Future Tech Advice and Assistance Thread [O.O.C.]

[Lubyak]

Apparently, I'm interrupting an argument here, but are there any good PMT-FT roleplaying regions? All that I have found are somewhat inactive.

The Local Cluster is a potential one. However, do be aware it's less a 'roleplay region' in the sense of a setting where people roleplay, and more a collection of FT players and their nations. It's a good place to meet people to have an RP, but there's not going to be a regional map or something like that. Hopefully that helps you out some.

[Kyrusia]

At this point, this line of questioning and topic of discussion has pushed itself to the point of being beyond the purview of this thread: providing advice and assistance in relation to Future Tech, not discussing the merits of the World Assembly. This topic of discussion, in particular, has been addressed for the better part of a page and a half with similar responses being given by both sides - repeatedly.

I trust the thread will move back onto track following this post.

[Stormwrath]

Apparently, I'm interrupting an argument here, but are there any good PMT-FT roleplaying regions? All that I have found are somewhat inactive.

Depends on what you're looking for. Closed or open canon? Milky Way or somewhere else in the universe? Large or small empires? Those things may help you find the perfect PMT/FT regions for you. Also, It helps to go to the Tags for FT regions.

[Excidium Planetis]

At this point this is nothing but a blatant threadjack and entirely disruptive to the purpose of this thread, I don't know why you are insisting others join the WA,

I have never once in my life insisted anyone join the WA.

and to be frank at this point I don't care, is been explained to time again why players are not interested across two RMBs and in this thread

And therin lies the problem. I never wanted to know why people are not interested in joining the WA. I wanted to know why the Galactic Assembly would not work, as indicated here:

I already had a discussion similar to this on the Local Cluster's RMB several months ago, I'd rather not repeat it. This was not what I was discussing.

Players already submit themselves to the rules of alliances, economic organizations, etc.
So why would submitting to rules be the problem with the Galactic Assembly? If players already do it anyway, why would that be the cause?

Surely there is some other reason?

And already felt that question was answered:

The advice was given as to why it hasn't been done

It has been done. I was questioning the reasoning for why it isn't being done now, which I feel Rethan and Kyrusia finally answered.

Frankly, I don't know why this continued at all past that point.

If you would like to start an FT WA thread I suggest the gameplay forum for you

Gameplay is not the place for this discussion either.

Anyways, I'll stop here. Clearly this discussion is going nowhere.

[The V O I D]

@ Void:

ICly, a nation with that kind of biotech would use it to the extent it's affordable. It's not really much different to a nation making extensive use of droids, just a case of biological rather than mechanical engineering for it. Just like making an army of droids it isn't going to be free, so the costs and benefits want comparing with those of training and equipping real soldiers and the value of their lives. And of course politics and ideology can play into it - a nation could keep making expensive and rubbish supersoldiers because the factory is in a key swing state for elections, for example.

OOCly, "super soldiers" often end up wanky. I'd suggest some caution when RPing if you don't want to come across that way.

ICly-speaking, the things I use Slates for aren't exactly things that normal soldiers could do. I mean, sometimes they're used to take capitals of planets or storm military bases that are extremely guarded. Main soldiers are mainly for defense of newly captured areas and stuff...

OOCly speaking, yeah... I get that. But Slates are kind of meant to be used to take bases that if I used normal soldiers would be just as or moreso expensive than creating a thousand Slates... so...

[Tierra Prime]

The problem with the size of nations in FT is that unless you are a part of a closed RP group or only RP with like-minded people (As I do), you'll often have to tailor your nation to the RP you're in so that you don't look too weak or two strong. In my canon, my nation controls a dwarf galaxy of several hundred systems, but I usually only RP with people whose nation's are of a similar size to mine, so I've never had any problems portraying my nation like that. In the event I end up in a RP that is, for a lack of a better word, "FT Prime" - my nation suddenly transitions to being a medium-sized power located in the back-arse of Delta that controls maybe 14 systems (My secondary canon). Factbooks are primarily fluff (Well, mine is anyway), it doesn't matter how big you say your nation is, or how many ships you say it has, so long as you play fairly when you RP with people.

