New NESes, ideas, development, etc

Resources will be a major problem in the next 90 years.
 
Certain resource depeletion is apparent, however technologies have to some regard mitigated the worst of it.
 
A post about SysNES 2: Sicut Pulverem Soles and discussion thereof
1) Firstly, it won’t be for months and months and months. But when it’s on, it’ll be on (if anyone remembers the update pace of the last one).
2) Secondly, it will not be a continuation or reboot of SysNES 1. There’s so much stuff I wanted to change and alter that it’d be unrecognisable anyway, and I ing hated how SysNES 1 developed.
3) This one will occur a Millennium before and a Millennium away from SysNES1 in a backwards sector during the High Kingdom Age.
4) Pretty much all game systems will be reworked, but should be understandable in essence from the first game (more on this below).
5) On year growth will be slower, but players will start with more stuff and higher tech levels, there will be more NPC ‘stuff’ around to boot.
6) I want to gauge interest now, and have people kick around civilisation concepts if they like. Much like the first one the player roster will be small and I will kick consistent failures to send orders (oth the mechanical nature of the NES and the stockpiling of resources means missing 1 update of orders is far less damaging)
7) Updates will be variable in length, if nothing much seems to be going on with one updates order sets I will jump through time 2-5 years.
8) There will be more systems but lower average world count per system

Ruleset Changes, in no particular order:

The Game Space will not be fully pairwise traversable – instead of being able to jump from a system to every other system, gas clouds and other stars will occlude some of the linkages, creating some strategy and choke points, though stars on average will connect to at least half of the 35 odd stars in the game space.


Population will move on its own – you no longer have to ferry around pops (indeed will be explicitly forbidden from doing so) but instead it’ll be calculated automagically based on your societal settings and habitat attractiveness.

Abstracted Merchant Fleet – rather than setting up trade routes you have a ‘merchant fleet tonnage’ statistic that enables movement between your worlds (the fleet tonnage being the max e you can move about). You will be able to build this directly, convert obsolete ships into merchant tonnage, rent out your merchant tonnage to other players, and gain trade benefits from having a lot of it whilst also having a presence in appropriate bits of space. This will also make piracy easier.

Eight value economic system – rather than the old four-part one (f e s p) there will be a new economic system with 8 different components. These will be the full storable Minerals (M), Volatiles (V), and Antimatter (A), the storable but degrading Economic activity (E) and Food (F), the non-storable intellectual activity (S), and the population metrics people (P) and talents (T). Construction and maintenance of things can require any of these components laid out in the diagram below:


Armies are reworked – rather than pissing around with separation divisions armies are much more like ships. You have a limited number with unique names for which you buy components (like hospitals, air wings, infantry battalions) that affect the army’s stat line. Unlike ships armies can have new components added at later dates. This should also hopefully give better narratives. Ship boardings will be done by space marine ship components.

Specialist ground units – effectively armies with only one component these have useful functions within and beyond your nation, stuff like the Planetologist Team, Mobile Hospital, Espionage Team and so on.

Minor Terraforming is a lot easier – also hopefully someone will invest in it at some point.

Rebalanced Ship Weapons – I’ve decided I want to push for this rock-paper scissors model of warship metagames to prevent the existence of a ‘best’ design as occurred at several points in the old SysNES. The main change is to make missiles really goddamn heavy, and lasers to require very heavy ancillary cooling systems, and give particle weapons better penetration. Thus light, fast, high dodge particle ships will dodge missiles and destroy missile boats, but will be slagged when they get within range of a multilaser gunship. Laser gunships however will be too slow to evade missiles very well and will be crushed at long range by missile ships. There will be also long range laser and particle weapons, though these will be more for siege and support purposes.


Templates and Refinement – Ship designs were too expensive in s to be very fun in the last SysNES, but on the other hand I don’t want to make them too cheap, so we have two new systems beign brought in. Templates is effectively letting you make generic ship components at the cost of a ship design slot. You would for example make a missile boat template (Kickpuncher class) with ‘weapon hardpoints’ instead of actual missiles. You could then make a Kickpuncher Fusion Buster design for only the additional s cost of the Fusion Busters, and then later make a Kickpuncher Kinetic Lance design for only the s cost of the Kinetic Lances (for a total of 3 ship design slots used). Refinement is you spending e and a little bit of s to refine an existing ship design (making it cost less) leveraging your e rather than constantly having to spend s on new designs to keep up with the joneses.

