Bay 12 Games Forum

Funds: ₹3.00

Items

---

Value:	Can't Be Sold
Stock:	1
		Name:	Starter Moonlight Inoculation
		Encumbrance:	None	|	Consumable:	N/A

       Usage: Can only be used in town on a Candidate Hunter. Cures them and converts them into a Hunter that you can equip with items and send them on expeditions as needed. This special injection does not add traits during the cure process, nor can it be used to add traits to existing Hunters.

---

As the game progresses, you gain access to various Locations that where you can send an Expedition. An expedition consists of one or more Hunters, who may come from various players or player coalitions. Each expedition has a cost, which represents the expense in supplies of getting each Hunter to that particular location, and this fee must be paid for every Hunter in the expedition.

Each expedition is a string of Encounters, which are combat actions where the Hunters go up against NPC enemies, other Hunters, or both. Each encounter takes one turn. The owner(s) of surviving Hunter(s) will receive combat logs at the end of the encounter, as well as the loot gained. The players can then decide to push forward on the expedition, which allows them to start another encounter next round without paying the expedition fee again, or return to Town. The loot and combat difficulty increase with each subsequent encounter on the same expedition, but all loot gained is lost forever if the Hunters are killed before returning to town.

There are two main ways of going on an expedition, Embarking and Invading.

When you Embark, you are intentionally trying to not meet with any other Hunters. You can specify any friendly Hunters you are going with, and as long as their owner(s) also specify that they're going with you, then you'll all join on the same side and fight together.

When you Invade, you are intentionally trying to pick a fight with another Hunter or group of Hunters who are already embarked. When you invade, there is a significant chance you won't find anyone and will embark on the expedition normally, but if you do find a target you'll enter during the start of their encounter, creating a 3-way fight between the Invader(s), the AI, and the original embarkers. If there are multiple invasion candidates, you will invade one at random and cannot specify any one group in particular. You can, however, specify groups that you will immediately back off from if you invade. This, however, can lead to a very high chance of wasting your turn. In this case, you gain nothing, but can otherwise proceed as though you were victorious.

 If you invade a group that is on the first stage of their expedition, you will be able to continue as a normal expedition after you achieve victory. Otherwise, you will be forced to turn back immediately, attempt to invade again immediately, or begin a new expedition at stage 1, if you achieve victory. After a successful invasion, you will have access to all the loot from the encounter, as well as the loot they've uncovered thus far. As with a normal expedition, you can invade with others.

If you are already a party member on an established expedition, you can also opt to Betray instead of going deeper or heading back to town. If you betray, it's treated the same as if you invaded (creating a 3-way fight), but you are guaranteed to get the fight.

Multiple invaders can independently invade the same area, and each will be on their own side, allowing for N-sided battles.

At the very end of an expedition, there may be a special Boss encounter. If the next encounter will be a boss encounter, you will be told so in order to inform your decision to press forward or turn back.

You can send me your actions for Expeditions AND ONLY EXPEDITIONS via PM. If PM actions and thread actions conflict, I will prioritize PM actions. Interacting with the store and other non-expedition actions still have to be in thread. If you are part of a coalition, I expect you to either CC your compatriots or have Chairman control.

There's a lot of these, so bear with me here. There are two main categories, Intrinsic and Set stats. Intrinsic stats are part of what something is, and can only be changed by other items or gaining levels. However, Set stats can be configured whenever you're between encounters.

For Hunters, Hunter Candidates, and monsters, the actual numbers behind their intrinsic stats are obfusticated. Why? Because I felt like it.
Mortal Span: How much HP a unit can have. This number is always pretty low. Someone of average health can be killed by a single shotgun blast.
Armor Save: How effective a unit's armor is at preventing damage.
Strength: How likely a unit is to inflict serious damage when hitting in melee.
Toughness: How likely a unit is to be able to shrug off damage when struck.
Melee Skill: How likely a unit is to land a hit in melee.
Ranged Skill: How likely a unit is to land a hit at range
Alacrity: How many melee attacks a unit can make at base
Enc. Limit: The only non-obfusticated Candidate/Hunter stat. Determines how many items you can bring with you.
Mobility Chance: How likely a unit is to be able make or take ground in combat.
Initiative: How likely a candidate is to be placed high in the turn order for combat.

All Hunters can also have 3 Set stats
Preferred Range: The distance a Hunter will attempt to keep between themselves and enemies. 0 is Melee, larger numbers represent longer ranges.

Target Priority (Ranged): You can set six kinds of priority here, giving each a numeric weight. If there are multiple available targets for a ranged weapon, then the target that gets the largest value of the weights you've chosen will get shot at.
-Wounded: Applies its weight to any target in range that's wounded.
-Closest: Applies its weight to the nearest target you can shoot
-Furthest: Applies its weight to the furthest target you can shoot
-LeastNumerous: Applies its weight to the target you can shoot with the lowest number of units in its mob
-MostNumerous: Applies its weight to the target you can shoot with the highest number of units in its mob
-HasRanged: Applies its weight to any target you can shoot that has a ranged attack

Target Priority (Melee): Same as above, except Closest and Furthest can't be used.

For Melee Weapons, there are five main statistics. Every Melee Weapon has an encumbrance of 1, unless it's a Hybrid weapon (see below) in which case it has an encumbrance of 2.

Extra Attacks: A modifier to the number of base melee attacks a Hunter gets. Cannot cause the number of attacks to drop below 1.
Strength Mod: A modifier to the Hunter's melee strength.
Pierce: Directly penalizes the target's Armor save when attacking.
Damage: The number of wounds this weapon deals.
Hybrid: A yes/no. If no, then it's just a melee weapon. If yes, then this weapon is also a ranged weapon and, if equipped, you cannot also equip a separate ranged weapon.

For Ranged Weapons, there are 8 main stats, and as well as range brackets which can be disabled as needed.
Attacks: How many ranged attacks you can make in a round with this weapon.
Extra Attacks: Rolls 1dx, where X is the value of this stat, and gives you that many extra ranged attacks this round.
Damage: How many wounds a successful hit from this weapon deals.
Strength: The effective strength of the ranged attacks. (Not affected by the Hunter's strength)
Pierce:Directly penalizes the target's Armor save when attacking.
Ammunition Carried: How much reserve this ammunition gets at the start of each Expedition. | Will automatically refill this supply when in town.
Ammunition Used: How much ammunition is used for each attack.
Hybrid: A yes/no. If no, then it's just a ranged weapon. If yes, then this weapon is also a melee weapon and, if equipped, you cannot also equip a separate melee weapon.

Ranged weapons also have ranged brackets, which is the list of all ranges they can shoot at and any modifiers for that particular range. Between encounters you can always elect to turn off a particular bracket or brackets if you don't want to use the weapon at that range. Each bracket has 6 values.
Range: What range the bracket applies to.
ACC: Modifies the chance to hit the target at that range.
DMG: Modifies the damage
ATK: Modifies the number of attacks
ARP: Modifies the armor piercing value
STR: Modifies the ranged strength

For Gear, there's only 3 things to pay attention to.
Encumbrance: How many encumbrance slots the item takes up on a Hunter
Consumable: Whether the item disappears when used. There may be additional rules for it being consumed in the description.
Usage: Describes how and when a piece of gear can be activated, what it does, and any other effects that it applies or conditions it has.

The Store is where you'll get Experimental Candidates to use Inoculations on, purchase weapons and equipment, and sell off your ill-gotten gains.

Every round, the store loses a certain amount of inventory, gains a certain amount of inventory, and may shift its prices. Due to the way this happens, high-tier appear rarely and vanish quickly.

The store is not, entirely, First Come, First Served. Experimental Candidates are sold entirely through auction, with the max price limited only by what people are willing to pay.

For other items, however, you can either start the bid at the given price, or instantly buy the item for twice the listed price. When bidding against an existing bid, you're required to exceed the last bid by a minimum of ₹0.05 per rarity tier.
       ₹0.05 for Tier 5, (no symbol)
       ₹0.10 for Tier 4 (✢ symbol)
       ₹0.15 for Tier 3 (❊ symbol)
       ₹0.20 for Tier 2 (✾ symbol)
       ₹0.25 for Tier 1 (ꕥ symbol)

To prevent abuse, if you are currently winning the auction for an item or Hunter and you cancel a winning bid, you need to either find someone willing to take over your bid, or pay 10% of the canceled bid as an auctioneer's fee.

