Governors Quest

A quest on /tg/, run by TheGameroom daily at 9PM EST (2AM GMT).

Basic Information

You are Michael Greystone: BOLO Supertank Commander turned Free Trader, Smuggler, borderline Outlaw, and more recently Interstellar Folk Hero. You have been given Governorship over the Megacorp-chartered Mining Colony of Tempest. Your duty is to manage your colony effectively, pay off your debt to AAA Planetary Industries and the host of smaller entities that funded this venture, protect your fledgling world from any threats that come your way, and build the foundations for a shining example of what a Commonwealth World can be.

Personal Information

• Reason For Governorship: In light of your exemplary service in the BOLO Legion Varus, during which you saved the lives of several committee members in charge appointing Governors to new worlds, and your leap to the station of Commonwealth Folk Hero after your actions at Malddred Prime Tradestation, convinced the Commonwealth Expansion and Colonization Department that it would be of no harm to gain some positive press and give you a frontier command.

Planetary Government

• Planetary Govt: Three Elected Representatives serve as advisers to the Governor, serving six-month terms, with a maximum service of two terms and recall with a two-thirds majority vote of the population.

• Planetary Law: Lax (Limited to public safety, violent crime, narcotics, and tax evasion, essentially). Census carried out every decade.
  • Planetary Narcotic Laws: Virtually no restrictions on substances
  • Planetary Weapon Laws: Virtually no restrictions on guns at the planetary level. All Citizens from the age of 15 will be part of the Standing Militia for three years, and thereafter be part of the Reserve Militia/Unorganized Militia until they are no longer physically capable of combat duty. Militia members who retire have the option to buy back their assigned service small arms and armor.

• Canton Law: Settlements, heretofore referred to as cantons, would maintain Semi-Autonomy, and handle things like maintenance and utilities internally. The only constant would be to abide by a small set of Planetary laws, mostly guaranteeing the basic rights of all Citizens, such as Freedom of Speech, Assembly, Religion, Association, the Right to Bear Arms, etc, and banning slavery and indentured labor of non-citizens. Cantons would have very flexible government systems, allowing many variations and versions to be tried and tested, but all would be some form of Democracy.
  • Canton Law Enforcement: Appointed and lead by an elected Sheriff, funded and supplied by the Canton.
  • Canton Borders: That immigration and Emigration between Cantons be totally open uncontrolled, with no extradition for non-violent crimes between Settlements

• Judicial Law: Judges are appointed. Lawyers are part of the legal system. Universal, supplementing randomly selected juries, with the exception of drawing again if close family or other involved parties are drawn, with elected judges and State Attorneys, whose job would be to present the facts of the case, and would be marked as successful based on cases where true justice was reached in a civil manner, instead of the number of convictions. For municipal govt, they can choose between having either or both a jury trial and bench trial. There is a Planetary Court that deals with appeals,records and observes all the rulings to ensure there a relatively equal law system in place while also acting as our high court

• Tax Rate: Medium

Staff

• Dian Hollsworth: Aide and Commonwealth Liaison. SOP to attach an Aide that is both certain to be up to demanding Commonwealth standards, but doubles as a useful spy.

• Brick Helloway: Mining Foreman. In charge of daily mining operations, loading & unloading of cargo and performance reports.

• Charles Young: Chief Administrator. Handles paperwork and daily running of the Colony.

• Georg Mutsavych: Mercenaries' Union leader.

• Jack Calladan: Represents AAA Planetary Industries. Cocky motherfucker, a "snake of the most dangerous kind, utterly devoid of humanity. You must remember to never trust him."

• Jacob Spivens: Represents minor debtors (Church of St. Miguel, Church of Arcanology, Church of Unitology, Stoneheart Group, Sir Westley Banks Esquire, Rand Corporation & Markers Limited).

• James Wittmore: General of the Tempest Military. Ex-Captain of the Commonwealth Armed Forces.

• Ras: Warlord and representative of the Kzin.

