The LosTech Draft (collaborative Storytelling, apply within!)

[Daryk]

I think "selling" one ship every 10 years might be slow enough to fly under the radar, and could even be chaliked up to simple salvage operations.

That said, Cannonshop's not wrong about the maintenance side of things, though a potential way out of that is to limit the "unrepairable" parts to the bear minimum number, and make them the most durable and hard to duplicate pieces (like, say, the core forging equipment).

[Cannonshop]

I think "selling" one ship every 10 years might be slow enough to fly under the radar, and could even be chaliked up to simple salvage operations.

That said, Cannonshop's not wrong about the maintenance side of things, though a potential way out of that is to limit the "unrepairable" parts to the bear minimum number, and make them the most durable and hard to duplicate pieces (like, say, the core forging equipment).

Probability is that the core forges are going to be the LEAST durable parts-in terms of wear and need for upkeep.  the tolerance stated in the breakdown practically demands it's too delicate to last long without needing constant upkeep.  (the more precise your product needs to be, the more you have to invest in maintaining your production equipment.)  Here's the thing: you're working with metals.  Titanium (high temperature, hard to isolate, a bitch to work with) and Germanium (low temperature melting point, easily deformed)  this means you've got extremely tight temperature constraints and heavy mechanical loads, with a precision into the trillionths of a part.  This is something that can wander out of spec in the course of a single forging just because of the sheer difference in the materials it's handling. 

It's possible to do it, but for production OR maintenance purposes, you need a LOT of precision measurement gear just to keep the production machine in workable condition, because your temperature and mechanical loads have to be exact or you just have a nice lump of modern sculpture instead of either a production machine, or a production part.

[Daryk]

One core a decade too much, then?  I'm thinking if you have a single machine that can get things back into tolerance, it could easily take a decade to get the forge (and it's trillions of sub-assemblies) set up for a single use.

[Cannonshop]

One core a decade too much, then?  I'm thinking if you have a single machine that can get things back into tolerance, it could easily take a decade to get the forge (and it's trillions of sub-assemblies) set up for a single use.

thing an old tooling guy showed me, is that if you can build the product, you can build the machinery to make it.  The major bottleneck is the money and raw materials divided by time, but with shipyards going 'pop' throughout the first three succession wars, it's worth the money and the time to make not only spare tooling, but spares for your various calibration tooling and standards of calibration-except you don't get to do that under the rules here-everything is 'irreplaceable', therefore you can't maintain your gear.  One every decade is blindingly optimistic-your shipyard personnel aren't going to be skilled workers at that rate-they'll age out and retire or die before they become good at their jobs, or, as they say, 'proficient'.

I've got 20 years banging metal into airplane shapes, and cub engineers ask ME if something's possible/feasible when correcting an error on the floor.  at a 'slow' rate of a single 747 every month? skills get rusty.  if you're looking at forging a core every decade, those skills become nonexistent in your workforce FAST.

Management bitches about "Tribal Knowledge" but on large, precision machinery, that's the knowledge that produces airframes that work-there ARE things you can't put in a manual. (as they discovered when they tried to build robots to rivet body sections together. It didn't work.)

[Daryk]

Hmmm... good point. 

[Vehrec]

I see a major flaw in the model here: once someone knows you've got it, and roughly where? they'er going to come for it.  this is an environment where major nations stage raids for water and fight wars over warehouses of factory spares.

If you have more than one yard, your better investment is to dismantle and monkey-model/copy every piece you have the physical ability to do, then reassemble it, because the moment someone knows you've got a yard, you're going to have every pirate., bandit, and most nations within a five jump radius coming for you. (not to mention Comstar coming, because they're all about destroying knowledge and sending mankind back to the paleolithic.)  The major problem here, is that even with that, the Lothians are restricted to no-space-industries by the rules of the setup-they're not really able to maintain the yard they have, and machines that don't get maintenance die.

How? with production equipment, you get tolerance drift, the more you use it, the faster it drifts. eventually everything comes out 'out of tolerance' and/or the machine breaks.  This isn't a big deal for ground-bound machinery, because that stuff isn't that precise to start with, and a 'mech has huge tolerances just on the basis of how much flex it's expected to endure, plus fusion engines aren't moving parts, so they wear out slower.

but production machinery? uh-uh.  if it has moving parts, those parts aren't self-maintaining like a biological organism (and biologicals also wear out! it's called aging.)