Items you gain will have a 'value' attached to them, which is what you'll be able to sell them for at the shop, no questions asked.

When an encounter starts, ranges are set between all units. Each encounter will usually tell you roughly what range you'll start at, and what the variability is.

Every round, initiative is recalculated. Each unit takes turns going through all of its actions. Many enemy units are mobs, that is they are made up of many smaller units. Mobs take their actions as though they were a single unit.

First, a unit attempts to maneuver into its favored range. Making a mobility check on every non-allied unit that isn't already at its favored range. If it passes, it moves one step closer to its favored range, if it fails, it doesn't move. Importantly, if a unit is engaged in melee, it must first disengage from all melee combatants before it can move further/closer to any other unit.

Second, if a unit is in melee, it launches melee attacks at the available non-allied melee target that best matches its selection criteria.

Third, if a unit has a ranged attack, has ammo, and has non-allied units at a range where its weapon has an active bracket, it will make all the ranged attacks it can at the unit that best matches its selection criteria.

This continues until there is only one side left in a given encounter.

The actual gritty details of how attacking and dealing damage works is ripped from WH40k. First, a unit rolls to hit (Melee or ranged skill). If it hits, it rolls to see if it did significant damage (str vs toughness). If it did significant damage, the defender makes an armor save. If the armor save fails, then damage is dealt based on the weapon.

If the damage reduces the target's mortal span to 0 or below, it loses one unit from its mob. If it's the last mob in the unit, that unit is destroyed. Importantly, extra damage does not roll over. There is no benefit to dealing massive damage to low HP targets. 
 

When you're sending out an expedition or proceeding from one stage of an expedition to the next, there's a list of things I need to know to make it go smoothly. I need to know what hunters are going where, what equipment they have, any equipment they want to use/avoid using, and how they intend to engage. These four blocks are pretty easy.

The first two, what Hunters are going and what equipment they have, it's pretty freeform. Something Like,


Expedition to Darremont's Bell
Dame Beatrice of Thorne
Mare's Leg Rifle
Cruciform Sword
T4 Ammo

Doug the Subway Fugitive
Canister Rifle
Serrated Axe
Adrenaline Shot
Rage Serum


I don't need to know the hunter's stats, or even what items are being slotted where as long as I know what Hunter they're going on. It's all pretty self-explanatory for me to punch in, and the important part here is WHO is going and WHAT they're carrying. The next section, the equipment you intend to reserve or explicitly use, is easy to format but occasionally difficult to think about. You only need to explicitly use an item if, in its usage block, it contains the phrase 'declare'. For instance, the adrenaline shot has to be declared before it's taken at the beginning of an encounter. Conversely, you only need to explicitly disable an item if it would be used automatically during an encounter. Spare ammo, for instance, is automatically used when the unit runs out of ammunition. You activate or disable items with the following command

Activate: [item name]
Disable: [item name]

Any item not explicitly Disabled will be Enabled, and any item not explicitly Activated before the Encounter will not be used. When adding commands, make sure the names are as exact as possible. So, if we add these commands to the above, we can get a total expedition that looks like,


Expedition to Darremont's Bell
Dame Beatrice of Thorne
Mare's Leg Rifle
Cruciform Sword
T4 Ammo
---
Disable: T4 Ammo

Doug the Subway Fugitive
Canister Rifle
Serrated Axe
Adrenaline Shot
Rage Serum
---
Activate: Adrenaline Shot


The last block is the biggest, and contains a number of commands. You need to set a Hunter's range brackets, their preferred range, their movement, and their targeting parameters. The first, range brackets, is done with a single string.

[Enable/Disable] Range: [Input]

The [Input] can be done in a number of forms. You can list out all the numbers you want as the simplest method (I.E: 2,3,4,5,9), you can specify a range (2-5), and unbounded range (3+, 9-), or you can mix and match all of the above. If you're using the 'Enable' command, then any range not within the parameters listed will be disabled, and the reverse is true if you're using the 'Disable' command. Next up is the preferred range of the Hunter, which is set easily as a single value,

Preferred Range: [Input]

The preferred range should be a single integer. Importantly, you can't set your preferred range to a range you can't fight at. If you try to do so, your range will be automatically set to 0, or melee. Movement is also simple, with only a couple options to choose from,

Movement: [Hold Ground/Walk Only/Run To Engage/Free Movement]

If set to 'Hold Ground' a Hunter will never take movement actions, towards or away from enemies. 'Walk Only' forbids sprinting in any case, but otherwise allows normal movement. 'Run to Engage' allows a hunter to sprint as long as they're outside any of their usable weapon ranges, and 'Free Movement' places no restrictions on sprinting or movement. This leaves only targeting parameters, which takes up the largest section, and should look like:

Melee Target Weights (
[WeightName] = [WeightValue]
[...]
[WeightName] = [WeightValue]
)

Ranged Target Weights (
[WeightName] = [WeightValue]
[...]
[WeightName] = [WeightValue]
)

Where '[WeightName]' is any of the targeting types listed in the above "Explanation Of Stats" section, and the [WeightValue] is any integer. Any targeting type you don't set using this command is treated as 0. Combining all of the above, our final expedition manifest should look like,

Expedition to Darremont's Bell
Dame Beatrice of Thorne
Mare's Leg Rifle
Cruciform Sword
T4 Ammo
---
Disable: T4 Ammo
Disable Range: 1-, 4+
Preferred Range: 2
Movement: Run To Engage

Melee Target Weights (
Wounded = 1
)

Ranged Target Weights (
LeastNumerous = 2
Wounded = 2
HasRanged = 3
)

Doug the Subway Fugitive
Canister Rifle
Serrated Axe
Adrenaline Shot
Rage Serum
---
Activate: Adrenaline Shot
Enable Range: 2-7
Preferred Range: 7
Movement: Walk Only

Melee Target Weights (
Wounded = 2
MostNumerous = 1
)

Ranged Target Weights (
HasRanged = 2
Wounded = 1
)

Long form explanation of each zone is in the core thread.

Zone of Toxicity
- The Parasitic forest (Side Alpha)  [Width: 9000]
- The Bog   [Width: 10000]
- The Misted Ravines  (Side Omega)  [Width: 3000]

Zone of Fire
- The Dried Seabed (Side Alpha)  [Width: 15000]
- The Lava Rivers  [Width: 5000]
- The Desert of Mirrors (Side Omega)  [Width: 15000]

Zone of Razors
- The Howling Crevasses (Side Alpha) [Width 3000]
- The Glowing Crater [Width 15000]
- The Shattered Badlands  (Side Omega) [Width 9000]

Grub Production: 4000

Grub
 -Evolution Chance: 68%
 -Available Evolutions:
 -- Digger: 30%
 -- PteroHawk: 30%
 -- Ember: 20%
 -- Murder-Pup: 20%
 -- Grub+: 0%
 -Mutagenic Potential: 0
 - Description: A large, approximately one meter long,  grub of unobtrusive hue. Slow moving and nearly blind, this creature scrapes the surrounding matter for anything it can digest - which, given its robust gastric system, is quite a lot. Robust by dint of its general simplicity, this grub would only be dangerous in large vast numbers or to the already incapacitated.
---> Revision: Grubs constantly produce a slime with slightly controllable adhesion, along them to climb and cling to previously inaccessible surfaces. Slime is also toxic, creating escalating nerve misfires that start at pain and (very slowly) work their way up to spasms and seizures.
 
 Grub+
 -Evolution Chance: NaN
 -Mutagenic Potential: 3
 - Description: A larger variant of the grub, with small plates of carapace bridging out from its fleshy body. Keratinous growths from its body mass can be used like peg-legs to supplement its undulating motion, and a pair of similar spike-growths flank its mouth to aid in gouging out food. It is still, however, nearly blind, quite slow, and barely more than harmless when alone.

