4 World Generation
4.1 Solar Systems
4.2 Biomes
Sure, man, use Fell & Fey; no one else did.
4.3 Technology
Species have technology levels, and these levels can have one or more modifiers.
| Technology Level | Description |
|---|---|
| 1 | Early civilization |
| 3 | Feudal1 |
| 3 | Proto-industrial2 |
| 4 | Industrial3 |
| 5 | Classic4 |
| 6 | Stellar local Species |
| 7 | Stellar invasive Species that can subsist in new systems, but struggle to travel between them. E.g.: - Buzzkills |
| 8 | Interstellar Species that can travel multiple times between systems. E.g.: - Humans - Blattids - Buzzkills - Raspberries5 |
| 9 | The uncanny valley: There are no species of this level of technology6 |
| 0 | The Good |
5 World Transitions
Worlds can end. They can also transition into other Worlds, perhaps based on ending conditions of the former World. (And no, new Worlds don’t have to have the same rules as the prior7)
Example World Transitions
Seraph
The Raspberries have arrived. They bring Deus ex and plenty of exotic fare to eat. You’ll never get your fill!
How Humans and the Raspberries come into equilibrium determines the outcome of this World. The Raspberries come, of course, to a pre-stellar Humanity; it is one that contends bitterly for the dwindling resources of their system. Among the strongest of the factions are the Deciders, a group of academics that successfully tap into a large share of the federal governmental system. Many of the outcomes of this World hinge on the relationship between the Raspberries and Deciders.
Instead of the Deciders, there is a loose-but-colleagial group of federations. The dominant party in most of these federations are representative democratic governments run by the Informed Party8.
- Combat tends to be dense and close.
- Rocky is rarely Far or Very Far unless it’s higher-order battles (like navies and space combat)
- But short-range weapons are also deadly (including often being revealed upon attacking)
- Despite long range weapons starting to gain prominence, void fights are dominated by Coursers and Hounds, with a slow drumbeat of early Haggs’ orbits sometimes bringing them to bear on enemy units.
- Humans are not of all one degree; some tend to be of a higher degree, but Humans can have traits, skills, etc. of widely different degrees.
Taurus
With Deciders and Raspberries aligned—well, with Deciders leading the Humans and Raspberries enjoying the unfettered feast in the lower degrees—Humanity sets out into the galaxy. Some failed false starts and some strategic systems being lost to heedless depletion later, Humans have a modest stellar group but a firm enough community that they meet the Blattids nearly head-on in battle.
The sides are close, and things could easily go either way when the Taurus arrives and decides. Both Humans and Blattids are devastated, and it’s nearly a toss-up which survives and recovers that implacable beast.
- Combat tends to be distant; information reigns supreme on the battlefield. Recon and evasion, waiting and creating kill shots makes for a quiet battlefield; the better-tuned thrum of fire makes finding attackers hard, even if it’s often too late anyway.
- Space shapes are on the same order as terrestrial cities and armies; Haggs have an order of magnitude better armor but are otherwise also at (the top of) this level.
- Humans most effective void ships are MULERs and 山s. Having finally found this to copy—um, counter—Buzzkill Corsairs holding a system until a Blinkerblaster jump port could be built.
- Note that the basic mechanics and technology of combat is the same across all Zodiac Worlds.
Scorpio
The Humans enter the void in peace. The Blattids and Buzzkills sure don’t, but they focus less concertedly on erradicating the Humans for now, choosing instead to harry and manipulate them with raids and psionic probes, for now.
And to guide the Humans towards a particularly troublesome region of the galaxy, one the Blattids sure would like made clear for their own colonization. This is a region with a richer interstellar biome. Were Scorpio are the alpha predators.
- Combat varies in distance and substance, with strange attacks and unknown foes. Advanced recon and certainly good evasion can give the Humans a chance to position themselves to at least die more slowly. Anyway, being pacifists (at first), they’ve got tactical retreats down.
- Void fights vary greatly, with Humans tasked with finding new combinations and tactics to use with the Zodiac-level craft.
Ares
The balance has tilted, and the Deciders flee the fray; they are now in exile. They are gone, but not forever.
They’ve brought enough shuttled matter and first factories that it’s not that much less cozy than things were during their rule. But supplies are always limited in space, and this now also means genes. Humans can edit genes well enough to manufacture good variance, but it’s still dicey introducing that variance into fetuses; Humans aren’t that good at self-editing. So the Deciders still face that same age-old threat to all exiles and stragglers: navigating a bottleneck while fighting off accumulating mutations.
The Ariens—the Deciders—start in a week and precarious position. The early battles in the World matter disproportionately high. But the more the Deciders are beaten early on, the more genetic points any surviving Strain gets (something like X points for however badly beaten, divided unevenly among Y Strains, that depending, too, on which survive the early campaigns.)
And if the Deciders die out, Humanity dies out (Humans without them are too stupid to survive against Blattids).
Among the Deciders is Ares, and among the Raspberries Strains are Y9. Ares excels at finding novel ways to integrate even some of the more basic organic compounds on alien planets into biological systems; this used to mostly be meat plants (manufacturing really crispy but juicy bacon on Mars was is claim to fame—which he never lives down). But now his talents are being used by the Deciders to scour systems along their trail for good and tolerably-odd genetic diversity.
