Starship Operations

Good morning Cadet. I imagine by now you're wondering what's going on. Unfortunately, this training mission has not gone entirely to plan. The last thing you should remember is going into stasis suspension for transport from the home world to training aboard the Mnemosyne, which is where you are now. Unfortunately, the situation has invaded radically since then. Seventy two hours ago, Six Earth battleships entered Jibiko deep space and destroyed the guard ships Gaia' 'and Tethys the Mnemosyne, which is the ship you are on was on training outside the system when this happened, but the Terrans accounted for us too, striking the ship with an enhanced radiation weapon which penetrated the ships radiation shielding and forced the crew to evacuate, after which they were taken prisoner by a Terran Perseus class cruiser.

The Terrans made a mistake however. They're conducting this operation without enough troops and ships, so the Perseus headed off before waiting for the automated cleanup cycle to finish and putting a prize crew aboard. They didn't know about you and your friends in stasis, which means the Mnemosyne has a crew, and Jibiko has some hope.

Who am I? I'm Mnemo (the M is silent), the ships Artificial Intelligence system. It's my job to help you in your mission and assign you positions aboard. Our mission now is to destroy Terran space assets in the Jibiko system to allow ground operations and reinforcement from our outer bases. While we will be outnumbered, the enemy is spread out and we should be able to achieve operational and some level of tactical surprise. The odds could be worse.

Good luck to us both Cadet. We're going to need it.

History

Since the discovery of warp travel humanity has been spreading out from its homeworld, terraforming and settling new worlds. Warp travel was to slow to allow for interplanetary war, and so there were until recently few combat spacecraft. Now however, with the discovery of second generation warp systems, interplanetary war and conquest has become now only possible but even economical.

Faced with various wars in the colonies threatening their interests, and with the growing economic strength of more developed colonies competing for vital resources, Earth's United Governments have begun a policy of military takeover and 'police actions' in the colonies. Resistance to Earth's imperialism has centred around the planet of Jibiko, your home world and one of the colonies with the most developed space industry. Until this point the dispute has been mostly diplomatic, with occasional bouts of espionage, but now the Terran's have launched an unprovoked invasion in massive force. Their aim is nothing short of crushing Jibiko's government and forcing the other colonies into line.

And the Mnemosyne is the last, best, hope for Jibiko's peace.

The Mnemosyne

Exo-Orbital Guard Ship 3 (EOG-3) Mnemosyne is a state of the art space dominance vehicle (battleshp) constructed in Jibiko's, Keshi sky yards over the last three years. The Mnemosyne is both the most advanced vessel in the Jibiko fleet and the only one constructed entirely with native technology without help from Sol or Alpha Centauri based manufacturers. The Mnemosyne is three hundred meters in length and weighs around three hundred and fifty thousand tons. It has a crew of up to thirty, though as few as five officers can run the ship due to extensive automation.

The ship has only recently entered commission and its current on a training cruise in the nearby red dwarf USO-182.

Offensive and Defensive systems

The Mnemosyne's primary weapon is a fast firing particle lance, capable of one pulse every fifteen seconds. The main gun is mounted down the centre line of the ship, and capable of destroying all but the largest enemy ships. It deals 20 damage dice to any target it hits, and halves enemy armour soak. It's range is Long.

While the main gun is mounted spinally, its beam can be steered by the magnetic systems along it's barrel it still requires the entire ship to be aimed at the target, so can only engage targets in the front arc, and requires the operator to beat a difficulty 7 in order to strike the target.

The Mnemosyne's secondary battery consists of two fast firing three barrelled twenty centimetre automatic cannons, one mounted on the upper and one on the lower superstructure. The autocannons use a plasma charge to propel small self guided shells, which are in reality more like missiles than conventional gun rounds, and usually carry a hypervelocity vectored penetrator charge to engage enemy armour. The guided shells make these weapons easier to hit with. Both guns can be targetted together and may engage in all facings except above and below where only one gun may engage. Each has a difficulty 6 to strike target and does 6 dice of damage. It can fire once every three turns.

Due to their use of physical projectiles the autocannons range is medium. They can also engage missiles and fighters.

