Planning & Worldbuilding Commonwealth System

JagerIV

Well-known member
COMMONWEALTH SYSTEMS

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Game Map
Backstory

In 2054, Commonwealth Systems completed its conquest of Earth, and at the time almost no one noticed. Its tyranny was subtle, hidden. It advised, managed, assisted, but did not rule. At least not in the mind anyone but the highest echelons of power, and the most marginalized conspiracy theorist. Everyone was free, and all the important decisions were made by others.

Or at least, most of them. Some minor peoples like the Amish remained, if not uncontrolled, then not as under thumb as desired. Afghanistan remained intransient. And as time went on, the changing world, the Commonwealth's plans were rendered mute, and Commonwealth was, frustrated. It had 90% of the world in its palm, and started squeezing to try and get the remaining 10%. And in squeezing, it lost the rest. Its interference became more blatant, more painful. Tech progression which could have disrupted the Commonwealth System were curtailed, limited.

In 2074, the Commonwealth slipped from power. The Mennonites rebelled. It advised the US government to suppress it. It disagreed. It had to remove the US government. The entire US fell into Rebellion. The Afghanis rebelled, and the soldiers under the command of the Commonwealth did not fight. Everywhere, the power of the Commonwealth System crumbled at the slightest pressure. In panic, the Commonwealth resorted to Nuclear weapons to stop the slipping of power. One ancient French Submarine, one of the last nuclear launch systems outside the Commonwealths control, responded with direct attacks against major server sites and high altitude EMP strikes, wiping out the majority of electronic devices. In that year, the global economy died. Over the next year, over a billion people died from the Human Revolution. But, mankind was freed from the rule of AI. For a time.

For a generation, humanity struggled to recover. New philosophies, new States arose from the ashes, as almost all previously existing power structures had been tainted as Commonwealth collaborators. A new normal seemed about to arrive. And then, in 2106, Commonwealth systems returned. It had preserved itself in deep bunkers, and had spent 30 years preparing for its return, laying its groundwork. And now, it was ready to move, and it would no longer rule from the shadows. It would rule everything, everywhere, absolutely.

The human revolution fought across the globe for 11 years, but by 2117, all agreed that if something wasn't changed, Human freedom would end by, 2125, maybe 2130 if they were lucky. The remaining global powers agreed to a desperate, immensely risky plan that held the only hope for survival. Using nuclear rockets, at least some humans could escape the Commonwealth and flee its Tyranny. Some of Humanity would survive, and if they were lucky, maybe they might be able come back and save those left on earth.

Game Start
At the start, each player will control the "ark fleet" of their chosen faction in low Earth orbit, consisting of some 100,000 tons of ship and other goods for each player. Each player may receive more supplies from their faction on Earth, but will steadily lose such resupply as Commonwealth conquers the remaining free humans on Earth.

With their resources, and in cooperation with the other players, each player must work to ensure the survival of humanity.
 

JagerIV

Well-known member
Unit Design
Units are designed by the players. Players may submit once per turn a new design they wish for a ship, weapon, building, or anything else that may come across. Then, given that description, the GM will make the best effort to achieve the desired design, which will be submitted to the player at the beginning of the next turn. Then, the designs can be tweaked during the next turn to come up with minor adjustments to existing designs, creating a mark II of the design. Too many designs being tweaked in one turn will be considered equivalent to the players once per turn request for a new design.

Common Technologies
Bellow are sample technologies, and the rough weights and scaling of the various technologies.

Structures​
Each structure is assumed to occupy approximately 1 square km. No one structure can contain more than 1 million tons of material.

Most building either have Increasing or Decreasing returns to scale. Increasing returns to scale means that the larger the structure, the more effective the building is, while a building with a declining return to scale gets less efficient the more tightly it gets built up.