---

Driller
[Efficacy: 4]
-Base Incidence Rate: 30%
-Evolution Chance: 35%
 -Available Evolutions:
 -- Driller+ 80%
 -- Cultivator 20%
 -Mutagenic Potential: 0
 - Description: The Driller is, in most respects, a strictly improved grub. Similar in form, light yet strong carapace segments covered - though the necessities of flexibility mean that each body contains substantial gaps where an adequately soft chitin sub-form could not be produced. The modified rostrum of the Driller grows into a peculiar spiral that incorporates multiple mineral elements, giving it a deep rusty hue and excellent hardness for an organic material. This shape enables a Driller to contort its body and then whip forward, slamming the drill into a hard surface before death rolling its way into building a tunnel - using its peculiar neck flexibility to reset the 'drill' as needed. Vibrational senses in many stiff hairs that poke between chitin plates enable the Driller to detect nearby motion in the air, and to 'hear' a short distance into most solid materials. This enables them to select softer paths through most materials and to detect when ambush worthy prey is near.

Problematically, the driller's method of locomotion, though fast and effective, is very energy-intensive and rarely yields enough to sustain the driller. This is generally solved by sending swarms of drillers into the same hole, so that the tip of the drill, the bit, is constantly starving and being cannibalized by those drillers behind them. This pattern most be done carefully, however, as the suffocation of the swarm in tight quarters is a real danger. In combat, the Driller's senses let it down considerably. While its face is an excellent weapon, it has very little accuracy after an initial ambush - after which vibration and movement will typically arise in a furious clamor.  Too many drillers in an ambush will occasionally result in a death seethe, where the drillers thrust to the surface and thrash around, creating so much debris and movement that the drillers continue to believe that foes exist when none remain. This means that the thrashing continues until the drillers exhaust themselves or they splatter enough of one another to end the cycle.
---> Revision: Vacuole stomachs. A back-evolution of the Driller+, Drillers now have additional stomachs to enable them to survive harsh environments and brave the tunnels longer before expiring.

Driller+
-Evolution Chance: NaN
 -Mutagenic Potential 3
 - Description: The Driller+ is only slightly larger than the driller, with improved chitin coverage in the form of dozens of small fingernail like ridges between body segments which both serve to abrade the tunnel walls and to protect the fleshy-fleshy insides. The most notable change in the Driller+ is a system of three flexible chitin plates along its length, corresponding with the locations of three reserve vacuole stomachs. One vacuole is reserved to hold air for harsh environments, one reserved to hold pre-digested food back to extend endurance, and one to hold water back for the same reason. This allows the Driller+ to enter much harsher environs, travel much further, and to dig for longer than an ordinary driller.

---

Ember
[Efficacy: 6]
-Base Incidence Rate: 20%
-Evolution Chance: 35%
 -Available Evolutions:
 -- Ember+ 100%
 -Mutagenic Potential 2
-Description: The straight jump to a hybrid sulfur-oxygen based energy cycle is a feat of evolution that, under normal circumstances of evolution, would be utterly impossible. Under the guiding talons of your intelligent design, however, it’s merely difficult. Externally, the Ember isn’t much to look at. If not moving and in bright light, one could mistake it for a heavily armored grub that was set on fire and burned black. In dim light, or when in motion, the tell-tale cherry glow of the Ember’s internal structure can be seen through the more flexible sections of its carapace.

Considerably better armored than the grub by dint of the insulating carapace that keeps it from freezing to death, the Ember is a nightmarish demon when compared to its progenitor. Any assault by a grub would result in only slight damage to the Ember’s armor while the grub receives serious burns in return. While concerted efforts by multiple assailants could gouge through its carapace, this would also intensify the local defensive heat - though at the cost of dangerously chilling the Ember. While its heat makes standard grubslime much less useful, the Ember is capable of secreting a thick coat when injured. This rapidly plugs the injuries and dries into a new insulating layer -if one much weaker than carapace. In offense, the Ember retains the grub’s bite unchanged but also gains the ability to expectorate a stream of sulphurous bile. This spit can be projected up to ten meters and is scalding, mildly acidic, and slightly toxic. While not enormously fatal, it is extremely painful.

It is very important to note, however, that while a nightmarish demon when compared to a grub, the Ember is still bound by many of the grub’s failings. Its locomotion is slow and simplistic, its vision is poor, and it doesn’t really have any other senses to write home about. Its spit attack is laughably inaccurate at its maximum range, and its body is still quite capable of overheating if exposed to temperatures significantly more extreme than itself.

Ember+
-Evolution Chance: NaN
 -Mutagenic Potential 3
-Description: The elite form of the Ember features an alternative cellular structure, integrating silicon-based anatomy with normal carbon-based structures. The usage of Si-S instead of C-S molecular bonds allows for considerably higher internal temperatures, while cell-walls incorporating hybrid silicate organics tolerate this heightened temperature with much lower thermal degradation. As such, while the Elite Ember is unchanged in size and shape to the standard Ember, it has a resting heat in the low hundreds (Centigrade) and a commensurately brighter glow, higher heat damage, and a sludgier high-temperature spit.

---

Ptero-Hawk
[Efficacy: 5]
-Base Incidence Rate: 30%
-Evolution Chance: 35%
 -Available Evolutions:
 -- Ptero-Hawk+ 70%
 -- Stomato-Shrike 30%
 -Mutagenic Potential: 0
--MUTAGENIC BOOST USED
-Description: The Ptero-Hawk is the first major step towards reclaiming the old forms of splendor - featuring both legs and wings. While the body itself is distinctly grub-like, its internal structure is a tightly wound spiral of muscular and metabolic systems, capable of a speed and strength of motion far beyond that of its parent. On the ground, the Ptero-Hawk is competent. It’s stride could charitably be described as ‘loping’, being much quicker than that of a grub, but inefficient when compared to the memories of previous organisms who once claimed the land.

This is fine, as the Ptero-Hawk was never meant to claim the land.

A powerful flyer, their membranous wings are capable of vaulting into flight from a standstill when needed and provide good aerial speed (when in a dive or at the cost of a lot of flapping) and excellent maneuverability. Strong rear talons allow the Ptero-Hawk to grip into creatures and tear chunks away, completely lift smaller creatures into the air, or merely to anchor the Ptero-Hawk while it tears into enemies with its sharp-beak.

Perhaps most importantly. The Ptero-Hawk has greatly augmented psionic ability and moderately increased (though still animalistic) intelligence that allows it to act as a psionic forward relay for the queen. Sharp-eyed, the Ptero-Hawk can provide enhanced vision of the terrain and the enemy to the queen as any other member of the swarm, but it’s also capable of holding a register of basic instructions and criteria from the queen. This enables it to react immediately to what it sees and provide directions for other creatures in the swarm. These instructions are simple but can be relayed nearly immediately based on what the Ptero-Hawk sees in the field.

Ptero-Hawk+
-Evolution Chance: NaN
 -Mutagenic Potential 4
-Description: The Elite Ptero-Hawk is a beefy creature, with nearly three times the wingspan of its ancestor, dramatically increased musculature in its legs and wings, and heavy, reshaped beak with an axe-like front that allows it to quite literally hammer its way through heavy armor before opening its sharp mouth to bite into the innards. While somewhat less maneuverable in the air by dint of its size, the Ptero-Hawk is just as fast in flight. Its psionic abilities are modestly improved, capable of providing stronger and longer-lasting directional signals - but more importantly, is a vicious streak of animal cunning in its intelligence. While it has no ability (or concept) of going beyond its queen’s instructions, it can be very nearly clever in its method of execution.

---

Murder Pup
[Efficacy: 4]
-Base Incidence Rate: 30%
-Evolution Chance: 35%
 -Available Evolutions:
 -- Murder Pup+ 100%
 -Mutagenic Potential 3
-Description:  The newly evolved creature, identified by the curious mnemonic ‘Murder Pup’, is an example of a moderate success at something only moderately difficult. The six-legged creature is marvelously quick and agile - particularly compared to what it came from. Capable of leaping great bounds, sprinting over most terrain, and clambering up and down moderately steep faces by a combination of strong limbs and piton-like claws. Its eyes provide it redundant and highly accurate depth perception which greatly facilitates its ability to make leaping attacks.