• Rigel McArthur: Head of Terraforming Operations. Will investigate any "interesting phenomena". Considers himself a scientist and philosopher.

• Zan: Represenative of the Cthall.

Political Assets

• Independence: Your Colony has been granted Autonomy within the Commonwealth. Commonwealth Officials will no longer have the power t press-gang your Guard into service for local manhunts, demand free fuel or docking space, or have any authority to veto your decisions. Many Commonwealth laws, such as registration and restriction of rights of genetically engineered individuals, intelligent machines, uplifted animals, and aliens will only apply if you so choose.

• Monkey-Be-Gone: Having paid off 10% of your Corporate debt up front, AAA has lost most of its authority over your colony. Corporate Mercs will no longer be above local laws, AAA Executives will no longer hold the power to visit and assume direct control, and you can refuse appointed Corporate Advisers. They will still foreclose your shit if you fail to make payments, though.

Planetary Information

Population: 1,023,640 (49% Jeffersonian, 49% Neo-Tokyo Exiles, ~20000 Refugees, ~3000 Misc Immigrants, 600 Kzin & 40 Cthall)

Tempest is a Class Five World, with a thriving Scum ecology with the top of the foodchain assumed by the Rach, and an atmosphere unbreathable to humans. It is two-thirds larger than earth, with only slightly higher gravity. It has a complex Moon System, with one large Luna-analogue, rare in the Galaxy, three smaller moons, and dozns of of lesser moons barely large enough to pull themselves into spheres. It is rich in Industrial Metals, and your colony will be a mining colony. The sponsoring Megacorp, AAA Planetary Industries, will be taking most of your output as payment for the costs of setting up the colony, with you making a small profit off each load of minerals. They also have a deadlock on trading food and equipment for the near future, as there simply aren't any other trade lines in the area, and have ultimate authority over the Mercenaries.

You have one central "Capitol" dome, where the Sky-El connects you to orbit that houses 100,000 people and your seat of government. The other 400,000 colonists are scattered near rich mineral deposits and areas that make for good transport hubs and stopovers between mining domes, in domes with populations ranging from 1,000-10,000. Because you took Double domes and twice the initial Colonists, you have roughly a million people who will be scattered over your starting region, and expand from there as new colonists immigrate and new habitats are brought in and built. .

You have enough AA cannons to cover your starting Domes, plus a few extra to be moved wherever they're needed, and your patrol ships will be able to handle the converted junk freighters and tugs most Slavers use when preying on isolated colonies and unarmed refugee fleets, but pirates in real (If old and probably poorly maintained) warships, or even up-gunned bulk freighters will be another story.

Colony

Education

• Complete Encyclopedia Galactica Set (1): Comes with full rights for copying and re-distribution in digital and print form. It's an Encyclopedia of... Everything humanity knows that isn't classified or largely forgotten. The latest edition, and famous for being the most comprehensive Encyclopedia, ever.

• Commonwealth Library (1): A collection of books representing everything you should be able to find in any Core World Library, three years ago.

• The Shadow Library (1): A comprehensive collection of texts and treatise that could NOT be found in Core World libraries, mostly of fringe political philosophies, inconvenient history books, and unwanted truth in written form.

• The Library of Earth (1): This hard to come by collection represents the classics of Pr-expansion and early Expansion literature and history. Considered the keystone to properly understanding the dawn of Man.

• Commonwealth Common Curriculum: A standard pre-school to High-School curriculum. Optimized for the production of valuable members of society.

• Alternative Curriculum: A collection of unorthodox teaching methods and school materials too unbiased for the Commonwealths tastes, this is optimized for the production of individuals with keen critical thinking, good historical knowledge, and practical skills, though not as strong on abstract science and art, as well as skipping all "schooling" before Grade School/Middle School as cruel and ineffective. The designers of the Alternative Curriculum advocate exposing students to mainstream schoolbooks, both to shore up their abstract are and science, but, in their opinion, show why it's so important to have critical thinking skills and the knowledge that no secondary source can be entirely trusted.