Without the ability to maintain the yard, the yard breaks down and is of no use to anyone in a couple generations.  If you CAN maintain it, you can replicate it, which violates the rules as presented.  There's a reason Hesperus II was only turning out a dozen or so 'mechs a year until the Helm Core-they had to go VERY easy on the equipment to keep it from failing at a bad time until they could build/get parts to repair or replace the machines.

Maintenance of the yard alone requires nullgee industries that aren't allowed-the specifics state infrastructure is gone, and no factory can exist without it, or maintenance point, for any length of time.

The basic flaw in the rules, is that they are required to ignore the rule of natural consequences and of entropy.  A magic sword can stay magic for the duration of plot, but a drill press requires bearings and lubrication.  a milling machine requires precision instruments to calibrate it, a CNC requires all of those plus additional maintenance tools and methods.  The more precise you get, the more active infrastructure you need just to be able to USE it.

To this, I have two responses.  The first is that this is a criticism of the entire concept of lostech and factories that can't be replicated and doing raids for computer chips to keep your water-factory running.  If you reject machines running with minimal maintenance for centuries, then you reject a core setting conceit.  Of course, you've spoken up against LosTech before, and your objections are factual-but they're being ignored here because we want to tell a story about industries with no visible means of support.  Things are winding down, yes, but they're not all going to collapse in just 20 years or so.  Or even 200 years.  Because to let them break completely breaks the story.  So they won't break completely, because we the authors won't let that happen.

My other response is that this isn't a factory.  It's not even a proper maintenance facility-this is a combination of artisan shop and experimental research facility, building parts with basically a file and a vice.  It can't build all parts, it can't do all work, and it is very, VERY slow.  It takes them TEN YEARS to do the overhauls and refurbishments on common Invaders, and get the damn hydroponics domes to retract again, along with other problems.  And Pirates might want to strip it for parts, but they have ships that need maintenance as well-and where, exactly, are they going to fix up their ships?  (See: How To Be A Pirate: Quartermaster Edition)  Pirates can't just pull into a shipyard and say 'hey this sail doesn't furl right' or 'Our jump computer has a lot of bit-flipping errors and it keeps giving us the wrong jump coordinates.'  Now, I'm not saying that you need to take on pirate customers, but I'm not going to offer people trap options that just exist to deny them the chance to play the game.

Cannonshop, I know you're speaking from a place of personal experience and expertise, but you seem to be of the opinion that I should just remove these options from the game entirely and not let anyone touch aerospace tech at all.  And that doesn't seem like fun to me.  What, exactly, is your prefered solution here, in your own words?  Can we just say 'this isn't realistic, but we're here to tell a fun story, not have pretentions of simulating futuristic industrial growth and contraction'?

One core a decade too much, then?  I'm thinking if you have a single machine that can get things back into tolerance, it could easily take a decade to get the forge (and it's trillions of sub-assemblies) set up for a single use.

Daryk, you're not building cores.  No Jump Core production, nothing that comes close to that.  Maybe basic replacement parts for tokomaks, but my headcanon for a jump core is effectively a germanium/titanium microchip that weighs tens of thousands of tons.  And you can't just drill on down through thousands of layers of circuitry to reach a deep defect without wrecking havoc on the exterior parts.

[Cannonshop]

Hmmm... good point. 

a couple decades ago, Boeing got this bright idea to cut their labor costs by giving early retirements out with generous terms, because it was cheaper than maintaining the wages and benefits they were paying out.

Lots of people took it-enough that we spent half a decade re-learning how to do a lot of jobs, because the knowledge base walked out the door all at once.  Similar teething problems happened when another bright symposium manager decided they needed to 'standardize' all the tooling on the floor to make it easier to keep it accounted for.  This cost a shit-ton of money and had to be walked back, because while CATIA might claim otherwise, some tools don't fit in places you need them to fit without modification, and you can't do the job in the timeframe allotted without them.

[Sir Chaos]

If you reject machines running with minimal maintenance for centuries, then you reject a core setting conceit.

