UnSol

Soon to be a book or three!

Setting

The year is 2201. The worlds of the Solar System are just now beginning to discover faster-than-light technology. The first scout ships preparing to leap away to nearby stars herald the dawn of a new age of discovery. The great Sol system, however, is not as it once was.

• Mercury: ???
• Venus: ???
• Terra (Terran Union):
  • The cradle of human civilization, overpopulated and covered with megalopoli teeming with human life, labors under a brutal, technologically stagnant hegemony bent on regaining control of the system and all of humanity.
• Luna (Terran Union):
  • Primary base of the Union Navy, dotted with domed settlements and chafing under Earther oppression of all 'genetic deviants.
• Mars: MW
  • Germans!
• The Belt:
• Ceres (CeresCorp):
  • Of the hundreds of settlements in the Belt, only Ceres shows any semblance of organized government.
• Jupiter (Jovian Federation):
  • The last bastion of Western (read: American) Democracy and #2 superpower in the system behind the Union.
• Jovian Trojans: Shrike
• Saturn: Oseng
• Uranus:
• Neptune:
  • The edge of the Main System, Neptune looks out upon the lawless frontier that is the Kuiper Belt.
• Pluto: ???
• Eris: ???
• Sedna (Cyberlife): >|(

Making an UnSol nation

Simplicity itself. Simply assign your points to each of the categories until you run out. That'll give you the basis around which to write up the details of your nation. Modifiers (such as +3 Infrastructure) are cost, not level modifiers. Negative modifiers do not need to be bought up to zero, though values below 0 can be assumed to be particularly exaggerated.

Current suggestion: 30 points

Population

0: A backwater nowhere habitat, the solar equivalent of a city-state.
2: A small alliance of habitats or a single dwarf planet like Ceres. Adds +1 Growth Potential.
3: A lesser state, though one that cannot be ignored. An exceptionally populous minor world or else one of several nations on a major world. Adds +1 to Infrastructure.
5: A fairly typical midsized nation, the typical owners of a major body or multiple smaller ones. Adds +1 to Infrastructure and Space Fleet.
6: A large nation with a substantial, diverse population spread across many cities and habitats. Adds +2 to Space Fleet and Infrastructure but suffers -1 to Growth Potential and Transhumanism.
7: A top-tier state with a massive population. Space-China. Adds +3 to Infrastructure, +2 to Space Fleet, but suffers -1 to Transhumanism and -2 to Growth Potential.

Transhumanism

0: None at all! Your people are the same old [i]Homo Sapiens Sapiens[/i] from the 20th century. Badass normal powers combine!
1: Basic gene-screening has weeded out various ailments and weaknesses, though nobody is fundamentally [i]different[/i].
2: Minor genetic engineering has spliced in desirable traits from exceptional humans, but except for a few outliers, everyone remains functionally ‘natural’.
4: Significant genetic engineering allows for the implementation of more radical changes through transgenic techniques. Reproductive speciation is a possible side-effect, though uncommon and can be mediated.
6: ‘Strong’ transhumanism starts to skirt the edge of what’s no longer truly ‘human’, at least in the eyes of some. Reproductive speciation is inevitable and discrimination from baselines is not uncommon.

Infrastructure

0: Well, you could probably rearm a warship . . . Construction Rating 20, max size 2
1: Construction Rating 30, max size 4
2: Construction Rating 40, max size 8
3: Construction Rating 50, max size 16
4: Construction Rating 60, max size 48
5: Massive, well developed planetary and spaceborn industry. Construction Rating 70, max size 96

Growth Potential

0: Overcrowding and resource shortages are chronic; you need relief and now!
1: Either planning or natural growth has put you at a comfortable maximum, but you have nowhere to grow.
2:
3:
4:
5: The Frontier. Resources are plentiful, with plenty you probably haven’t even begun to tap yet.

Military Quality

0: No real military, more like a glorified police force.
1: Barely adequate, not quite an undisciplined rabble but definately not very good.
2: Below average, your soldiers might be trained decently, but there's not many of them. Or the reverse, with a large but ill-trained army.
3: Average armed forces, nothing special but no glaring weaknesses.
4: A respectable military force, definately something to be reckoned with.
5: Best of the best, your military is well trained and/or very large.

