Greinar

Galactic Rebels – Fact Sheet

Miscellaneous information

Computers

All computer units in the galaxy work in the same basic way, and they are all compatible, there is no computer system which isn't set up to the GCS (Galactic Council of Science) standards, so one can just buy a computer without worrying about compatibility.

Computers typically do not have keyboards or other extraneous input devices, but rely on voice recognition and an interactive holographic screen. The voice recognition capabilities of computers vary, but because of the simple nature of Galactic, that language is easily understood by computers

Computers do not work on simple ones and zeroes. They are semi-sentient, and they are capable of independent thought. This makes them highly versatile, but can also be a problem (computer psychology has becoming a booming industry over the last few hundred years).

It is not possible to assign a MIPS (Million Instructions Per Second) or MFLOPS (Million FLOating Points per Second) number to these computer systems as they are intelligent and unorthodox methods are used for problem solving.

Although computers are intelligent, they have no feelings, although they can learn to display feelings which aren't real, such as joy and sadness. These feelings are always very limited and will not interfere with the computers function.

The computer systems in the Galactic Rebels game setting are very sophisticated, and computer crime is a very large concern. Because of this all security has been tightened in the last millennia. Many computers require a password, a face recognition pattern, a retina identity pattern, a finger pattern and DNA sampling of an individual who wishes to log in, so computer hacking isn't very easy, but with enough programming one could be able to convince a computer of anything computers are very smart, more so even than humans, but strangely naive.

Virtual reality is a big thing in Computer-Person communication in GRAUC. Many spaceships operate by using virtual reality with the pilot, and many world networks can be explored by using virtual reality. Virtual reality is very advanced, advanced enough to make it nearly impossible to distinguish between reality and virtual reality. There are basically two ways of accessing virtual reality. The first way, is more common, simply because it's less complicated. Individuals who are going to enter virtual reality put on a specially designed suit which reads all body movements and gives a slight electrical pulse into all muscles to simulate a barrier in the program etc. The individual must wear a helmet which contains two monitors, one for each eye, headphones, and scent simulator. This works quite well and is in major use in sophisticated spaceships, and in some large computer networks.

The other way works by placing the an individual who wishes to enter virtual reality into a specially designed compartment. Here he is stunned using electric pulses, and then special coherent electromagnetic waves are shot into his head from thousands of directions. These waves enter the brain and stimulate it in a pre-programmed way. Now the individual is completely inside virtual reality, and all scenes are completely unable to distinguish between virtual reality and the world outside. Mind Scanners work in a way not much different from this, and people could, and have been manipulated terribly by using a device named CITAR (Computer Induced Thoughts And Reactions).

All homes on civilized worlds have a computer that is connected to the central database archive on the local planet. On most worlds net access is free and available through wireless networking anywhere (even in the most remote of places), via a satellite hookup.

Data is stored either on low storage datatapes or high storage UDS (Uridium Data Storage) crystals, which are capable of storing at least a thousand times more information than their aging counterparts. A typical datatape can store up to 100 hours of high resolution holographic imaging.

A typical holographic computer costs around 100-200 credits, so it isn’t for everyone. People can also buy terminals which do not have any processing power, but draw all their usage from the planetary network. This is enough for the majority of the population, and these devices cost around 10-15 cr.

Phones

Phones come in all shapes and sizes and most often connect through the local planet’s satellite computer network (see above). In most cases people don’t carry phones, but rather just very small computers which also act as phones. The phones do not have a phone number as today, but rather an address on the planets computer network.

For the ultra technologically adept, phones can be implanted into their skull. These devices are voice operated, and connected to the planets network same as usual. The procedure is completely harmless, and can be reversed simply.

Cars and transportation

There are several types of ground vehicles in the Grauc world. The typical car is the groundcar, which is most often fueled by electricity, and has a top speed of around 160 km/h. These cars are very inexpensive, and are quite enough for everyone. As they only need to be plugged into electric outlets during the night, they are very easy to maintain. The price of a typical groundcar ranges from 250-1000 credits.

On the other side of the money spectrum you’ve got hovercars. These vehicles are much more expensive than groundcars, costing from 5000 – 10000 credits.

Hovercars require electricity in the same way as groundcars, so maintaining them is relatively inexpensive.

A hovercar floats above the ground, at the height of approx. 60-80 cm, and it cannot float higher than that, although it's possible to bring the hovercar closer to the ground. Beneath the hovercar lies its hoverbed which is a super-conducting quantum repulsion drive. This hoverbed repels all objects beneath it by applying opposite atomic charge which is directly proportional to the object below it. By changing the repulsion to attraction at certain areas, and increasing the repulsion in others the hovercar can achieve momentum, in much the same way as tanks do, by reaching for farther and farther atoms in the surface beneath the car.

The top speed which can be achieved by using this method is 350 km/h on normal surfaces. All hovercars, however, are fitted with a Velocity Regulation Module or VRM for short, which makes the vehicle unable to achieve speeds exceeding 260 km/h. The VRM has been known to be bypassed, and the penalties for doing so are severe.