Its hairs, unfortunately, don’t live up to expectations. While, when combined with the natural slime secretions, they provide a thick barrier against biological contaminants, their matted slickness means that don’t ‘poof’ enough to provide good protection from blunt impacts, and the lubricating slime means that anything moderately sharp can push the hairs out of the way to strike flesh below. Against slashing blows, the hair is effective, and it does a fair job of filtering large particulates, but the biological complexity brought on in increasing its strength means that it doesn’t shed out as quickly as hoped.
The pack link is an effective expansion of the grub’s own increased awareness, allowing for limited impression sharing from between pack members. While not as accurate as Alpha Entity’s mosaic, it allows pack mates to act and react as a group to accomplish their directives.

While somewhat lacking in armor penetration unless it can get a running start, the Murder-Pup does a good job against soft targets. Slashing talons and gnawing teeth go far, particularly when the Pups work together, and her downward stabbing still maintains decent penetration against thicker targets.
Murder Pup+
-Evolution Chance: NaN
 -Mutagenic Potential 3
-Description: Outwardly extremely similar to the ordinary Murder Pup, the Elite features minor musculoskeletal changes that allow it to better orient its body into a ‘diving’ position when performing leaps - focusing its bladed forelimbs to a single point and mechanically locking its joints for better initial contact damage and penetration. Much more importantly, however, is the fact that each elite Murder Pup is, in a manner of speaking, born pregnant. Each elite carries a partially developed clone inside its body, held in bio-stasis until necromones released by the Elite being killed awake the infant within. At this point the infant will rapidly begin chewing its way out of its parent, using its remains as biological material to fuel its greatly accelerated development. It will be combat-capable in minutes, and, given sufficient food, fully mature within six hours. Newly ‘born’ pups also contain dormant inner entities, but the enormously increased cancer risks from the breakneck cellular division required to enable the infant’s meteoric growth rate typically mean that it’s only 2 or 3 rebirths before the Murder Pup is seriously impeded by prolific tumors.

---

DRILLER EVOLUTION
Cultivator
[Efficacy: 4]
-Base Incidence Rate: 20%
-Evolution Chance: 25%
 -Available Evolutions:
 -- Cultivator+ 100%
 -Mutagenic Potential 3
-Description: The Cultivator appears, at first, to be a grub-like regression of the Driller. Its expanded flesh largely free of the the Driller’s streamlined armor and somewhat bloated in appearance, while the driller’s refined headshape has been lost in favor of a singular gaping maw - though that maw is filled with independently muscled grinding ‘teeth’ that do preserve the driller’s head shape, among other specialized forms. Primarily a scavenger and waste disposal system, the cultivator has additional scent/taste receptors embedded within its mouth to sample and classify the materials it grinds to dust, as well as a modified system of tongues and sphincters that allow it to semi-separate the material it pulverizes into various specialized stomachs for efficient digestion.

In terms of normal edible matter, the Cultivator is an efficient eater, capable of heightening the relative nutritional content of its meals while still breaking down many threatening toxins within the food - though far from all. When ingesting inorganic rocky matter and earth, the Cultivator uses a  series of stomachs that act as chemical leaching bathes, extracting trace mineral content to supply a surprisingly wide variety of micro-nutrient necessities, but no gut bacteria has yet been isolated or woven that would enable the Cultivator to reach a positive energy balance by this process alone. These micro-nutrients, however, are put to good use enriching and supplying a wide variety of symbiotic life that lives sheltered beneath the Cultivator’s remaining chitin.

During its daylight cycle, the Cultivator either burrows to the surface of its own accord or signals nearby drillers to accomplish the same, and opens the plates of its back armor to reveal a small but significant hidden garden which rapidly unfurls and greets whatever light is available. Supported by a mineral enriched ‘soil’ specially craft by the cultivator, these plants are highly exotic and efficient photosynthetic life forms, serving as biological factories to turn the raw glop the Cultivator ingests and leaches into a rich and complete food product - which is then secreted back into vacuoles within the Cultivator for later dispensation to the swarm.

While it largely meets its design goals, the cultivator’s communication ability is somewhat lacking, and can only make the broadest of directions to the Drillers. This isn’t helped by the fact that it’s primitive scent receptors, though sufficient to help it tell when it’s eating something good, and when there’s something good already on the ground, have difficulty determining which direction good food is when it’s still embedded in the earth. The Cultivator’s stomach system, likewise, is highly functional, but still vulnerable to many hazards, and the tongue system used to filter food items often fails to be 100% accurate when sorting through the materials pulped by the Cultivator’s teeth. Its portable garden, while efficient, is also not yet a perfect eco-system, and doesn’t integrate properly with native bioforms in order to leverage them to full effect.

Cultivator+
-Evolution Chance: NaN
 -Mutagenic Potential 3
-Description: Larger than an ordinary Cultivator, principally in length, the Elite form is similar in most respects. A bit hungrier, a bit better at sensing exactly where the tasty scents come from, and a bit faster at eating as a general rule, the primary difference in the Elite cultivator is an expanded set of honey-vacuoles with muscular linings, external valves, and small internal organ capable of rapidly secreting hundreds of small seeds into the vacuole. Once the cultivator reaches its honey capacity, it will inject seeds into one of these special vacuoles and vent it, spattering everything in a wide cone with a thick layer of fertilized biomatter which, on contact with the air, rapidly blooms into a thick lichen-like mat of quasi-vegetation. This vegetation is imminently edible, and contains fibrous roots that are capable of infiltrating many soft materials and supporting the plant as a separate life form - given sufficient water. While this is useful in externalizing the honey in a stable state, it also enables the elite cultivator to rapidly blanket the dead in a layer of plantish matter that will slowly but steadily help eat them to continuously supply more food.

---

PTERO-HAWK EVOLUTION
Stomato-Shrike
[Efficacy: 5   (3, 1, 2, 3)]
-Base Incidence Rate: 30%
-Evolution Chance: 25%
 -Available Evolutions:
 -- Stomato-Shrike+ 100%
 -Mutagenic Potential: 4
-Description: The Stomato-Shrike is big, powerful, and somewhat awkward. As large as a Pterohawk elite, and with an evolved armor coating, the wingspan and musculature of the Stomato-Shrike is greatly improved to facilitate the new scale and weight. Some sacrifices in armor coverage have to be made in order to accommodate graceful flight, and there are notable gaps where the wings connect to the body and where the wing fingers hinge.

Her frontal arms, long and thin as they are, provide excellent reach with their talons, but have a fragility that makes them very difficult to use for more than fly-by swipes at soft targets. Her mouth parts are heavily reinforced, with a pecking beak capable of skewering smaller targets or fishing for the innards of weakened targets. Her primary weapon, of course, is her peculiar back legs. Designed to unite into a single flying wedge, heavy with carapace and laden with internal reinforcement, it provides the Stomato-Shrike with a potent mixture of crushing and piercing impact damage. When it can line up, which is where the issues start happening.

While reasonably aerodynamic in level flight, there’s no getting around the fact that the Stomato-Shrike is big and heavy. This means that, when on final approach, it’s very difficult for the Stomato-Shrike to significantly change course. Likewise, the abdomen twist needed to bring the ‘legs’ to bear in mid-air completely disrupts the flight profile, focusing the Stomato-Shrike entirely on not crashing completely rather than on aiming. Even when it hits, small and soft targets don’t really provide enough resistance to adequately slow the Stomato-Shrike, and, despite reinforcement, a collision with harder varieties of ground can still irreparably shatter the Shrike’s rear legs depending on speed and angle. If it misses its target, the Shrike has to desperately unroll in the air and pull out of its maneuver pre-impact, or risk smashing its body into the ground. 

In short, while potentially devastating against something big, heavily armored, and slow, the enormous risks in regularly utilizing the Shrike means the queen has to pick targets quite carefully and accept that many Shrikes won’t make it back from the first pass against mobile targets in hard terrain.

