Princesses of the Cosmos

Fundamental Concepts

This is a clean-slate reboot of Space Princesses, returning to the very dawn of that game.
It is focussed more on character adventures, intrigues with imperial cliques and managing the character's demesne.
The party will also be more coherent as opposed to instant atomization; every PC will likely have some tie to the 'home' system/systems likely by Demesne.
Ongoing discussion: D20 vs 2D10 vs D10

Character Design

Characters will be generated with two pools of points

XP is used for character stats and skills (or just ability-only system?)
Assets is used for 'mega-aspects' such as a warship, family demesnes or standing, etc

Assets can be converted to XP/used to buy character-level abilities (Rifter gene-hax!)

Characters will have solid starting values and in-game growth will be slow.
Variable ability cost depending on usefulness

Suggested abilities

'Eye for Talent': Boosts ship stats if you get an opportunity to roll out and find good crew

Demesne

One of the key elements of the campaign is Demesne. These provide important resources and need to be managed - essentially nation gameplay (very) lite.

Resources:

Wealth: This is mostly money, but also represents attention taken by your factors, etc. It is the main currency of the Demesne level. Wealth is used for buying stuff ranging from ships to personal equipment.
Industry: This is used for building things (warships mostly!). Demesnes may or may not generate industry, in which case you'll need to pay for the industry too.

Characters are assumed to have access to effectively unlimited 'common' gear because nobles are rich enough to buy as many M16s as they want, but Wealth is needed for stuff that provides actual bonuses; a Mk XXIV pattern blast-fusil made by Sir Kendrick the Robin-Faced, Master Armsmith of the VI Regency is no easy object to find.
All actual (bonus-giving) gear should come with names and maybe a history.
Budget cycle is undefined as of yet
Characters may take their Demesne' wealth as taxes or may instead take it as loans which have interest but provide much more wealth.
Welp you're in debt. Keep adventuring!
Other noble characters might have estates in that situation, so you can squeeze them

Reputation

Reputation is a vitally important 'soft' stat; it is how well you are liked (or DISliked) by various factions and cliques in the Empire or outside. I'm using the term 'Clique' for all of these.

Each Rep is tracked individually
Rep can be used in two ways; to provide passive bonuses as levels increase or 'burnt' to provide immediate effects.
Track both current and absolute (amount added over all time) Reputation. Having very high absolute Rep can still provide some passive bonuses but requires much more than current Rep.
Rep effects could be getting some money (borrowing against your name to keep your estate working), having an extra warship present, getting an audience, etc.
Friendly and opposed cliques can also gain or lose prestige as a relative percent. Doing stuff for the Forward Clique might also give you 20% Rep in Outwander Clique but will cost you -100% Rep in the Conservative Clique.
Derived prestige only comes in after a certain threshold; below that you're still a nobody.
Baseline family prestige? TBD
That blonde brat!

Ship Combat

Ship combat is intended that PCs will have a single ship or at most a small squadron of light ships.

Specific rolling TBD
Probably lightly detailed, with several weapon systems per ship.
Weapons are simple but will have individual stats - a bit more detailed than Space Princesses the First.
Armor acts as a damage reducer.
Shields are TBD (similar to armor? bubble HP?)
Upon hitting a ship, roll on the location.

Different locations have different armor values
Void locations represent smaller ships that are simply not there. Guess you didn't hit that DD after all.
Several standard hit tables will be generated. Most ships will fall into a small number of templates.

Once Structure HP is exhausted the ship is into Vital HP. Hits to Vital HP automatically cause critical hits. A ship that loses all Vital HP is completely destroyed.

Small ships such as Dragoons, fighters and mecha will operate in groups; one token representing multiple ships.

Setting

Keels

Keels are the foundation of interstellar travel, what allows ships to traverse the star lanes in an efficient, timely manner. In addition to this wondrous if, by by contemporary standards mundane, ability, they also provide ample excess power and sublight propulsion. Each keel emits a unique resonance frequency; this is the keel's 'signature' and all navies maintain large databases tracking keel signatures of both civilian and military ships. While any common standard keel is often not terribly difficult to confuse with another, at any given time there may be only be a dozen Dragon or Phoenixkeels in service, each with their own entirely unique signature.

One quirk of keels is that they have very consistent speeds; singlecore (ie standard keels) keels all operate in more or less the same speed band. Keels with more than one core are more variable, but depending on if they are set up in parellel or in series they will either have low speed and extremely high motive tonnage or significantly improved speed but relatively minimal increased motive tonnage respectively. Keels featuring even greater number of cores are also possible but while immensely powerful parallel multicore drags do exist to transport huge quantities of cargo (generally semirefined asteroid ore), most multicore keels are used for flagships and similar large, powerful warships.

All keels are built - forged - in keelforges and are then supplied to shipyards for installation in ships. Keels (which in fact have no real relation to the keel of a wet-navy ship) may also be dismounted and it is quite common for any given keel to have an entire history of ships it was fitted to. Actually setting up a keelforge is not particularly difficult and within the means of even a relatively modest world, but because forging superior keels is often as much of an art as it is a science a relatively few long-established and long-reknowned keelforges provide much of the higher-capability keels for national fleets while smaller forges generally provide instead for the massive civilian fleets of the great stats. A third group of keelforges exists in the Phoenix Empire, a number of small artisan forges that provide superior keels to the nobility. While arguably even more skilled than the great fleet forges their output is vastly less - with prices to match.

Some ships such as Dragoons are not fitted with keels and are thus incapable of FTL flight; as a consequence they must be towed between the stars on motherships. Keels are also unnecessary for wormhole transits and many high-capacity and high-efficiency merchant ships are built without keels and travel only between wormhole-connected systems. Finally, the Rifters have managed to develop (or perhaps redevelop) an FTL propulsion method that does not require a keel, but given that it seems to be derived from the fruits of the Abominable Intelligences the requisite technologies to ape it are generally illegal if not outright proscribed.

Singlecore Keels

Singlecore keels are the most common type, mass-produced for freighters and for the massed formations of warships used by all the known states.

Impkeel

Heavy loss of tonnage

Goblinkeel

Heavy loss of power

Gnomekeel

Loss of speed and power

(Standard) Keel

Bog standard keel. Used for light freighters and warships of the wall.

Yetikeel
Ogrekeel
Goliathkeel
Jotunkeel

Dualcore Keels

Light Twins

Mulekeel

Loss of power and speed, increase in tonnage. Typical light liner keel.

Jennetkeel

Standard dualcore keel

Palfreykeel

Increase in power and speed

Pegasuskeel

Increase in power, major increase in speed

Charger Twins

Rounceykeel

Standard charger dualcore keel

Courserkeel

Increase in power and tonnage

Destrierkeel

Major increase in power and tonnage

Heavy Twins

Oxkeel

Slow and low power but extremely large tonnage. Standard heavy freighter keel.

Bearkeel

Slow, high tonnage, improved power.

Multicore Keels

Griffinkeel
Mantikeel (Manti-core lol)
Dragonkeel
Phoenikeel

Because every keel is unique, each will have one (or more) rolls on a Keel Quirk table. This may result in (small) benefits or (small) penalties, or simply interesting quirks that have no stat effect.

Forging a keel

Keels have an upfront cost to forge, this cost depending on what family (single core, light/charger/heavy dualcore, multicore) of keel is being made. The actual grade of keel is determined by the forging skill check, with a bonus from forge quality, smith quality, any extra costs (high quality material) and any bonuses from a character. It is very difficult for a keel forging to outright fail but in many cases the desired product is not as powerful as desired. These 'seconds' or 'discards' are downrated and sold, generally at a discount.