The autorail is where the real power of the hovercar comes to play. Most civilized worlds have an elaborate system of these tunnel-like structures which enable hovercars to reach a top speed of 700 km/h in an automated transit system.

Autorails connect most major cities on industrialized worlds, and it is a preferred mode of transportation for most people than flying or taking trains (trains use a similar system and reach the same speed).

Before the driver enters the autorail he must select his destination, and a toll (if any) is deducted from his account. Then the autorail’s computer assumes control of the vehicle and the driver does not drive himself until the vehicle exits the autorail tunnel

The autorail is controlled by each city on a planet, and often the cities autorail systems are hooked together, creating a massive autorail network all over a planet. When a vehicle enters an autorail all information concerning the vehicle, such as number of passengers etc. is sent to the autorail control board. So any hovercars which are stolen, or tracked by the police are immediately spotted on the autorail, and they can be ejected from it or diverted to an alternate route.

It's very possible that the hovercar is amongst the most important scientific transit achievements of the GST era, as it was invented in the year 1000 GST. The hovercar excels the groundcar in most areas, capable of reaching 100 km/h from 0 in less than 3 seconds, and having a much higher top speed, etc. There is one drawback of the hovercar, which is more of a commercial concern than a practical one. It is very expensive, so it is regarded as a luxury on some worlds, making up only around 10 % of the total number of cars. On others the number is closer to 80%.

The hovercars are not very effective in off-road situations, and can be difficult to control in rain or snow. In these situations the groundcars are preferable, and can reach higher speeds.

Narcotics

Distributing narcotics is big business in the Galaxy. Most of the soft drugs come from the southern part of the Galaxy (Real-Nordon). These drugs include Dream and Tobacco.

Much of the hard drug trafficking comes from the Danger zone (former Andoronia). This is where most of the Storm, Gale and other worker drugs are manufactured. These drugs are injected and make you able to work longer and harder, of course it does end up killing you.

Dream costs around 2-3 cr / gram on the street. Tobacco 1 cr. Storm and Gale cost 10 cr / doze.

Many of the worlds in the galaxy which are inhabited by humanoids are mining colonies. Such places are a perfect place to sell narcotics, as all the workers in the mines are no doubt both very tired, and very bored. It's believed that in a typical mining colony, around 30-45 % of the workers use narcotics. Some mining companies even supply their workers with narcotics which speed up their progress, but kill in several months. Andoronia was also big on narcotics, supplying it's army with a special drug called kick which increases fighting efficiency, and causes psychosis! This drug has found itself into the mainstream junky population of the Galaxy, and has increased violent crimes by a whopping 50% on worlds where it is widely used

The main drug in the galaxy today is Dream, which is a mild hallucinating drug, which causes the user to relax completely, and float into his own fantasy world. The drug isn't very dangerous, as it isn't very addictive except mentally and hasn't very serious side effects. That is the reason that it's very popular, especially among wealthy university students, who have nothing better to do.

Dream is illegal on most (but not all) civilized worlds. Dream is used in pill form and inhaled, depending on the quality (lesser quality is inhaled).

Another widely used drug, although much more dangerous is the drug Power which is extremely addictive and causes the user to become very tense and hyper active, often resulting in violent behaviour. This drug isn't very expensive and is the single most deadly drug because of it popularity with the poor.

Kick is the drug which Andoronia used in its army. It's original purpose was two-fold. First, to improve fighting efficiency of soldiers (making them much more aggressive) and secondly to make them addicted to the Andoronian army as it is one of the few places where this drug can be found, as it is very addictive, and quitting the drug can result in death.

Now Kick can be purchased anywhere, and it is very popular in Liren.

An individual on Kick has severely bloodshot eyes, and is very jumpy. His combat abilities are many fold as adrenaline production is five times normal, and the individuals body is very tense. An overdose of kick results in a very painful death as all muscles contract beyond breaking point and tear, as the brain suffers a trauma making the individual unable to communicate. Breath seizes shortly after all muscles have snapped, and the individual is dead.

Kick is injected into the body, often by drug-guns, designed for medicine injection.

Another "industry" drug is Storm which is used by workers in mines both in Orion and in Nordon. This drug keeps work efficiency at it's peak (something that is very important to workers as they get paid by efficiency) until the individual simply dies after several months. This drug causes mild relaxing effects at first but then increases muscle response allowing the worker to triple his efficiency.

The last dosage, however works differently. After a specific number of dozes (individually defined) when 12 mg of NG 22 (the lethal part of Storm) have settled in the brain, the individual turns absolutely insane, often killing people around him, due to the fact that NG 22 in excess of 12 mg goes into the rational parts of the brain and totally disrupts any logical thought.

Gale is the Imperial version of Storm. The Empire itself condemns Gale and possession of it is of course illegal, but many workers in the empire choose this drug instead of Storm because it's cheaper. The result is a shorter life. The life expectancy of individuals using Gale is half of the life expectancy of an individual using Storm. NG 22 has been replaced by NG 32 which is cheaper to manufacture, but settles more easily in the brain. Work efficiency isn't more but the drug costs only 20 cr per doze, half of the cost of Storm.