• Xenostudies: A comprehensive course on mans nonhuman neighbors past and present, including history, physiology, and psychology. Decried for promoting indecency and moral corruption on many conservative worlds.

Colonist Demographics

• Chtall Colonists (~40): An insectoid race of brilliant bio-engineers, the Chtall never quite got the hang of technology based on "dead metals", ceramics, and plastics. Instead, they rely on human transportation to spread among the stars, building enclaves of their own strange and vibrant ecosystem in isolated parts of newly founded human worlds. In exchange for their aid in terraforming general biotech support, they wish a few areas on your worlds surface that will one day be extremely humid tropical island chains and sub-continents be ceded to them and for accommodation in the meantime.

• Kzin Outcasts (~600): A group of dangerously deviant cultists, renegades and descendants of POWs from a feared Felinoid warrior race that has clashed with humanity many times in the past, these individuals seek to establish a home for themselves away from the prying eyes of the Bureau of Extraterrestrial Affairs and the control of the core systems, and they offer their fearsome combat power and skill as weapons techs and gunners in exchange for a place to call their own.

• Jeffersonian Idealists: A new wave of political dissent on many core worlds, primarily New America, these people raised a great fuss about the undue influence of Megacorps in government, corruption, censorship, centralization of power, and other general complaints. Rather than risk the backlash of having them eliminated, the Core Worlds instead gave them the "option" of going to to the Frontier to build their utopian Republic in peace, away from them. Hard-working, bright-eyed and optimistic, these people are perhaps the most enthusiastic settlers one could ask for, dedicated to building a new Republic on the edge of human space. They will push for representation in government and giving local settlements semi-autonomy far earlier and more insistently, but you will generally be able to point them at a problem and focus your attention elsewhere while it's fixed, often in a highly creative manner.

• Neo-Tokyo Exiles: The result of a purge by Megacorp hand-puppet the trade hub of Neo-Tokyo calls a government, these people are the undesirables of a world that never truly sleeps, sent out to fend for themselves. Gangs too low-level to become part of the local government, genetically altered 'splicers, freelance hackers, private Mercs, tribes of feral Neo-Dogs and, escaped gene-tailored prostitutes, cyborgs, mutants, bio-androids, and the ever-present political dissenters, all rounded up by the unsympathetic private soldiers of Shogun Inc and its pan-Western counterpart, Overlord Defense and shoved into cramped junk liners on minimal life support, bound for the Frontier. Being essentially press-ganged colonists, most will not be terribly enthusiastic about their new home, although some will decide that pretty much anywhere is better than the slums of Neo-Tokyo and make the best of it. Not the keenest workers or the most motivated soldiers, and full of internal strife, plus the threat of riots if the line for "gender Identity" isn't added to a form, but that same diversity holds both a treasure trove valuable technicians, mostly in software, and individuals with unique capabilities that normal humans do not not possess

• Ex Slaver Refugees (20000):

• Immigrants (3000): Mostly Androids, Gene-Mods, and a handful of AIs.

Colonist Skills

• Survival Training: All of your colonists receive training in surviving in hostile environments and space. Lethal accidents will be greatly reduced, and your colonists will be more capable of spreading independently over your world.

• Basic Technology: Colonists are trained in basic tech, allowing them to repair simple equipment themselves and use technological devices more effectively. Decreases maintenance, increases productivity.

• Labor Training: Colonists are trained in the tasks associated with your new venture, namely mining operations and constructing pre-fabricated Hab Domes. Accidents will decrease and productivity and construction speed will increase.

• Militia: Every adult colonist is given basic military training, a standard Guard Pattern Assault Rifle, and basic Security Armor.

Colony Assets

• Technical University (1). The same basic product offered by AAA by law at Embark, this will provide training in relatively primitive technologies to provide your Colonists with locally manufactured goods and greater local industrial capacity. With the Settlers Equipment, your Tech base will be bumped up a notch if combined with Technical university by providing tech just advanced more advanced than the norm to be useful, but not so much that locally trained Engineers can't reverse-engineer it with a lot of head-banging.

