephs which were hideously superior pilots.

Fabbers were important to produce supplies, equipment and small vehicles on-site. Advanced or large craft were mostly built with real industry and shipped in.

To start with let's confirm what every system's role was. Bear in mind this is all 2-4 decades ago and could be very much different to their modern bent.

Minkowski: converted slowdrives to jumpships, made things to carry with them, assembled relief forces.

Nidaros/Vrijheid: Got invaded by the Magnates. This arm of the invasion probably went very badly since/once ZOCU could move craft at speed.

Delten: Took forefront as the Magnate manufacturing world during the war. Ended up becoming the primary shipyard facility after the breakdown ended.

Eternal Dawn: Supersoldiers with advanced (for the Rim anyways) armor and railguns, landing in your cities!

Bilad Al-Rafigayn: Probably invaded by the Magnates during the early or middle part of the war.

Structure of the war:

Sarreva, Bilad and Finnegan's Folly took the brunt of the Magnate invasion.

The war was for theta, so Altus and Vimelan are priority targets, but they were never invaded in force

Minkowski was not invaded significantly but instead shipped things around.

Cook recieved refugees.

This suggests a structure for the League of Bilad, Sarreva and Finnegan facing the Magnates directly, and Altus/Vimelan/Minkowski/Cook 'behind the lines'.