Stomato-Shrike+
-Evolution Chance: NaN
 -Mutagenic Potential: 4
-Description: The Elite Stomato-Shrike is… curvier than its predecessor. Where the ordinary Stomato-Shrike hurls itself at its targets like a stiletto or an épée, the elite variant on its final approach maintains a hooked appearance, with the concavity of the blade facing upwards. This, on normal impacts, means that the Shrike will slide upwards during impact and that overpenetration collisions or near misses will hopefully result in a gentler, rolling collision. The elite variant doubles down on this, however, with a triple row of chitinous ‘warts’ that extend with dozens of nodules from the base of its ‘neck’ down almost to the tip of its abdomen. Beneath their external chitin, these warts have internal cartilaginous shock-absorbing structures very similar to that of the Shrike’s bones. When the elite shrike detects that its attack run will fail and it doesn’t have a good chance to abort back to the air, it makes a single powerful flap with its wings accompanied by a muscular spasm that simultaneously tucks in its arms and wings and curls the body into a spinning ball configuration. In this manner, the elite Shrike can connect with the ground and bounce several times - potentially still cannon-balling into its target - and can unfurl its wings either at the height of a bounce or after it comes to rest.

At the start of the game there are only a few things available for purchase. However, there’s a plethora of goods available for purchase via the HGMT network. You can inquire over any item or service you’d like to purchase*, and I'll try and update this list occasionally.

Flat-Pack Settlement: 10 Credits
// Salt of the earth, people of the land, the common clay of the galactic west. 
//
// You know, morons.
:- Targets one tile without a settlement and establishes a settlement.
:- Needs one fiscal quarter to establish, then will gather and send resources quarterly.
:- Contains people, roofs, tools, a limited garrison equipment, and (most importantly) an orbital slingshot cannon to send packages back to orbit.

Labrador Sweep: 1 Credit
// For when you’ve got your eye on the slobbery red ball.
:- Targets 1 map tile. Reveals most surface resources and conditions of that tile. Detects but does not reveal subterranean resources.
:-  1-Step Adjacent tiles have a 50% chance to have most surface resources/conditions revealed. Detects but does not reveal subterranean resources.
:-   2-Step Adjacent tiles have a 25% chance to have their surface resources/conditions revealed. Detects but does not reveal subterranean resources.


Bloodhound Deep Scan: 2 Credits
// Because the acronym for Penetrative Imaging Scanning Sweep didn’t poll well.
:- Targets 1 Map tile, reveals all surface and subterranean resources/conditions.

Haz-Rec Team: 2 Credits
// For when you’re not sure if you lost your settlement to alien attack, worker riots, hyperstorms, or a tragic coffee spill in ops.
:- Targets 1 map tile. Very limited ability to scan the area, but can provide detailed status of anything you’ve lost contact with. Can eliminate minor threats and fix minor issues.

*Weapons of Mass Destruction may not be used on planet, per the terms of your contract. Purchases made for the sole purpose of ‘salting the earth’ against others may likewise be subject to punitive financial measures. SiegCorp put you here to make money, not get into some kind of perverse Arms Race.

Once you have a settlement on the ground, it will spend its first quarter setting up and telling you the details about its immediate surface area that you might have missed. This is also when you’re going to set the labor priorities for your settlement, which tells it what you want it to produce that quarter.

Based on the local surveys, your settlements will be able to produce various goods in exchange for labor, list in a format like the below:

Sand  1:2
Ultraganic Crops 1:1 (Prod. Limit: 5)
Lithium Ore Mine 1:0.2 (Prod. Limit: 1) (Dangerous!)

Where the format is Labor:Product. Remember, Labor starts with an L and is on the Left.

At base, each settlement has 10 units of labor they can expend per quarter.

You CAN extract resources from tiles that your settlement is not on. However, each tile traveled increases the labor cost by 15%, multiplicatively- so 115%->132%->152%->175%

You can also send people to just walk around and survey the land, which gets you some basic data on resources. Just poking about a bit costs you 0.5 labor per tile traveled, and 1 labor per ground survey.

All new items, expansions, factories, tactical teams, settlements, etc not covered in the OP need to be licensed and purchased.

Each Quarter, each Custodian can request a single new license from SiegCorp. You may buy as many licenses already on offer as you have funds, but you may request only a single new license each quarter. Licenses will be revealed as soon as you confirm your request and do NOT wait until the end of the quarter to become active, enabling you to request and purchase a license in the same quarter.

Purchasing a license will grant you the ability to purchase that item. For an 'exclusivity period' after and including the initial purchase of the license, ONLY license holders will be able to acquire the licensed merchandise. During the exclusivity period, other custodians can still buy licenses in order to buy the item, they are not forced to buy it from license holders. After the exclusivity period ends, the license becomes public and any individual can purchase the item in question. However, before this exclusivity period expires, any combination of current license holders can pay the initial license fee, +1 credit for each license holder beyond the first, for another full period of private licensing.

The exclusivity period for any given license is a number of quarters equal the the greater of 4 and 2*License Fee.

You have basic starting equipment. There are a few surprises. Most are not good surprises. One thing is nice. It is very nice. It is emblematic of your faction. Due to insufficient amounts of resource, it is very expensive.

The designed items are all here as you expect. Your expectations might be flawed.

Advanced Equipment
You do your basic equipment but you advance it by making it better. Good job! This makes it better like you expect. The expenses are also advanced too. Your coolest people are sad because they can't afford to use their coolest stuff. Most people are happy with their advanced stuff. Most people are not the coolest people.

Enemy Tax
The people love your tax! The people are not the enemy! They are cool. The enemy is ultimately uncool.

The problem is that the enemy refuses to pay their taxes! This is sad. Your very smart and cool people have a solution! They make tax collectors who go to the enemy and take their stuff. Some call them muggers. These people are uncool. They are government officials!

Who mug people.

Because Taxes.

Tax Officials will join the fight! They will tax the enemy in battle and give their stuff to the good guys. This will go like you think it will.

Super Cool Upgrades Deluxe
You make super cool upgrades to your arsenal like you want. Great work! The changes made are all super cool. Not everyone can have them. The enemy is uncool to the max. There are no people in your side who are uncool to the max. There are people in your empire who are less cool than others. They use their money to buy cool soda and cool shoes and learn cool things to say. They want to be cooler. They want to be the coolest. Not everyone can be the coolest. You are becoming a coolocracy. Coolness is becoming stratified like you expect. Bloodline matters less than coolness. Facts matter less than coolness. Experience matters less than coolness. Designers are cool to the max.

Your tax collectors are very cool. They take stuff from the enemy. The enemy is uncool to the max. That makes people want the stuff the tax collectors make a lot less. The people do not want uncool stuff. 

Health: Monday
God Juice: The ghost of a smidge of a sniff of a whisper.

The number of pips beside a planet indicates its size. Larger planets usually have larger resource pools and can support more potent infrastructure, but the infrastructure is more expensive to build there. Small planets, conversely, are cheap to build on but provide more limited resources.

Map design is courtesy of evictedSaint; scholar, artist, and warrior poet.

Terran
Advantage: Bore-Savants: When working with and innovating using bore drives, Terran empires are more effective.
Drawback: Lastborn of the Stars: Rush dice have a 75% chance to degrade performance.
Details: Bipedal primates, usually between 150 and 200cm in height and weighing between 60 and 80kg. They are dual gendered and display only limited sexual dimorphism. Adept and aggressive tool users, humans are characterized by their integration of tools (simple or otherwise) into nearly every aspect of their lives. It is uncommon in the extreme for a human in public to not be covered nearly head to toe in various garments (tools to deal with heat and cold) or to be without various technological tools to provide entertainment when bored, facilitate social connection, and provide enhanced awareness of the world. The current human system of government is both militaristic and rigidly authoritarian, but this was not always the case. Sadly, Earth was once united and mostly harmonious, largely eschewing machines of war and utilizing rapidly advancing technology to make great strides against problems of hunger, disease, and social disparity created by their barbarous past. A first contact event with a hostile alien species, however, nearly destroyed the people of Earth- and it succeeded in turning dreams of peaceful stellar exploration into drifting ash.