[Novum Alexandria]

I was working with a friend to further flesh out the history of our two nations. Particularly, a war between two alliances. Canonically, a region of several dozen solar systems was united over the course of this war, but we ran into an issue after dealing with the causes and outcomes and so on. Neither of us have any idea how one would go about conquering a planet that is more than just one or two major cities, and we very quickly realized that conquering a homeworld where the natives have had time to build up and urbanize for thousands of years... One would have to seize centers of production, no doubt, and establish a way to regularly deploy additional men and equipment in a relatively safe manner, but there's still the issue of how one would proceed to... March forth, I suppose.

Advise?

[Nyte]

I was working with a friend to further flesh out the history of our two nations. Particularly, a war between two alliances. Canonically, a region of several dozen solar systems was united over the course of this war, but we ran into an issue after dealing with the causes and outcomes and so on. Neither of us have any idea how one would go about conquering a planet that is more than just one or two major cities, and we very quickly realized that conquering a homeworld where the natives have had time to build up and urbanize for thousands of years... One would have to seize centers of production, no doubt, and establish a way to regularly deploy additional men and equipment in a relatively safe manner, but there's still the issue of how one would proceed to... March forth, I suppose.

Advise?

Without having all the information, I'd recommend looking at our own past wars; especially ones where there was an occupation for some period of time (WW1 and WW2 immediately spring to mind). That should give you a decent idea of what you need to do... Simply put a FT spin on it. Sadly, I can't comfortably give you more specific information because I don't know the details of this war you're fleshing out. The only other bit of advice I could give you is to keep it consistent; if the majority of that war was fought with anything like ethics or morals, you probably wouldn't be bombing cities from orbit or nuking civvies for example.

[Taledonia]

Gain air superiority(or orbital dominance, or whatever) and carpet bomb their farms, manufacturies, hospitals, basically anything that their civilisation requires. Once all that is ash, and the government is in hiding, send down supplies and luxuries and promises of good things to come.

Basically, give the population Stockholm Syndrome and win them over to your side. Once this is done, put boots on the ground and use local militias to route out the remaining resistance pockets.

[Nyte]

...Then you'll just have to deal with the FT equivalent of the Taliban/ISIS because the first thing that will come to there minds won't be the luxuries you've shipped down after the dust settles, it will be the hunger pains and the deaths of their loved ones who were bombed to death while lying defenseless in a hospital bed.

Also, you'll probably have a few FT America clones coming after you for "warcrimes" and the like.

None of this fits with the relatively "safe manner" Novum Alexandria is looking for...

[Taledonia]

Perhaps not, but it's an idea. Further, FT Taliban could be stopped by stealing all the children, brainwashing and training them, then after the year or two you've been bombing, they won't remember their loved ones.

Like Ottoman janisaries, or more modern, African child soldiers.

Suppose, like you said, it depends on how moral the combatants are.

[The Eastern Hegemony]

So, by the end of the 30th century, we're heavily entrenched in a civil war with he descendants of the Holy Islamic Union- now The Holy Empire of Allah. They control most of the Milky Way, Andromeda, the Draco galaxy, the Large Magellanic Cloud, a few dozen Globular Clusters, and some space in the Wilds. We control the rest of the Local Group and we have several thousand colonies in The Beyondspace.

I was thinking of writing about a battle on a planet 1.5 times the size of Earth, but close enough to its red giant star for lakes of molten rock to form on its surface. The air temperature is 1,200F and the thick clouds are composed of ash that occasionally rains down, blanketing the surface. The atmosphere is poisonous to humans. Seismic activity is frequent, and earthquakes and volcanic eruptions rock the surface. What should my ground vehicles be like, and what logistical difficulties will my infantry units face? How should they attempt to overcome these?