Military Support (Replaces Military Quality)

0: Your nation simply sees little need for a large military; 6x Infrastructure in support
1: 8x Infrastructure in support
2: 10x Infrastructure in support
3: 12x Infrastructure in support
4: 14x Infrastructure in support
5: 16x Infrastructure in support

Space Fleet

0: No deep space fleet whatsoever, just a handful of short-range corvettes. 50 fleet points
1: 200 fleet points
2: 350 fleet points
3: 500 fleet points
4: 650 fleet points
5: 800 fleet points

General Advancement

0: Fairly limited technology, probably imports all high-tech goods.
1: About the lowest level at which one could design a halfway-competitive spaceship.
2: Below average technology, probably a second tier power. May have a spike or two of above-average effectiveness but overall not too impressive.
3: Average advancement, no glaring weaknesses or strong points.
4: Powerful technology including advanced energy weapons.
5: Highly sophisticated technology across the board.

Emergent Technologies:

The 21st century was a boom time for so-called emergent technologies; ubiquitous connectivity, autonomous robots, flexible AIs, nanotechnology. These promised the galaxy and delivered the solar system as legions of machines erected sunshades around Venus, built cities on Mars and excavated habitats all across the outer system. Unfortunately, ‘Rogue machine’ incidents in the latter 21st as well as the heavy use of automated weapons in various Earthside conflicts saw these technologies progressively limited and collectively suppressed and the mechanical workers of the early colonization era worked until they failed, never to be replaced.

0: Safetech only; while the overall advancement level might be high, there is no access (probably deliberately) to nanotechnology, advanced AIs and the like. The reimagined Battlestar Galactica is the archetype here, where (like a number of Sol states) emergent technologies were sealed away for the greater good.
1: You have a few examples of emergent technologies, though they are almost certainly kept under (very) tight control and may not even be publically acknowledged. An example of this level is Halo, which has a smattering of AIs and cybernetics of generally primitive (if effective) design.
3: Cornucopias and similar devices have begun to radically reshape your economy. Industry is faster and more flexible than ever before. Star Trek is firmly at this level, though in a much more ‘floppytech’ paradigm.
6: You’ve passed into the New Economy, though the dreams of post-scarcity and TA-style instant construction haven’t materialized. Adds +1 General Advancement. Eclipse Phase and similar settings would be at this level.

FTL Drives

0: Has no ability to design or construct FTL ships.
1: Has the basic theory for FTL jumpships, but needs outside help to actually construct them.
3: The principles of FTL travel are well-understood and your nation can construct jumpships.
6: You [i]invented[/i] the damn things and know a few tricks others don’t. Adds +1 Outsystem Territory.

Outsystem Territory

0: No outsystem territories, strictly a Sol system power. The norm at this stage of the game, really.
1: Little more than fueling stops and barren rocks.
3: You have an actual outsystem presence of a few (armed?) stations and as a result can conduct meaningful fleet operations in the Great Beyond.
6: You’ve actually dropped a self-sustaining colony on a habitable world. Mucho bragging rights.

Setting notes

Getting There and Back

Quantum Transition Engine
First developed in the middle of the 21st century, Quantum Transition Engines (colloquially known as QTEs or ‘Cuties’, or Q-Drives for the more straightlaced) revolutionized space travel. A non-newtonian propulsion method, they generate a macroquantum effect that essentially ‘tunnels’ the QTE and surroundings across significant distance. The effect propagates directly forward at the speed of light and as such does not violate relativity – it would take another century and a half to cheat Einstein. However, as it takes substantial time to recycle a QTE between jumps, the effective pseudovelocity is far below c, rarely exceeding ~1 light second jumps every 10-12 minutes for high-performance units and giving an effective pseudovelocity of 4-500 kms or about 1 AU every 4 days. Outside of strong mass influences (several tens of light-seconds of distance for the Earth) the quantum effect can travel much further before dissipating, resulting in approximately an order of magnitude increase in pseudovelocity. This is known as ‘high cruise’.

Despite many years of use, the performance and general design of QTEs has not improved markedly since the late 21st century; a QTE from an American Trailblazer deep-space cruiser circa 2080 would recycle in 25 or so minutes instead of every 12 like that of a Jovian Federation Endeavor destroyer’s, circa 2200. Growth in the speed of cargo ships has been essentially nonexistent with typical peudovelocities being in the 2-2.5 light secondshour range. Durability, fault tolerance, size and cost have improved however, and few ships of any size built in the past half-century are not fitted with a QTE.