Don´t forget that rejecting core setting conceits is the essence of how Cannonshop approaches fan fiction. If you want to do something that embraces those core setting conceits, you probably shouldn´t pay attention to him in first place - any more than you should pay attention to a physicist talking about conservation of matter and energy when planning a D&D campaign (because violating the shit out of basic laws of physics is kinda the entire point of high fantasy magic systems).

[Daryk]

*snip*
Daryk, you're not building cores.  No Jump Core production, nothing that comes close to that.  Maybe basic replacement parts for tokomaks, but my headcanon for a jump core is effectively a germanium/titanium microchip that weighs tens of thousands of tons.  And you can't just drill on down through thousands of layers of circuitry to reach a deep defect without wrecking havoc on the exterior parts.

Ah, ok... how about the "trade-in" business model?

[Cannonshop]

To this, I have two responses.  The first is that this is a criticism of the entire concept of lostech and factories that can't be replicated and doing raids for computer chips to keep your water-factory running.  If you reject machines running with minimal maintenance for centuries, then you reject a core setting conceit.  Of course, you've spoken up against LosTech before, and your objections are factual-but they're being ignored here because we want to tell a story about industries with no visible means of support.  Things are winding down, yes, but they're not all going to collapse in just 20 years or so.  Or even 200 years.  Because to let them break completely breaks the story.  So they won't break completely, because we the authors won't let that happen.

My other response is that this isn't a factory.  It's not even a proper maintenance facility-this is a combination of artisan shop and experimental research facility, building parts with basically a file and a vice.  It can't build all parts, it can't do all work, and it is very, VERY slow.  It takes them TEN YEARS to do the overhauls and refurbishments on common Invaders, and get the damn hydroponics domes to retract again, along with other problems.  And Pirates might want to strip it for parts, but they have ships that need maintenance as well-and where, exactly, are they going to fix up their ships?  (See: How To Be A Pirate: Quartermaster Edition)  Pirates can't just pull into a shipyard and say 'hey this sail doesn't furl right' or 'Our jump computer has a lot of bit-flipping errors and it keeps giving us the wrong jump coordinates.'  Now, I'm not saying that you need to take on pirate customers, but I'm not going to offer people trap options that just exist to deny them the chance to play the game.

Cannonshop, I know you're speaking from a place of personal experience and expertise, but you seem to be of the opinion that I should just remove these options from the game entirely and not let anyone touch aerospace tech at all.  And that doesn't seem like fun to me.  What, exactly, is your prefered solution here, in your own words?  Can we just say 'this isn't realistic, but we're here to tell a fun story, not have pretentions of simulating futuristic industrial growth and contraction'?
Daryk, you're not building cores.  No Jump Core production, nothing that comes close to that.  Maybe basic replacement parts for tokomaks, but my headcanon for a jump core is effectively a germanium/titanium microchip that weighs tens of thousands of tons.  And you can't just drill on down through thousands of layers of circuitry to reach a deep defect without wrecking havoc on the exterior parts.

I don't necessarily think they need to be removed-but you need to think them through thoroughly, weigh the options, and be specific about your limits from the first moment onward.  The Water-filters thing? we make those now, they're definitely something that  can be done 'Artisanally'-the worst that can happen is a filter that's slightly less effective..most of the time, except when you get one that's all the way effective because it was made on a wednesday.

but anything high-energy and reliable enough to use, requires a lot of underlying infrastructure to produce, even if the final manufacturing point is an 'artisan' shop.  The equipment you need to turn raw metal into a small-block V8 might boggle your mind, nevermind building a working turbine engine.  this stuff is VERY much a precision operation, and you don't get precision equipment without an underlying industrial base. 

ONe of the things that makes the fanfic setting I created work, is that it's built around a tooling company, which I inserted into the background, they're not DefHes, they're not CMW, they're not Comstar.  they're the guys who make the tools that keep DefHes in business.

"If you don't have infrastructure, you don't have an economy."

Basically, it's like this: Your local blacksmith might make fine rakes and shovels, but he's not going to be able to hammer-and-tongs a Chevrolet V8 engine out of railroad ties with a charcoal furnace and a set of hammers.

at least, not one that works.

if your tech is post-1940s you need to have a functional industrial base and infrastructure, a fusion engine is 22nd century, 1940s industrial base doesn't cut it.