[Excidium Planetis]

I was thinking of writing about a battle on a planet 1.5 times the size of Earth, but close enough to its red giant star for lakes of molten rock to form on its surface. The air temperature is 1,200F and the thick clouds are composed of ash that occasionally rains down, blanketing the surface. The atmosphere is poisonous to humans. Seismic activity is frequent, and earthquakes and volcanic eruptions rock the surface. What should my ground vehicles be like, and what logistical difficulties will my infantry units face? How should they attempt to overcome these?

First of all, why would that hellhole be worth fighting over, especially when your possession of vaat amounts of space means you have billions of other planets to choose from?

Second, I personally wouldn't deploy ground vehicles or infantry to that planet. Actually, I wouldn't deploy anything to it. It's simply too hazardous for the troops. If it was really important, I'd fight a space battle, take the system, and starve out the enemy forces on the planet.

[Lubyak]

So, by the end of the 30th century, we're heavily entrenched in a civil war with he descendants of the Holy Islamic Union- now The Holy Empire of Allah. They control most of the Milky Way, Andromeda, the Draco galaxy, the Large Magellanic Cloud, a few dozen Globular Clusters, and some space in the Wilds. We control the rest of the Local Group and we have several thousand colonies in The Beyondspace.

I was thinking of writing about a battle on a planet 1.5 times the size of Earth, but close enough to its red giant star for lakes of molten rock to form on its surface. The air temperature is 1,200F and the thick clouds are composed of ash that occasionally rains down, blanketing the surface. The atmosphere is poisonous to humans. Seismic activity is frequent, and earthquakes and volcanic eruptions rock the surface. What should my ground vehicles be like, and what logistical difficulties will my infantry units face? How should they attempt to overcome these?

Excidium is correct in his line of questioning. The big question is why this world is important. Given how inhospitable it is, it can't be a major population centre or something. Best I can think of is it's some kind of mining world, and produces resources of some notable value. You'e already hit on what the problems are: earthquakes and eruptions limit your ability to build structures beyond the most re-inforced installations, and the atmosphere means any infantry will have to operate in full protective suits and what not.

However, the important question is why you're fighting. If it's small pockets of mining installations or space ports, then you could rely on drops from space and what not. I can't see any reason why you'd have to deploy significant forces beyond some light infantry to defend some limited installations. Otherwise, remain in orbit. If you don't need the surface installations, then this is one of those situations where my first reaction would be orbital bombardment.

[SquareDisc City]

I was thinking of writing about a battle on a planet 1.5 times the size of Earth, but close enough to its red giant star for lakes of molten rock to form on its surface. The air temperature is 1,200F and the thick clouds are composed of ash that occasionally rains down, blanketing the surface. The atmosphere is poisonous to humans. Seismic activity is frequent, and earthquakes and volcanic eruptions rock the surface. What should my ground vehicles be like, and what logistical difficulties will my infantry units face? How should they attempt to overcome these?

Seems pretty obvious. Staying cool is the biggest challenge, you'll need some seriously capable air conditioning inside stuff. It's not just people, electronics probably won't work at those ambient temperatures and even mechanicals may have issues. Depending on technology, at best infantry will have to wear highly advanced protective suits that make spacesuits look like child's play, and that's if "infantry" in any normal sense is even possible on such a planet.

It does sound like a hellhole that's best simply bombarded from orbit.

[The Eastern Hegemony]

Instead of quoting all those posts, since they said similar things, I'll just answer them all.

Yes, there are vast mineral deposits, plus virtually infinite potential for geothermal energy collection. Its medium-sized moon could literally be completely mined- all of it is made of useful materials. The star is obviously useful for solar energy. But that's not why the planet is valuable. On the surface, there is a long-term, stable, artificial wormhole created eons ago by a prehistoric starfaring race. It can be used to transport ships to a heavily-defended jungle planet in the center of enemy territory, in the same system as a major industrial center. The molten planet is much nearer to the border and less defended because of how hard it is to build installations there, thus why we're going to it instead of the jungle planet. Orbital bombardment is possible, but we'd rather not destroy the mineral reserves, some of which are within meters of the surface, and we certainly can't afford to destroy the wormhole.

