ARC and Maradonian Military Doctrine

Today, we continue the series on military vehicles in the Psi-Wars Galaxy.  Last time, we looked at the Empire and their "Imperial Combine" manufactured military vehicles.  Today, we look at their prime enemies and the default "heroic" faction of the Alliance.

I've been wanting to talk about them for awhile. When I wrote up the Empire back in Iteration 6, I also wrote up a series on how I saw the Empire fight their wars.  With the Alliance, I began to do something similar, but I don't think I ever released it, and I know I didn't finish the vehicles because they proved complicated and, by this point, I had already grown disgruntled with the Spaceship design system.  I needed to really build everything from scratch and think my way through their different tactics.

But I like the Alliance because it presents such a contrast to the Empire, but they also represent a fairly unique faction for the setting.  The Alliance, with their focus on elegant aristocracy, space knights and a precognitive preisthood, represent an obvious deviation from the Psi-Wars inspiration of Star Wars, and I feel like their doctrines and military vehicles, despite some obvious inspirations from Star Wars (such as the Valiant by way of Starhawk by way of X-wing) represent a very different way of war.

So, as usual for these series, I'll start by talking about how the Alliance engages in war and what their priorities are.

Elite Armor II: Imperial Knight Armor

Over on my Patreon, I did a poll some time ago about the elements of the Emperor’s mystical conspiracy, those aspects of the Empire that are beyond the control of generals and bureaucrats, that answer directly to him and know of his command over Dark Communion. One such element is the Imperial Knight, a small cadre of elite psychics who have studied at the feet of the Emperor himself and deploy their psychic might in a dark mirror of the Maradon Space Knight or, more accurately, as a dark mirror to the Templars of Communion.

In Tinker Titan Rebel Spy, we had a player who wanted to be an imperial knight (even before Imperial Knights were a thing), and wanted to know what sort of armor they would have. I gave him some hacked together version of what I had designed for Maradon Space Knights, but it required a few different features, such as a unique material (diamondoid laminate, in this case). When I rebuilt the materials, he expressed sadness that I had removed their unique material (replacing it with Carbide Laminate, which is “common” now for the soldiers of the Empire). What this says to me is that his armor mattered to him. And why shouldn’t it? An Imperial Knight is as defined by his armor as a Maradon space knight is.

So, if I’m going to give Maradon space knights cool armor options, should I not give the same to Imperial Knights? More, this is an opportunity to show off some of the other options made available to the Cult of the Emperor, what secret technologies he uses to empower his most prized minions.

Imperial Knights are an order of magnitude rarer than Maradon Space Knights, but where most space knights play at war with their dueling while warrior over-priced fashion-original armor, the Imperial Knights are titans of psychic power with access to Dark Communion and thus make up for quantity with quality. So while this armor is unlikely to see much use throughout the Empire, those who wear it are such key NPCs, or the armor is sufficiently interesting to PCs, that its definitely worth diving into at great length.

Imperial Knight armor is elite armor. It may not be purchased with money, only as signature gear.

Elite Armor I: Maradon Space Knight Armor

While working on armor, I came to a few realizations.  First, increasingly, armor is the signature of a few factions, especially the Maradonian space knights.  One thing I've noticed my readers really enjoy is the idea of a fully armored space knight, rather than the lightly-clad space samurai of Star Wars.  I don't think they mind the latter so much as see the former as an element that stands out.  As such, I want to really bring an emphasis to that armor.

Psi-Wars feels like fantasy, but isn't.  From this, certain forms of Space Opera gain a lot of interesting tension, so I wanted the armor of the setting to merge tropes of each.  On the one hand, they should be obviously "plate armor," perhaps with relic suits worn by ancestors and maybe with magic psychic powers embedded into them.  But at the same time, if you look through the designs of armor in Star Wars: the Old Republic, or even just Star Wars itself, you find glowing buttons and tubes and wires.  What does all of that do?  I want to evoke a feel of the space marine who lovingly attends his armor, runs diagnostics over the whole thing before closing it about him with an atmospheric hiss and a click, and then ignites his force sword with a crack and prepares for battle.