Don´t forget that rejecting core setting conceits is the essence of how Cannonshop approaches fan fiction. If you want to do something that embraces those core setting conceits, you probably shouldn´t pay attention to him in first place - any more than you should pay attention to a physicist talking about conservation of matter and energy when planning a D&D campaign (because violating the shit out of basic laws of physics is kinda the entire point of high fantasy magic systems).

as for 'core setting conceits'?  Until the Helm Core showed up and everything got retconned, those factories were assembling war machines from spare parts backlogs, and they were raiding each other for replacement parts for what factories they had, to varying levels of success.

(Yes, I've played the game that long.) IOW nobody was building anything, so much as assembling what they could from what they could salvage or find in spare parts depots and forgotten cache sites.

hell, the fluff for the Savannahmaster was that a consignment of Omni-25s were found and used to pay one of the crew, and he had to figure out how to turn them into money.

In those days, if your engine got damaged you didn't have the option to repair it, you needed to either junk your ride out, or find an engine that fit and somehow cobble it in.

[Sir Chaos]

as for 'core setting conceits'?  Until the Helm Core showed up and everything got retconned, those factories were assembling war machines from spare parts backlogs, and they were raiding each other for replacement parts for what factories they had, to varying levels of success.

(Yes, I've played the game that long.) IOW nobody was building anything, so much as assembling what they could from what they could salvage or find in spare parts depots and forgotten cache sites.

hell, the fluff for the Savannahmaster was that a consignment of Omni-25s were found and used to pay one of the crew, and he had to figure out how to turn them into money.

In those days, if your engine got damaged you didn't have the option to repair it, you needed to either junk your ride out, or find an engine that fit and somehow cobble it in.

Nobody´s stopping you from writing your fan fiction the way you want, no matter how little sense it makes within the framework of the established universe´s core conceits. So I really don´t understand your burning desire to relentlessly shit on someone who is working off a different premise.

[AlphaMirage]

Back to the main things,

I think I am going for the Free Worlds League and the Economic Supercomputer. As a major trading power and many member state League, such a central thing would be necessary to keep the Marik economy flowing.

[Vehrec]

Ah, ok... how about the "trade-in" business model?

Not enough liquidity in the periphery transit models to make it happen-ship owners can't afford to sell their ships to 'prime the pump' as it were.  You'd have to sell off a couple of your existing fleet and that would be politically difficult to sell inside the League.

I don't necessarily think they need to be removed-but you need to think them through thoroughly, weigh the options, and be specific about your limits from the first moment onward.  The Water-filters thing? we make those now, they're definitely something that  can be done 'Artisanally'-the worst that can happen is a filter that's slightly less effective..most of the time, except when you get one that's all the way effective because it was made on a wednesday.

but anything high-energy and reliable enough to use, requires a lot of underlying infrastructure to produce, even if the final manufacturing point is an 'artisan' shop.  The equipment you need to turn raw metal into a small-block V8 might boggle your mind, nevermind building a working turbine engine.  this stuff is VERY much a precision operation, and you don't get precision equipment without an underlying industrial base. 

ONe of the things that makes the fanfic setting I created work, is that it's built around a tooling company, which I inserted into the background, they're not DefHes, they're not CMW, they're not Comstar.  they're the guys who make the tools that keep DefHes in business.

"If you don't have infrastructure, you don't have an economy."

Basically, it's like this: Your local blacksmith might make fine rakes and shovels, but he's not going to be able to hammer-and-tongs a Chevrolet V8 engine out of railroad ties with a charcoal furnace and a set of hammers.

at least, not one that works.

if your tech is post-1940s you need to have a functional industrial base and infrastructure, a fusion engine is 22nd century, 1940s industrial base doesn't cut it..