Tobacco is not a very lethal drug. It's effects are mildly soothing to some and just the opposite to others. The use of Tobacco isn't a serious crime, and it's widely used in the Realm of flowers. It's not possible to overdose on tobacco but individuals using more than 20-40 dozes each day have a risk of developing lung cancer after continuous use for several decades.

Peace is a drug, inhaled in much the same way as tobacco. The way in which Peace is used is by spreading it over hot rocks, and pouring water on it. The steam rising up includes Peace. It's a ritual in the Realm of flowers for families to gather around a stone stow and use Peace together. Peace results in a very relaxing effect on the user, and sexual desires are greatly stimulated, although memory is reduced. Peace is therefore the main reason for all those illegitimate Bont children. It isn't possible to overdose on Peace and it's only slightly addictive. The use of Peace is legal in The Realm of flowers although it's banned in other conreces. The price of Peace is very low, and it's easy to obtain it, especially in the southern part of the galaxy.

When characters become addicted to narcotics the Referee must coach the players as to how to behave. If the players do not respond to the wishes of the Referee (concerning the drug state etc.) the Referee must make the character an NPC until the drug no longer controls him.

Smuggling of narcotics is a very popular way of making money, as the IGSP convict records prove. The IGSP has tightened security in all conreces concerning drug trafficking so smuggling isn't as easy as it was in the GST era. The rewards of smuggling can be great as profits can exceed 300 %, with the right connections, but the price of capture can be death!

Neither smuggling nor use of illegal narcotics is recommended, but it can result in exciting situations to occur.

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Table 33rug effects

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Drug Effect Duration Cost / doze

Dream Relaxing 1d6 hours 2-3 cr

Power +1 hit 2d20 min 5 cr

Kick +3 hit/dmg (h2h) 1d2 hours 50 cr

Storm +2 Str, +1 sta 1d6 hours 50 cr

Gale +2 Str, +1 sta 1d6 hours 60 cr

Peace Relaxing 1d12 hours 5 cr

Tobacco - 1d8 min 1 cr

The Drug effects are for game use. The Relaxing effects have no use but for roleplayingrole-playing, but may result in impaired judgment. There are several other narcotics in the Galaxy which are widespread. These narcotics include Frost, Pain and Giga. Their effect is similar to Power.

Space stations

There are many space stations in orbit around all civilized worlds. Many of these planets do not allow foreign spaceships to land, but require them to dock at space stations called docking ports, and then take a transport shuttle down to the planet surface.

Space stations come in all shapes and sizes, and can in many cases accommodate up to 50.000 persons at once.

Most of the time it is prohibited to carry firearms above MDC 6 on space stations, and projectile weapons are strictly prohibited. Many space stations will not allow any weapons to be carried on-board.

Spaceships can either enter space stations or dock outside them, via docking clamps. The latter option is cheaper, and is usually advised if you don’t intend to carry a significant amount of cargo aboard the space station, and your spaceship does not require repairs.

Docking fees vary, but typical fees are 2-5 cr / ship ton (with a minimum fee of 500 cr) on a docking clamp and up to 10 cr/ton for full entrance (with a 2000 cr minimum fee). Each day costs 1 cr / ton (minimum 200 cr) on a docking clamp and 3 cr/ton for full entrance (minimum 500 cr). It is considerably less expensive to park ships on planets where space isn’t at such premium.

If your ship does not require it (for refueling or cargo transport) then it is advised that you do not dock with space stations, but keep your ship in a space-slot in close proximity of the station. Such slots generally cost 50 cr / day. Then you can order a transfer shuttle to go to the space station or down to the planetary surface, and your ship is protected by the space station.

Space stations typically generate gravity by centrifugal acceleration (rotation), but most advanced space stations have an artificial gravity generator, or a combination of both.

Space stations are usually protected by several fighter squadrons and/or orbital defence batteries. They seldom have weapon systems of their own, but such varieties exit of course, but mostly as military platforms.

Weather control

There are two types of weather control a planet can have. Either macroscopic or exact. The former is much more common, and does not have the ability to alter weather patterns, but can rather direct the way that weather will behave in the next months or years. This type of weather control can eliminate draughts, severe lightning storms, floods, and all other weather extremes, and is nearly perfectly predictable at a time span of 2-3 weeks. So the population on the planet knows exactly what the weather will be like in the next few weeks, and they know to some degree what the weather will be like next summer, or next winter.

The exact weather control system is not available on many worlds, but can be found on some planets with tech level 1 or higher. It is capable of changing the weather on a small area at any time. Thus is can cause extreme showers on a 10x10 km slice of land.

Spaceship crews

Spaceships need crews in order to function. A typical ship crew on a medium sized ship is between 5 and ten, depending on how automated the ship functions are. A spaceship can usually be manned by half of the normal crew, it is then considered to have a skeleton crew. A ship that has a skeleton crew is not as efficient as a ship with full crew compliment, and all piloting checks increase in difficulty by one category, weapons are fired with a -3 penalty, and maneuverability class is decreased by one (MC B -> C).