All of this means that I need to give Space Knight Armor additional attention and, perhaps, ways of differentiating them.  Ideally, given its nature, each suit would be perfectly unique, as is true of all forms of Low-Tech armor from which it draws its inspiration, but asking your players to design their own suits of armor is a bridge too far, so I offer a few models and a few modification options below.

All forms of Elite Armor, including Space Knight armor, are sufficiently unique that one cannot buy them; they must be purchased as Signature Gear.

Psi-Wars Armor

This took longer than I thought.  Thank you for your patience!

This should be an all-inclusive list of all generic armor, readily market-available, in the Psi-Wars setting. If more arises, I’ll add to it. Most of the armor is presented as generic; the lack of inclusion of various corporations (especially Colt and Han & Kord) does not mean they do not produce armor, rather that the armor they produce is no different from the armor noted below.

There will be additional armor, but not included here.  This will represent "rare" and exclusive armor, typically taken as signature gear rather than purchased off the market.

The Personal Tech Overview of Humanity

I previously said I was going to “start” with the Maradonian military, but that’s not entirely right. What I should start with is an overview, as per the general setting design principles I laid out in this post here (and here). The whole reason I started moving in this direction is that I can’t really do anything, such as run a decent playtest, until I have a good sense of what everything looks like, and there’s a few ways you can do that: you can start from the bottom up (“I want to use Starhawks and Typhoons!”) or you can start from the top and work your way down, which is generally how I prefer to work with this, because it’s easier to “start simple” and build your complexity from there. This means we should work on a quick summary of what all the military forces of Psi-Wars look like.

This will do a few things for us. First, it gives us a “minimum viable product.” If I design the Maradonian forces, but fail to build anything else, you’ve got 1/4th of a setting, but if I give you an overview and do nothing else, you’ve at least got insights into how you can flesh out the entire setting. Second, by building an overview, we can get a sense of what general elements the setting has in abundance, and what it might lack; that is, we can make sure that military forces don’t look too similar. It helps us ensure that each faction has a well-defined niche. Finally, it makes the final design process easier, because we’ve already laid out the blueprints.

I know I said “all” the military forces, but naturally, we’re focusing on humanity because they are the core “default” of the setting. A good space opera has nice contrasts between the familiar and the exotic, and humanity and its grounding in “Star Wars” is familiar. We know the Rebel Alliance vs the Empire, we have little trouble explaining it; to be sure, I’ve done some different things, but it should still feel familiar. Aliens, by contrast, should contrast with the base we build out of the “familiar” human setting elements, so that when you transition to those parts of the setting, they feel as exotic as they should. Thus, we will not worry about them yet, and will handle them in due course.

This will be a very high level perspective. We’ll briefly touch on how I see each faction approaching their military, what sorts of niches that I see them filling, and then hit on the archetypes I’ve mentioned in my previous posts, creating a table so we can see where we have “too much” of a particular element, and where we might need more.

A further note: I had intended this to cover spaceships, robot and vehicles too, but something happened: it got very long and, also, I noticed some of my readers already discussing ground doctrines and equipment, so I thought it might be better to strike while the iron was hot and just release this portion and move on to personal equipment and come back and deal with robots, vehicles and spaceships once that was done.  I'll have a general overview of space combat soon enough as well.

Also, I’m diving into corporations and I want to credit a couple of people for names: GURB, for introducing quite a few corporate names, and Alan Chambers, for suggesting Starlink Telecom.

Ground Based Military Doctrines

Military personal gear and ground vehicles are ultimately tied to soldiers and military forces. Every weapon manufactured and every tank built are designed to fit the military doctrine of the customer that purchases them. Thus, to understand what military gear we have, we need to understand how a force fights. For the purposes of this post, we want to get a sense of how a military force fights “on the ground,” with infantry, human(ish) scale combat robots, and ground vehicles, so we can get a sense of what sort of equipment they might manufacture to fit their needs.