[Excidium Planetis]

Instead of quoting all those posts, since they said similar things, I'll just answer them all.

Yes, there are vast mineral deposits, plus virtually infinite potential for geothermal energy collection. Its medium-sized moon could literally be completely mined- all of it is made of useful materials. The star is obviously useful for solar energy. But that's not why the planet is valuable. On the surface, there is a long-term, stable, artificial wormhole created eons ago by a prehistoric starfaring race. It can be used to transport ships to a heavily-defended jungle planet in the center of enemy territory, in the same system as a major industrial center. The molten planet is much nearer to the border and less defended because of how hard it is to build installations there, thus why we're going to it instead of the jungle planet. Orbital bombardment is possible, but we'd rather not destroy the mineral reserves, some of which are within meters of the surface, and we certainly can't afford to destroy the wormhole.

If that's the case, I'd focus more on getting through the wormhole than taking the planet. A kind of "The Enemy's Gate is Down" strategy. Fly a ton of assault ships and dropships down to the wormhole, provide enough covering fire to get them through it, and attack the jungle planet beyond.

If the wormhole needs to be "activated" or something, or if it is inside a building, drop heavily armored infantry at the wormhole site, take it by force, and begin dropping reinforcements there to send through the wormhole.

[Novum Alexandria]

I was working with a friend to further flesh out the history of our two nations. Particularly, a war between two alliances. Canonically, a region of several dozen solar systems was united over the course of this war, but we ran into an issue after dealing with the causes and outcomes and so on. Neither of us have any idea how one would go about conquering a planet that is more than just one or two major cities, and we very quickly realized that conquering a homeworld where the natives have had time to build up and urbanize for thousands of years... One would have to seize centers of production, no doubt, and establish a way to regularly deploy additional men and equipment in a relatively safe manner, but there's still the issue of how one would proceed to... March forth, I suppose.

Advise?

Without having all the information, I'd recommend looking at our own past wars; especially ones where there was an occupation for some period of time (WW1 and WW2 immediately spring to mind). That should give you a decent idea of what you need to do... Simply put a FT spin on it. Sadly, I can't comfortably give you more specific information because I don't know the details of this war you're fleshing out. The only other bit of advice I could give you is to keep it consistent; if the majority of that war was fought with anything like ethics or morals, you probably wouldn't be bombing cities from orbit or nuking civvies for example.

Gain air superiority(or orbital dominance, or whatever) and carpet bomb their farms, manufacturies, hospitals, basically anything that their civilisation requires. Once all that is ash, and the government is in hiding, send down supplies and luxuries and promises of good things to come.

Basically, give the population Stockholm Syndrome and win them over to your side. Once this is done, put boots on the ground and use local militias to route out the remaining resistance pockets.

-Deep breath.-
In a region of space referred to simply as 'Aevum', two nations sprouted up from colonial offshoots of Earth during a huge migration to avoid a painful existence on a crowded and drained planet. One of these nations is named Arcus, the citizens being Arceii, and their government being a conglomeration of copied human minds that are regularly uploaded and downloaded to and from clones. A digital consensus of sorts. They are technologically significant, surpassing most of Aevum in many fields of research, but suffer in diplomatic relations due to the sheer abrasiveness of Arceii behavior, their narcissism, and their disregard for ethics.

The second human nation is generally referred to as the Machine Imperium, the Empire, Alexandria, or any other acceptable variations. The population is well tended to, but also well suppressed beneath the heel of a monarch who's mind slowly degrades from being repeatedly cloned in order to live near eternally. The entirety of the nation is devoted to the practice of warfare, though they rarely engage in conflicts that are all-consuming. This Aevic War is the exception.

