world idea: gates

World idea: Human Gates
This was partially inspired by the strategy game Sword Of The Stars, which shows off the effects of various types of FTL drives on setting by having 6 races with distinct ones, and the superiority of sublight ships to otherwise equal ships that must make room for FTL drives. It got me thinking about the idea of a setting shaped by the nature of FTL technology.
It requires serious fleshing out at the moment, and hopefully some way for grand politics to end up involving the verser. Preferably more ways than just a massive trans-gate war with an alien race.

General concept: Humanity has expanded to the stars, ruled by the military dictatorship of the Earth Defense Force and centering on a network of massive gates, built by humans at vast expense and each taking decades and the metal content of entire planets to construct. In addition to the immense gates, FTL is possible with hyperdrive, but ships must dedicate a large percentage of their mass to the drive system and require massive quantities of fuel. The mass requirement for hyperdrive means intra-system sublight ships are immensely more powerful than comparable FTL ships and combines with higher technology to give the EDF an entirely insurmountable edge when defending gates against human rebels and alien invasions. However, beyond the immensely secure gateworlds lie systems which are less safe but also more free. The EDF is not so oppressive that people flee the gateworlds whenever they have the opportunity, but many choose to live on other worlds, feeling that freedom is more important than security. The EDF permits those who make that choice to do so freely, feeling that it is better for “romanticists” to live as they choose than to force them to remain and risk igniting a civil war. The EDF could probably win any civil war, as patriotism among fleet recruits is high, and people working on starship weaponry are screened for loyalty, but the Commander In Chief would rather avoid that.

I’m planning to try to hit a very particular note with the oppressiveness of the EDF. It needs to be high enough that a noticeable chunk of the population will want to leave to get away from it to an extent, though mostly not going totally beyond control and protection. However, it needs to be low enough for a majority to want to live in gate systems or systems only moderately less controlled than gate systems. It’s perfectly fine if you don’t end up wanting to live there, but you should probably be able to imagine people accepting it.

I’ll eventually want to actually write up more about the fleet and what ship weapons exist, but at the moment I only know that I want the EDF to include medium warships that, due to technological advantage, can nearly go toe-to-toe with enemy dreadnoughts. The EDF will also be building ever more powerful dreadnoughts, and already have a plentiful supply of them. This is actually mainly born out of not wanting to abruptly be unpleasantly surprised by the hypothetical firepower of alien gate empires, but most people with clearances below top secret figure it’s just wanting shiny new toys to look impressive.

8 types of systems. Note: the EDF itself divides worlds into these categories and officially acknowledges the less controlled nature of the outer worlds, though not the ruthlessness of systems with gates under construction

Gate system- massive population, industry. Heavily fortified by giant sublight-only capital ships, main base for all fleet elements in the area. Absolutely no interstellar black market, EDF searches every ship entering. Minimal crime, always swiftly punished. EDF surveillance is omnipresent. No attack has ever succeeded, few even try anymore, the sublight ships are nearly twice as powerful as equal-sized FTL warships, equally fast in normal space if not faster, instant reinforcement from every other gate system, massive orbital forts all protect the planets in the system and the gate.

Gate under construction- huge military presence of most powerful FTL ships, massive industry strip-mining planets. All industry focused on building more fortifications and the gigantic gate, military protecting only the gate and mining operations. Local civilian population highly variable, from none to a few billion. Potentially not very happy, but military controls orbitals and does not tolerate rebellion. Even complete obliteration of a planetary population considered acceptable in order to protect the gate

Core- no gate, but still high population(5-12 billion, generally) and industry. EDF enforces laws, generally always a large fleet presence, but not the hundreds of warships present in a gate system. Black market exists, though the EDF attempts to crack down on it. Rarely successfully attacked, but it has happened. Still generally considered safe from bombardment, minimal violent crime, though not as low as gate systems.

Frontier- population varies, generally single-digit billions, sometimes high hundred millions. Industry highly variable, not as high as core. Military presence not constant, but always a small garrison in-system and on-planet. Calls for assistance answered by available fleet forces, but not a high priority, loss of these worlds to outside attack is not frequent, but it does happen and EDF command doesn’t lose too much sleep over it.

Rim- Population highly variable, though always over 100 million. No permanent EDF forces unless serving as a fleet base for a higher strategic purpose, and generally end up promoted to frontier or core in those cases. EDF forces do move through them, but generally EDF law is only enforced in sight of it’s soldiers. The planets are largely self-governened and generally have to rely on their own forces for protection. Calls for reinforcements might eventually be answered, but generally not in time if at all. Total conquest of a rim world by an outside power is far more common than with inner worlds, but the constant surveillance and oppression of a core world is entirely absent.

Uncontrolled: Planets inhabited by humans that are completely outside the influence, protection, and aid of the EDF. No set guidelines. However, none of them posses a gate. Attempting to construct one would be virtual suicide for any planet that attempts it. The EDF will not permit any other human organization to possess a gate, and creating one would provide a conduit for home fleet to attack. EDF forces only enter uncontrolled systems to build a new gate, to take control of the system and integrate it into a higher category (generally rim, at first), or to hunt down someone who has been foolish enough to anger them. Local forces generally cannot resist a major EDF fleet, and even ones that can rarely dare.

Alien: Catch-all category for alien controlled worlds. They vary widely in population, industrialization, and military power, as well as level of control by the government. Some of them are parts of larger empires, though none so far encountered can truly threaten a gate system. A number of alien worlds are conquered frontier or rim worlds. A small number are former core worlds, though many conquests of core worlds are short-lived.