Easier mass Destruction – to avoid the constant whiney demands to be able to commit genocide and bombard stations, all such things will now be permissible. However such actions are guaranteed to see a high tech war fleet from a power outside the backwater region to turn up in a few years and utterly destroy your faction root and branch for the greater good of the galaxy. Even attempting to keep it secret will fail – you can’t stop the signal.

Social Policy Decisions – rather than micromanage, you’ll be able to choose between social policies on the Alpha Centuari model, which will have lots of tiny modifiers throughout the economic and social model.

Stress is now a number value.

You can engender schemes to increase population growth, but since this will not increase your number of talents you’re not going to get any benefit out of it so screw you :p.

Awesome Graphics – like this but better:


Reworked IS Drives – The lack of difference in the effect of the IS drives irked me before so they’ve been redone somewhat. Now the Manifold and Burst Drives are cheaper but have limited range – in the network graph above they are unable to make any of the pink and purple transitions directly and must hop from star to star. The Charm and Twist drives can make these long range transitions as long as they have the power equal to the difficulty of the jump for a Charm drive the power is the number of computer modules available to the fleet, whilst the Twist drive’s power is just the ships surplus energy rating.

An actual proper commercial system – it’ll be mathematically complicated on the back end but easy enough to use the essential components will be a) have a big enough merchant fleet and the necessary commercial buildings, b) have rich planets yourself and your merchant units in the rich planets of other people. There will also be a commercial battle mechanic!

So step right up and pitch some civ ideas/reserve places (only actual civilisations will be sufficient for a reservation). Or not – who knows how you’ll feel months from now after all! :D

A)Please provide a Background and Description
B)Pick two of these societal values (they can change over the course of the game but only via RP)
Freedom, Society, Wealth, Knowledge, Power, Faith, Survival
C)And a total of 7 points worth from the traits list (you can take up to 7 points worth of negative traits to boot)
Positive
Spoiler :

1 - Start with Planned Economy or Free Market Economy
1 - Start with Republic, Theocratic, Authoritarian, or Hierarchic
1 - +1 to a tech field at start and 4% reduced cost to research that field
3 - +2 to a tech field at start and 10% reduced cost to the field (cannot be taken with the above)
1 – Start with a non-obsoleting component refined (I’ll choose one based on the background)
3 - Martial: less unhappiness from conflict, army and fleet organisation requires less s & start with a small army
2 - Warrior Society: armies are formed at seasoned level of experience & start with a small army
2 - Militant: armies get bonus HP when recruiting from population
2 - Medics & Mendicants: Hospital Units and facilities much cheaper
2 - Scholarly: making specialists costs half as much s
2 - Gregarious: People will move to large cities, less social stress from cities
2 - Frontiersmen: people will move to low population areas and are more mobile
2 - Architects: Worldside constructions cost less s
2 - Industrious: Building factories doesn’t consume t or s, doesn’t produce social stress
2 - Financially Savvy: Commercial buildings cost less s and t, function better
2 - Skilled traders: Merchants cost less to make, bonus to commercial operations
3 - Data traders: Trading and commercial buildings will give s bonuses, +5% to maths research
3 - Skilled Farmers: Farms produce more food, +5% to biotech research
3 - Mining Engineers: Extra minerals from mines and boreholes, +5% to materials research
3 - Fluid Mechanics: Extra volatiles from pumping stations and aerostats, +5% to propulsion research
3 - Plasma Technicians: Extra antimatter from plasma arrays and factories, +5% to energy research, shields are cheaper to refine.
2 - Rugged designers: Armour has greater effect, habitats bomb resistant, can build larger ships on planet surfaces
2 - Edifice Complex: Large structures much cheaper, +5% construction research
1 - Zero-G Agility: stronger at boarding, less social stress in space habitats
1 - Natural Pilots: Small ships have +1 dodge, large ships +1 Int
2 - Resistant to one of (Hot, Cold, Radiation, Toxins, Thin Atmosphere, Thick Atmosphere), can only take once.
1 - Like one of (Mountains, Oceans, Jungles, Temperate, Snow, Low Gravity), much reduced social stress and higher talent limit in habitats in these environments (providing also has breathable atmosphere), people will move to these. Can only be taken once.
2 - Welcoming: Greater chance of immigration, some radical societal choices curtailed.
2 – Entertainers: People like them, extra wealth from tourism services if in a good location.
Affinity for a technology (ship components of that class are automatic refined after an example is built)
5 - Reaction Drives, Armour, Shields
4 - Missiles, Particle Weapons, EM Weapons
3 - Sail Drives, Supply Components, Bombs, Scanners
3 - Understanding of the Transcendent physics of one of the drive types (Burst, Manifold, Charm, Twist): ships build with these drives will be better, and ships with these drives will have trouble escaping you.