While Arceii utilize extensive aerial control, directed energy weapons, Zerg-rushes of clone soldiers, and drone fighters, their allies have a rather different presence on the battlefield. Alexandria's ground forces are often heavily armoured, but much less numerous than the foe. Heavy power armour, highly explosive and large caliber bullets, and mech suits are all a regularity. They are only interested in the sky when there is an enemy to shoot down, or when they need to deploy their disc-shaped VTOLs in order to move troops quickly. In orbit, the Arceii throw wave upon wave of highly expendable drones at the enemy, while the Alexandrians prefer to make use of thick armour and extremely heavy laser weaponry.

On the front where planets are being conquered, the vast majority of the human side consists of Arceii. Alexandrian ground forces only make up about 5% of the invading army. Their foe is a strangely human-ish nation by the name of Tractia, which emulates Rome to such a degree that the offspring of Earth are more than a little disturbed by the apparent coincidence.

The Tractians are on the defensive. Their sciences are less significant, energy weapons too inefficient to be put on anything smaller than a tank. While technologically stagnant, they have had a long, long time to dig their roots into the planets they own. Their population outnumbers the Arceii and Alexandrians by such a huge margin that, if it were not for their reliance on weaker armour and more traditional ballistics, the Tractians could probably have ruled over most of Orion's Arm. Of course, most of this population is well and fully occupied with ensuring that weapons, armour, starships, and other such machines of war continue rolling off the assembly line. On the ground, they rely heavily on digging into quick set-up fortifications and deploying as many heavy weapons as possible. Their tank divisions are able to go head-to-head with Arceii mechs, but only because of their sheer bulk and firepower. This often results in the Tractian armour being outmaneuvered. They suffer from much of the same issues in space. Heavy armour and comparatively primitive but devastating firepower, but incapable of moving more quickly than Arceii or Alexandrians in terms of both sub-light and FTL travel. Fortunately, their defense is made all the easier by the fact that nearly every planet is a heavily urbanized environment, and the Arceii/Alexandrians seem intent on taking planets with as much intact population and property as possible.

Sufficient information?

[Lubyak]

Without having all the information, I'd recommend looking at our own past wars; especially ones where there was an occupation for some period of time (WW1 and WW2 immediately spring to mind). That should give you a decent idea of what you need to do... Simply put a FT spin on it. Sadly, I can't comfortably give you more specific information because I don't know the details of this war you're fleshing out. The only other bit of advice I could give you is to keep it consistent; if the majority of that war was fought with anything like ethics or morals, you probably wouldn't be bombing cities from orbit or nuking civvies for example.

Gain air superiority(or orbital dominance, or whatever) and carpet bomb their farms, manufacturies, hospitals, basically anything that their civilisation requires. Once all that is ash, and the government is in hiding, send down supplies and luxuries and promises of good things to come.

Basically, give the population Stockholm Syndrome and win them over to your side. Once this is done, put boots on the ground and use local militias to route out the remaining resistance pockets.

-snip-

So it seems like you're almost guaranteed to have to deal with an insurgency. You want to take the worlds with their infrastructure and population intact, so you can't raze each world and move on to the next. If they're heavily urbanised, with deep roots, and a population that strongly identifies with their state, then it seems almost inevitable that you're going to have to deal with a large scale insurgency. Given how much they outnumber you, and their large industrial production, it seems like it'd be simplicity itself to leave large depots of small arms and other equipment for the remaining civilians to wage a low level war against your invaders. The plan, of course, will be that the insurgency in the worlds you conquer will draw off forces from your front line to deal with them, or otherwise convince you that the war is too expensive to be worthwhile, and to force a favourable peace. Furthermore, you're likely to only hold ruins, as it seems your enemy's are: a) advantaged on the defensive, when you have to come to them, b) has the advantage of large urban centres to retreat into. If you're determined to take these cities intact, you're going to be at a bit of a stalemate, unless you're willing to siege them slowly over time. Taking cities by storm is never easy on either the attacker or the city in question.

Now, how to deal with this?