• Frontier Medical (1): Once again, the same basic product. Skilled human Doctors and Nurses seeking a new life on the frontier, but without the gross incompetence and legal troubles that usually hide behind that descriptive, along with a Medical University to train more. Their presence has a statistically significant difference even when they're doing nothing but overseeing Autodoc

• Extra Domes: double the pre-fab Hab Domes, allowing for more room for initial expansion and less crowding from immigrant waves.

• Industrial basics: Automated factories that can produce most of what your colony needs outside of heavy equipment and advanced electronics.

• Infonet: A durable electronic communications network tying your fledgling world together. Connecting people, businesses, and government, this simple technology will bring your local economy into a new level of productivity. More efficient, durable and half the cost of a Comnet but far harder to censor and control. "The Infonet is up, has been upgraded in many cantons by resident Hackers, and is already filled to the brim with weird porn."

• Supercomputer: A used supercomputer that's very useful to your terraforming operations if configured correctly.

• Settlers Equipment: Pre-Fab structures, vehicles, mining equipment, and other relatively low-tech tools that will allow more independent-minded Colonists to spread across the surface, prospecting for minerals and other valuable commodities or just setting up remote farming communities around rudimentary hydroponics, away from the crowding of the Domes. While they probably won't try to start sovereign nations in the hills, this can make controlling your population more difficult, and settlements will have to be heavily armed against surface threats.

• Semi-automated Machine Shop: A machine shop specialized to make repairs to the mining machinery too expensive and complex to manufacture locally, although you will eventually need spare parts.

Economy

(Needs confirmation, all of it)

• Treasury: 10C (@Ch13 end)

• Income: 14C every financial quarter (@Ch13 end) Needs confirmation
  • Mining: +3
  • Fuel & Asteroid Sales: +6
  • Mining Hub: +1
  • Machine Shop: +1 (Locally repairing & manufacturing mining equipment) Offline
  • x10 Autofacs, x4 Online: +8.5?
  • ?

• Autofactories: 10 autofactories
  • Each one consumes 1 unit of power to produce 10 units of production. In total, they produce 100 production units
  • Production can be converted into income on a per turn basis at a rate of 10 units of production => 1C / turn income; if the autofactories are set to produce cheap trade goods for export
  • @Ch13: 2 were operational at beginning of chapter, purchased 4 more reactors to provide the 8 power needed to power the rest. (21 days to install) (Needs confirmation)
  • @Ch13: Schematics cores were brought online, allowing the manufacturing of things such as: Cheaper, lower quality models of the Tri-Guns, combat Armor, and SCAR APCs can be produced by the Autofactory, along with other basic weapons and vehicles, such as tanks and fighter aircraft. Cannot produce reactors or heavy industry.

Power

• Fusion Reactors: 16

• Power: 34/32
• x16 Fusion Reactors: +32
• x10 Automated Factories: -10
• x10 100K Colonists: -10
• x10 Mining Pits: -10
• Capital Dome: -2
• Machine Shop: -2 (Offline)

Production

• Production: 15/100
• Production Sum: +85
  • x10 Autofactories: 100
  • Machine Shop: ???
  • Maintain Tech Level: 15

Military

Ground Military Force

• Tempest Army (25K): These men are loyal to you, at least in theory. They also double as Enforcers. Around five thousand are equipped Guard ARs & Security Armor.

• Tempest Rangers (4K): Planetary law enforcement, led by Motoko Kusanagi. Many of them are augmented. Militia gear.

• Mercenaries (5K): A1 Security is the largest contingent, and also the one with the only air transports and gunships. North Star, Tristar and Musashi Arms all hold Power Armored elements and large amounts of plasma weaponry, Thorhammer Military Services has a number of AT-14 Humanoid Armored Combat Walkers, and the Orns World Rangers have a unit of heavy self-propelled artillery."

• Kzin Warriors (600): A mix of greens, blood-soaked veterans and legendary heroes.

• Standing Militia (800K): Every adult colonist is given basic military training, a standard Guard Pattern Assault Rifle, and basic Security Armor.