Mixed
Spoiler :

1 - Ascetic: Less social stress, food consumption, decreased rate of talent generation.
2 - Hive: Less social stress from large populaitons, double habitat pop limits, decreased rate of talent generation, very low pop movement.
2 - Flexible: People are more mobile, less stress from change, generate stress when bored
3 - Ecopeotic: Farms and hydroponics produce more food, less damaging to the environment, social stress from pollution.
2 - Conservative: People are less mobile, more stress from changes, less stress if things haven’t changed in a while, high population growth in some environments.
2 - Superior Genetics: Faster rate of talent generation (will reduced population growth), higher talent limit, increased food and resource consumption, +5% to social research. Can be taken up to three times.
2 - Spaceborn: Reduced social stress in space habitats, increased stress in planetside habitats, -25% space habitat cost.
1 - Open: gain s bonus from trade, knowledge will be leaked to other civilisations.
1 - Placid: Less social stress, -1 Int, worse army effectiveness
6 - Cyberorganised: Higher food and resource consumption, reduced cost of adaption, faster rate of talent production, ships have +2 Int, facility bonuses are higher, better electronic warfare rolls but weak to them, computer cores and networks give armies bonuses, +10% Computation research.
6 - Advancer: Higher food and resource consumption, reduced cost of adaption, faster rate of talent production, ships have +2 Int, armies have extra attack, better biological warfare rolls but weak to them, +10% Biotech research.
3 - Aquatic: No increased building expenses from oceanic environment, less stress in these environments, greater m and f production in oceans, oceanic habitats higher pop limits, ships have +2 dodge.

Negative
Spoiler :

-2 - Insular: Immigration is rejected by society
-2 – Inflexible: Research spending on anything but your three best fields cost 50% more.
-2 – Distrustful: Can’t technology trade, reduced commercial efficiency
-5 - Xenophobic: stress from interaction with other cultures, 2/3rd reduction to trading efficiency. Can’t take with Insular or distrustful
-2 - Horrible Start: muahahahahha
-2 - Vulnerable to one of (Hot, Cold, Radiation, Toxins, Thin Atmosphere, Thick Atmosphere), can only take once.
-2 - Poor Safety Culture: armour less effective, habitats less bomb resistant, construction limit is one less
-1 - Aggressive: If you find yourself sharing a world your population will start being dicks. Also chance to mob the specialist teams of other players you might be using.
-1 - Hate one of (Mountains, Oceans, Jungles, Cold Temperate, Snow, Low Gravity), even if its got a breathable atmosphere your people won’t move here. Can only take one and can’t take with Spaceborn :p

Others available on request.
 
Whoah! Wow! Um... I'll try to get more constructive feedback to you later on, but that looks great and I was quite disappointed that I was away when you were running the previous SysNES!
 
So I've been uh... waiting for about a year for this and... :eek:

Can't wait! Dis would you like any opinions of any sort? Pulling my application from Kal's NES, I can get something for a civilization submitted very quickly. :)

Edit: This looks to be incredibly workload heavy, nevermind the statistics, the graphics alone seem to require it. Do you plan on displaying a planet view like Heron for each and every human world Dis?
 
So I've been uh... waiting for about a year for this and... :eek:

Can't wait! Dis would you like any opinions of any sort? Pulling my application from Kal's NES, I can get something for a civilization submitted very quickly. :)

I hoped you paid attention to the first point there Matt0088. And sure I'm happy to ignore your opinion whenever you choose to give it.
 