Alien Gate: None directly encountered by the EDF, but some outer worlds have detected signs of one or more active gate systems other than the human one. None are in range at present, but the EDF is already making preparations for a war of defense or conquest over a gate network. All data relating to them is highly classified. Alien gate worlds that might be reached soon are extremely similar to human gate worlds in general aspects, though the oppressiveness of the government varies. No other race close enough to matter has fought a trans-gate war. The extent to which they are preparing to fight one varies. Technology relative to the EDF also varies, but Is on about the same level. The EDF and all aliens so far encountered know none of this.

I'm thinking of two specific openers at the moment:

1. Rim world under threat. The verser gets handed a gun and not asked questions. Some fighting by local defense forces, the verser, and anyone who can hold a gun on the ground, along with whatever ships the planet has fighting to keep the attackers from getting control of the orbitals and bombing the resistance to a cinder. An EDF force arrives, all enemy ships in orbit cut and run as well as they are able. Ground forces are swiftly defeated by power-armored EDF soldiers. The verser gets to experience EDF law firsthand and decide what to do. Need a suitably epic description of a gate system's defenses as seen from an inbound starship if they go to one. Probably best opener for a convention, might shift to a frontier world that's much the same except with the chance to interact with local EDF before the fight.
2. Verser lands on a gateworld, potentially gets arrested very quickly by overwhelming force, gets interrogated and then probably released if they tell the truth. I'm a bit worried that this is too much of a binary situation with a dangerous trap for people accustomed to lying about their arrival, mostly because the EDF is the kind of organization to freak out if someone seems to possess teleportation or invisibility. If they can get past that, though, they've got a wide range of potentially good options. Even if they've got a serious problem with authority.

Biases: tech is high enough to support the gate network, possibly higher. No magic and psionics. Bod is high to support weird aliens far stronger physically than humanity with weird abilities.

It might actually be fun to have reasonable magic and psionics biases but no preexisting users in the relevant area. The idea being that the verser could show some magic or psionics off and the EDF would decide that merely being magic does not mean they cannot do SCIENCE! on it. That altitude is one of my favorite things about shadowrun, after all. What I mean by that is not that they'd discover how to duplicate it technologically, but that they'd figure out limitations, rules, nonmagical countermeasures (example from shadowrun being using mirrored windows to break line of sight and prevent spells centered inside from being cast outside) and suchlike.

I like the idea that system ships are stronger than warp ships. Usually, SF says warp ships have much better engines, and are thus more powerful, but your way of doing it is fair too, and unusual.

Its again one of those things that will make the players think the GM is smart.

I also like the 'EDF is not really evil, but a bit jerkish' thing.

I think I go for #1 as opener, and if you have the verser there, he gets the advantage of being given a laser rifle and light reflective armor which he might be able to carry to the next world.

I would say you should set either Magic or Psionics to be fairly high, in order to give the aliens that edge over humanity, and give them something to do Science! on.

Opener #1 I think is really epic, especially good for cons, but probably for a different reason than everyone else thinks. I hear 'frontier world in space' and I immediately start spinning Firefly references.

I think there's a bit of a political problem with the EDF core worlds.

If I understand aright, the EDF has a huge and expensive infrastructure, and thus it has a fairly high tax assessment. No matter how you arrange it, taxes are perceived as unfair by those who have to pay them. Real quick rundown:

• Fixed tax: everyone pays the same amount. That's problematic on several levels, most notably that that some people in such a culture will have no income and no assets, and so we either have to spend a lot of money punishing them for being impoverished or we have to exempt them from paying; and once we exempt them from paying, we have to find a "fair" threshold for when you have to pay; and wherever that threshold is, there is a severe discrepancy between those who have to pay their thousand dollars each year and those who pay nothing because they make a penny less. There is also the problem of perception that those on the bottom end of this will think it unfair that those who make a lot more money don't have to pay more. It's only "fair" in the sense that everyone who makes the minimum pays the same amount, but those on the bottom rungs know that they would pay a lot less if those on the top rungs paid a lot more.
• Flat rate income tax: Everyone pays the same percentage of income. Supposing it's ten percent, that means the guy who earns a dollar only pays a dime, while the guy who makes a million dollars pays a hundred thousand. The inequity here arises because the guy who pays the dime has to live on ninety cents while the guy who pays the hundred thousand still has nine hundred thousand left. However, both sides feel impinged: the poor because the rich have so much left after taxes, and the rich because they pay so much more.
• Graduated income tax: attempts to address the concerns of the poor in connection with the fixed rate tax, by saying that the more money you earn the greater portion of it you have to pay. Under this scheme, the guy who earns a dollar probably pays a penny, while the guy who earns a million dollars probably pays five to six hundred thousand. Democratic governments like it because the majority are paying less in tax and the minority making up the difference in a big way, such that it pulls in more money in total than a fixed rate tax would by putting more pressure on the rich. The rich suffer.
• Sales tax: rather than taxing income, this taxes outflow, in essence collecting tax not on what you earn but what you spend. The inequity here is that the wealthy don't have to spend their money. That is, if the government is going to collect a penny on every dollar spent on anything, the guy who makes ten thousand dollars is going to spend nearly all of it just trying to survive, and so winds up paying a hundred dollars in taxes, but the guy who makes a million can live considerably better than him by spending fifty thousand dollars of which only five hundred is tax, and putting the rest away for a rainy day.
• Luxury tax: this is an effort to redeem the sales tax; it is in essence a sales tax in which necessities are excluded, the theory being that the wealthy spend a greater proportion of their income on luxuries. Defining "luxuries" is difficult, but this tax taxes the wealthy more heavily. It has the disadvantage of trying to find the sweet spot: the only control government has on the amount of tax it will collect comes from its impact on the price of luxury items. As the tax rate increases, the sales of luxury items drops; as the tax rate decreases such sales rise. The perfect rate is the one that has the greatest value returned, but that will change with changes in the economy, and will be difficult to guess without experimentation; and experimentation influences the market, because if I know that the tax rate is likely to fall if it gets too high I might wait to see if it drops before making a luxury purchase.