The crew requires at least one pilot (usually 2) and one engineer (usually 2), other than that, you don’t need any qualified personnel to run the ship. It is assumed that anyone can carry out the day to day operations aboard the spaceship as long as they have a pilot and an engineer to guide them.

Aboard a spaceship the working day is considered to be between 8 and 10 hours, during which the crew is actively working on maintaining the spaceship. With additional personnel, this number decreases. It is considered normal practice to pick up hitchhikers who pay little or nothing for the fare, providing they work during the voyage, as it costs little for the crew to add them, and it lessens the load on the others. It is very easy to find people like that around spaceports and in space stations. People who want to go anywhere, and don’t have any money. It is a good arrangement for all parties concerned.

If a spaceship exceeds its maximum crew capacity then it becomes too crowded for the life support to handle. A ship can typically accept 50% more passengers than is listed, but there are no quarters or sleeping bunks for the latter half of the passengers. Any more than that and the life support system cannot handle it. The air becomes stuffy and the waste recyclers shut down. At twice the maximum capacity the life support cannot filter the carbon dioxide and people start to die after one to two weeks.

Space suits and thrust belts

Space suits can maintain a person for up to 72 hours providing they are not punctured. They include a waste management system for urine, sweat and… other waste, and, for slightly more expensive products, can recycle it into nutrition for the wearer.

Space suits can provide some protection against attacks, and often include a ‘self-sealer’ which automatically seals any tears in the suit.

Thrust belts are often used when venturing outside spaceships, as they are an important safety tool. They can also be used in atmospheres: although they are not powerful enough to enable the user to fly at will, they can be used instead of parachutes.

Means of propulsion

Groundcars and hovercars all use electric motors, which is a very clean source of energy, especially since on nearly all civilized worlds electricity is produced with fusion. Electricity is very inexpensive, and on many worlds it’s even free.

Spaceships use fusion reactors to power their on-board systems and Near Light-Speed drive. Modern spaceships can travel in NLS for many years, and would only then drop out of NLS because of wear and tear, not because of lack of energy.

The hyperdrive on spaceships is a different matter. It requires enormous amounts of fuel called Hyperfuel for propulsion. A 600 ton ship usually carries an additional 600 tons of this fuel for hyperspatial jumps. The hyperfuel is extracted from ore mined in many star systems, and is the most widely mined ore in the Galaxy. These mines are always devastating to the ecological system of the planet its being mined on, and is because of this most often mined on barren worlds. Hyperfuel costs around 100-200 credits per ton, so a 10000 ly jump would cost more than 50.000 cr, enough to buy two large houses.

The price of hyperfuel and the space it takes on spaceships is the reason that hyperportals are considered the single biggest technological achievement of the NGST era.

There are available variations of hyperdrives called Quad-Vector and Dual Quad-Vector hyperdrives that enable ships to travel 2 times or 4 times faster than conventional hyperdrives. These drives are very difficult to procure, and require even more fuel / ly than normal hyperdrives.

Hyperportals

The hyperportal was invented by the Empire around 50 RTC. This invention revolutionized space travel because it gave ships the ability to travel between star systems without having to have a hyperdrive fitted. This increases the amount of cargo a ship can hold and the hyperportal toll is a lot cheaper than hyperfuel (a 10.000 ly jump through a hyperportal costs around 20.000 cr, typically it’s around 10000 cr as a base charge, and 1-2 cr per lightyear, depending on ship tonnage). Oddly enough this is not an order of magnitude cheaper than it would otherwise cost. Just roughly half.

There is another type of hyperportal, that’s the in-system portal which allows ships to travel from the outer marker to the orbit of a planet in hyperspace. The trip takes minutes instead of days in NLS.

Hyperportals can be used on only the starting end of a hyperspatial tunnel or at both ends. If only the starting end is a hyperportal it is not possible to exit closer to a star than the COM distance because of the inherit instability of hyperspace openings near gravity wells although it is possible to enter it close to the planet. If both ends are a hyperportal then no COM separation is needed.

Ships without hyperdrives require a hyperportal at both ends of the jump, while ships who employ hyperdrives only need a portal at either end. This sort of a journey does require some fuel, approx. 1/2 of the fuel required for a conventional jump as the hyperportal only handles the entry or exit wormtunnel respectively.

Depending on the hyperportal, it can be placed in the inner system or at the outer marker. Hyperportals in the inner system are obviously much more valuable since they take NLS time totally out of the picture, shaving 10-14 days from a typical flight, but they do require more power and are thus more expensive to maintain. Some systems have opted for a dual portal solution; a low-power hyperportal on the outer marker and an in-system hyperportal for the NLS route.

Ships with hyperdrives can exit hyperspace through a hyperportal, while entering it under their own power and thus take advantage of the fact that they can be placed within the inner system. This requires notifying the portal control prior to entering hyperspace. It is not possible to exit from a hyperportal without the portal control having the ships hyperspatial signature and precise exit time.