Yeah, um, I went back through the thread and...you don't actually seem to have any interest in 'participating' just in making sure that everything conforms to your vision-which, I think should be our lowest priority right now.  So, unless, you actually want to claim a nation and pick techs, I'm just going to advise everyone to nod along and then ignore you if they think it makes a better story.  I know it's a tad disrespectful, but I don't think you're actually suggesting improvements here.  I appreciate your suggestion about 'defining limits' but I know that to enumerate EVERY limit is to go down a rabbit hole that isn't useful to me or anyone else-instead, I'm going to trust that people understand the general spirit in which we are proceeding.  Everything after that is 'you either have tools to build tools or you have no tools at all' which might be true but we're in the FM world here of Freaking Magic, not the AM world of Actual Machines.  furthermore-wait what the...

Back to the main things,

I think I am going for the Free Worlds League and the Economic Supercomputer. As a major trading power and many member state League, such a central thing would be necessary to keep the Marik economy flowing.

  HEY!  BACK IN LINE, this is a DRAFT, you pick in order or you don't pick at all, we haven't got a full roster yet!  I'm gonna give people a bit more time to sign up, you don't get to go first just because you got here first.  I have determined the draft order-but I won't post it until the roster is full-up or I give up on filling it.

[Sir Chaos]

Back to the main things, indeed. I think the Draconis Combine is still up for grabs? I would like to take that, then.

[Cannonshop]

Not enough liquidity in the periphery transit models to make it happen-ship owners can't afford to sell their ships to 'prime the pump' as it were.  You'd have to sell off a couple of your existing fleet and that would be politically difficult to sell inside the League.

Yeah, um, I went back through the thread and...you don't actually seem to have any interest in 'participating' just in making sure that everything conforms to your vision-which, I think should be our lowest priority right now.  So, unless, you actually want to claim a nation and pick techs, I'm just going to advise everyone to nod along and then ignore you if they think it makes a better story.  I know it's a tad disrespectful, but I don't think you're actually suggesting improvements here.  I appreciate your suggestion about 'defining limits' but I know that to enumerate EVERY limit is to go down a rabbit hole that isn't useful to me or anyone else-instead, I'm going to trust that people understand the general spirit in which we are proceeding.  Everything after that is 'you either have tools to build tools or you have no tools at all' which might be true but we're in the FM world here of Freaking Magic, not the AM world of Actual Machines.  furthermore-wait what the...
  HEY!  BACK IN LINE, this is a DRAFT, you pick in order or you don't pick at all, we haven't got a full roster yet!  I'm gonna give people a bit more time to sign up, you don't get to go first just because you got here first.  I have determined the draft order-but I won't post it until the roster is full-up or I give up on filling it.

Fair 'nough. I'm actually looking forward to seeing the product from this experiment. (doing two or three stories simultaneously right now, for a group project like this, it kinda takes full attention not to screw things up for the other contributors with whacky plot directions.)

[Daryk]

*snip*
  HEY!  BACK IN LINE, this is a DRAFT, you pick in order or you don't pick at all, we haven't got a full roster yet!  I'm gonna give people a bit more time to sign up, you don't get to go first just because you got here first.  I have determined the draft order-but I won't post it until the roster is full-up or I give up on filling it.

Sorry, did I pick prematurely?

And as far as liquidity, I was figuring the value of the trade in would be most of it.  How much does a 10-year overhaul cost?  I mean, here at Crazy Logan's used spaceships, we'll take your aging ship off your hands (as long as it can still jump) and sell you an almost good as new ship of the same class...

[Vehrec]

Back to the main things, indeed. I think the Draconis Combine is still up for grabs? I would like to take that, then.

Yeah, you're in, welcome aboard.

Sorry, did I pick prematurely?

And as far as liquidity, I was figuring the value of the trade in would be most of it.  How much does a 10-year overhaul cost?  I mean, here at Crazy Logan's used spaceships, we'll take your aging ship off your hands (as long as it can still jump) and sell you an almost good as new ship of the same class...

You're good, it's Alpha Mirage who did the bad thing of picking out of order.  And as far as liquidity is concerned, it's not 'I need money' but 'My business is transport and I can't stop swimming', and you don't have the raw cash to buy new jumpships to lubricate the market by having a 'for sale' model to trade in for.

[Daryk]

And I'm in the "can't stop swimming" pool too, right?

[idea weenie]

   HEY!  BACK IN LINE, this is a DRAFT, you pick in order or you don't pick at all, we haven't got a full roster yet!  I'm gonna give people a bit more time to sign up, you don't get to go first just because you got here first.  I have determined the draft order-but I won't post it until the roster is full-up or I give up on filling it.