A typical civilian ship goes at 2.5 light seconds per hour.

A typical military ship goes at 5 light seconds per hour.

For high-travel, any ship outside of a defined distance from a significant sub-stellar mass can travel 10 times normal speed.

• Addendum - Any ship in the interstellar void beyond the interference of a stellar curb can accelerate to a further order of magnitude.

Star ‘curb’: 500 light seconds

Gas Giant ‘curb’: 100 light seconds

Major Body ‘curb’: 25 light seconds

Minor Body ‘curb’: 10 light seconds

This would put Earth-Pluto travel times at 16-40 days, one way.

Tachyon Jump Drive
While a handful of interstellar sleeperships were launched in the late 21st century, outfitted with special QTEs designed for the exceptionally flat space-time between stars and capable of upwards of 10% lightspeed even without using their immense antimatter drives, it seemed that for all intents and purposes humanity was locked inside its solar system, unless one wanted to be very patient. All that changed with the publishing of a physics research paper in 2189 that laid out the foundation of a new theory of FTL transit. The critical difference between this one and previous such as wormholes and Alcubierre drives was that the ‘tachyonic spatial displacement device’ was actually workable. Several major governments poured immense resources into developing tachyon jump drives (or simply ‘jump drives’) and the first flights were scheduled to coincide with the 2200 centennial celebrations.

Jump drives are radically different beasts from the familiar QTEs of solar system craft large and small. First and most notably, jump drives are capable of bridging the distances between two stars essentially instantly. They are also extremely large, cumbersome devices; where a QTE or fusion drive is a ship component, a jump drive essentially is the ship.

A jumpdrive (and thus by extension a typical jumpship design) is essentially a pair of monolithic wheel-shaped field guides connected by a spine that houses much of the core generation equipment. The particular and unusual design is a necessity to properly shape the jump envelope; the loss of even one field node could potentially critically compromise the entire envelope geometry. Unsurprisingly, jumpships carry a lot of spares. A number of combat jumpship designs have also been floated – the Earther ‘System Control Ship’ concept being most notable – which move away from the simple wheel-spine-wheel design for less efficient but less constraining geometries, though all are instantly recognizable by the massive field guide arrays.

In operation, jumpships are designed to spread a field envelope around one or more in-system ships; the mass and strict design criteria of a jump drive make the best of them clumsy and pathetically ill-suited as anything other than interstellar tugs. Since the jump takes place in the blink of an eye, hard docking is not required. After each jump the drive must be purged, which involves both cooling it down (larger jumpships can go through a hundred tons of water in less than a minute, vented into space as superheated steam) and then the much longer process of stabilizing and damping the post-jump ‘static’ in the drive, which can take a week or more.

Jump drives can only function between stellar-mass objects, and furthermore ones that are no more than ~8 light years apart (ed. note: test jumps of <8.75 and even [once] 9LY have been recorded, but are not recommended outside of dire emergency due to undue stress on the TJD and an uncomfortably high chance of total existence failure). This has created an interesting dynamic with regards to exploration and expansion, as ships must take specific routes outward.

Smallcraft

All fighters come in squadrons of twenty. All bombers come in squadrons of ten.

Light Fighter Squadron

Analogous to: nBSG Vipers, F-16s, TIEs, wyrdlife drones
1pt
10DP

Lightweight single-seat screening and escort fighters, produced in mass numbers in wartime due to their low cost.

Medium Fighter Squadron

Analogous to: X-wings, F-15s, Yukikaze Sylphids, wyrdlife centurions
2pts
20DP

Two-seat (usually) fleet Combat Space Patrol and strike fighters, the bulk of most nations' peacetime fighter fleet.

Superfighter Squadron

Analogous to: Yukikaze Maves, Su-47s, wyrdlife praetorians
4pts
40DP

Incredibly expensive, incredibly valuable, and incredibly effective, these (also usually two-seat) multirole fighters are often deployed to dominate areas of space or as an ace card against attacking enemy fighters and bombers.

Attack Bomber Squadron

Analogous to: B-25s, B-1s, wyrdlife princesses
3pts
30DP

Smaller bombers, usually with crews of between four and eight, used to strike enemy ships and installations in hit-and-run raids. They have a rudimentary self-defense capability as represented by a number of light railgun turrets.