Hyperportals exist in all sizes. Some can only accommodate smaller ships while there are extremely massive ones that can take 20000 ton transporters. The bigger the portal, the more it costs to run it.

Private organizations usually cannot purchase hyperportals and the Empire, which is its sole producer keeps tight reins on who gets them. As of present, only Utopia and the Orion confederation have purchase rights to the hyperportals. This is the unofficial reason Orion agreed to a truce with the Empire in the year 130 RTC.

Having hyperportals can boost a star system’s economy a hundred fold and they are highly sought after. Solution Inc, a government-funded company produces the hyperportals and the price for a medium sized one is in the range of 300-500 million credits. Not only that but the Empire takes a special tax of each ship passing through any portal of 2000 cr plus 100-500 thousand credits per day. A typical hyperportal handles something like a thousand ships per day and there are an estimated 5000 portals in the Galaxy today, so the tax alone nets the Empire 10 Billion credits per day. The hyperportals have indeed been a huge leap for the Empire.

It is highly probable that all other governments are trying to develop their own hyperportals but so far they have not succeeded. The Empire has a small regiment guarding each one in addition to the local forces to hinder tampering and reverse-engineering. The staff of all hyperportals, wherever they are stations is in the Imperial military.

There are extremely strict rules about what you can carry when you go through a hyperportal because if an accident occurs and a hyperportal fails for some reason then all ships in the portals wormtunnel will be lost. If a ship has its own hyperdrive it might try an emergency hyperspace exit itself but ships without hyperdrives (the majority of ships using hyperportals) are destroyed. This only applies to outbound ships in the former leg of their journey and inbound ships in the latter leg. Inbound ships in the former leg of their journey are still under the influence of their sending portal and might thus be diverted to an alternative portal close by. Outbound ships on their latter leg are not affected at all.

There has been one such ‘accident’ where a military frigate was sabotages so it collided with a portal. The portal was damaged and fell off-line for an hour. Three thousand ships and a quarter of a million people were lost. This occurred in the year 60 RTC and was a brutal wake-up call for the hyperportal project. Such an accident now would cause ten times the casualties because many of the ships in the portal’s grasp had hyperdrives, something many ships don’t have now. That is why many ships became equipped with a miniature type of hyperdrive, called a “Emergency Portal Exit Drive” or EPED for short. These (very expensive) modules don’t take up quite as much space as a regular hyperdrive and are completely autonomous, using data from the entry portal for Locus positions and other important exit data. These modules are often found on people transports but smaller ships often try to do without because of the extra cargo they’d be able to carry. Some systems don’t even allow ships without an EPED to use their hyperportals although there has only been that one incident.

A large garrison of a thousand ships with enough firepower to take on a small fleet protects all hyperportals today. This is one of the factors for the extreme maintenance cost of a portal. The hyperportal also draw a lot of power from a fusion reactor that has to be placed off-site because of the dangers of sabotage. The power is sent to the portal by high-energy gamma radiation or through physical power relays.

Hyperportals usually attract a lot of entrepreneurs who build space-stations close by. In a few years a society of 10-20 large interconnected space stations with millions of inhabitants will often form around portals. Cargo-carrying ships often find that there is no need to go to the system’s planet or another station, all business can be carried our a few kilometers from the portal itself.

If you’re conducting legitimate business this might be an attractive proposition since security in these space stations is always extremely high and crime is virtually nonexistent.

Locus Candles

The Locus Candle Lattice (LCL), often just called Locus Candles is a huge matrix of satellites encompassing the entire Galaxy at a mean separation of 1000 ly. The matrix is 10,000 ly in height and 100,000 ly in width on each axis. The entire mesh therefore consists of roughly a hundred thousand satellites.

These satellites broadcast on a given (radio) frequency exact time and position enabling anyone with a mediocre radio and computer to position himself within the lattice, by using triangulation, with unprecedented accuracy.

The project was commissioned early in the GST era, some 60 thousand years before RTC and it took one and a half millennia to complete. Over the next 2-3 thousand years the signals, which travel at lightspeed, had been transmitted over enough distances to make the solution viable.

This system has proved incremental in the colonization of the Galaxy. It is free for all to use and not subject to any restrictions. It doesn’t matter whether you’re in an escape pod or commanding a battlecruiser, the locus candles make sure you know exactly where you are.

Locus candles are the cornerstone of interstellar space travel because they are indispensable for hyperspatial travel. When a ship is going from point A to point B via hyperspace the location of the ship and the exit point must be known with great certainty. If they are not the ship risks flying way off course, and even into a star.

A pilot must use Locus to triangulate his position as well as the exit point before entering hyperspace. This requires that he is able to receive signals from locus candles however distant the exit point might be. If a pilot is going to travel 10 thousand light-years then he must be able to pick up signals from locus candles 10 thousand light-years away (and 10 thousand years old). Not all comms are good enough to accomplish that, and not all pilots able enough in astrogation and comm. Operation. If this proves too difficult the pilot can always elect to take several smaller jumps. This requires a little bit more time as locus triangulation can take from a few hours to a few days each jump.