• Reserve Militia (0K): Every adult colonist is given basic military training, a standard Guard Pattern Assault Rifle, and basic Security Armor.

• • Soldiery: Your soldiers are trained up to the standards of a real military, making them a match for most Mercs where skills are concerned. Excellent for use of armored vehicles and aircraft, and makes your Guard much more professional and disciplined.

• • Weaponry: Your soldiers are are equipped with powerful military-pattern tri-barrel Assault Rifles, firing standard caseless, explosive-tipped light armor piercing rounds. Tri-barrel ARs can pierce through Combat Armor at the very least. They are also equipped with autopistols, knives, and frag grenades. Tempest Army soldiers are also given Combat Armor in stead of Security Armor. Your soldiers have enough LMGs to outfit most squads in your Guard with one, takes the same ammunition as your rifles, a few interchangeable parts. Said LMGs need their Morkul Combine ID chips removed.

• Coalition Mammoth Super-Heavy Tanks (6): Seen by many as the poor mans BOLO, these tanks have an excellent blend of firepower, armor, and mobility combined with the excellent durability and ruggedness of Coalition designs. You blew up a fair number of these during the Iron league War, and know that even though they can't hope to match a BOLO, they're effective war machines. Good enough that on all else being equal, 10 of them are equal to a BOLO.

• Southern Cross Light Amphibious Tanks (80): Light, fast, maneuverable, and cheap. Each comes with a light Battle Cannon and a hull-mounted Heavy Machine Gun, and a substantial supply of ammunition for both.

• K-7 Combat Walkers (100): Also known as Chicken Walkers for their leg shape, these are effectively an armored cockpit with a heavy chaingun, limited missile launcher, and good sensors on nimble legs for recon and infantry support in rough terrain and urban environments.

• SCAR-23 Amphibious APCs (825): Armed with heavy machine guns with basic passive and active countermeasure. Has a capacity of 16 passengers. You currently have enough that 2/3rds of the Tempest Army is mechanized.

• Anti-Air cannons: Basic rapid-fire autocannons, great for shooting down home-built pirate junk fighters and converted shuttles, but not so much against even outdated fighters and landers.

Space Forces

• Gladius-Class Rift Federation Destroyer (1): Often regarded as a triumph of ship-building, its excellent construction fundamentals and superb design ensuring that many ships of its era still remain in service a hundred years after being sold off by the Rift Federation Navy. Even with its original, outmoded weapons and defenses, it could probably take on the combined might of the Pirate fleet it was until recently Flag of.

• Missile Carriers (5)

• Draconis Combine Frigates (9)

• Patrol Ships (25): Lightly armed, more intended for police actions and rescue operations than combat.

• Defense Auxilliary (Name Pending): An assorted collection of converted tugs and junk freighters gunned up enough to scare off small-time pirates and slavers. Put in a pattern common to defense satellites.

• Coalition X-35 Talon Multi-Role Aerospace Fighters (50): While not up to date, like all Coalition Militech, they're well designed and built to last.

BOLO

• Iron Scythe: An aging BOLO, once named Iron Scythe, refitted for industrial purposes. A bit on the senile side, which makes many buyers skittish with memory of BOLOs on the rampage in their senility. The Commonwealth Safety Bureau will have a keen interest in this machine. Missing most of his former industrial tools outside of the drills. It now has four Laser Cannons and a box of rockets that must be manually fired by personnel.

• Spare Parts: Various BOLO spare parts. Most from Sycthes Mark, the rest universal enough among BOLOs that Mark matters very little.

• Full BOLO suite: Prmary and secondary plasma cannons, tertiary weapons outfitted with Gattling Lasers for anti-infantry, original countermeasures suite, point-defense.

• Secondary Shields: For when the primary Shields go down, and to help stop specialized Shield-Breaker weaponry.