Xertra

Spoiler BACKGROUND :
Background: The ancestors of the Xertra peoples many eons ago could be found dispersed throughout the [Geographical Region] on many of the region’s systems, planets, and habitable masses, for where the seemingly ubiquitous Adamas corporation created commence, surely were their laborers, among them the Xertra, there accomplishing the menial work underlying the corporation’s staggering growth and profitability. Key to the core of the Adamas Corporation’s success was the use of cybernetic enhancements to render vast amounts of “acquired” human resources almost totally dependent on a localized central command center, and yet, comparatively, be incredibly efficient in the multitude of tasks that were demanded. The Xertra, native to this sector of space, were simply selected by Adamas, and as it had in clockwork fashion numerable times before, outfitted a large stock of Xertrians into manual workers, and set them about in resource extraction and manufacture for future benefit of technocrats lightyears away. However, before the Xertra lost all sense of their past identity, before fusing into a homogenous entity of mindless mammals, the signal of commands, from above, from anywhere, stopped, died. Any trace of the Adamas Corporation simply vanished. Unbeknownst to the Xertra, a reclusive figure of wealth, never revealed, had purchased the Xertra from the abruptly freefalling Adamas Corp, intent on creating a successful utopian society, having been frustrated in his many previous attempts, with these peoples so easily melded by simple command code. This figure, not of any evil character, believed in granting almost complete total free will to the peoples realizing his goals, and the newly amazed were informed of their new circumstances. High capacity transport ships were chartered for transport to a virgin planet fresh and capable of utopia in an unperturbed sector of space. Under the figure's watchful eye, the Xetrians step forward to a new future...


Spoiler TRAITS :
-2 - Insular: Immigration is rejected by society (External variables/humans are unneeded in utopia)
-2 - Poor Safety Culture: armour less effective, habitats less bomb resistant, construction limit is one less (Previous history for the Xertians has reduced the value of human life, there are many)
-1 - Aggressive: If you find yourself sharing a world your population will start being dicks. Also chance to mob the specialist teams of other players you might be using. (External variables/humans are unneeded in utopia)
6 - Cyberorganised: Higher food and resource consumption, reduced cost of adaption, faster rate of talent production, ships have +2 Int, facility bonuses are higher, better electronic warfare rolls but weak to them, computer cores and networks give armies bonuses, +10% Computation research. (See background)
2 - Gregarious: People will move to large cities, less social stress from cities (Natural tendency, Xertians formerly worked in urban settings)
2 - Industrious: Building factories doesn’t consume t or s, doesn’t produce social stress (Natural tendency, Xertians formerly worked in factories)
2 - Edifice Complex: Large structures much cheaper, +5% construction research (Great edifices are symbols of communal effort and utopian success)

Society and Faith
 
The Ilk Cloud was Kal's thing Matt, and that backstory is pretty :/

Also the graphics will take a lot to make in the first place but will be easy to modify, but I can just reuse a lot of the world pictures SymD made previous. Also there is the magic of copy-paste, perhaps you've heard of it?
 
I can try and get you the full-sized versions, if you want. One or two are missing but I still have all the rest.
 
Here you go. Some of them look rather crappy at full-resolution but if they're shrunk down a bit they should generally be fine.
 
Background for SysNES 2: Sicut Pulverem Soles

The region of space immediately spinward of the Eighth Finger of the Flame Nebula has never been particularly of note beyond the scenic nebula itself, lacking even a name for the first three thousand years of human occupation. Characterised by the three young white giants known as the Triplets just emerged from the Nebula the worlds are low in heavy elements and contain only a smattering of radiation washed marginal biospheres.

The emergent superpower of the Apeilic Iris has given this region a name however – Segmentum Alnitahium after the mighty blue triple supergiant Alnitah that shines so sharply in all the sky’s of the Segments worlds and makes the Flame nebula glow so bright. Though having only dust in orbit itself, the star is so bright and large than transcendent traverses can be made to it from thousands of light years away.

Such an important potential travel junction has made the Apeilic Iris, fresh from their destruction of their arch rivals and ancestors the Datha Commonwealth, claim the Segment as part of their hinterland. Whilst much to distant from the Iris itself to make resource extraction or trade with the scum of the region economically viable, the Apeilic Iris has chosen to enforce a semblance of interstellar order in the region (as if it had a bad reputation worldships might not chose to travel out this way, and exterminating the inhabitants also might be frowned on by high tech traders/the public back home) and placed a Consul and flagship in orbit of Alnitah itself*.