Liir
Advantage: Biomastery:  When manipulating biology, genetics, or living organisms, Liir empires are more effective.
Drawback: Ecological Sensitivity: All Liir regiments have increased cost.
Details: Closely resembling the cetaceans of Earth, albeit with greater variability in color and marking, the Liir are highly intelligent, and natively telekinetic, creatures. They were once very gentle creatures, seeking only to live simple lives in harmony with their oceanic environs, and completely lacking in a concept of 'war' on the scale of hundreds of nations. Even now, the Liiran word for war is actually developed from the phrase 'blood feud between great families'. Natively, they never developed beyond the bronze age in terms of construction and principally used their native telekinetic abilities to shape their world as a place of a balance between great and small instead of resorting to tools. Unfortunately, however, this peace was shattered by a race known as the Suul'Ka (A complex phrase, basically meaning The Enemy, but in such a way as to represent an Anethema to Peaceful Liiran life) which enslaved the Liir and basically force marched their technological understanding forwards. The Liir rebelled with a tailored bio-weapon made in one of the very labs they served in as slaves, an act so successful that the Suul'Ka have not been seen since. Still, the event shaped the Liir, and those of the current age are harder and more unforgiving than their ancestors. Where once the Liir would have accepted that some of their own must pass on so that all could grow together, they now seek an assurance of power so that they can never be made slaves again.

Tarka
Advantage: Brothers of Battle: When working to improve infantry, through training, superior weapons, or vehicles, Tarka empires are more effective.
Drawback: Honorbound: Overmatched Tarka take more damage when retreating.
Details: Somewhat similar to humans, Tarka resemble scaled apes. A three gendered species, they consist of females, inactive males, and active males. Females are slightly larger than humans, and are generally kept far from the gaze of outsiders. However, their role in culture is central, as though they are forbidden from government, they are the only ones allowed to own land or decide inheritance. Inactive males are characterized by lithe bodies, obedient personalities, and quick intellects. Human sized or slightly smaller, these creatures form the bulk of the male population, and thus are the stock for government positions and ground forces both. Active males are roughly twice the height and four to eight times the mass of a human, their physical form and senses heightened dramatically- though their intelligence suffers somewhat from the hormonal cocktail raging through them.  Their cultural, though strict and ordered, is conflict oriented by nature- requiring that failure be repaid by sacrifice, and disobedience remedied with death. They are creatures of strict laws and codes, both of written law and of unspoken bonds between each individual. Though many would see Tarka society as cruel or needless draconian, at heart they are a simple people. They cleave the universe into clean lines, with little room and less tolerance for doubt or equivocation.

Hiver
Advantage: The Swarm: When working with tactics, or pushing against the command limit, Hiver empires are more effective.
Drawback: Distributed Intelligence: All project durations are slightly longer. 
Details: The Hiver share many similarities with the insects of Earth, but are rather distinct entities. They have an endo-skeletal structure, and their external chitin is often cut and ornamented heavily. Hiver 'gender' is complex, with Drones, Warriors, Princes, Princesses, and Queens all being distinct forces. Drones are small, exceedingly common, affable, and unintelligent- receiving psychic instruction from their princess and then running mostly on routine. Warriors are similar, but their forms are of thick armor, strong musculature, and natural weaponry- with their minds bred to little more than biological combat computers. Princes are similar in form to small, lightly built warriors, but are vastly more intelligent.  Princes are needed to remain near a princess in order to fertilize her offspring, but they are capable of independent thought are often used to supervise important affairs in science or military matters. Princes, however, can only extend limited psionic control over their peers. Princesses are the governors large planetary regions, and (given the assistance of a prince) are capable of birthing hundreds of thousands of drones and warriors. Queens are far rarer still, and can command hundreds of princesses across interstellar distances. Culturally, the Hiver behave somewhat like an unusually effective system feudal lords- with Queen at the top of the chain and the princesses managing various fiefs below.

Morrigi
Advantage: Firstborn of Heaven: Dice spent to advance projects get +1.
Drawback: Decadence: Morrigi planetary infrastructure is always slightly more expensive.
Details: Morrigi are both large and ancient, described as 'feathered dragons' when they visited ancient human cultures, and are thought to be the origin for the Quetzalcoatl myths of the Aztec people. While they breed slowly, they are also exceptionally long lived- a trait which resulted in strong breeding restrictions enforced by their government. Strong proponents of automation, Morrigi drones and robotics were once the most advanced within known space. There was a time when the Morrigi were masters among the stars, with a span of dozens of worlds and a technological crown second to none. Cultural decline, however, did what no enemy ever could. Their society decadent and cumbersome in its unending social restrictions, generations of Morrigi grew up barely aware of how the technology around them worked- until that technology began to fail. The Morrigi now are the result of a cultural revolution, one that began with the destruction of the millenia old system of government that had stalled nearly all progress in favor of maintaining order. Though they have lost nearly all that they were in the long, dark centuries of the decline, Morrigi seek to reclaim the old world and forge a new empire in the stars.

Dice in this arms race will have a result from 1 to 6, but will have a bell-shaped instead of a uniform distribution. Behind the scenes, this is accomplished by rolling 1d4+2d2-2. For designs, efficacy and cost are rolled separately. Revisions merely work on a single roll, but use the same distribution. What follows is a rough breakdown of the different rolls for prototypes.

Result 1: [6.25% Chance] Design are known for their SNAFU operation (if any), severe bugs run wild, or costs are through the roof.
Result 2: [18.75% Chance] Design function well below expected parameters, but kinda work. There is at least one severe bug, and likely a couple little ones. Costs are much higher than expected.
Result 3: [25% Chance] Design functions, perhaps with room for improvement. One severe or multiple minor bugs.  Costs are a bit higher would be desired.
Result 4: [25% Chance] Design functions, meeting or slightly exceeding expections. No severe bugs, at least one minor bug. Costs are within expected parameters.
Result 5: [18.75% Chance] Design works very well, exceeding expected parameters. No more than a single minor bug, if any. Costs are considerably lower than expected.
Result 6: [6.25% Chance] Design works incredibly well, with some kind of added benefit. No bugs to report. Costs are trivial.

These results are generally independent of the difficulty of the project, which is reflected in the time it takes to actually complete a project (see Designs and Projects, below), and bonuses or penalties will usually only be applied as credits warrant.

Designs, Projects, and Revisions

Designs are the bread and butter of any arms race and require a minimum of three dice to start. Designs can be basically anything; the theoretical foundations of a groundbreaking discovery, a brand new main battle tank, a new resource extraction structure, or a sweeping social reform.

In this arms race, chosen designs immediately result in a prototype model that accurately depicts what the finished product will be like. This prototype will have only one roll associated with it, the efficacy. Efficacy is a general determiner of how well the finished project measures up to the design goals, which makes having clear and well defined design goals essential. Want something cheap? Make its design inexpensive. Want something better than everything else? Spare no expense in its materials. Good rolls can help and bad rolls can harm, but the focus is on your write-up.

However, you will not immediately be able to manufacture this new technology at a grand scale until you've completed the requisite research. This requisite research is referred to as the Project, and is a general reflection of how much time and expense needs to be invested before your empire is able to make a particular piece of technology viable for widespread deployment. When a project reaches 50% completion it reaches the prototype stage and a couple things can happen depending on the type of project. For projects that cannot be 'manufactured' (their end product has no unit cost), reaching prototype may give access to a reduced form of the technology or may grant a limited improvement in another area. For projects that do have a manufacturable end product,  the team gains the ability to construct prototypes for twice the cost of the finished technology, and this cost scales downwards as additional progress is made. For instance, if the progress cost of a project is 20, then prototypes will cost 200% at progress 10, 150% at progress 15 110% at progress 19. 

Every project rolls dice for time, progress, and cost when it is initiated. Time modifies a projects duration; in general, a project with a 1 in time will complete in half the time as the same project with a 6 in time. That being said, a project won't have a progress requirement lower than 3, and generally won't go too much higher than 35. The progress roll determines how much progress the engineers can make in a turn without direct intervention; a 1 generates only 1 unit of progress per turn, a 2 or 3 provides two units of progress, a four or a five provides three units of progress, and a six provides 4 units of progress per turn. The Cost roll is a similar multiplier for the material costs of the research performed, a low cost roll may have high costs and strongly restrict what resources you can use to pay for a project, while a good roll reduces overall costs and provides more flexible methods of payment.