So this is the current order:

• Great Houses (exact order determined by bribe to GM)
• Comstar (aka Me)
• Periphery nations (exact order determined by bribe to GM)

[Vehrec]

Can you provide the current list of nations/organizations in the order that they will be doing their picks, along with who has chosen those nations/organizations?

I assume it is in the following order

• Great Houses
• Periphery nations
• Comstar (aka Me)

But a little more breakdown on steps 1 & 2 would be appreciated, so we all know where we stand

The exact order is not going to be revealed right now, and would confer advantage to people to know, so I'm not sharing it.  Then, ComStar picks two, and any Periphery Majors can pick over the remains.

AlphaMirage is playing as the Free World's League.
Venser's Revenge is playing as the Federated Suns.
Sir Chaos is playing the Draconis Combine.
The Lyran Commonwealth and Capellan Confederation are still up for grabs.

[Vehrec]

Okay, after a few days with no sign-up and no motion, we will go ahead I guess.  Our first Draftee is the Federated Suns, so let's get Venser's Revenge in here to make their choice.

The options are: just again:

• Water Filtration:  Star League water filters were an invisible part of life-now they're life or death.  This factory produces control chips, filter media, monomolecular titanium sluice gates, bacteria-resistant seals, all the stuff you need to turn periphery toxic sludge into high grade drinking or industrial water.  It's in very high demand-too bad you can't sell any of it, as your own worlds are screaming for this stuff, and you need to be very careful that you don't lose a planet because the water chips go to the wrong place.
• Climate Stabilization: Everyone loves a nice sunny day, but there are people who are fans of nice cool rains, or big booming thundersnows.  But nobody wants to deal with hurricanes, tornados, and drought.  Star League Climate Stabilization Satellites make your planets better-if you have enough of them.  Too bad there's not enough to cover every world-but your best jewels shine a little brighter if polished with this system.
• Full Pharmacopia: The oldest person in history was some tiny Japanese lady who lived to be almost 200 on a diet of pills and low-stress living in a healthy climate.  Most people in the Star League could aspire to 150 years.  That dream yet lives on due to this extensive drug production facility.  Anti-parasitics, anti-biotics, anti-senescent, a pill for everything, and for everything a pill.  But is it enough to treat everyone, for everything?
• Auto-factory tooling: The Heterodyne 9000 was an instantly infamous piece of hardware when it was first introduced-it destroyed 90% of the jobs on the periphery world of Detroit.  You use it somewhat more cautiously, but the same hardware and software drive your industry to production numbers that look insane.  All non-creative jobs, from janitor to vice-president of marketing, can be handled automatically by the facility itself.
• Extra Shipyard: As the shipping industry collapsed, you threw everything you had into salvaging what could be saved.  Vital tooling here, an assembly frame there, and the all-important monocrystaline germanium-titanium growth chambers to make jump cores doped to one part per trillion exactness, with the proper 'defect circuitry'.  The result is a bit of a workflow disaster area, but in an era where the construction of such shipyards is a lost art, having put together one more than anyone else is an advantage you can't deny.
• HPG sub-component: Is ComStar angry about this one?  Does a bear poo in the woods, heck yes ComStar would skin you alive for this if you tried to set it up today, but it is written into their founding treaty.  They get the exclusive rights to buy these widgets, nobody even knows what they do but them, and in exchange, you get a nice big fat discount on transmissions.  Now if only you could discount those nutjobs telling you to nationalize it and build your own HPG network...
• Economic Supercomputer: Once, this great machine the size of a city kept the economy of the Star League and the value of the Dollar as solid as a rock.  Today, it's planning and modeling software is at your disposal-either for purely national concerns, or for sale to national companies.  Garbage In, Garbage Out though, so beware the inputs your underlings send you.
• Large-scale Fusion Power: Not every fusion reactor need be an ultra-compact model.  These are the great metropolitan generators, using less common fuels for more efficient output, higher energy capture, and the like.  Combined with superconductive long-distance power cables, and there are few power needs that cannot be met by Fusion.  The trained technicians are a nice byproduct, you must agree, even if they aren't quite used to military grade reactors.
• Primary Production Robotics: Agrobots and Mining Robots, once a key of Star League productivity and Leisure, now are only common within your realm.  Ranging from tiny berry-pickers to enormous scrape-processors weighing hundreds of thousands of tons, these robots handle nearly all the primary resourcing needs your society feels.  Their AI were programmed by the best Nirasaki Computers Collective engineers, and over 200 years later, still are the best available.
• Low-cost Civilian Electronics: Personal computing died with the Star league-everywhere but here.  Originally a boondoggle of excess capacity, we now operate the only major chippery in the Inner Sphere-optronic crystals are automatically doped, cut, mirrored and attached to boards in the millions every day in one huge factory.  It turns out everything from personal mobile phones to gigantic stadium holographic systems.  The number one target of enemy raids are looting cell and satellite phones that are in high demand outside our territory.