A mostly mechanized, race, the Ariens are something not quite Human. If not found and hunted out, they will grow into an, of course, existential threat to Humanity. Who may well finally get it and deserve it, whatever comes next.
- Ares has no additional World. The Ariens have no deviation in their trajectory and do indeed become unable to maintain enough genetic diversity.
- Warfare is also genetic, both biological and cybernetic. Sure, battles are still fought in real time within generations, but overlayed with longer contests.
- Ariens develop Strains (as do still Raspberries). Each Strain gets a certain number of genetic points10 they can use to change the default start values for the creation of new Arien units. These, of course, can be valuable and fine-tuned.
- Different strains don’t need to all start with the same number of points. Or follow the exact same rules to get or use them.
- City-order units (Strains, armies, spaceships) can attack an enemy’s genetic pool, knocking out GPs that that Strain can no longer use. In other words, hastening their extinction (well, inability to further adapt and thus be overcome with specific adaptations against that Strain).
- Ariens develop Strains (as do still Raspberries). Each Strain gets a certain number of genetic points10 they can use to change the default start values for the creation of new Arien units. These, of course, can be valuable and fine-tuned.
Orion
Humanity is on a winning streak. Earlier, clean control of clean nuclear energy and renewable economies didn’t help them get to space sooner, but it did get them their better. When the Humans first meet the Blattids, they only reach out in peace (kinda in a Ashitaka sort of way). They defend in earnest, though, with more powerful γ-guns and efficient warp drives. Can Humans make peace with the Blattids, and fight together against Taurus, and come out even stronger together thereafter?
- Battlefields again smell like ozone and burnt pork. Combat includes greater use of energy weapons, at least among Humans.
- Due to fine-tuned frequency modulation, γ-guns interact less with gases, causing and being affected by bloom less
- Human fighting units usually carry \(D_{egree} - 1\) Bottleflies
- Bottleflies can reflect γ-gun rays to Vewry Far locations. These take \(D_{ie} + 2\) rounds to get into initial position against a given Very Far location. They take 1 round to re-establish their position after either the attacker or target changes location.
- Bottleflies begin engagement Concealed. They cannot attack on their own, but otherwise act as 2° units with 2 HP.
Kek, Kauket11
The Humans lost. After the Taurus, they were too few and dispersed to hold out against the increasing precision of Buzzkill jumps into key systems, including Sol.
The Cambria can sense the rot of dying civilizations. If advanced civilizations are indeed possible, and if our system is good but certainly not unique, then the mass movement of heavy and rare elements to the surface—and then petering out beyond being able to defend those reserves—is something a beast could evolve to eat.
But the don’t just eat rot. Blattid systems aren’t exactly tidy utopias. There’s lots of things on their fringes for a local Cambria to nibble on. Especially the pure, exponential exhaust of a jump. Cambria generally depress the ability for races to jump, settling in coming to feed off of where jump exhaust is frequent. Even as they then gnaw into the weakened local civilizations.
- Combat tends to be psionic or with old, Zodiac weaponry. Humans have learned enough about the Blattid to realize they both have and have been using psionics to attack them interstellarly. Humans will be a long time in evolving to the order of psionics that allows then to fight with psionics interstellarly (interstellar recon and evasion skills develop first), but some have indeed started to develop it. Its first documented appearances are of various defensive natures, so it’s thought to have developed among 1°s or 2°s in reaction to Blattid attacks.
- Human degrees proportions have changed. There are few mid-degree Humans; most are 2° but many of those who survived are 6° and above. It is mostly among the 2°s that psionics appear, though, so the power balance is starting to shift.
Anhur
The Humans won. They burst into the galaxy, colonizing systems and destroying biomes. They are the Really Big Space Monster now.
Kaiju
Nothing has stopped the rise of the Humans. The but the galaxy is a vast place, with room for things even larger than Human’s greed. Things that prey on Taurus, that scatter the denizens of Scorpion regions. Things the Good avoid—and refuse to aid in fighting.
- Combat is system-wide, with collections of systems fighting as units in galactic armies.
Greek/Roman to the Renaissance↩︎
Human Renaissance to the Industrial & Scientific Revolution.↩︎
The Industrial/Scientific through the Information Revolutions in actual Human tech.↩︎
“Classic” in gaming terms; this is where 20th – 21st century actual Human technology falls↩︎
Kinda. Outside of Deus ex and advanced, biologically-based information technology, the Raspberries don’t use a lot of technology. They instead use that of their hosts.↩︎
The Good make sure of that. But I’m thinking this is achieved post Zodiac; maybe in contention with the Good.↩︎
It’s sci fi, the laws of physics has already changed. One of my goals here is to only change a few, and see where that takes us.↩︎
Their platform is entirely evidence-based, the success rate of programs they’ve backed is exceptional, but not until the creation of the Advisory Board was it also successful at finding the best ways of staying in power, too. It’s still a slow process, though, new and only marginally better than the competition, but slowly and more often than not coming out a little ahead.↩︎
Originally—organically—named X and Y, respectively.↩︎
Yay! Another point system!↩︎
Originally called Cambria before the Egyptiam theme to keep it all more comprehensible.↩︎