All of which is a rather unnecessary prelude to saying that nearly any taxation system the EDF uses is going to make the rich feel impinged, and thus you have a good chance that they will emigrate to locations with lower tax rates on the wealthy. However, as the wealthy emigrate demands on the tax base increase and tax rates rise, more people get pushed into the top end, and emigration pressures also rise.

The only effective way to prevent the flight of the wealthy from the severe tax burdens of the core worlds is to provide them with significant perks for their wealth; that creates a more socially stratified society and more discontent among the poor. The best way to counter the discontent among the poor is to create the sense that they, too, have the possibility of becoming wealthy. That's not easy to accomplish unless it happens at least frequently enough and to sufficiently ordinary people that others believe it.

--M. J. Young

I figure the EDF will go for an uncomplicated mildly progressive tax, give benifits to the rich, and rely on a combination of some level of social mobility and complete control of the media to create the impression of the possibility of becoming wealthy. They'll also be able to get away with somewhat fewer benifits than is typical, since the only areas with lower taxes tend to be alien held worlds that don't like humans that much, or worlds with a much lower standard of living. However, I expect they'll lean towards making the rich happy and rely on the generally rather secure loyalty of the fleet in case they do spark a revolt. The military will be exempt from tax on their salaries, though not on any other money they end up making.

Anyways, Rim systems. In general, Rim systems will only have one planet settled, which will have a funny pattern of settlement unlike any on earth. Most Rim systems were colonized with the support of the EDF, and are fairly technologically advanced. They'll tend to be broken up into a number of towns, spaced incredibly far apart and surrounded by farmlands. In addition to the towns, there are a number of villages, which will be the main center of organized crime. Although organized crime or random gangs do exist in the towns, any EDF force that drops by for an unrelated reason or to show the flag will help the sheriffs with anyone untouchable by local justice for whatever reason.

Some of the villages are on maps and sort of under the control of the local government, some are not. Even the legal ones live in what is considered squalid poverty, though that often includes reliable clean water and electricity. Food shortages on rim worlds are rare except for common cases of active sabatoge by outlaws in hidden villages or intruders from beyond EDF space. The EDF will attempt to help in those cases, but in practice a few warships cannot effectively search the surface of entire planets or guard all farming equipment and stores. They can easily deal with anyone who has already been located in a general sense, and do sometimes torch outlaw villages that local law enforcement has managed to locate via sting operations. Plot hook: A well-organized group of bandits is raiding farms and attempting to extort manufactured goods from the towns. An EDF cruiser squadron will arrive in a week and help hunt criminals for a few more, and the verser has been recruited to infiltrate the bandits and locate their base of operations before the squadron departs. If he can report progress, the squadron will hang around a little longer, but the bandits will get suspicious if that happens.

The EDF uses advanced 3D printing techniques for manufacturing weapons, armor, spaceships, and Armored Fighting Vehicles (catchall term for pretty much all combat ground vehicles). Compared to conventional mass production techniques, it is expensive to set up, slow, and energy intensive. However, it does mean that the EDF does not have to retool factories to produce new equipment, and the process of implementing an improvement is nearly free. As a result, the EDF constantly improves on the design of every piece of hardware, and the accelerated pace of upgrades is part of the reason for the technological superiority of the EDF. The tradeoffs are severe enough that most civilian goods and rim system defense ships are produced by assembly line, but the EDF has plenty of power to burn and considers them acceptable.

What this means for things that the verser is likely to see is that EDF equipment is actually less standardized than that of most smaller powers. What this means in game terms is actually not very much. The Referee can slightly increase rate of fire or give a small sitmod to newer equipment if they decide it to be appropriate.

infantry weapons: Generally use some form of high-powered projectile weapon for people in inert or no armor. Chemical lasers are the most typical weapon for people in power armor.

One thing I used in Starsong was individualized controls. Each of us has a learning style (some auditory, some visual, and so on), and I suspect that there are considerably more quirks to each person. Of course, there's also a lot of similarity from human to human...the color red is likely to catch pretty much anyone who is not colorblind.

So the EDF Armored Fighting Vehicle commander has a control system perfectly suited to him (43% auditory, 27% visual, 30% kinetic with precisely the correct tone of red that sparks the most response in his visual cortex on pre-configuration tests for the alarm lights of the AFV, and the sonic alarm is directly in the middle of his hearing range so that he hears and comprehends it .01% faster than an unconfigured alarm.)

That seems like a good idea, though the EDF will want to be able to change configurations in a hurry in case the commander gets sniped.

Frontier systems are generally capable of manufacturing intersteller ships and enforcing basic law and order. They do not tend to have murderous bands of outlaws roaming areas between cities, and when they do the local EDF forces hunt them down with reasonable ease. However, they do often have large-scale organized crime in the cities, and quite a number of minor criminals. They are more urbanized than rim worlds, with economies based more around manufactured goods than export of metals and farming. Their pattern of settlement shows traces of the original settlement as a rim world, but many new towns and cities have sprung up away from the original landing sites. The old villages have either expanded or been burned to the ground. If there is another reasonably habitable planet, settlement may have begun on it. It will generally be settled somewhat like a rim world, although it will be much less lawless.

