Racing the Darkness: A Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri Fan Fiction Photoessay
- Thread starter Axis Kast
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Axis Kast
Warlord
Thanks much for the reference!
How are you enjoying the story?
Any questions we can answer, or topics you'd like to see covered?
How are you enjoying the story?
Any questions we can answer, or topics you'd like to see covered?
Axis Kast
Warlord
The seventh Social Engineering theme is Romantic choices.
Administration modifiers affect the Social Engineering multiplier in each base. The better a faction's administration, the more bonuses compound and the less maluses hurt.
Cohesion is a measure of a society's commitment to leadership. Low scores make it easier for others to subvert a faction's units.
Culture influences the rate at which a society's borders grow, and the appeal of its ideology in rival bases.
Economy modifies energy production rates in friendly base squares.
Efficiency measures how much energy is lost due to inefficiency each turn, which is a product of a base's distance from the faction HQ and its Social Engineering value.
Discipline measures how much water is lost due to inefficiency each turn.
Growth is a modifier on the nutrient cap necessary to gain an additional POP at each base.
Industry modifies production cost. A high score reduces the amount of minerals required to build units and facilities.
Morale modifies the battlefield performance of living combat units.
Planet scores affect a variety of conditions, including resource production in fungus squares, worm capture probability, ecological damage levels, and the combat strength of native units.
Police measures how much unhappiness results if garrisons are light.
Probe values affect defense against sabotage.
Research affects a society's rate of technological progress.
Support affects the mineral cost to keep units in the field.
Doctrine affects a society's rate of doctrinal advance.
- Romantic societies attempt to preserve and reproduce a mythologized past. Their focus is less on traditional materialist or esoteric truth-seeking activities than maintaining immediate community integrity against outsiders. Romantic choices manifest improvements to loyalty and doctrinal thinking but falter economically and in terms of scientific progress.
- Stratocratic politics are dominated by a warrior caste--one that often sees itself as the long-suffering protector of community virtue. This option is available with Doctrine: Defense and confers +2 SUPPORT, -2 EFFICIENCY, and +1 Officer in HQ.
- Autarkic economics operate on a strictly local scale as a society tries to provide its own needs through domestic production. As eyes turn inward, dependence on neighbors strengthens social bonds. This option is available with Systems Thinking and confers +2 COHESION, +1 DISCIPLINE, +1 PLANET, -3 EFFICIENCY, and -2 RESEARCH.
- Community values place the physical continuity and geographic togetherness of people ahead of all other ideals. This option is available with Centauri Survival and confers +1 THOUGHT, +1 GROWTH and +1 COHESION, but -2 ECONOMY.
- Retrospective Future Societies make re-engagement with Old Earth culture the highest priority. This option is available with Doctrine: Preservation and confers -2 THOUGHT, -1 PLANET, and +2 Librarians in HQ.
- Technocratic societies are managed by an elite trained in the humanistic tradition. High gains to efficiency and happiness redirect society from warfare and consumerism onto a path of self-improvement that is sometimes derided as pseudo-religious. Human populations begin to shrink.
- Meritocratic politics filter decisions through civil servants selected on a competitive basis for their technical excellence and leadership acumen. This option is available with Doctrine: Initiative and confers +2 Administration and +1 Talent in the faction HQ.
- Post-Scracity economics go beyond a guarantee of basic subsistence to assigning resources based on individual aptitude as well as need. The artist receives her canvas, and the dreamer his pillow. This option is available with Adaptive Economics and confers -2 Support and +2 Artists in the faction HQ.
- Knowledge values celebrate a robust, secular education. This option is available with Intellectual Integrity and confers +2 Research, -1 Growth, -1 Doctrine, and +1 Research Pod/season.
- Computer-assisted Future Societies will achieve better living through robotics. This option is available with Cyberethics and results in +1 Efficiency, -1 Culture, -2 Growth, and +2 Robots in HQ.
Administration modifiers affect the Social Engineering multiplier in each base. The better a faction's administration, the more bonuses compound and the less maluses hurt.
Cohesion is a measure of a society's commitment to leadership. Low scores make it easier for others to subvert a faction's units.
Culture influences the rate at which a society's borders grow, and the appeal of its ideology in rival bases.
Economy modifies energy production rates in friendly base squares.
Efficiency measures how much energy is lost due to inefficiency each turn, which is a product of a base's distance from the faction HQ and its Social Engineering value.
Discipline measures how much water is lost due to inefficiency each turn.
Growth is a modifier on the nutrient cap necessary to gain an additional POP at each base.
Industry modifies production cost. A high score reduces the amount of minerals required to build units and facilities.
Morale modifies the battlefield performance of living combat units.