The Locus signal contains a detailed gravitation map of the surrounding region which is the most important aspect of it from a hyperspace perspective because the hyperdrive must know the exact gravity distribution at its exit point to calculate it effectively. But because the age of this map depends on the distance to the Locus Candle in question the validity of the map depends on the distance to the satellite. If a pilot receives a signal from a few dosen satellites at several distances he can build a gravitational map based on it and see if there are any variations over time. If there are then he might be able extrapolate an accurate map from the available data or simply take shorter jumps, which is a safer alternative.

Locus signals from inhabited systems are much more accurate than from the Locus Candle Lattice and provide a much better predictability as to the exit point configuration.

The reason why pilots can’t just use maps to plot the exit point is that it’s not enough to know the exact position and gravitational alignment of the exit point – The error during the exit procedure is very high and the trajectory deviation can be several light-years. The largest problem is that there is a great tendency for the opening to converge to any nearby mass and without an exit Locus anchor there is a 95-99% probability that the ship will exit inside a sun or a planet within 10-20 light-years of the intended exit point.

The hyperspatial opening starts to form several hours before exit and the ship is able to communicate outside the opening in that time. During this time the pilot or navigation officer must locate the Locus candles they locked on during entry to be able to feed drift corrections into the hyperdrive. If the jump is longer than five thousand light-years the pilot must rely on Locus Maps to position exit anchors since it is possible that there are no visible candles close enough to the exit point to be useful. Note that the quality of maps vary considerably although maps of the four major conreces are virtually flawless.

If the pilot relies not on maps but on direct observational data instead (within 5000 ly) he must take into account that the satellites were accurate 5000 years ago and might not even be operational today, so it is a good idea to gather at least 10 anchors before entering hyperspace (four is the absolute minimum and the ship risks exiting inside a sun if there are any fewer).

If a ship is close to exiting hyperspace and the navigational array cannot find at least four Locus anchors the pilot can either use his own astrogation expertise to try and make it out in empty space (usually several light-years away from the intended destination) or he can lock on to a single Locus Candle and exit hyperspace at its location. This method is much safer and once out the pilot can simply enter hyperspace again towards his intended target as only entry information is required for such a short jump.

As the tunnel starts to open a few hours before exit ships at the destination are able to see the tunnel opening (this is particularly true for exits in inhabited systems where exit points are determined within a few thousand kilometers). They cannot determine the type of ship that is about to exit but they are able to determine its mass. This can be quite a good way to ambush ships while they are vulnerable. A defense strategy for this is to use Locus candles to exit hyperspace a light-year or so from the system and then take a shorter jump the last leg. Using this method the tunnel opening starts to form only seconds before the ship emergence.

Ships can be outfitted with special hyperspatial sensors to be able to pick up hyperspace tunnel openings. With these it might even be possible to pick up if a tunnel opening is wildly off course, signifying that a pilot was unable to locate Locus anchors. It might be possible to send out a radio transmission to guide the ship but since the fluctuations are very erratic and cover many light-years it is quite unlikely that this would aid the struggling ship.

One of the reasons that in-system signals provide a better exit point (but only for entry into that specific system) is that the gravity wells surrounding the Locus satellite remain more constant in time because the satellite rotates with its star around the Galaxy. The Locus Candle Lattice remains fixed in space while the Galaxy rotates to provide for a more consistant frame of reference. The gravitational changes that result from this as star systems and globular clusters whiz by at several thousand km/hour can be easily extrapolated so the accuracy instability isn’t really a huge problem.

The Locus Candles maintain their position within the lattice by using on-board ion-drives, which counteract the gravitational pull of neighboring masses and the Galactic nucleus. The most common cause of Locus Candle decommission is that it’s thruster or navigational arrays have failed. In most major conreces there are regular maintenance checks on each Candle which makes sure it remains operational. These checks are usually carried out continuously and a cycle of one sector takes 5 years. In other conreces (Liren, Nordon, Realm for instance) there is little or no maintenance and the system is degrading. This makes Locus data in these regions unreliable and ships have to take shorter jumps to remain on track.

When ships are jumping less then a hundred light-years it is not necessary to gather Locus data from the exit point as the entry point data can be extrapolated without a lot of error. The error accumulates quickly, however, and each light-year after that adds to the risk. A very proficient pilot with good positional information regarding his entry point might make a successful jump up to a thousand light-years without exit point data while others might wind up as filling for a passing comet.

Because ships are slaves to good Locus positional information the best route between two systems isn’t always a straight line. This has caused the creation of trade routes, which have waypoints at relatively specific intervals where good locus signals are available. At these waypoints there have sprung up commercial depots where ships can dock for repairs, refuel, gambling and prostitutes.

These waypoints are also favorites of pirates but since the exit point of ships can vary by hundreds of light-years it’s a game of searching for a needle in a haystack.