Core systems are not completely covered by urban sprawl and farmland. Few areas are completely unaffected by the inhabitants, generally areas both poor in resources and inconveniently located. Raw materials are no longer produced for export, exceptionally rare metals and some rare foods are imported. Remaining minerals are used for local industry, which now includes some production of EDF warships in addition to freighters. These systems no longer rely on the local government for defense, depending entirely on the EDF. There is little organized crime or violent crime in these systems. The organized crime that exists is largely dedicated to smuggling. Asteroid mining is a major industry in all core systems except the very oldest. Planets other than the originally settled one are not quite as heavily settled and generally provide raw materials for the main world in addition to local manufacturing. Ones settled shortly before or after becoming a core system tend to have more even settlement than lower category worlds.

Gate systems are completely covered by urban sprawl and farmland. The local economies are entirely based on manufacturing, programming, and research. Essentially all metals used are imported, except in the most recently and third most recently added to the network, as they had not been settled heavily before and have not depleted all of their stocks of common metals since, although most metals used for advanced electronics and nearly all iridium got used in the gates. Gateworlds have no criminals who have committed crimes more than once between jail sentences, and very few of those. All habitable worlds have been settled to the same extent. Although gateworlds are self-sufficient in terms of food, local food is almost entirely algae, and gene manipulation can only change taste and nutrition, not texture.

Laws: frontier systems have some capacity to set their own laws and are free from bans on personal weaponry. Theft, other property crimes, and violence not in self defense are illegal on all. All of them also censor texts directly critical of the EDF and follow standard media manipulation procedures.

Core and gate systems share their laws, except for looser weapons restrictions in core systems. In both, lethal weapons are restricted to EDF personnel, and mining or industrial explosives require permits. Core systems permit possession of pepper spray, stun guns, and similar, gate worlds do not. Self-defense is permitted, with the stipulation that inflicting injuries beyond those the victim had reason to believe were necessary to subdue the attacker until law enforcement arrives is treated like any accidental but avoidable harm. Anything critical of military dictatorships or supportive of other forms of government is banned or heavily edited. Anything accurate about the original EDF coup is strictly banned, anything relating to the rise of the roman empire requires a top-secret clearance to view and is need-to-know only, fleet commanders do not need to know. This is because the EDF rise to power was similar to the rise to power of the roman empire and the EDF does not want an ironic overthrow. Freedom of religion exists for all religions that do not oppose human government in general or dictatorships in particular. Religion is not considered a valid reason to not obey laws and does not permit automatic paid leave unless specifically negotiated with an employer. Most forms of drug are prescription only or banned entirely, including alcohol and tobacco but not caffeine.

Media manipulation will be written up in the morning.

That seems like a good idea, though the EDF will want to be able to change configurations in a hurry in case the commander gets sniped.

This is a good point, and raises another. Probably there are multiple user settings in the device, and the device detects and recognizes which user is the current operator. Since it is a defense system device, it would have security protocols, and thus someone would have to authorize a new user.

The upside of this is that an enemy capturing such a device could not easily operate it in the field; he would have to transport it to a secure facility where the operations protocols could be hacked and enemy users authorized, or his team would have to include a systems hacker capable of overriding the security protocols in the field.

The downside is that recovery of such devices would be similarly challenged. Either there would have to be an authorized users list that included a large number of recovery team personnel or there would have to be an override system used by recovery personnel when recovering equipment from the battlefield. The latter makes the equipment vulnerable to enemy use, if they can get the recovery overrides.

It also means that a soldier can't jump into the driver's seat of an abandoned piece of equipment and use it, because unless there is a technologically detectable difference between the two sides the equipment will have to assume that an unauthorized user is potentially an enemy.

--M. J. Young

This took quite a while, because apparently I have writers block for propoganda.

Media manipulation:
Obviously, major disasters are not reported if they occur away from a core world. Attacks on core worlds cannot really be suppressed, so the EDF attempts to have a crushing victory ready by the end of the week on the occasions that does happen. Major protests put down by liberal use of tear gas and less-lethal microwave rays, uprisings on rim worlds put down by machine guns, and uprisings on pre-gate worlds put down by nuclear strikes tend to focus almost entirely on the acts of the protesters or revolutionaries, with only enough footage of the EDF response to make sure people are aware of the result of attempting to repeat such actions. Military defeats are generally mentioned unless they went spectacularly wrong, but inevitably all reports are phrased in a positive manner, generally talking about how successful the EDF forces were in the face of overwhelming numbers -Pretty much all defeats involve overwhelming numbers due to technological superiority- and how a powerful fleet is being assembled to respond to the attack. Victories are reported, with emphasis going to victories against considerably larger enemy forces through superior technology and clever maneuvering. However, one thing that may strike the verser is that, no matter how many reports they see, they don’t learn who commanded in any of the battles. This is because the EDF wants to avoid someone becoming popular enough through military success for them to lead a successful coup.