Heavy Bomber Squadron

Analogous to: B-17s, B-52s, wyrdlife queens
6pts
60DP

There are some things too fast to be hit by a three-ton antiship munition. For everything else, there's the Heavy Bomber. Usually crewed by between eight and sixteen people and positively bristling with antifighter weapons.

Preliminary hullcosts (Modernish)

In-system ships

Corvette: 1
Frigate: 2
Destroyer: 4
Cruiser: 8
Battlecruiser: 16
Battleship: 32
Superbattleship: 64

Monitor: 16

Aviation Cruiser: 12 (10DP)
Assault Carrier: 24 (30DP)

Escort Carrier: 8 (20DP)
Light Carrier: 16 (40DP)
Fleet Carrier: 32 (80DP)
Supercarrier: 48 (120DP)

Jump-capable ships

Scout: 4
Constructor: 16 (10DP)
System Control Ship: 96 (80DP)
Light Jumpship (4x8): 8
Heavy Jumpship (4x32): 24

Space Stations

Gun Platforms

The GP series of platforms was first introduced by the Union Navy during the latter half of the Synthlife Rebellion as part of the Lunar defense network. Each largely immobile platform was only half the cost and tonnage of a similarly-armed warship, allowing the Union to create a heavy shield around its' primary refuge from the synthlife rampaging through the inner system, and the series was once again proven to be a worthwhile expenditure with each failed Synth attempt to break Luna's wall of defenses. In light of their effectiveness, most nations have since copied and continuously upgraded the series throughout a tumultuous century of service.

GP-L (Gun Platform, Light)

4pts
Cruiser equivalent

GP-M (Gun Platform, Medium)

16pts
Battleship equivalent

GP-H (Gun Platform, Heavy)

32pts
Superbattleship equivalent

Fighter Platforms

Concieved as a way to eliminate the intercept delays and fuel expenditures of STO interceptions and to extend the defensive envelope of a world without requiring dedicated warships, the 'Long Fang' fighter platform was the brainchild of the old People's Republic of the Red Planet, China's primary offworld puppet. The PLASF proved their worth when they repelled a typically fighter-heavy Jovian raiding force within seven minutes of its' arrival over the Red Planet. Like the Terran GP series of gun-armed stations, the Long Fangs were copied across the Solar System and repeatedly upgraded.

FP1

4pts
30DP

FP2

8pts
60DP

FP3

16pts
120DP

National Wonders

National wonders represent truly massive constructions, hero projects designed to display and project a nation's power. They generally have a listed limit. Abusers will be spaced. Sry. U mad?

Skyhook (Limit 1)

The archetypical space elevator, skyhooks are a composite-fiber tether leading from a space station in geosynchronous orbit to a point on the planet's surface directly below. Their primary use is as a cheap way to get things from surface to orbit without expensive cargo transport trips. Once completed, Skyhooks provide a one-time bonus to the world they orbit of one level of Infrastructure and one level of Military Support.
250pts
240DP
Has effective Construction Rating 40, max size 8.

Spacedock (Limit 1)

Mammoth orbital fleet yards, Spacedocks are the beating heart of a large military and a heavily-defended hub of repair slips, fighter manufactories, and troop marshalling facilities. Once completed, Spacedocks provide a one-time bonus to the world they orbit of 150 points of ships (at player discretion and mod approval) and one level of Military Support.
250pts
120DP
Has effective Construction Rating 60, max size 48.

Orbital Colony Group (Limit 2 over your homeworld and 1 per extrasolar world under your control)

Stanford Toruses, Bernal Spheres, O'Neill Cylinders - these represent efforts to provide space for your burgeoning population by constructing groups of orbital colonies. Once completed, Orbital Colonies provide a one-time bonus to the world they orbit of one level of population, one level of Infrastructure, and one level of Military Support. Surgeon General's Warning: Will rebel and colony-drop you if abused.
375pts

Colony Mission (Limit 1 per extrasolar world under your control)

The sum total of all the preparation required to colonize another world, Colony Missions comprise the colonists, supplies, prefabricated structures, transport ships, and myriad other items you gather in order to put a permanent presence on a world outside of Sol. Once safely landed and set up, a process requiring one game quarter, Colony Missions provide the following basic stats for that colony: one level of Population, one level of infrastructure, one level of military support, and five levels of growth potential. These are specific to this colony, and are not added to the totals for your Solar System holdings. Also, true bragging rights. Escort optional.
500pts