hard sci fi game (future idea only at this point)

[Destructionator XV]

To start, note that I have no intention to get this started any time soon. I just want to throw out an idea that I will develop in full detail later.

My basic plan consists of having three solar systems, all like our own. All players would create a nation and a well defined hard sci fi style tech base.

Randomly, each player is assigned a planet. There can (and should!) be more than one player on a planet. The final goal is to conquer all three systems, as intact as possible, under a single banner - yours. In the mean time though, you might form an alliance, but eventually you will have to backstab your allies to win the game.

Moon bases or space colonies are possible, and asteroid mines are almost certain to be present. These, too, should be brought under your flag, or destroyed if they dare resist, but if you kill it, you can't take it for yourself.


Each player needs to define his technology and basic economy before the game begins. As a base, if the modern United States can do it, you can too (not for free, of course). From there, you need to build up a little.

For each sci-fiish technology you want, a detailed explanation on its capabilities, limits, and costs are required. Then I'll approve or deny it. I want to maintain some realism, but more importantly, balance. I might accept, for example, shields, if they are well defined, have downsides (even if that downside is cost) and must not be unbeatable with reasonable technology.

If you capture someone else's facilities, you can absorb his technology. Also, trade with other players (goods, not design plans) is permitted.

Since there are other factions all on the same planet, war will not be limited to just space battles, indeed, space battles may be of lesser importance considering the tech level and the fact that you want to capture enemy facilities rather than destroy them so you can absorb their technology.

There will also be ground, sea, and air combat to take / defend a planet.

A player loses if 1) he cheats (act of Q zaps him into oblivion), 2) is annihilated or 3) leader killed. Annihilation means he can no longer wage war. This might be due to, for example, full scale nuclear attack, or him just wasting all his soldiers on poorly planed attacks. Killed occurs only if enemy troops take the capital and execute him. The capital is immune to orbital bombardment or nuclear attack - you actually have to work to knock a player out of the game.

I will allow a player set orders for his nation to carry out should its leader be killed. An example would be retaliate with full force. This often leads to annihilation, often of both players involved (think MAD), but not always.

Also, if say you are at a summit meeting with other leaders, and one of them has a gun and shoots you, you do not necessarily lose; I might let you continue as your vice-president at that point.

This promotes the other player offering the losing player a conditional surrender. If a player surrenders, he is not out of the game (unless he is the last player to do so, in which case the attacking player wins), but instead still commands his forces now under the flag of the attacker. At this point, if he doesn't do what the attacker tells him, he will probably be executed, and and MAD plans should fail since your silos are now occupied by the other player's forces (unless the other player is a fucking idiot and leaves the WMDs under the surrendered player's direct control, then he gets what he deserves).



Again, I am just throwing out ideas, and don't intend to actually do this game for some time, but if anyone has any comments or tech / nation submittals now, we can talk about it and get the foundation layed for when we do decide to get the game started. One thing that needs work is deciding who wins a battle and what was lost in it. I'm not sure how I'll do that right now.

[Comrade Tortoise]

I have actually wanted to do a hard sci-fi game for a while. the issue is FTL of course, with three solar systems...wormholes?

[Ra]

Or maybe null-grav points, like covered in Adam's cBSG thread.

[SirNitram]

Hard FTL?

Prisoner's Dileema. Everyone dies.

:P

But yea, we'll see.

[B4UTRUST]

Fold tech! Fold tech for the win!

But sounds interesting enough, though we'd have to settle some points before hand for tech such as this and the level of tech for ships and/or interplanetary weapons systems.

[Destructionator XV]

I've been rethinking for a bit and am thinking one system might be more workable than many. The problem comes to troop transport across planets. At the lower tech level, bringing in an army large enough to take and hold an enemy country is wholly impractical.

The reason I wanted multiple planets was just to explore how the FTL systems everyone makes up changes the war (and I would be really flexible on FTL ideas, since they aren't realistic anyway), but even with one system I think that can be done.

Consider there is earth, orbital colonies, moon colony, and maybe a terraformed Mars. With STL travel, any attack from Earth to / from mars would be detected far ahead of time, on the scale of months. With FTL, they might be able to surprise the other or something like that. I'm not sure of that either, though.