If a pirate does get lucky then he can be sure there is no one anywhere around to receive his prey’s distress signal.

A pirate might also monitor his prey while entering hyperspace and might deduce from that where he will emerge. A second ship moves to those coordinates for interception before the prey can exit hyperspace.

There is only around 60-70% of Locus candles still operational. There are many spots in the Galaxy where the candles have long since been snuffed out. Their signals are of course still available for those far enough away so that the signals were emitted before it went off-line. These regions of space have become known as dark-zones and it can be perilous for ships without good pilots and communication equipment to enter these regions as they might have difficulty getting out again.

Inhabited star systems almost always have their own Locus signals which act as very accurate guides for incoming and outgoing ships. For commercial ships the upside is that they get a much better accuracy than with the locus candles and can exit hyperspace at precisely the closest point possible to the system (Outer Marker). If using only Locus Candles the ship might have to spend an additional 2-10 days in NLS or risk coming too close to the star, being in grave danger of crashing directly into it. The downside for those of questionable morality is that these signals direct incoming ships into one of several shipping ports which are heavily monitored by customs and border control. This has caused many smugglers to try using only locus and either take the long way in or take a chance. Many ships have been lost in that way.

Another upside is that these shipping port zones often contain a space station or at the very least a fuel depot so that passing ships who only need fuel don’t need to enter the inner system, a trip that usually takes 10 days back and forth in NLS.

This is the general paradigm of hyperspace travel. You need to know exactly your start and end point or your ship has a better chance of ending up in a random black hole than it does of reaching its destination.

This is the reason that nothing outside the Galaxy has been explored – Ships don’t have a definite exit point for their hyperdrives, something that can prove catastrophic. Because there is not a lot of mass outside the Galaxy ships can go into intergalactic space and make it back but the trip is usually arduous and not very fruitful. Before a hundred years ago no one had managed to reach either Magellan clouds and make it back despite numerous attempts.

The reason the Dilern Regime could reach the Galaxy from the Large Magellan Cloud is that they have a very similar system there, albeit not as sophisticated one. They managed to pick up Locus signals which traveled for 120 thousand years through intergalactic space. This coupled with their own positioning data gave them an entry and exit point.

Their own transmitters aren’t nearly as powerful as Locus but now that the Galactic Wormtunnel has been discovered ships can go through it to only 6000 ly from the LMC. From there they are able to access Dilernian Positioning data from 6000 years ago. This enables ships to go to the LMC now.

There is a huge project ongoing now to start a new Locus Lattice in the LMC since the Ivalieh invasion destroyed the Dilernian satellite cache. This project will take thousands of years and has faced some stiff political hurdles from the Dilern Regime.

A Locus Candle is an unmanned satellite roughly 500 meters across. It is powered by a He3 fusion reactor, which can, for all intended purposes, run indefinitely. The Lattice is 40-60 thousand years old (depending on location), with the oldest satellites in the Empire, Utopia and Orion and the most recent ones in the southern part of the Galaxy.

Because the Candles are no more than 60 thousand years old it means that no ship can make a hyperspatial jump longer then 60 thousand light-years because the signal hasn’t had enough time to reach that far. In practical terms a ship will have trouble picking up Locus signals from more than 5-10 thousand light-years no matter how good communication arrays they have.

Why can’t ships just receive hypercomm transmissions with positional data or use maps? Good question! Ships have to gather data at the precise position where they are to enter hyperspace because of the extreme accuracy that is required for the calculations. If there are predetermined spots on the Outer Marker where ships always go from towards a common destination ships might use the same data with minor alterations for ship mass and such, shaving 50-80% of the calculation time off.

There are special ships that can fire anti-gravity pulses to pull ships out of hyperspace. If the interceptor knows the prey’s entry and exit points as well as exit time, something that’s possible if he has a tracker at the prey’s entry point and the prey is exiting at an inhabited system’s predefined exit marker, then he might wait for the ship several light-days from the exit-marker and fire the anti-gravity pulse at precisely the right moment to pull the ship out. This technique is very new since it only came into being after the anti-gravity experiments of the Special Operations and is highly outlawed since it can cause disruptions to the space-time continuum.

Intelligence agencies

Each conrece has its own intelligence agency. The Empire’s primary agencies are the Imperial Military’s Special Operations, which is, as the name states, a branch of the military. This agency has been around for thousands of years and some say that it has become too powerful and corrupt. Samantha Rose formed “Misc” in the year 555 NGST (-5 RTC) in an attempt to thwart SO’s plans which did not coincide with Rose’s at the time. Since then Misc has acted outside the government and the current political agenda for the greater good of the Empire and the Galaxy.

Andoronian Special Projects (ASP) was the most feared intelligence agency in its day, executing thousands upon thousands of the enemies of the state and using some very unciviliced methods for achieving its goals. After Andoronia collapsed in the year 550 NGST it is thought that ASP prevailed as an extremely powerful criminal organization in the Dangerzone (the region of space once inhabited by Andoronia). Whether or not they intend to rebuild Andoronia remains to be seen.