A project header for an ambitious new ship generator looks something like this,

Hastur ξ-Phase Generator: 18/32 [2] | 100 Metal + 150 Transplutonic + 40 Synthetic | Rushed 1 times | 300 metal, 450 transplutonic, 120 Synthetic, and 6 dice invested

Name, followed by current progress/total needed with the amount guaranteed per turn in brackets, then how much each die of progress costs, the number of times the project has been rushed, and the total resources that have been currently invested.

Every round, during the design phase, a team can elect to spend any number of their dice on progressing projects. For each die they spend on a project, they have to pay that project's resource cost. So if you elect to spend 2 die on the above, you have to spend 200 metal, 300 transplutonic, and 80 synthetic. For every die you spend resources on, you can also elect to rush the project. This gives you an extra die that adds to project progress normally, but has a 33% chance to add a bug of random severity to the project or worsen an existing bug. It's not as bad as getting a -1 on your efficacy roll, but it can add up.

A project can be canceled at any time, and its resources re-allocated. When a project is canceled, the team gets 50% of the invested resources back at the end of the next turn, and a random number of dice back between 1 and the total number of dice invested, including the initial 3 dice used to start the project.

Revisions
Revisions are as standard in Arms Race games. They cost only one die, but they provide limited returns. Importantly, revisions are best used as improvements and modifications to existing technology and/or tactics. If you find yourself wondering whether something should be a revision or a new design, ask yourself whether it uses the same frame, and whether the addition is a technology by itself.

However, sufficiently minor new technology or preliminary scientific work can be done with revisions. Some situations are tricky, and if you overreach you might get a crappy version of what you wanted and a none-too-subtle hint that you should spend a design somewhere.  I might feel nice enough to clarify if you ask about a particular situation (particularly in the early game), but don't count on that.

A special use of revisions is the creation of production patterns, which enable fully outfitted regiments or completed ships to be built from production points instead of raw resources. Importantly, infrastructure projects cannot have production patterns made, and cannot be bought from production points.

Shipbuilding Essentials
While your starting tech will be freeform, there's a few mechanical details in common with all ships. All ships are designed as hulls, with three key feature shared across all designs: the number of hardpoints, the mission capacity, and the ship class. Hardpoints determine the max number (and max size) of the guns you can stack on, mission capacity is for every other component you want to shove into the ship, and ship class determines how much command cost a vessel requires. One important extra feature that all ships should have, but may not be included intrinsically, is at least one generator.

Hardpoints are places to permanently mount guns/missiles/etc to ships. While you might later be able to come up with disposable missile systems and similar temporary augments, hardpoints are the currency of a ship's primary weapons. Hardpoints are divided, generally, into small, medium, and large mounts. Though one can later imagine a need for specialized classifications for Torpedo bays, fixed beam assemblies, and similar devices, their exact mounting type will be decided on creation. Most weapons that can be mounted to a small can be double mounted to a medium, or triple mounted to a large, a process which multiplies all the costs of the weapon, but also enables it to scale when needed. This process can also be used to double mount a medium weapon into a large slot. However, this process is not optimal, since a medium mount can house an optimized weapon three times the size of a small mount, and a large mount can house an optimized mount three times the size of a medium mount.

Mission capacity is how much space inside the ship there is for ammunition storage, shield generators, Bore spools, ritual chambers, internal organs, crew, etc. Most everything that you'd like to stick inside a ship requires a certain amount of dedicated space. Every weapon and subsystem you have requires space, and some space is spoken for from the outset. In general, a ship absolutely needs to reserve space for three things: Its weapons, its generator, and its engines and FTL system. Space beyond that can go into frills, spinning rims, and the tech that turns a ship into something more advanced than an FTL-capable cardboard box in space.

A vessel's class determines how well command vessels can keep track of and utilize it in combat, as reflected by a command cost (See the Fleet Cap definition below). This arms race breaks things into 7 big classes of ship, where each class of ship is about three times larger than the class before it. In order of size and command cost, the classes are Corvette (1), Frigate (3), Destroyer (6), Cruiser (12), Battleship (24), Dreadnought (48), and Leviathan (96). If you're wondering what class a ship will be when you design, just ask me and I'll take a look. In general, corvettes are all small mount, a frigate might mount a couple medium mounts, a destroyer might mount a single large weapon, a cruiser operates a good mix of mounts with multiple larges, a battleship pushes the envelope towards an all large gun layout, a dreadnought can mount massive cannons with ease with room to spare for systems, and a Leviathan does whatever the fuck you want.

A ship's generator could be a psionic savant, the beating heart that pumps blood through a bioship, or a nuclear fission reactor, but -whatever the form- its purpose is to run power to every system on board. In addition to the mission capacity of a ship, you'll be fighting against the energy rating of a ship's generator. A ship can't use more energy at any one time than the generator produces, although captains will intelligently deactivate non-essential or irrelevant systems depending on the circumstance. For instance, a cloaked ship whose cloak proves ineffective against enemy sensors, or that can't fight and cloak at the same time, will deactivate that system in order to turn on other systems- such as weapons, shields, and engines. Likewise, if a ship can't power its FTL and guns at the same time, but is engaged in combat, it will power down FTL to fight back unless it's actively attempting to retreat or told to do otherwise by its tactics.


The Fleet Cap: Each fleet has a cap, determined by its command vessel. This rating is an abstraction of a commander's skill, the suite of tools available on the command ship, the obedience of subordinate officers, the ease of relaying commands, etc. Each vessel has 'command cost', which represents how easily it can be accounted for and manipulated by a commanding officer. When in combat, a fleet can only actively field a total number of ships whose sum total of command cost does not exceed the fleet's cap. Any vessels beyond that will be kept in reserves to replace losses. If there is no command vessel, the fleet cap is 15. You may deploy any vessel alone, even if its command cost exceeds 15.  Command vessels will generally be weaker than their peers, owing to their need to house more advanced computational and broadcast systems than their peers. However, one does not necessarily need to create a special hull for them, and can instead designate a plug and play command suite which instead merely requires power and mission space.

Deploying multiple command vessels at the same time does not increase the fleet cap, although any command vessels in reserves will automatically be pulled to the front if the primary command vessel is disabled or otherwise rendered unable to command. Command vessels will count against their own fleet capacity.


Landing Force Essentials
Each ground regiment is a fighting force of infantry, assumed to have internal logistical support and some light transport capability. Everything else that regiment needs must be provided through attachments- secondary buys that improves the options available to a regiment. Armor support, naval ships, artillery, advanced weapons- all of these are provided through the miracle of attachments.

Each attachment is a separate budget item, and is generally tightly focused. Designing a new type of heavy tank or monstrous xenomorph is likely to generate something analogous to a heavy armor attachment. An advanced weapons package with technology much more powerful and expensive than can be produced for the rank and file is likely an elite troop attachment. In general, augments of the same type do not stack up- but the most ideal type for the situation will be used. For instance, if a division is given three different air superiority attachments, they'll use the best mix of of fighters to defend themselves, but still won't be as strong as three separate divisions each with one of the three air superiority attachments.

That said, it is possible to integrate some things directly into a regiment itself, and one can always create new types of regiments. Machine armies, hordes of dimensional horrors, xenomorph scourges, if they would make up the bulk of a fighting force, you can directly make regiments from them instead. In the same way, you can still try to make upgrades to the base equipment of a regiment- though this may result in increasing its cost.

Getting a regiment to a planet requires a transport of some variety. Considering that a regiment consists of several thousand individuals, transport ships are generally of decent size, and you cannot just pack troops onto a ship that doesn't have space set aside for them. Unloading marines from a 'hot' area ends a transport's turn, as does loading troops from a 'hot' area. Be careful with this, as it makes transports quite vulnerable. Transports can load and unload freely from safe worlds.

Resources: Instead of certain bovine systems, we run off TOMES, Transplutonics, Organics, Metals, Energetics, and Synthetics. These are used to pay for various research projects, and can be used to pay for ships and equipment beyond production limits.
Transplutonics: Tranplutonics are refined and exotic heavy elements, of great variety and use in industrial and scientific application. Often key components of high-energy systems.
Organics: A wide category of carbon based molecules, used in biotech, polymers, solvents, and a great variety of other applications.
Metals: Copper, iron, tungsten, whole nine yards. Most basic metallic elements are covered under the domain of 'metals'.
Energetics: Useful light elements and their respective molecules, usually desiring to be in either a more gaseous or a more exploded form than their solid or liquid configurations.
Synthetics: Synthetic elements and molecules that do not exist in nature and (generally) desire to decay unless kept under tight containment. Difficult to create, harder to contain, and essential for advanced technology.