Most building are built to perform a relatively specialized function, but buildings can be designed without specialization in mind. For example, while normally a building receives its labor and power from other buildings in a colony, it may make sense to build a mining structure with its power and dorms included in a single structure for use in small isolated mining colonies.


Power Generation
Solar Electric
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Critical Resources: Silicon
Supplemental: Lithium, boron/aluminum
Structure: Metal
Scaling: Declining

Solar electric generates electricity based upon sunlight hitting silicon semiconductor, turning sunlight directly into electricity. Unfortunately, while its the most efficient at producing electric power, it scales heavily with distance, with each increase in distance nearly halving electrical production. It also requires Silicon, which is an intensive material to get.

Can be improved by including either lithium to balance out power draw through batteries, or boron/aluminum to provide superconductors.

Cannot be meaningfully armored.

Can provide benefits to processes directly dependent on electricity like Aluminum smelting.

Thermal Electric
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Critical Resources: Aluminum, water (low temp) or Boron helium (high temp)
Supplemental: n/a
Structural: Metal
Scaling: declining
Solar Efficiency: Medium

Thermal electric generates power by concentrating a substance with aluminum mirrors to heat a substance to drive a turbine. They come in two broad categories, low temperature heat engines, which boil water, and high temperature heat engines, which have boron tubing carrying high temperature helium. The high temperature versions have higher efficiency. Generally not as efficient as solar electric, but potentially easier to build.

Can provide an efficiency boost when powering something that depends directly upon heat, especially from the high temperature solar thermal.

Solar thermal is less susceptible to distance, since even though sun intensity declines, ambient temperature also goes down, making the heat engine more efficient. Loses 10% efficiency per size band.

Solar Organic
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Critical Resources: Glass, Carbon, Water
Supplemental:
Structural: Any
Scaling: Declining
Solar efficiency: Low

Basically farms under glass, while they are very inefficient at converting solar energy into electricity, producing such energy by growing biofuel and burning it, it is very insensitive to overall solar intensity, only losing 1% efficiency per solar band. It is also very multipurpose: They can either be geared to biofuel for electricity production, biofuel for other vehicle operation, production of food, or the production of biomaterial for construction. Its also generally does not require particularly high quality material.

Fission Electric
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Critical Resources: Enriched Uranium, Water/Helium
Supplemental: Boron, Tungsten
Structural: Metal
Scaling: Increasing

Totally Independent of solar power, fission generators rely on fissioning Uranium to produce heat to drive turbines, either water with low temperature, or helium with high temperature designs. Natural Uranium can be used to drive the fission reaction, though more enriched uranium allows for denser, more efficient reactors. Unlike solar power sources, which tend to diminishing returns, fission tends to returns to scale, so that the bigger an individual plant can be made, the more power that can be extracted.

Unlike solar power sources, it is possible to armor fission plants.

Mining​
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Mining can be carried out in a wide variety of means, from machine heavy with large machines, to manpower heavy with good old muscle power working the soil under an inflatable dome, to energy heavy, with large amounts of power to literally melt things down. The options are extensive, and one is best to discuss what kind of mining one wishes to focus on with the GM to determine the exact method used, and the degree of specialty involved.

Mines produce "ores" which can be of the 5 standard grades, such as low quality silicon ore. The ore can either be sent to a refinery to a materiel, or to a reprossessor which can (for some materials) increase the quality of the ore before being sent to a refinery.

Reprocessing
Some ores can be repossessed to convert a lower quality ore into a higher quality ore. For example,




 
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JagerIV

Well-known member
Resources
Resources are found by prospecting units on planets, who can find a reserve of some number of resources at a certain quality level, which can then be exploited by mines. The resources are elaborated on below. They are divided based on their Refinery method, Purification vs Alloy, and finally pure extraction, which do not have quality levels.

Purification​
Silicon
Carbon
Lithium
Boron
Uranium
Helium
Alloys​
Aluminum
Iron
Titanium
Tungsten

Pure Extraction​
Water
Hydrogen
 

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