Building the Psi-Wars Technological Frameworks

“I understand why you’re revisiting this technological stuff, I just miss working on the setting” - Maverick (I think; and paraphrased, because it was ages ago, which illustrates how much of a problem it is)

“I think its time for a new playtest.” – The Secret Council, ominously

I am unhappy. I had wanted to round out a final playtest and a new version of the Dreadnought, but in the latter case, it felt redundant based on what I knew was coming up, and the former felt unfinishable, because I would have to use “Generic everything.” In fact, the reason I came up with the Generic Fleet was to do a playtest, but even as I found myself sitting down to write it, the words wouldn’t come, and I think I know why: it’s because I’m unhappy. I am unhappy because Maverick is right, and that sort of thing is way more fun. I am unhappy because my mind swims with alternate races and lost houses and Alexian secrets. I am unhappy because I know you want to see those things and I watch interest dwindle on my discord and my patreon.

It is very important that a writer be happy. Sure, he can be stressed, push to his limits and freaking out, but he should be enjoying what he’s doing, or the words will stop flowing. Creativity requires an element of play, as they are deeply bound to one another! If it feels like homework, then, perhaps you shouldn’t do it! Yes, eventually you need to get it done, but pain (and boredom, etc) are indicators of a problem, and perhaps we can solve that problem.

There’s a reason I’ve done Iteration 7 the way I have, and it boils down to dissatisfaction with GURPS Spaceships as a catchall for vehicles. We don’t have Vehicles 4e, and I must say, this journey has showed me a lot, and provided a great deal of useful assets I need to move forward with this, and now that we have them, let’s move forward, shall we?

I want to make December my “Framework” month, not in the bland “Let’s talk about technology in an abstract way” but concrete material that you, as a Psi-Wars player, can use, and I want it to reflect the setting, so we’ll kill two birds with one stone: we’ll build a gear catalog and develop our setting at the same time! Though let’s be honest, this will take more than a month, but let’s see where this takes us!

Sensors, Planetary Power and Comments on Smuggling: A Psi-Wars Electronics Ammendum

While not strictly necessary for the running of a good Psi-Wars game, I personally enjoy thinking through the consequences of my choices, and I find that many of my readers enjoy that as well.  Of course, a good space opera game doesn't really care much about the details, and cares more about the "Wow!" factor.  For example, a lot of Star Wars die-hards like to complain about a particular scene in the Last Jedi, while a lot of people counter "It's just a movie, it's cool, stop thinking about it so much," and that's fair!  If you stopped and overthought most of your space opera, you could probably poke a million holes in it, and the Rule of Cool matters more.  But that said, I find that having a bit of verisimilitude can help, especially if it doesn't hurt.  I've tried to arrange Psi-Wars so that it makes sense where possible.  I don't demand that you use it this way, but I try to bake it in without really getting in your way, so that if a weird question comes up, it can be easily and logically answered.

What follows here is my musings over the consequences of the scanner rules I have created, paired with some thoughts on hyperspace, war, smuggling and pirates and the roles fighters might play in such a situation.  It's really not necessary to understand, but like my discussions on Patreon about imperial "tactics," or my discussions on this blog about Insurgent Tactics, I find some people enjoy this sort of musing, so if you do, well, see you after the jump!

Psi-Wars Electronics I -- Comms

I've been working on Electronics in general when my post spiraled out of control.  Originally, this was meant to cover sensors and sensor jamming when I noticed I hadn't touched on Comms and Comm-Jamming.  I, at least, see the fight between ECM and ECCM as a fight between sensor systems and counter-sensor systems, but in fact, it began as comm systems and counter-comm systems. Furthermore, this makes sense: once you’ve begun an ambush (whether pirates attacking a shipping freighter or a fighter wing attacking a patrol), not only do you want to prevent yourself from being detected, but you want to prevent the target from calling for assistance, or communicating any intelligence back to an authority figure.  So this is where I want to start.

Normally I peel out the GURPS Vehicles stuff for my Patreons, but it's too small to really make into its own document, and perhaps you'll find it interesting, and they have the whole document, which will be updated to include this information, so see it as a preview.  I also talk about "Low, Patrolling and High Orbit," in the document; this arises from the sensors discussion and a post that will drop later this week.  If I may briefly summarize them: low orbit is 100 miles from the surface, safely above the atmosphere but still close to the action.  Patrolling Orbit is about 500 miles up, as close to the surface as one can get while still maintaining "sight-lines" with other ships that might be guarding the planet at equidistant locations in a band around the planet, and high orbit is 4000 miles, one planetary radius away, which has to do with hyperspatial dynamics.