Official history of the founding:
The EDF was first formed by the World Parliament in the 22nd year of the old calendar to enforce the rule of law among the regional governments of earth and to control the crude fission-fusion warheads and mass drivers of the asteroid defense systems. As colonization of the moon expanded, the world parliament, in a rare moment of insight, saw that mere sanctions would not be enough to effectively control extraplanetary populations and expanded the role of the EDF beyond earth orbit. Even when it was little more than a police and orbit-clearing force, the EDF maintained an excellent standard of tactical training. Many of the malcontents of the time refused to see this, calling the EDF tightly bound to 2D combat tactics where they had no meaning and unwilling to adopt new technologies. Encouraged by such foolish beliefs, the asteroid belt miners decided that they owed earth nothing for the vast expenditure of resources required for the establishment of the orbital industry and space elevators needed to make their settlements possible. When they revolted, the World Parliament dithered over how to react. The Supreme Leader, his true name and rank at the time lost to history, took matters into his own hands. While the debate continued, he destroyed those who dared to resist with the first-generation pure fusion warheads in their first field deployment. The parliament attempted to censure him, but found that he had violated no law and they had no grounds to punish him on. The matter was quietly dropped, though the incident disturbed The Supreme Leader greatly as he attempted to reconcile his duty with the actions of the parliament. His loyalty held as the parliament learned that they could depend on the might of the EDF to quash rebellions, no matter how strong they seemed, and ceased holding back out of fear, permitting the crushing of some rebellions of planets newly settled via hyperdrive.
A decade after the belter rebellion, The Supreme Leader encountered the Cyginans on a scouting mission to Aeneas, then known by an alpha-numerical designation. Despite the discipline and experience of the EDF force, they were nearly obliterated by the better-armed aliens in an unprovoked attack, only the tactical genius of their commander allowing the fleet to destroy the attackers. Once again, the Parliament hesitated in the face of seemingly superior forces, and once again, The Supreme Leader led the EDF to victory, as EDF scientists used his sensor logs to determine the answer to previously unsolved questions of antimatter mechanics. The Cyngian fleet was destroyed and their main worlds burned from orbit.
Despite his victories, the supreme leader realized that for humanity to succeed the archaic, failed institution of the parliament had to be removed. Many among the EDF stood against him, but a majority aided in bringing down the parliament and constructing the first gate, which had been within the reach of Cyngian technology but took human ingenuity to complete.

True history:
The EDF initially existed to remind former national governments that they were, in fact, former national governments and not going to become active national governments at any later point. Their primary job was putting down large-scale revolts with modern or nearly modern weaponry. They also provided security forces for the asteroid defense systems, though operation was technically a separate group.
The expansion into space is pretty much accurate. The belter revolt is technically accurate, but misstates the role of the parliament. The gridlock would have been resolved shortly, likely with a limited war against the belter revolt, but the supreme leader (actual name Bob Smith the third) decided to treat it as a large-scale act of treason, skipping any need for a formal declaration of war. It was legally dubious, but the end result was essentially what had been going to happen anyway, except with fewer EDF losses than anticipated. The reason Bob escaped prosecution was actually large popular support for ending the war quickly with few deaths. The revolt occurred the day of the first pure-fusion warhead tests, in an attempt at making a symbolic point about Earth’s lack of ingenuity that horribly backfired when the tests succeeded.
The part about revolts after the belter rebellion is essentially accurate.
Again, the Cyngian incident is technically correct but misleading regarding parliament.
The Coup actually involved a minority of the total EDF but a major majority of Fleet. Nearly the entire ground defense and revolt suppression force remained loyal and were slaughtered by orbital bombardment, along with a number of cities that refused to accept the dictatorship. Most of the cities fell into line, and the ruins were built over as Earth became the capital of the largest empire of the galactic arm. The coup drove home the importance of controlling the orbit of a plant and caused the new EDF dictatorship to focus on ensuring the loyalty of the fleet in the future.

So, in an effort to conquer a specific bit of writers block, I'm soliciting suggestions for aliens. Some general rules for reasons of setting theme:

- No proud warrior race guys, defined as people who are like klingons, unless there is some interesting twist that helpfully explains why they are not monoatomic vapor from angering the EDF.
- No hive-like insect races, because there are a lot of those in sci-fi already.
- Nothing directly from a published setting, for obvious reasons.
- Nothing directly from a world that made it into one of the multiverser world books, in an effort to avoid repeats. Things suggested in worlds that were started and abandoned in a thread like this one.
- Every race uses technology, not magic, for spaceflight.
- There are only two types of FTL, and only the EDF has gates in the area. Everyone else uses hyperdrives.
- No organic technology used for power generation, conventional weaponry, spaceflight, large-scale construction.

Also, some suggestions for the nebulous other gate empires would be nice. They don't have to be very detailed, since the verser will probably either be far away from the main action or verse out shortly after they are encountered.

I've always liked scavenger races to be honest, merchants who go around and pick up floating debris and use it both to outfit their vessels and sell for profit, so here's my go at that.

Ship Design:
Are the gates available to non EDF members? I'm imagining these guys as the unsavory sort that people might not want to deal with, but who's travel brings in product that is too hard to acquire otherwise, and thus could see the EDF permitting them to use the gates even if it's otherwise not allowed. If gate use is allowed by civilians I don't see a problem at all.

That being said, I imagine the ships to start relatively small when the merchants head out, but with a lot of weird looking hooks and tubes jutting out along the sides. These hooks and tubes (the tubes have wires to hook up to various types of alien technology) are used to attach debris or parts of ships the merchants scavenge. As the ship gathers more it gradually becomes slower unless it scavenges additional propulsion systems. It has no warp drive however as it would cut down on their profit margin too much.

The weaponry of the base design is pretty lackluster, effectively a set of lasers that is more designed for cutting for scavenging than actual combat.

The ship also has deployable manned robots to move metal into a docking position. They are small round capsules with arms. When not active the arms for a cage, forming a square for easy storage.

This is the base of how the ship sets out.

