Solaris Builder Rules

Solaris Builder -- The Long Journey

The Democratic Council of Species has fallen. An unknown enemy has taken your worlds, marched machines on your capitals, and detonated EMPs in your habitats. The Enemy is ruthless, their technology advanced, their tactics cruel, and their strategy clear: To Wipe out all Sapient Life in this sector.

For those of you lucky enough to escape, you've been tasked with the greatest challenge: Survival. With no worlds to support you, no agriculture, industry, or services to provide for your people, you've banded together with races from all across the DCS. Ships remain loyal to their nations, their populace clinging to the last vestiges of civlization. And they look to you for guidance.

For the Enemy is Coming. And they will only stop when your people are dead.


Rules:
I abide by the rule of cool. If it's not broken, stupid, or otherwise detrimental to the story, it flies. If it's awesome and improves the story, I'll leave the only stumbling block to the dice.
 -> If you abuse this rule, I reserve the right to remove the portions that adversely affect gameplay, although I will almost never do this.

Don't be a dick, plain and simple. If you're going to harrass, harm, or otherwise bar a player from achieving goals, have a solid roleplay reason for it. Saying "because I can" doesn't cut it.

Dice is law. While I'm lenient in a lot of regards, the dice rolls are what they are. You may not reroll, preroll, or call foul. I'm not RNGeezus, and I wont fudge your rolls for you.

Nation Creation, Stats, & Resources

Nations can be whatever race, species, government, alignment, etc that you want. I encourage you to write creative fluff and interesting races. There are only three requirements.

Sapient, Individual, and Organic.

Due to the way I'm writing the story, Hiveminds, Synthetics, and groupthink are out. Otherwise, abide by rule #1.

Nations should follow the sheet below
Name
Species/Subrace
DCS Member Species (Y/N)
Fluff

You should also keep track of any technology you have researched here as well.

There are two major pieces you'll be juggling throughout the game. Your ship, and your resources.

Resources:
At Nation creation, roll 5d10. This is the amount of resources you have to start.
Resources are as follows:
Fuel: He3 & Antimatter are the primary fuel sources in this setting. They are interchangeable for the most part.
Food: Foodstuffs, universal unless otherwise specified in fluff.
Water: Both for consumption, and use in its component forms, Hydrogen for power generation & Oxygen for breathing. Unless specified in fluff, I assume your race drinks H2O and breathes O2.
Raw Metals: Iron, Titanium, Nickel, Carbon alloys, Silicon, etc. Anything that could be easily harvested in bulk from asteroids, planets, etc.
Exotic Metals: Uranium, Gold, Silver, Platinum, Palladium, Iridium, etc. Anything that is found in scarce quantities.

Ship Creation & Stats
You will start out with a single ship that you will roll stats for, as well as for the ship type.
Ship types are as follows from smallest to largest:
  Frigate, Cruiser, Liveship, Colony Barge.
  There are also military variants of the two larger hulls, but these are not available at the start.
Ships have the following stats, and the associated dice to roll on creation:
  Population Cap (1d6): How many people you can comfortably support on your ship, in the thousands. Liveships may multiply this number by 1.5, Colony Barges by 2.
  Defensive Rating(1d10): How well your ship can tank damage, via armor and hull integrity.
  Offensive Rating(1d10): How well your ship can dish out damage. Liveships and Colony barges have this reduced to 3/4ths of the roll (ex: a roll of 8 would be reduced to 6.)
  Propulsion Rating(1d10): How well your ship can maneuver. Frigates may multiply this number by 1.5, Colony Barges must reduce this by half.
  Shield Efficency(1d100): The percentage of damage mitigated by EM, Point or Hardlight shielding. Incoming damage is reduced by this percentage.

You will also roll 1d100 for any special attributes. I will decide these along with Racial Bonuses & Racial Penalties for your Nation.


I use a degrees of success system. 1d100 per action, up to three times per round. Actions can be researching tech, manufacturing equipment, or trading with other ships in the fleet. Each action has a number of turns required to complete it, some completing on that turn, others spanning several turns, depending on the action. Diplomacy, Communication, etc are free actions. When the fleet is in combat, normal actions may not be taken. Instead you can: Attack, Defend, Flank, or Retreat. These actions follow the same 1d100 degrees of success rolls as actions. Your Ship stats will be factored in with each combat action.

Lastly, the Democratic Council of Species has been mostly preserved through this ordeal. You will have representatives in a senate, and your votes will be determined by the number of combat-capable ships you have at the period of voting, Combat capable ships are considered ships without major damage, and a combat raiting of 2 or higher Votes are regulated to a minimum of one vote, and a maximum of 4. Membership in this Senate is optional, however you will lose your voice in the Senate & the council will have to vote on you being allowed to return.

The Enemy may be advanced, but they aren't impossible to track. The fleet will start with a single turn of warning in most combat encounters, which can be upgraded by research.

I have a special rule when working with Researched technology. When proposing the technology to work with, you must specify if you want to keep it private, or make it public. Public projects can be contributed to by anyone, and the contributors recieve the research in full. Private research can only be worked on by the owner nation, but can be traded, sold, or otherwise used as a barganing chip. Other races can still research this tech on their own, albiet at a penalty.

Lastly, this game is about having fun. If you have any questions, feel free to message Maldaris on IRC, in #nation on irc.mibbit.net