Psi-Wars Weaponry Revisited

Thus far in Psi-Wars, I've used the Ultra-Tech weapons more or less unchanged, though by Iteration 6, it was clear that we needed some changes.  The following details all weapons available in the setting and their general rules, and some additional changes and thoughts on the scale of weaponry that we might employ, especially on large scales.

Patreon Post: Let's Build a Vehicle (Starfighter Edition)

I continue my examination of my vehicles conversion by diving into starfighters.  Previously I looked at mostly civilian ground vehicles, but this time it's exclusively militaristic aerospatial vehicles using plasma thrusters.  As a result, I learned a lot about how Vehicles handles aerodynamics, and I got a thorough working of my engines, power-plants and took a new look at weaponry.  This is an ongoing process, and each step of the way teaches me a little more about vehicles.

In this case, I've converted a 4e fighter craft from a Pyramid Article, and then two classic vehicles from GURPS Starships: the Typhoon and the Starhawk.  I wouldn't take these versions as "gospel," because I think I'd go into more detail and change quite a few things about the Spaceship design, not the least of which because the SS designs are based on SS constraints, which we don't  have, nor need.

Still, I think it's worthwhile to get a sense of where the design process is going, and I hope you enjoy it.  This is a patreon post available to all $1+ patrons.  If you're a patron, check it out!  And thanks very much for your support.  If you're not a patron, don't worry.  Once I have this stuff worked out, I'll be back with more sci-fi goodness.  Thanks for your patience!

Patreon Post: Let's Build a Vehicle (the Ground Edition)

Those following this new Tech Series of Psi-Wars might have caught a whiff of GURPS Vehicles and, if so, you're exactly right.  I'm too dissatisfied with GURPS Spaceships for all of this, so I thought I would dive in with both feet to see if I could bring Vehicles into 4e.  With the conversion of propulsion, power and materials, that begins to look possible.

This patreon post contains three design diaries:

• A generic hover-car
• A generic hover-bike
• A generic hover-tank

In these design diaries, I check to see if I like the results my numbers give me and look for holes or problems.  This post is available to all $1+ patrons (while it contains some preview information, it's more about a larger project to see what it would take to get Vehicles into 4e, which I think interests more than just the Psi-Wars fans).  If you're a patron, check it out!  And thank you for your support.

Psi-Wars Material Technology

In the far future of the Psi-Wars galaxy, industry makes use of new materials from which to construct their buildings, factories, starships and to armor their soldiers. Most of these materials resemble modern materials, but typically are far stronger and lighter, able to stand up to the firepower of a blaster and to shrug off more primitive attacks with ease. Some are the results of far superior crafting technology, but others are mined from the depths of planetary cores, or taken from exotic asteroids who passed too close to hyperspatial anomalies.

This post has two companion patreon posts:

• For Fellow Travellers ($3+) I have a more detailed look at these materials, including using them for armor design, vehicle design, building design, and some advanced and primitive materials.
• For Dreamers ($1+) I have some research notes on real-world sci-fi materials, as well as conversion notes for GURPS Vehicles 3e armor and GURPS Spaceships armor.

Psi-Wars Propulsion Technology

Psi-Wars features vehicles of all sorts, from hover cars for high speed chases to starfighters zipping around great and mighty capital ships in battles that look surprisingly reminiscent of WW2 battles.  This post takes a look at what technologies the Psi-Wars setting uses to traverse its planets and the galaxy, including:

• Hyperspace drives
• Hyperdynamic technology and aerospace engines including plasma thrusters, impulse drives and the grav drive
• Ground-based propulsion technology including repulsorlift technology, legged vehicles and tracks.
• Aquatic propulsion technology and why it is slowly becoming obsolete.

For those who want additional details about the design process, including the specifications (compatible with the design process of GURPS Vehicles 3e, and with the previous power post!), $3+ patrons can find the design notes here.

Designing an Ultra-Tech Framework

Given my blog’s focus on GURPS sci-fi, I often find myself fielding a lot of questions, especially about Ultra-Tech. I often see criticisms leveled against it that it is the most flawed GURPS book, apart from (perhaps) Magic. While I do not wish to argue for or against this point, I do understand where and how people can find it frustrating. So what I want to do with this post is get to the heart of what I think Ultra-Tech is and what it isn’t. I want to discuss how I use it, and how I recommend you use it too, if you want to get the most out of it, and if you want to understand how GURPS really works, especially when it comes to sci-fi.