Planet scores affect a variety of conditions, including resource production in fungus squares, worm capture probability, ecological damage levels, and the combat strength of native units.
Police measures how much unhappiness results if garrisons are light.
Probe values affect defense against sabotage.
Research affects a society's rate of technological progress.
Support affects the mineral cost to keep units in the field.
Doctrine affects a society's rate of doctrinal advance.
MysticWind
Warlord
- Joined
- Dec 25, 2008
- Messages
- 197
For reference, the original Racing the Darkness posts (not by me) found on previous threads outside of this forum are archived here:
There are also elements that can be found elsewhere on the internet, in greatest quantities in the Iterations story game.
forums.sufficientvelocity.com
There are also elements that can be found elsewhere on the internet, in greatest quantities in the Iterations story game.
Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri: Iterations Sci-Fi
Quest based on Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri.
forums.sufficientvelocity.com
MysticWind
Warlord
- Joined
- Dec 25, 2008
- Messages
- 197
Chassis: Truck
Anonymous Crawler Jock on the Odyssey Highway said:
The truck was a workhorse that spanned the stars, forming a major component of the Unity motor pool. Ranging from electric ultralights, to gasoline-powered pickups and utes, to diesel tractor units with semi-trailers, trucks were used primarily for supply transport. On Planet as on Earth, trucks brought unrefined mineral ore from mines to smelters, harvested crops from farming settlements to residential cores, factory-built waste fission batteries and fuel cells to newly-founded bases, and perhaps most crucially, water from treatment plants to any and all colonists. Beyond necessities, trucks brought salvage from Unity wreck sites to reclamation crews, battlefield rubble to the recycling tanks, and commodities- the lifeblood of trade pacts- between factions.
Modified for the alien high-grav terrain but not always for the atmosphere, many of these vehicles proved to be reliable, if dangerous, mainstays of the colonization effort. Just as most pilots of speeders or Terraformer Transports always carried a breather mask, or wore full-on envirosuits at all times, Chironian truckers were prepared to deal with cab breach. Especially since many of their rides were simply Earth originals hastily-converted for interplanetary travel. Yet the factions used them just the same. While far smaller than prime movers, pickers, formers, rigs, and their own successor, the supply crawler, trucks proved to be more versatile, cost-effective, and abundant.
The original Leyland-Toyota Kingsman, popularly known as the Unity Lorry, became the standard cargo truck of Planet
A panoply of vehicle manufacturers supplied trucks for the mission, but none as many as automobile giant Leyland-Toyota. Along with Chiron-compatible Startrain tractor-trailers, compact Hilux pickups, and miniature kei trucks, the Anglo-Japanese manufacturer built the Kingsman, a semiautomated extraterrestrial environment heavy hauler with a capacity of nearly 50 metric tons. Like Unity Rovers, it was equipped with a radiothermal generator- supposedly much cleaner than the microreactors of the Soviet-produced junked armored cars- and all-wheel drive. The service console contained an Oya-class (親) autodriver that could navigate around obstacles and over difficult terrain, rated for traveling thousands of kilometers without operator input. Indeed, many behind the wheel of a Kingsman were more overseers than drivers. For its durability and quality engineering, not to mention its ubiquity, the truck was widely referred to as the Unity Lorry.
As provider of mechanical expertise and a wide range of trucks, up-armored buses, agricultural machinery, Rovers, Land Cruisers, robotic laborers, vans, and even atmospheric processors, Leyland-Toyota was one of the U.N. Mission to Alpha Centauri’s twelve Prime Contractors. However, neither Leyland, Lancashire nor Toyota, Aichi deigned to purchase a billet, and so there were few loyalist employees on Chiron to refound the company. As with many major brands, multiple succession claims arose, usually arguing on behalf of an ex-executive or another as the legitimate commanding officer. The leading pretender was once director of operations at Ashok Leyland who rebuilt the South Asian division in the aftermath of the Six-Minute War, chosen as figurehead for a NoxCo rights resurrection project (a practice often derided as “patent necromancy”). A rival company-in-exile was based in the Chiron Cartel, a group of high-ranking engineers who had defected to, and then travelled to Alpha Centauri as employees of, Foden Trucks. But due to the proliferation of Leyland-Toyota machines, factions built custom copycats, from the Emporium’s militarized Laager variants courtesy of Imperial Logistics and Materiel to the Data Angels’ open source Toyland versions by the Download A Car campaign. As L-T designs became universally adopted, ownership claims were rendered moot.