In other words, Low-cost Civilian Electronics preserves much of the Star league's computing for the common man.  Primary Production Robots decouples your mining and agriculture from the workforce-for better and for worse.  Large Scale Fusion Power means that you never really lose the ability to maintain these large reactors on even the most remote planets.  The economic and humanitarian blows of the succession war and loss of lives can be greatly cushioned by the Economic Supercomputer.  In exchange for sale of HPG sub-components, ComStar offers a discount on purchase of C-bills.  Extra Shipyards mean more ships-not an overwhelming advantage, but the extra slips add up.  Auto-factory tooling will allow you to maintain Star League Factories better, though it is keyed around light industry, civilian goods, not heavy industry and military production, and forces humans out of jobs.  With access to the Full Pharmacopeia of Star League Medicine, you can choose from a variety of quality-of-life improvements, either for your elite, or bring up the standard of living of everyone slightly.  Finally, Climate Stabilization and Water Filtering are mirror-image techs-the first improves good planets, and the second keeps you from losing marginal planets.

[Speedbump]

I was thinking about volunteering to run the Outworlds Alliance when I saw this at the weekend, but as it looks like you're kicking off without all the main slots filled is it OK if I claim the Lyran Commonwealth?

[Gorgon]

This looks interesting. How do you plan to run this? Do players write about their faction each year / decade / turn? Is it competitive (as in, warplans, mods, etc) or more cooperative?

[Vehrec]

I was thinking about volunteering to run the Outworlds Alliance when I saw this at the weekend, but as it looks like you're kicking off without all the main slots filled is it OK if I claim the Lyran Commonwealth?

  Sure, I'll pencil you in right away.  That leaves, I believe, only the Capellans unpicked.

This looks interesting. How do you plan to run this? Do players write about their faction each year / decade / turn? Is it competitive (as in, warplans, mods, etc) or more cooperative?

I was thinking that everyone would be able to write little slice-of-life vingettes about how their choices impact the course of the war, the life of the average citizen, or even the leaders at various points through the succession war.  I'd try to pick up the slack from the less verbose writers.  There isn't going to be direct competition to 'win the war', or a hard and fast rule that you need to write for every X years, but just an exploration of what the universe looks like.

[VensersRevenge]

To be clear Federated Suns will be the first drafter even if the Capellans get a player, correct? I don't want to steal someone's pick

[Vehrec]

To be clear Federated Suns will be the first drafter even if the Capellans get a player, correct? I don't want to steal someone's pick

The turn order is Federated Suns first, yes.  Capellans get second pick though, so if there's someone eager to pick, do so now!!

[VensersRevenge]

Alright then, I'll choose Water Filtration. One of the Federated Suns biggest failings is the terrible state of the Outback. Hopefully maintaining better quality worlds will hopefully have the knock-on effects to make the Suns a better place to fight off the encroaching Snakes and Cappies.

[Vehrec]

Water filtration it is!  You'll find your new facility on Panpour III, where, along a primary SLDF logistics hub, it was ideally suited for humanitarian relief efforts in the Periphery.  after the SLDF left, the factory was brought to full production-but it cannot supply every world.  As the supply of water-filtering technology begins to enter free fall, you deploy these resources...