They are very capable of upgrading their ship with the parts they scavenge however. A lucky merchant ship that comes across a marooned ship of any race will strip it down to it's bare frame, attaching everything other than a warpdrive, and then cutting the frame and loading it into their cargo hold. A merchant ship outfitted this way is almost as strong as the initial races ship, with a slight penalty to all actions (-5 or -10SM).

They would normally leave the warpdrive as it takes too much weight and space and isn't usable to help them get back. The exception to this is if they are close to a known planet with a market for the goods.

Weaponry:
I've gone over the ships initial weaponry above, but the individual crew members on the ship all carry a pen-like laser cutter. It is once again primarily used for cutting through metal, but is just as powerful as a laser blaster so in the case of a battle they have been known to use their cutters.

Race Looks:
They are a humanoid race but unsavory to look at or smell, as they only bathe when docked to sell their equipment. People put up with this however as their prices while very profitable to themselves are also much cheaper than otherwise possible.

Some captains sell down to their base ship as soon as they hit market while others like to keep some of the more utilitarian items on board. (weaponry and propulsion systems)

They seem rather more suited to outer worlds than gate worlds, since gateworlds are pretty full of intrasystem ships already, and don't usually get spacecraft too badly damaged to be repaired except for accidents during launch and docking, due to being well-established and light on combat. Also, their method of salvage doesn't make too much sense in a gate system, where adding weaponry is kind of pointless. Lastly, the EDF wants to keep their technology out of the hands of aliens, and a good percentage of the ships in a gate system are warships or government ships, which the EDF would want to salvage themselves.

For them to fit in the outer systems, they'll need some way to have gotten to those systems in the first place. Possibly the race has both the in-system salvage operations and some ships that go between systems and haul the most valuable salvage to places where it can be sold at full value. Those would mostly travel in areas too newly settled to have the industry to use salvaged wreckage, and haul intact complex electronics to those areas in exchange for the refined rare metals recovered from wrecked ships. Also, some stuff about their salvaging probably needs changing, specifically:

1- EDF equipment is smelted or sold back as soon as possible. The EDF does not want aliens getting their highly advanced weaponry, and care more about that than the economic welfare of outer systems, so using it is sure to anger them.
2- Intact warp drives are a huge score, enough to justify going to port immediately. They can't use it, but they're the most expensive and difficult to produce component of an intersteller ship, with the possible exception of the fusion reactor and a warship's entire computer system. Generally, ships that take enough damage to cease functioning suffer severe damage to all three.
3- Given that frontier, rim, and uncontrolled systems don't have much in the way of a fleet, pretty much every salvager ship has a tendency to keep the best weaponry that they can mount that's not from an EDF warship.

Also, the race presumably has a homeworld and possibly some settled colonies with a semi-unified government. To tie in with their honest salvaging theme, they may rely extensively on salvage for the electronics, weaponry, and power systems of their ships. The costs inherent in transport mean they'd probably not import the raw scrap and instead have the sublight ships sell that locally to whatever alien planet they're set up near. They'd be a noteworthy local power from salvaging human freighters and system defense ships for stuff produced by private companies on core and gate worlds. Historically, this would not have been the case, so they may have arranged local alliances or just made a deal with a pre-EDF local power for protection.

Also, I should probably have written some more up on fleets before posting a request for aliens, but I guess I'll do it here.

Firstly, warp drives consume 20% or more of a ship's mass, plus some amount for computer systems. That is an inviolate law of physics for the specific way the drive is built, which is distinct from other drives in multiverser in a way that's not otherwise really important. EDF intersteller warships devote roughly 10% to the sublight drive, and both systems draw from the same fusion reactor, along with all other systems. Fusion is the typical power source simply because the fuel is readily available. How much of an intersteller ship is devoted to fuel varies, but generally 10% by mass and a large chunk of the volume is the minimum to be able to reliably reach the next system in a given direction and handle reaching the gas giant, with enough left over to run environmental systems and sustain a few hours of combat. 50% is essentially the upper practical limit, so any race exceeding that needs a very good reason. The EDF opts for about 25% on the main fleets, and 35% on some fast reaction ships. Warships tend to leave their fuel tanks exposed, since there is nothing for the hydrogen to react with and only a very small percentage of the fuel is needed for combat. As a result, intersteller ships often have highly visible fuel tanks between the end of the drive and anything else important. Freighters and troop transports have them set into the hull to reduce the risk of fire on the ground. The remainder is divided into crew quarters, weaponry, the actual reactors, enviromental, some cramped corridors to repair damaged fuel tanks, and the cargo bay or troop quarters. Merchant ships have tiny crews to reduce expense, and always use fusion because the fuel is cheap. They're also really cramped and try to fill the cargo bay, because the main expense is keeping the drive system in good repair and is pretty much flat regardless of how full the bay is. As a result, exporting raw material to anywhere outside of the EDF core worlds is a losing prospect. Nowhere else is able to pay but lacks the ability to mine it locally. Also, high-end technology is extremely expensive because of the constriction of supply. There is still enough demand to make exporting latest-generation private sector technology in exchange for art or exotic food a viable concern pretty much anywhere.