With this shroud of protection the bandits, hiders, and ideologes of the Segementum (for the flame nebula makes these worlds an excellent hiding place) have emerged from the nooks and crannies to build societies in the light of the suns, especially after the Consul indicated some level of competition and warring would be tolerated.

Thus there are three generations of societies out here:
1st: The Dark Age Hiders who’ve been here quietly for hundreds to thousands of years, and are probably a bit weird.
2nd: Refugees from the Apeilic-Dathic wars fleeing with the shirts off their backs, bandits, ex-warships and unsavoury characters abound.
3rd: Fringe elements from the worlds under the Iris’s hegemony who reject the mainstream and want to go set up their own societies in the arse end of nowhere.

*Translation for the stupid: You are factions in Somalia/Wild West and the Apeilic Iris is the US Navy/Cavalry off the coast/back east, they’ll intervene whenever things get too bad, but a lot of bad powergrabbing can still go down.
 
Star Nation Proposal: The Standard Confederacy

Elric Standard was an adventurer, military leader, freebooter, homesteader, and all-around antihero that came out of the death of the Datha Commonwealth. Insofar as a dying nation which had outlived its purpose could have had a symbol, he was one.

He was born on the planet Standard, an odd Dathic experiment in social engineering carried out by a discredited faction within the elite of the Commonwealth: What happens if we put a few million colonists in a barely survivable biosphere and try to impose a high-technology socialist utopia without distinctions of family or property on the people? As they could have learned from Earth history (had much of it survived,) radical 'utopian' experiments rapidly devolve into a fear state in order to maintain political control. And the fear state functions, for a while, until a charismatic enough individual manages to unite the people to overthrow it. In practice, the social experiment persisted while the planet's surface was hazardous, but generations of mismanagement and cruelty (including abolishing the right to surnames) managed to instill a hatred of central authority in the minds of the people. Effective resistance was impossible for generations until the terraforming work progressed far enough to allow the colonists to spread into the hinterlands.

Elric Standard started his career as a guerilla caudillo-cum-philosopher, writing impassioned tracts on the imperative of human freedom from the oppressive oligarchies that all centralized states inevitably become, while bombing government convoys and sabotaging reeducation centers. The critical failing of the Central Committee of Standard was considering Elric as a lawbreaker rather than a revolutionary. The rural colonist homesteads of the planet were the first to flock to Elric's standard, (ha) which gave Elric's Standard Confederacy its subsequent freebooting, agriculturalist, libertarian aesthetic. (OOC: Essentially the Wild West/Browncoats/what have you)

The only place where the libertarian philosophy had to be dispensed with was the formation of an army, which began with parties of well-armed homesteaders turning their weapons from hunting local megafauna to hunting the toadies of the Central Committee. Elric's genius as a tactician became clear, driving government forces out of all but the few spaceport cities on the planet after a few years of fighting. At the time, the Dathic Commonwealth was too preoccupied with its continued existence to send reinforcements to some beleaguered backwater colony. And so, the Standard Revolution reached its inevitable completion. Besides a few targeted purges of socialist ideologues, the changeover was relatively orderly.

Because of Standard's relatively small population, most of which was swept up in the romance of Elric's cause, the change in society was swift. Government was reduced to a planetary defense council (headed by Elric, who retained his revolutionary title of Commodore,) a small domestic anti-corruption organization to prevent private monopolies, and little else. The oppressively high number of environmental and business regulations and the vast bureaucratic apparatus of the old state were immediately dismantled. Elric, unwilling to risk his revolution, applied for membership in the Commonwealth and was immediately accepted, as the central government was desperate for military support from any quarter.