It depends on the enemy's political system. You've only defined the Tractians as 'like Rome', but what stage of Rome? Essentially, how loyal are each of the provincial governors/generals and their armies to their political centre? Furthemore, how loyal are the citizens to their local government versus the central government? If loyalty to the central government is low, then your best bet would be to try and negotiate with each local government in turn, essentially changing their overlords from the enemy's central government to your central government. During this time, you should try to repeatedly challenge and defeat fleets, armies, and other forces of the central government, essentially demonstrating the inability of that government to protect these local states, while simultaneously showcasing your own ability. Militarily, your hands are bound, and I can't see a way forward that's not a long slow slog. As such, your best bet is to rely on the more political.

Instead of quoting all those posts, since they said similar things, I'll just answer them all.

Yes, there are vast mineral deposits, plus virtually infinite potential for geothermal energy collection. Its medium-sized moon could literally be completely mined- all of it is made of useful materials. The star is obviously useful for solar energy. But that's not why the planet is valuable. On the surface, there is a long-term, stable, artificial wormhole created eons ago by a prehistoric starfaring race. It can be used to transport ships to a heavily-defended jungle planet in the center of enemy territory, in the same system as a major industrial center. The molten planet is much nearer to the border and less defended because of how hard it is to build installations there, thus why we're going to it instead of the jungle planet. Orbital bombardment is possible, but we'd rather not destroy the mineral reserves, some of which are within meters of the surface, and we certainly can't afford to destroy the wormhole.

Really, at this point, you're going to have to rely on sealed infantry suits and sealed sealed vehicles that can protect equipment and soldiers from the hostile environment. It seems like it'd be expensive to do so, so forces committed will be very limited. Orbital superiority will be important, as it seems like your main force multiplier will be orbital support in some form or another.

However, with both of these questions, I would re-iterate the FT-Prime principles of co-operation and communication. Talk to your fellow roleplayers, and come up with an acceptable way for things to proceed with both of you. FT tech being what it is, everything I said is limited, simply because the type of tech you have completely varies. Maybe Alexandria has some kind of mind control technology that would eliminated the possibility of insurgency, or maybe all the troops that Eastern Hegemony has are already equipped with such sealed suits and vehicles, so it can easily be a massive campaign on the surface of this hell world. Really, with questions like this, the best advice is to talk to your fellow RPers, and come up with some kind of solutions that's workable for both of you.

[The Eastern Hegemony]

Thanks to both of you.

[Novum Alexandria]

-bigsnip-

You've accelerated the lore writing for Aevum's history significantly. Muh thanks.

[Senkaku]

-bigsnip-

You've accelerated the lore writing for Aevum's history significantly. Muh thanks.

Unless you're concerned about war crimes, the easiest way to ensure you don't have an insurgency to deal with would be to completely wipe out the population. If you want infrastructure intact, start by dropping some bioweapons tailored to the target species. Then wait for a few years, and come in and wipe out the huddled survivors and take everything over.

[Transvaal Vrystaat]

Nuking the affected area into plate glass is also an option, assuming you're fine with rebuilding a bit of infrastructure, and don't mind a little bit of background radiation.

[Transvaal Vrystaat]

Nuking the affected area into plate glass is also an option, assuming you're fine with rebuilding a bit of infrastructure, and don't mind a little bit of background radiation.

[Lubyak]

Nuking the affected area into plate glass is also an option, assuming you're fine with rebuilding a bit of infrastructure, and don't mind a little bit of background radiation.

You've accelerated the lore writing for Aevum's history significantly. Muh thanks.

Unless you're concerned about war crimes, the easiest way to ensure you don't have an insurgency to deal with would be to completely wipe out the population. If you want infrastructure intact, start by dropping some bioweapons tailored to the target species. Then wait for a few years, and come in and wipe out the huddled survivors and take everything over.

He did say he wanted to take the planet with population and infrastructure as intact as possible. Purging the world with nuclear fire/bioweapons seems counter-intuitive to that end.