The EDF uses the following general ship classes:

Frigates: These ships are purely for space combat and bombardment. They're considered too weak to be viable for heavy combat, but several of them are better for patrol duty than a heavier ship of the same combined cost, and they get grabbed up whenever a fleet is needed in a hurry. Crew of 15.
Destroyers: These have a squad in power armor aboard, and are deployed independantly or in small groups to patrol rim systems and garrison frontier systems. Crew, not counting marines, is about 40 people. They are reasonably matched against the heavy cruisers of alien major powers.
Light Cruisers: The heaviest ship used for routine patrol of frontier worlds, they carry a platoon in power armor and a trio of hovertanks, plus some scouting UAVs. Crew is about 100, plus a squad worth of criminal investigation when deployed on rim patrol. They're a match for the heaviest alien interstellar ships and often serve as flagships for reaction forces or raids outside EDF territory.
Heavy Cruisers: They only have a squad in armor for internal security, and are mainly used to react to major offensives into frontier or core systems, or retaliation for the same. Crew is about 120, no investigators. They are roughly 1.5 times as good as a light cruiser.
Dreadnought: Rarely seen away from fleet bases, the EDF capital ships are mainly used when the EDF decides a major alien power needs to be conquered. Sometimes, they show up when a raider force has managed to elude or surprise several lighter patrols. They are nearly three times the size of heavy cruisers and proportionately more powerful. Crew is about 220 and a platoon of power-armored ship security.

The EDF and human ships in general use the following weapons:
-Lasers: highly accurate and reasonably powerful, but only used at about a light second because enemy ships are too difficult to track at greater distances when they are maneuvering to evade. Still a common weapon.
- Railguns or coilguns: more powerful than lasers, they are the weapon of choice for capital ship main batteries because they cannot be shot down. Lighter ships tend not to use them because of the space needed for the coils or rails. They're effectively a bit shorter ranged than lasers, but not by enough to matter in most cases.
- Pure-fusion missiles: They do a good deal of damage, but are generally shot down by point defense. Large ships either use lots of them in hopes of overwhelming point defense or don't use any at all. Light warships tend to carry antimatter instead, but merchants sometimes mount some external racks to provide enough firepower to effectively cripple some pirate or commerce raider ships if they get lucky.
- Antimatter: much more powerful than fusion warheads, but subject to the same point defense. They're not popular on merchant ships because of the risk of accidental detonation due to relatively minor damage. Light warships carry some deep inside the ship to possibly cripple ships far more powerful than them, and they're popular on rim/frontier system defense ships for much the same reason. Light cruisers and up don't carry them to avoid being completely destroyed by a penetrating shot that would otherwise be survivable. Obviously, non-humans have differing opinions on how wise a choice it is, and some have managed to destroy EDF dreadnoughts with capital ships mounting heavy missile racks.

Obviously, aliens don't need to use the same guns, but have them use this set if you can't think of something interestingly different.

The Dead Ships:
These ships are basic hyperdrive, and truly massive being part asteroid, part ship. Indeed, the hyperdrive would have been finicky and unstable according to EDF engineers because they were trying to put too much mass on the drive. They were trying to beat the 20% rule.

It seems that the aliens who lived on these ships did not use gravity as the ship is arranged to use a zero gravity environment with stools on the ceilings, walls, and floors and computational stations as well.

From examining the handgrips, it looks as if a three-thumbed hand was their hand with a height of either three feet or five feet from the ground. Ergonomicists differ as to whether they are six or ten feet tall. (The answer is six, but the differing heights of the controls is because they have very long arms with two elbows in each arm.)

Their control systems refuse to be operated. (This is because in addition to numbers and physical manipulation, they also used ultrasonic whistles.)

No physical remains have been found. The ships seem to have been headed from a common region in the sky a great distance away, and are now adrift in space. (This is because they were being launched to evacuate their world from the coming supernova. It went off too soon, and so the few that were already on board the several dozen ships set out. A few ships found destinations. One has a moon, but the moonbase is as cryptic as the ships. One has a land base on a planet with the locals being technologically primitive sorts who worship the mountain where their ancestors landed (and even now, their ancestors sleep in highly experimental cryo chambers.) But the others found no rest, and so, in keeping with their customs, they spaced themselves, and let the ships drift onward.)

This serves as an early warning that a supernova wave is heading the EDF's way. Such blasts travel at near the speed of light or some enormous speed, and can damage solar systems a goodly distance away.

The fortifiers (You may not have noticed, but I am not good at naming things)
They are vaguely humanoid, with a very short neck and a decidedly yellowish cast to their skin, with a small pair of secondary arms, which aren’t useful for picking things up but form an integral component of their magic rituals, moving in elaborate patterns while the main arms are used for slow, sweeping movements. (I should have put this up earlier, but I got the idea that the EDF didn’t use magic because no magic-using species uses rituals compatible with human anatomy, so they’ve got nothing to copy until the verser shows up)

Prior to the EDF showing up, they seemed to have lucked into the correct biological urges for long-term success in space warfare. Their nickname comes from their tendency to expand their dwelling area slowly but with massive military force when they do, then obsessively fortify the area until it looks like the Maginot line before moving in non-military settlers. This served them well on their homeworld because of the left-over genetically engineered combat beasts from a long-forgotten intersteller war, and has helped them in space because of the 20% law and fuel restrictions making attacks on their systems completely infeasible. If not for the existence of Gate powers, they’d probably have eventually expanded to control an area equivalent to the area controlled by a gate world. As it is, they’re successfully maintaining effective independence from the EDF within 10 light years of the Hector gate system. (theme naming: gate worlds are all named after heros from the Iliad, Odyssey, or other Grecio-roman legends.) Although they aren’t exactly hostile to the EDF, their very existence offends high command. Their massive defenses can’t stop the combined mobile forces of four sectors, and that just might be coming for them eventually, or alternately soon.