Seeing an opportunity to spread his ideology beyond the planet, the defense council (with Elric at its head) quickly industrialized along a laissez-faire model, which managed to jury-rig an innovative and motley collection of vessels, whose greatest strength was perhaps being indistinguishable from highly-armed merchant vessels and could insinuate themselves into private shipping. Elric took advantage of aggressive use of nanorobotics and self-replicating robots acquired via a modest Dathic grant, while managing to protect the essential character of the state. The construction of a massive spaceport city, Freehold, was accomplished much more easily after the abolishing of the planetary currency and its replacement with the barter system. Within 10 years, the Confederates had a small but effective battlefleet. While not exactly seeing eye to eye with Elric on political matters, the Commonwealth decided to make use of him as a partisan, given that their pre-existing planets were already taxed to the brink supporting the regular forces.

The Apeilic forces soon faced a frustrating (if not highly-threatening, due to their somewhat lower technological standard) and highly mobile Confederate fleet, which deftly managed a hit-and-run harassment, infiltration and sabotage strategy that impeded the Apeilic advance somewhat, though it was understandably unable to change the greater course of the war. Worse still, the (anti-)social revolution on Standard had struck a chord among many of the Apeilic Iris' own highly-regimented and war-weary peoples, some of whom found more common ground with Commodore Elric than their own authoritarian leaders.

The Iris, however, was not stupid enough to consider Elric a lawbreaker rather than a revolutionary. Ignoring the pinpricks of the Standard forces on their vast military tonnage, the Iris assembled a larger-than-necessary expeditionary fleet and bombed Standard from orbit, destroying all industry and causing a lot of mostly-intentional collateral damage. The destruction of the planet was one of the more pyrrhic (for the Apeilic forces took disproportionate casualties) and controversial battles of the war, as it led to a negative reaction from the more sympathetic core worlds of the Iris, who were used to thinking of themselves as a 'force for good' as most empires do.

Commodore Elric himself was captured and tried for war crimes (the height of irony,) and despite political pressure (heightened by Elric making revolutionary speeches from the dock) he was executed. Making the Commodore a martyr of course ensured that his cause would transcend his own lifetime. And so, with the ragged remnants of the Commodore's old fleet and a crop of refugees from Standard, surprisingly bolstered by a cadre of ideological supporters from other worlds, the embittered Confederacy passes beyond the pale to build a shining beacon of real freedom, not simply its illusion, that they hope will one day eclipse the Iris and oppressive autarky everywhere...and get revenge.

Spoiler Traits :
Freedom and Survival

-1 Aggressive (Feel the need to 'liberate' neighbors laboring under oppression)
-1 Hate Jungles (Doesn't work very well with agriculture)
-2 Vulnerable to Toxins (See above)
+2 Frontiersmen
+1 Starts with Free Market Economy
+2 Rugged Designers
+3 Natural Farmers
+3 Martial

 
Seeing an opportunity to spread his ideology beyond the planet, the defense council (with Elric at its head) quickly industrialized along a laissez-faire model "build whatever you think will help us win wars" with aggressive use of nanites and self-replicating robots acquired via a Dathic grant, while managing to protect the essential character of the state. The construction of a massive spaceport city, Freehold, was accomplished much more easily after the abolishing of the planetary currency and its replacement with the barter system. Within 10 years, the Confederates had a small, but highly modern, battlefleet. While not exactly seeing eye to eye with Elric on political matters, the Commonwealth hailed the people of Standard (and Elric) as visionary leaders.

This paragraph is dumb. Who the hell is paying for this stuff if the confederacy is on the edge, and large scale war production being one of the few things planned economies are unequivocally better at than the alternatives. The Dathics would use these resources on a nice rock near their centre, rather than getting some untrained hicks to design and build things. Also insta-fail for using the word 'nanites'.

Also in this setting no one is going to undervalue a biosphere world so much as to conduct crackpot idiotic social experiments there, or fail to react effectively when a cliche libertopia crops up. Plus you're presuming stuff about the conduct and course of the war that I'm vetoing

The thrust of this idea is fine, but the points of the backstory leave a lot to be desired.
 
I'd be happy to edit it, hence the appellation 'Proposal'.

To address your concerns, I'll stress that Standard wasn't exactly at a terran level when it was first settled, and that the industrialization of the Confederacy's forces was useful insofar as the Dathics co-opted them as irregulars/privateers/fanatics to do the kind of asymmetric warfare that the center wasn't able or willing to do.

And it's not like the investment would have been that significant, at the most a few dozen advisors and the MRE-equivalent of industrial development packages that any organized multi-system polity would already send to their developing colonies.
 
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