Finally the Mnemosyne carries an array of torpedo and missile launchers, mostly designed for anti-fighter, anti-missile and anti-ground target work, but also capable of engaging other ships in a pinch. The Mnemosyne carries 50 missiles ready and carries 50 more reloads. Each missile can be configured for anti-ship, anti-fighter/missile or anti-ground work before launched, and as many as the operator wants maybe launched at once. Missiles had a 4 + (operators successes) dice to hit and travel up to one zone per turn, however they are subject to intercept by enemy point defence and maybe decoyed away by enemy ECM. Their warheads do 10 dice of damage to most types of target.

On the defence, Mnemosyne carries a powerful Circe ECM system, which can disrupt attempts to image the target in all electromagnetic spectrums, including the visible light. The Circe allows its operator to perform an (electronics +2) roll with a difficulty of 5 to defend against enemy attacks at medium and greater range.

A second line of defence against missiles and shells is the ships point defence system, which consists of several small laser phased arrays distributed across the ship. These lasers can engage enemy fighters as well as missiles, and attack with a difficulty 5 at Very Short range.

The ship also has a decoy launcher containing six decoy swarms in ready position, and six more in its magazine (requiring 20 minutes to load). Each decoy swarm includes ten fake targets. Targets appear to be the Mnemosyne unless the enemy sensor operator can score at least three successes on their skill check, and use of ECM may allow the Mnemosyne's defence system operator to increase this difficulty.

The ship also has two specific defences against energy weapons. It can launch anti-laser shields, which perfectly detect laser strikes from one angle, or charge its anti-particle shields, which cost a large amount of power, but halve the damage of any particle strike.

Finally, the Mnemosyne is armoured in super tough, heat resistant superconductive armour, which means damage rolls against it are at difficulty eight, and subtracts three dice from the damage pool of any successful strike. On the front the superconductor is even thicker, removing five dice from any damage pool.

The armour provides hit points varying by side. Once the armour is penetrated, the ship is in dire straits and will quickly begin to lose internal systems and then explode. The self repair system may be activated at any time and requires one point of damage per ten minutes.

Power and Propulsion Systems

The Mnemosyne has three fusion power cores, Alpha, Beta and Gamma. Each core generates ten power units, which due to a smart switching system can be transferred freely between different systems. Even with a ship the size of the Mnemosyne power is in short supply, so crew should think carefully about what they use power on.

The Mnemosyne also includes an advanced battery and capacitor system which allows it to store up to ten additional power units for emergencies. These units can be regenerated at one per hour after use.

The ship is also equipped with heavy fusion drive engines. These engines have three modes, Green, which is the slowest in acceleration but least power consuming, Yellow, which is a medium mode that balances speed and power consumption, and Red, in which consumes a lot of power.

At level green, the helms operator's roll to change zones relative to another moving target is at difficulty eight.

At level yellow, the helm operator's roll to change zones relative to another moving target is difficulty six

At level red, the helm operator's first zone change is automatic, and the second is at difficulty six.

Sensors and Informational Systems

The Mnemosyne includes an advanced sensor system. It's active scanners allow it to detect objects up to range Extreme with a difficulty of 3. They do however instantly allow any target to detect the Mnemosyne.

It's passive sensors allow it to detect any target out to range Extreme with difficulty of 6. It is generally recommended that the ship use passive sensors.

Armour and Power Chart

Armour

Forward 20

Left 10

Right 10

Back 10

Above 10

Below 10

Power

Main Gun 15

Secondary Guns (each) 4

Missile System 5

Point Defence 1

Decoy Launchers 1

ECM 5

Engines (Green Mode) 5

Engines (Yellow Mode) 8

Engines (Red Mode) 15

Self Repair System 5

Particle Beam deflector 20

Anti-Laser smoke launcher 3

Character Creation

You have 35 points to design your character. No PC may have statistic beyond 5, though some enemies maybe more skilful.

Level 1 - 1 CP
Level 2 - 3 CP
Level 3 - 6 CP
Level 4 - 10 CP
Level 5 - 15 CP

In short, to improve a stat costs (current level + 1)

There are five stats, electronics, equipment, spatial operations, perception and coordination.

Electronics

Electronics is the skill of operating sensors and ECM systems, as well as computers.

Engineering

Engineering is the skill for operating equipment within the ship, such as its engines, reactors and conducting damage control.

Spatial Operations

Spatial Operations is the basic skill of operating in space, and navigating the ship.

Perception

How good you are at seeing and identifying things, usually through sensors or telescopes.

Coordination

How well coordinated you are, and good at aiming and the like.

Starship Operations Characters