Ship design:
They don’t go in for the armed merchantmen of most other races, since they use exclusively military craft outside of their fortress worlds and don’t need any inside. Their fleet supply ships have armor and point defense exclusively, while their warships sacrifice onboard endurance for power. Even their hyperfocus doesn’t let them match the EDF’s constantly updated designs ton-for-ton, and they aren’t good for independent operations, or very fast. However, they possess firepower no other alien main fleet ships can match, and their Dreadnoughts can face EDF heavy cruisers one-on-one. They make use of lasers as their primary weapon to prevent enemy warships from exploiting speed and range advantages against them. Their low speed is rendered partially irrelevant because they don’t make a point of targeting enemy ships that don’t come to them.

Ground combat: The realities of ground combat in the intersteller era forces them to break from their preferred strategy of massive fortifications to an extent. They now use highly-mobile infantry and hovertanks to disrupt enemy forces attempting sieges and bombardment. They’ve also been forced to adopt a pattern of fortification similar to medieval era castles, with large fortresses armored against anything short of an antimatter warhead and with the anti-space weaponry to keep enemies from simply continuing bombardment until the fortress has melted. Their space fortifications mean this has rarely been put to the test in living memory. It has proven somewhat effective, until the spellcasters die of crucial mistakes and enemy artillery silences the anti-space weaponry.

Magic: Their magic generally involves extremely elaborate and time-consuming rituals used only for combat. Historical experience with using it for domestic tasks involved an inadvertent portal between the center of a fortress-town and a major monster hunting ground. Their ritual magic is long-distance but can only be manifested at a location the user can see with their own eyes. Generally, it’s used through armored windows. Mages can cast spells in a hurry, but try to avoid it because of the risk of disaster. When they take the field with mobile forces, they’re a primary target for snipers and guided weapons.

Note for future ones: Major powers could use some crippling flaw in their designs that they exploit to be really good at everything else and try to work around the flaw. Makes things less samey. Obviously, minor powers and rogue groups don’t have to do that, it’d be too hard to keep straight and they might end up repeating a fair bit anyhow.

I said I wanted to use JTM's idea in Constellation. And I've kinda decided to go with Zombies. So...

I could go with magic zombies, but I prefer techno-zombies I think. And in this case, its real dead.

The Matmak (from Matter Manipulator with a twist) do not believe in magic, to hear tell, if you can find one to speak. But they do believe in paranoia, and in shills. Each of them is convinced the rest of the universe is out to get them.

'Matmak against the Universe, Clans against Clans, Families against Families, Siblings against myself.' Is a saying of theirs which shows their attitude. Two Matmak will help each other against aliens. If no aliens are about, and they are of different clans, they will do each other in. If they are members of teh same clan, but of different families, and no other clan differing from theirs is near, they will do each otehr in. If siblings are near each other, and no non-sibling is about, they will do each other in.

Its unknown if this is a cultural propensity, or a biological one. In any case, they do not have the concept of 'word of honor' or 'dishonesty is wrong'.

They believe that no one has a soul, and we are as Yoda denied 'crude matter'. They further believe that they are the height of existence and that other species are lesser so they don't really feel pain.

This all goes to their customary practise. A Matmak catcher ship will sneak up, with its very capable stealth, and capture an alien ship (Human or other.) The entities on board are tortured for information, and then killed. Then electrical and mechanical devices are put into their body to enable their bodies to be run as robots at the whim of a Controller. Such 'meatbots' last a varying amount of time before decay and overuse destroys them. Humans tend to last four months.

The ship is taken back to an auction station where a well-to-do Matmak will bid on it. The winner becomes that ship's Controller. He sits in a very well protected cabin, and 'dance my puppets dance' describes things fairly well.

He then takes his new ship out, and tries to steal stuff, and spread division between allies, and capture more bodies to turn into meatbots.

No Matmak has ever been seen, or even captured. They have the ability to destroy the ship, and escape in a hyper capable escape pod. But they will destroy themselves with an A-M explosion before they let themselves be captured.

One thing that reinforces the Matmak's paranoia is how pretty much every other race in the galaxy treats them as walking targets once they realize who they are, and what they've done. This insistence on 'the value of XXXXX life, as if life was somethng innately valuable is a sign of a malicious desire to attack the Matmak under the subterfuge of silly reasons.'

Some Matmak do believe in souls, theirs anyways. A small underground sect of them (but most of them are underground as paranoia is a natural to them) practises dark magics aimed at creating madness and horror and enligtenment (they view them as close to the same thing.) Being a practising magician is grounds for expulsion from your clan as you're adjudged insane.

Now I have Zombie Space Pirates...

Second Post...

I'm going to have the verser arrive on the ship Good Hope, a medical rescue ship which had taken on a hull full of refugees from a planet that got hammered by an enemy race, and afterwards, teh ship picked up a pursuer, and is fleeing from this ship piloted by a wide variety of dead alien meatbots aka zombies.

The goal is to get across the solar system to a jumpgate because the EDF have a force on the far side.

Its a long and perilous journey with various stratagems to keep the more heavily armed pursuit craft back.

But finally they jump and escape.

And the EDF ship waiting for them is one that the zombies have taken over already.

Gates are pretty rare in this particular setting. They'd be trying to get far enough from the sun to jump.

Also, the intended feel isn't exactly horror, but eh, big setting.

I'd say that what ordinarily happens is...

Matmak meets merchant ship...Horror

Matmak meets EDF Frigate, or a decent warship of the Fortifiers, or other major powers....target practise with extreme prejudgice.

There are some elements in the EDF establishment that favor tracking down whoever is doing this, and KE blasting their planet into a parking lot.