I think the biggest problem with GURPS Ultra-Tech stems from the fact that people try to treat it as a catalog when it is better understood as a world-building tool. I see many people try to use Ultra-Tech in a similar manner to how they might use GURPS High-Tech; For example, if you can dig through High-Tech to find that one highly specific gun you want, y ou should be able to do the same in Ultra-Tech, right? Only what they find in Ultra-Tech is, at best, very generic ("Blaster Rifle"), and at worst, potentially profoundly unbalanced. However, GURPS Ultra-Tech dedicates a considerable volume of its pages not to gear that characters could carry around, but to concepts and megastructures, like terraforming projects, cryptography and even playable robots. These certainly impact characters, but they can often be better understood as things that exist in the world with them better than things they carry in their pocket (Incidentally, this is true of High Tech and Low-Tech too, especially when you combine the latter with its companions). Ultra-Tech itself takes this stance, as you can see from the introduction where it discusses how to use the book, including different technological frameworks, different development cycles and gadget control.

My approach with Ultra-Tech has always to take it as a guidebook of inspiration and ideas. Consider, for a moment, if you were to throw up your hands over GURPS, and step over to another system of your choice for your sci-fi epic, such as Fate, World of Darkness or D20. In what sort of book would you look for ideas about your sci-fi game? You might dig through Atomic Rockets or a wiki on a setting you wished to convert, but personally, I'd just pick up Ultra-Tech again, not because I intended to directly use its mechanics, but because those mechanics act like benchmarks, and the discussions in the book offer inspiration. The point of Ultra-Tech, then, is to inform your sci-fi game. The rest, alas, must be done by you.

Just how much work this actually requires can vary from "Just create a list of appropriate technologies" to "How good are you with algebra?"

This will be a short-running series over the next couple of weeks.  Patrons ($1+) gain immediate access to, and in two weeks from this posting date, the full document will be publicly available to everyone.  You can find it (patron and patient reader a like) here.

Iteration 7 Part 1 - Technology

“GURPS Vehicles is more than about just vehicles; it’s a technological infrastructure book” -David Pulver

Why start with technology? Because technology is the foundation of all sci-fi settings. While Psi-Wars endeavors to maintain a “feel” of familiar technology, both by extrapolating modern technology and by making use of familiar Star Wars technology, as well as the sort of “standard tropes” that we tend to see in space opera, rather than diving into a deep exploration of an alternate technological concepts. But even with all of that, the technological differences between the real world and Psi-Wars really need to be carefully outlined and discussed.

Psi-Wars is not a book or a film or a tightly bound computer- or board-game, it is an RPG, and in an RPG, players can and will try to do anything, which is often the source of many an amusing story. Players need to know what they can do and what they can’t, as does the GM, which means we need a really good idea of how technology works, and we need to explain it well, so that the players can see how everything works.

Furthermore, Psi-Wars deliberately draws on exotic ideas. While it doesn’t have crazy technologies like domination nano or consciousness uploading, I do make an effort to find some unusual and fascinating imagery. While Star Wars does trade in fairly familiar tropes, it goes out of its way to embrace the exotic on occassion (the salt plains of Crait, the court of Jaba, the ocean cities of the Gungans, the entire world of Geonosis), and I draw regularly from sci-fi that embraces weirdness, like Dune, the Metabarons and Barsoom. For me, the point of space opera is to go to weird places and have familiar adventures there. If you wanted to save the princess, you’d be playing D&D; you’re here because you want to save the space princess. What, exactly, is a space princess and how is she different?

One of the ways we can show that the setting is exotic is through unusual technology. We don’t have cars, we have repulsor cars. We don’t have guns, we have blasters. We don’t have fighters, we have starfighters, and so on. But, again, these need to be explained and, indeed, players will likely want to read about them! After all, the X-Wing and the Star Destroyer are nearly as discussed as the Jedi and the Force!