Convoy of Unity Lorries in twin tail formation shuttling goods and supplies over the Sunny Mesa
During the early colonial period, the relative speed of the cargo truck made it the preferred motor transportation for bulk delivery, alongside atomic locomotive-powered speedtrains and rail-converted rovers. Even later trucks were fielded as they were nimbler and smarter than their low-track crawler descendents. Not until the vast mag tube Planetary Transit System did their use decline. Autodriver semiautonomy, increased later to virtually full independence with Robot Cluster Control facilities, enabled massed caravans with minimal personnel. As trade routes formalized, onsite human presence could be reduced to a single crew at the head of a convoy, even three- driver, co-driver riding shotgun, and backup gunner. As valuable as their payloads were, the drive to ship more goods to more destinations in less time outweighed security considerations. Speeder escorts could be better deployed elsewhere. “Convoyers” who rode lead lorry faced a lonesome time in the empty wilderness.
A convoy captain calls Warm Welcome Traffic Control over Centauri CB. Unlike commlinks, truck radio frequencies actually increased range during higher sunspot activity
Convoyers fit uneasily into base life. Many possessed a pronounced yearning for lost Earth- some even shaky psych profiles with uncertain prognoses- and so were assigned to the solitude of truck convoying. Ironically, extended time in the lonely wild was usually salutary, leaving drivers softly melancholy yet with a certain zest for life. Psych chaplains suggested that fresh air- so to speak- away from cramped and claustrophobic colonies was the secret to improved mood, prosocial behavior. Many convoyers became devotees to the lifestyle, opting to take off on unscheduled jaunts between shipments, weaving between fungal patch and tower. Some who finished their contracts or tours went as far as to purchase their own lorries, becoming independent truckers repairing sensor installations, inspecting weather stations, assisting scientific surveys, making small time courier runs. These nomads were nicknamed “road smacers,” romanticized by basers as enviably loose and free, reminiscent of the cowboys of the American Wild West. They were said to live by the rules of the road, forging allegiances that went beyond factions.
For all of the supposed kinship among convoyers (also likened to the Pony Express) their livelihood had all the struggle, danger, violence for the frontier, but little of the camaraderie- at least not between trucks. While there did exist a rudimentary code of honor, it was often a luxury in the face of attacks by smacer bandits, Irredeemable Holnists, Darwin Raiders, even lunatic Muckers. A particularly nasty tactic by the more duplicitous factions was to feign distress over the radio, luring overly magnanimous and credulous crews into traps off the road. Many convoy captains refused to heed pleas for help. And even when meeting a fellow convoyer from the same faction under true colors, there was no telling if its drivers might not have gone wormmad.
Notes
Opening quote is from this /tg/ post. Fun idea from that thread: “A civilization of truckers, for example - forever on the road, driving enormous landships that might as well be mobile cities, transporting goods in raw materials in mass quantity, using their vessels' enormous bulk to breach even the thickest fungus.”
Leyland-Toyota was the original name for the Company from Alien, as proposed by concept artist and designer Ron Cobb, who wanted to “imply that poor old England is back on its feet and has united with the Japanese, who have taken over the building of spaceships the same way they have now with cars and supertankers”- but obviously the movie could not use British Leyland and Toyota’s actual monikers. For an extensive origin story of W-Y, see this history on Alien Explorations. For an attempt to come up with how an actual L-T could have arisen, perhaps by preventing the earlier merger that formed BLMC, check out this thread on the Alternate History forums, namely post #7. To prevent having too many preexisting megacorps running around Planet, I made it so Leyland-Toyota only supplies the mission, and not outright joins it.
(‘)Formers are formally called Terraformer Transports in the GURPS Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri sourcebook, pg. 112.
According to the SMAC Flavor.txt, the Supply Transport module has a capacity of 2575 mt (metric tons?), which is a hundred times that of a modern day semi-truck’s load.
Unity Rover details also from GURPS, pg. 110.
Oya is a Japanese way of speaking of one’s parents, and a nod to MU/TH/UR 6000 from Alien and FAR/TH/UR 2600 from Alien Resurrection.
Warm Welcome is located in a polar region, not unlike Antarctica Traffic Control from Alien.
High frequency band radio communications, including CB and ham radio, are indeed enhanced by greater solar activity.
The idea of wandering drivers on an alien planet is actually inspired by the Rovers subculture from the Outpost Mars RPG setting by Paul Elliott.
Image Credits
Mercedes-Benz Unimog is Red Mars conceptual art by William Bennett- his work has to be seen to be believed
Space truck is from the Outpost instruction manual, page 48
Space trucks is from Outpost 2: Divided Destiny as a unit type. Here is a short story about one.
Space trucker is Tom Skerritt as Captain Arthur Dallas from Alien
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Pickers
Soviet fission-powered armored cars
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