• Modern Countermeasures

Small Arms

• Screechers (70): Banned Sonic weapons that literally dissolve the flesh from a targets bones. Incredibly painful, and lethal, but short-ranged and ineffective against armor modified to protect against it. Used primarily for "crowd control" and putting down lightly armed peasant revolts. Can be very effective against certain strains of rach

• Northern Arms Powered Armor (50): High-quality with optional slots for integrated light weapons, currently empty. Still has the I.D chips.

• Pulse Laser Rifles (80 High Quality, 180 total): Capable of fucking up light powered armor, and going right through Combat Armor (What your troops have) unless it's a glancing hit or weakened by specialized reflective fog. The high quality versions weigh & are 2/3rds the size while having +30% more range and power.

• Morkul Combine LMGs (1299): Takes the same ammunition as your rifles, a few interchangeable parts.

Orbital

Space Elevator

• Sky-El: Anchored to your capitol, for fast and cheap transfer of cargo to and from orbit.
  • Heavy Duty: Your Sky El is a class II, with three cargo modules that can each move to and from Orbit independently and simultaneously. You will most likely not actually need this capacity for another 300 years, but it'll be cheaper to install now than to replace it later.
  • Rope Climber: Your Sky-El is equipped with an upgraded motivator, with lower maintenance costs and failure rate, and a surface-to-orbit time of 15 hours instead of the standard 20.
  • Strong: Your Sky-El is more deeply anchored to the surface, and designed to survive heavy impacts and even direct attacks without severing.

Orbital Assets

• Trade Station: A full docking station equipped to refuel and provide basic repairs to civilian and military craft, and act as a system trade hub. Will be connected directly to your Sky-El.

• Asteroid Mines: Equipment for small, mostly self-sufficient Asteroid mining camps to be set up throughout the Belt, mining metals not found easily on planetary surfaces, such as the Platinum group. Without transport of your own, AAA will take most of your output to pay for excessively high system freighter charter.

• Cloudscoop: In light of your home systems central placement in an undeveloped cluster and the several Hyperspace Lanes intersecting through it, the Commonwealth has elected to provide you with a functioning Cloudscoop to extract and refine HE3 from a nearby gas giant in the hopes that this will be a step forward towards making your world the heart of anew Sector. Once again, AAA will be taking most of your fuel if you lack transport of your own.

• Orbital Nodes: Numerous small industrial space stations designed around cramped hab-blocks. Will provide local manufacture of electronics components that can only be made in zero-G and faster build time on any orbital constructions.

• old Mining Hub Station: An ugly block with some basic defensive weapons and countermeasures designed to act as a trade and processing center for asteroid miners before shipping off the semi-refined ores to the next stage down the line.

• In-System Freighters (10% Off fuel and 12C to Mark): Basic transport with cargo at STL speeds.

Other

• One Way: A small fleet of ancient Havelholme class freighters literally only operating by the grace of duct tape. Good for one last trip out into the dark, allowing you to bring double the Colonists. However, they will all be effectively useless after arrival, though you may be able to jury-rig them into habitats if you can get them ground-side in one piece.

• Flesh Bazaar Habitat - a habitat set up by slavers. Was captured intact by our military

• Simulcra Kits: Once a popular sport of the rich and powerful, the Simulcra Arena allowed contestants to link their minds through a kind of (relatively) cheap, short-range, easily disrupted Neural Uplink to specially grown miniature human Simulcra, armed with miniature weapons and sent into battle against swarms of Terran insects. Banned after their repeated use by Crime Barons as tiny assassins. These kits contain everything you need to set up several first-class Simulcra Arenas, and the technical instructions to create more when your technology base advances enough. Currently used by the military to spy on the Rach brains.

• Data-capsule smuggled off of Tau Kapri concerning the Tau Cloudwhales, probably part of another long-forgotten attempt to transplant a population off-world.

• Combat Bio-Androids (7): You've encountered Combat Androids before, but they were designed to blend in with normal humans at least somewhat. Not these hulking brutes. Almost simian in their muscle bulk and posture, these tailored killers are fast, strong, tough, and brutally efficient. Emancipated, currently employed as personal bodyguards.