We spent iteration 6 exploring our setting, which means we already know a lot of technological concepts and we have a picture of how the setting works. All we really need to do is sit down and define things carefully and, more importantly, make them our own a little. I don’t think Psi-Wars players will ever get away from GURPS Ultra-Tech and I’m okay with that (though I think if we can get away from GURPS Spaceships, I’ll be happy with that!). All we really need to do now is put pen to paper and clearly define these.

Necro-Psionic Technology: The Legacy of the Dead Art

Necro-Psionic Technology

The Ranathim mastered the Dead Art and used it and its synthetic flesh to craft unliving biological machines that fed off of psionic energy to empower their uses. This technology gave them the edge they needed to forge their empire, but also had drawbacks, both in slowly twisting and corrupting their users, and in the intense specialization and skill needed to train necrocrafters. Thus, after the Ranathim Empire fell, most of its Necro-Psionic technology fell with it. Even so, some practitioners of the Dead Art still exist in the Galaxy, and many Ranathim relics still use this technology, or the living warmachines created by the Ranathim Empire still roam the decaying remnants of their great empire.

In essence, Necro-Psionic technology is bio-tech with a highly specific focus (synthetic flesh or dead flesh), and shaped with a specific technique (Necrokinesis). In a sense, it’s similar to “Variant Biotech” from BT 30, except that we use psionics instead of magic, and the Dead Art has a very distinc thematic flavor. Anything, from plague engineering to human engineering to bio-tech gadgets and bio-mods can be made using synthetic flesh or dead flesh and necrokinesis. The following represents a catalog of “common” technology as inspiration.

Patreon Post: the Gaunt (and the Dead Art preview)

When the Ranathim fought their great and terrible war with the "Monolith," they stole the secrets of Necro-Psi (and more here) and used them to forge an army of half-living constructs made of "synthetic flesh" that they called the "Tarvathim," but the rest of the Galaxy now calls the Gaunt.  The forbidden secrets of their construction have largely been lost (but not entirely!), and without their masters around to rule them, the hideous Gaunt have dispersed throughout the galaxy, struggling to eke out an existence in a galaxy that recoils from them in disgust, and when one of the ancient "True Tarvathim," immortal constructs built at the dawn of that terrible war, arrive in a community of the Gaunt, their lesser kindred flock to them, looking for leadership.

The Gaunt are a new PC race option, one deeply tied to the Ranathim, with extreme survivability balanced by unpleasant appearance (not to mention smell!) and psionic susceptibility.  The True Tarvathim are a new PC race option for players who want to try something ancient and terrifying, or for GMs who want to unleash an ancient horror upon the galaxy.

Both (and a Dead Arts preview, for context; it'll be available on this blog at the end of the month) are available now to all $3+ patrons on my patreon.  If you're a patron, enjoy! If not, as with all previews, these will eventually come out, but if you want to see them now, I'd love to have you.

Patreon Post: Neo-Rational Technology

Neo-Rationalism promises a new golden age of technology and delivers!  Neo-Rationalists also gain access to limited TL 12^ gadgetry via the Cutting Edge Technology (Neo-Rational Tech) available to all Neo-Rationalists.  For today's Patreon post, I offer a first draft of that technology.  It's available, as a preview, to all $3+ patrons. If you're a Patron, check it out! If you're not, I'd love to have you.

Tech Week 4: Explosives Revisted (A Patreon Post)

It's Tech Week! Based on feedback or elements that have come up as I've worked on setting design, I've come up with some additional details on technology that I've been using to refine my material from the third iteration. Eventually, I'd like to separate the tech material off into its own little book, but there's still quite some work before I can do that.

Why is this on Patreon and not on my blog? Well, first, I don't want to interfere with the flow of my setting material and, second, this gets a little rambling and acts as something of a design journal.

Today, I revisit explosives. This may seem an odd choice, but explosives and infrastructure have a symbiotic relationship in the action genre. How many charges do you need to take out a factory? What sort of bombs are at your disposal? When I worked on the insurgency, I realized how important this was, and so I offer a thorough study of appropriate explosives and their impact on the Psi-Wars world, including 5 sample structures you can destroy!

This post is available to all $1+ patrons.  If you're patron check it out!  If you're not, I'd love to have you.