Planets and Planetary Infrastructure
Every star represents a single potentially habitable planet. Each planet has one value for size and five values for resources, as well as accessibility ratings. The value for the resource is the theoretical max the planet could produce per turn, given ideal infrastructure. The accessibility rating represents your present ability to mine/capture/farm that resource- if you controlled the planet. Thus, a basic planet's readout, without infrastructure, looks something like:

Size: 3
Transplutonics: 1800 | 10% | 180/turn 
Organics:  6500 | 10% | 650/turn
Metals:  5000 | 20% | 1000/turn
Energetics: 3600 | 20% | 720/turn
Synthetics: 150 | 0% | 0/turn

After infrastructure is added on, the readout changes to reflect the bonuses from various technologies. At start, everyone has the ability to bring the accessibility up by 25% with various technologies. Homeworlds start with 50% across the board, to represent the ideal 25% basic extraction rate with the best attached starting facilities. The exception is synthetics, which starts at 25%, since you can't natively extract synthetics. So the world above, with partial infrastructure, looks like:

Size: 3
Transplutonics: 1800 | 10% + 20% (High-Energy Processing facilities IV) | 440/turn 
Organics:  6500 | 10% + 10% (Modular Farms II) | 650/turn
Metals:  5000 | 20% + 15% (Mining Station III)| 1750/turn
Energetics: 3600 | 20% | 720/turn
Synthetics: 150 | 0% + 25% (Elemental Synthesis Facility V) | 37/turn

The cost of infrastructure is modified by the size of the planet, which in turn modifies how much of a given resource a planet is likely to have. Aside from resource extraction infrastructure, there's also defensive infrastructure, which is designed to let the planet either help during orbital combat or provide protection against invading armies. Defense stations, GtS missile silos, orbital fighter bays, planetary shields, etc, are all examples of defensive infrastructure. During planetary bombardment, there's a chance, based on the combined firepower of the attacking fleet and how good they are at actually hitting the surface, for damage to be done to surface facilities. If a facility is damaged, its rank is dropped by one.

If a player captures a planet that retains intact civilian facilities that they already understand, they can use them at half efficacy. If they can already build such facilities themselves, they can bring them up to full production for a quarter of the facility's normal cost. If they don't understand a facility, they can attempt to spend revisions, or designs if they think its warranted, to gain understanding.

Production: Each nation has a certain amount of dedicated war production, which is a pool from which complete vessels and outfitted regiments can be purchased using production plans. Production plans, created through revisions, are a bill that contains every aspect of a ship, down to the last detail, and costs a specific number of production points- determined at the time the revision roll is made. Every turn you get to decide how your points are allocated, and partial builds are allowed. That is, if a production plan costs more production points than you currently have, it will be partially completed and will automatically pull points next round. Regiments, complete with all attachments, can also be constructed from the production point pool in the same manner.

Production points are gained from planets, based on the total resource income from each planet. Certain structures may be capable of boosting these numbers, but, at base, production is determined by,
Transplutonics Production * 3
Organics Production * 1
Metals Production * 1
Energetics Production * 1.5
Synthetics Production * 7.5

This same formula can be applied to production patterns, replacing 'production' with 'cost' to gain an estimate of how much the pattern will cost. Again, this may be able to be altered down the road.  In general, production points should be set aside for tried and true ships and units- the backbone of the armies that will be flung from year to year. It's there to make things nicer and easier to take care of than juggling the TOMES resources. The TOMES resources, then, are more for allocating towards special projects, creating the specialized fleets needed to turn the tide of a battle, and building infrastructure up on worlds. Infrastructure projects cannot be supported via production points, so this is a particularly important role.

Everybody has the same FTL travel: The Bore Drive. This is basically the big lie of the setting that allows the dynamic of space combat to change to something slightly more comprehensible without undue logical gymnastics, it's the big lie that allows for fleets to travel between solar systems in real-time without breaking Einstein's cage or utilizing engines of horrifyingly monstrous destructive power, and generally adds an element of spice to the Arms Race.

The gist of it is that there is a baseline technology called a Bore Drive that can create an effective wormhole between two points in space. The location where the wormhole is initiated is referred to as the genesis, the destination is referred to as the terminus, and the hole itself is referred to as the aperture. As long as the aperture is stable, matter and energy can slip through without consequence, nearly regardless of distance. The energy required to create a bore exhibits logarithmic growth with regards to distance, with an initial input energy modified exponentially with regard to the radius of the aperture being created. In addition to the energy required, the computation time required to generate a stable bore scales sub-exponentially with distance- though the distance calculated is not necessarily a straight line, and this law is dependent on there being a path to the target which is mostly composed of hard vacuum with only stable, or semi-stable interference sources along the way. Boring out of, into, or through an atmosphere is ridiculously difficult compared to boring through empty vacuum. Bores are also inherently unstable, they are created based on a mathematical model accurate only at the moment of their creation- and thus rapidly expires as time passes. As the model expires, the bore becomes more and more unstable, emitting radiation relative to the input mass, and damaging anything that passes through it. While a slightly unstable bore can likely be survived by an armored vessel, a frayed or highly unstable bore will tear apart (or worse, collapse on) anything that passes through it. Bores themselves are also fragile, and using them degrades them over time.  The more mass and energy pass through a bore, the more decayed and unstable it becomes.

It's important to remember that bores are directional. Anything moving through the genesis will be transported to the terminus, but one can pass through the terminus without effect- though this does risk being rammed by whatever is coming through the bore.

The 3 Axioms of Bore Travel

• The smaller the diameter, the less energy you need.
• The longer the distance, the more time and energy you need.
• The longer a bore has been in existence and the more it has been used, the more dangerous it is to traverse.

The interdiction of a bore can be achieved simply by complicating the model with as much relevant noise as possible. The designs of interdiction fields are numerous, but the basic idea is to create a schodastic interferent electromagnetically, physically, or gravitationally. This complicates the computations required to generate a stable aperature, dramatically slow even short-range jumps and either making it difficult or impossible to achieve a 'clean' bore. It is possible to generate a bore through interdiction, but creating a bore using a model that is incorrect even at the moment of its creation generates a ragged aperature (how ragged depends on how 'close' the model was) that will at best damage and at worst destroy anything that passes through it.

The consequences of this lie are numerous, but a few are worth exploring in greater detail. FTL communication is achievable by micro-bores dialed into specific or semi-specific locations. With enough bore drives to open and close bores, and the computation power devoted to recalculated new bore trajectories, high bandwidth connections can be established where the primary speed limitation is the 'air gap' where the EM signal propagates through free space instead of being transmitted through the bore. Large ships can achieve effective FTL sensors by opening small bores to near-field locations (such as a few light-minutes) and firing probes equipped with micro-boring transmitters. Smaller information gathering ships often do not have the luxury of mounting bore-capable drones, and instead make due with 'porpoising'. Patrol ships 'porpoise' by take a patrol route and jumping between a number of determined points, spending enough time there to recharge their bore drive and gather sensor information before moving on to the next point. In this manner, even a relatively small and ill-equipped fleet can create an FTL sensor network via mosaic search pattern. Naturally, however, such maneuvers can create bizarre after-images when a ship arrives before its earlier lightspeed electromagnetic reflection. A ship making multiple Bore jumps in a straight line would first be 'seen' at its closest approach, and then would briefly appear to flicker into existence at each of its earlier locations as its afterimage catches up.

Commander
Aki, Chief of the Secret Police

Creatures
Hired Thugs x10
Police Sniper x5
Police Lieutenant x3
Robotic Officer x5

Reactions
Weapon Scan X10
Hired Assassin x5

Tactics
Field Interrogation x5
Tap the Mind x5
Sanctioned Raid x10

Strategy
Crush the Sparks x2

Energy
20 Slum
20 Metropolis