-Evenly across the Federated Suns, annoying everyone, but saving the maximum amount of lives.
-Within the Cappelan March to secure loyalty.
-With the Draconis March to secure loyalty.
-Within the Circis March to reward loyalty.
--As above, but exclusively within the Outback to promote development.

[Gorgon]

I was thinking that everyone would be able to write little slice-of-life vingettes about how their choices impact the course of the war, the life of the average citizen, or even the leaders at various points through the succession war.  I'd try to pick up the slack from the less verbose writers.  There isn't going to be direct competition to 'win the war', or a hard and fast rule that you need to write for every X years, but just an exploration of what the universe looks like.

Sounds like fun. In that case, I'd like to apply for the CC

[Vehrec]

Sounds like fun. In that case, I'd like to apply for the CC

  Well, then you're up next to pick-  Here's the list again, modified to remove the previously selected technology.

• Climate Stabilization: Everyone loves a nice sunny day, but there are people who are fans of nice cool rains, or big booming thundersnows.  But nobody wants to deal with hurricanes, tornados, and drought.  Star League Climate Stabilization Satellites make your planets better-if you have enough of them.  Too bad there's not enough to cover every world-but your best jewels shine a little brighter if polished with this system.
• Full Pharmacopia: The oldest person in history was some tiny Japanese lady who lived to be almost 200 on a diet of pills and low-stress living in a healthy climate.  Most people in the Star League could aspire to 150 years.  That dream yet lives on due to this extensive drug production facility.  Anti-parasitics, anti-biotics, anti-senescent, a pill for everything, and for everything a pill.  But is it enough to treat everyone, for everything?
• Auto-factory tooling: The Heterodyne 9000 was an instantly infamous piece of hardware when it was first introduced-it destroyed 90% of the jobs on the periphery world of Detroit.  You use it somewhat more cautiously, but the same hardware and software drive your industry to production numbers that look insane.  All non-creative jobs, from janitor to vice-president of marketing, can be handled automatically by the facility itself.
• Extra Shipyard: As the shipping industry collapsed, you threw everything you had into salvaging what could be saved.  Vital tooling here, an assembly frame there, and the all-important monocrystaline germanium-titanium growth chambers to make jump cores doped to one part per trillion exactness, with the proper 'defect circuitry'.  The result is a bit of a workflow disaster area, but in an era where the construction of such shipyards is a lost art, having put together one more than anyone else is an advantage you can't deny.
• HPG sub-component: Is ComStar angry about this one?  Does a bear poo in the woods, heck yes ComStar would skin you alive for this if you tried to set it up today, but it is written into their founding treaty.  They get the exclusive rights to buy these widgets, nobody even knows what they do but them, and in exchange, you get a nice big fat discount on transmissions.  Now if only you could discount those nutjobs telling you to nationalize it and build your own HPG network...
• Economic Supercomputer: Once, this great machine the size of a city kept the economy of the Star League and the value of the Dollar as solid as a rock.  Today, it's planning and modeling software is at your disposal-either for purely national concerns, or for sale to national companies.  Garbage In, Garbage Out though, so beware the inputs your underlings send you.
• Large-scale Fusion Power: Not every fusion reactor need be an ultra-compact model.  These are the great metropolitan generators, using less common fuels for more efficient output, higher energy capture, and the like.  Combined with superconductive long-distance power cables, and there are few power needs that cannot be met by Fusion.  The trained technicians are a nice byproduct, you must agree, even if they aren't quite used to military grade reactors.
• Primary Production Robotics: Agrobots and Mining Robots, once a key of Star League productivity and Leisure, now are only common within your realm.  Ranging from tiny berry-pickers to enormous scrape-processors weighing hundreds of thousands of tons, these robots handle nearly all the primary resourcing needs your society feels.  Their AI were programmed by the best Nirasaki Computers Collective engineers, and over 200 years later, still are the best available.
• Low-cost Civilian Electronics: Personal computing died with the Star league-everywhere but here.  Originally a boondoggle of excess capacity, we now operate the only major chippery in the Inner Sphere-optronic crystals are automatically doped, cut, mirrored and attached to boards in the millions every day in one huge factory.  It turns out everything from personal mobile phones to gigantic stadium holographic systems.  The number one target of enemy raids are looting cell and satellite phones that are in high demand outside our territory.