The Orion confederation employs the Orion Intelligence, which is a moderately effective intelligence agency under strict guidelines from the government and subject to public scrutiny. This helps eliminate corruption in the agency but makes it less-than-ideally effective.

The Forte Military Intelligence (FMI) is Forte’s version, and it’s main task has been eradication of resistance in annexed Nordon systems. Their methods are often questionable.

In Utopia the Information Department (ID) is a branch of the government which handles intelligence operation. They are considered very effective, relying on superior technology and advanced ways to gather information. They don’t really specialize in assassination and black covert operations as many of the others.

Nilen has their own version of the Special Operations known as the Nilen Agency for Covert Operations (NACO), which employs a similar method as SO, since NACO started out as SO’s presence in the armies that formed Nilen.

Eiin has no intelligence agency as such but they have an extremely good relationship with IREA and they handle many of the civilian intelligence operations for Eiin.

Hypercomm and communication

Hypercomm is the only way to communicate over large distances. It takes approximately 6 minutes for a hypercomm transmission to traverse 1000 ly. This means that neighboring star systems can communicate in a more-or-less synchronous fashion, with latency ranging from 5-20 seconds.

In order to send a hypercomm transmission you require a Hypercomm Transceiver and close-by hypercomm satellites to relay the transmission. The second factor is not a problem in any of the core conreces but might become an issue in the DangerZone, the Badlands and even in areas of East and West Liren where the existing satellites might have been ravaged by pirates and other scum.

You cannot send or receive a hypercomm transmission from a planet or other large gravity wells because hypercomm employs the same techniques as normal hyperspace and is subject to perturbations from gravity. A medium planetary orbiting relaying satellite (at an orbit of 5000 km or greater) can take a normal transmission and convert it to hypercomm for sending.

When you travel over long distances you have make a call to the hypercomm network to let it know where you are (or the id of any hypercomm account you want to receive transmissions) because the hypercomm network has to know where to keep any messages for you. Since you never know if a transmission is asynchronous or synchronous the hypercomm network can keep in its cache any transmissions for you and if you don’t let it know at which satellite to store it you might have to wait additional days to receive it.

Languages

Galactic is the simplest language that has ever been created. It has only a few rules to remember and a small vocabulary. It can be taught to non-speaking aliens with Int higher than 5 in a matter of weeks and is as such perfect for the entire Galaxy. Just don’t expect to be writing any poems in the language though.

The Empire has no official language other than Galactic, as does Utopia, Eiin, Nilen and the Liren conreces.

The Orion confederation has Orionic as its official language although only around half of the population can actually speak it (since Orion expanded by more than a third at the expense of the Empire in the year 5-10 RTC).

Forte speaks Forte, which is not very different from Galactic, although somewhat more complex.

In Nordon and the southern part of Forte Nordonic is much spoken. In Nordon itself Galactic is hardly spoken at all and strangers are advised to learn the Nordon native tongue straight away.

Paradox has its own language, Forkote, which is as ancient as the race itself. It is extremely difficult to master but is a much thinned out version of their original dialect, Ancient Forekote which was spoken millennia ago.

The Dilern Regime speaks Arta’Par (Main Language). A harsh but complex language which cannot be spoken without an accent by anyone outside the trirace Geneler-Korthea-Kildoron.

Several species also have their own languages. Bonts have a language derived by a weird crossing of Galactic and Nordonic. If you speak Nordonic you might be able to understand a word or two. It’s not the official language in the Realm of Flowers but most of the population speak it and the language is even spreading into the Bont population of neighboring conreces, much to the dismay of their respective governments.

Rouls managed to develop their own language, Roulish during their 1000 year enslavement by Nordon. To the novice listener it sounds like grunts and growls but it has puzzled linguists how a species that is so uneducated could develop a language which is on par with many of the other languages in the Galaxy. There have been made many attempts to create a written Roulish but those attempts have proved quite fruitless. There is no real Roulish written work.

Koter have a language from which Orionic is derived which is phonetically very beautiful. Modern koter often do not learn the language so it is slowly dying out. In Orion high society it is still considered posh to engage in conversation in Koter.

Korthea have a language called Korthean which is not the most complex in the Galaxy and shares a striking resemblance to Arta’Par despite the fact that the languages evolved in different galaxies. Despite the resemblance to non-speaking people the languages are vastly different.

The most complex language spoken in the Galaxy today (with the exception of ancient Forkote) is Gingerish, the native tongue of the small furry critters. The language is derived from mathematics and is extremely well engineered to allow for delivery of maximum amount of information in the shortest possible amount of time. It is also extremely well suited for the vocal cords of Ginger. Ginger also use body language and hand gestures to pass information and their entire bodies often take part in communication, especially when a lot of information has to be passed.

Gingers have a unique ability to be able to separate many sound streams in their heads so they are able to listen to several speakers at once while themselves also talking. It is impossible for other species to understand such a conversation, no matter how proficient in Gingerish they might be.

Power generators