I guess one way around the transport problem would be open talks with one country on another planet, allowing you to use their ports, etc, to slowly bring in more and more of your troops to a relatively safe place. That could be fun on the diplomacy level too.

So yeah, I haven't really decided on the number of systems yet. One two or three are all decent choices, if we bring in space colonies and the sort for fewer systems. (No more than three though, since I want multiple nations to exist on one planet, and we don't have that many players on the board)



As to a little more detail on how it would be run, first (after we get maps and technology going), everyone picks country boundries then places their major population, natural resource, industrial, research, and military centers (including nuke silos if you want) on the map, and of course, their capital city. Each player also works out what space colonies or bases he has, and what kind of resources are available here.

Each player sets up the initial distribution of his armed forces, then we begin. During the game, you can talk to other players to set up alliances / trading etc, change your industrial and research focuses, and set up strategic plans. Since each player is playing as a president, he would not be micromanaging battle tactics, except perhaps in space since battles would be smaller scale. Travel time will be a big deal that you will need to take into account when attacking or defending.

I figure posts will focus on the big picture, not 'USS Freedom fires its missiles', 'HMS Invincible uses its missile countermeasures' or anything like that. Though, again, I might want that in space battles, since the technology could be unique enough to make it interesting.

And I am of course open to suggestions.

[Comrade Tortoise]

Well, fleet battles would be mutual suicide for everyone involved. At east fleet battles as we see them. With no shields (hard sci-fi remember) even a proximity hit from many weapons is an instant kill.

Combat will be like submarine combat. Only the ranges will be much much longer, on the order of light seconds. Missile combat will also take a long time. Hours for a single salvo. Battles will probably be fought with laser weapons, and maneuvering will be done at relatively slow accelerations. Technology probably will not allow the crew to survive, let alone remain conscious past 12 gs of acceleration for very long, especially without inertial dampening and artificial gravity. Neither of which is probably capable of existing. Limitations of hard sci-fi

Sensors would almost uniformly consist of radar radio telescopes, and light telescopes.

As for my technology, I call dibs on antimatter driven antimatter torps. )(Antimatter warhead with an antimatter torch drive)

[SirNitram]

You know, Tortoise, don't get on the mountain if you can't dispense correct wisdom.

Shields can be done within the bounds of hard science. It's called an electromagnetic field with the same properties as that holding together particularly durable material. Radar will be nearly useless; you'll be looking at passive thermal and optical.

[frigidmagi]

Would a radio telescope (I think that's what it's called?) be at all useful?

As for moving troops to take a nation. If you can get them there in sufficent numbers, then yes it can be done. Getting them there and keeping them supplied (say from Earth to Mars) will be a complete and total bitch without Space Domination.

[Masterharper]

In a setting like this, if you were going all or nothing, one would think that biological warfare would be king. A well delivered engineered disease would wreak havoc on a colony. And for planetside, attacking crops though such means would prove viable from where I see it--what planet of the future isn't on the theshold of production for their mother planet? A well placed contaminant in a seed bank, or a few hyper-resistant INDY strain pests... gotta refit that military for something completely different.

Excluding of course, some sort of 'Space-Geneva Convention'.
Anyway, I'm gonna keep an eye on this, I'm interested in it.

[SirNitram]

Bio-weapons are a huge problem for one reason:

You wanted that territory, right? Woops, now it's full of mutating strains of disease that are gonna make your life shit.

Might as well have just nuked it from orbit.

[Masterharper]

Mmm. Bio-Fallout.
Ah, but you designed them. That doesn't take care of mutations, but I hope to god someone has a vaccine in your labs.
I'd just figure on a waiting game. Not dissimilar from nukes, I suppose. Maybe not quite as long on the 'cooldown', if ya take my meaning.

[SirNitram]

Mmm. Bio-Fallout.
Ah, but you designed them. That doesn't take care of mutations, but I hope to god someone has a vaccine in your labs.
I'd just figure on a waiting game. Not dissimilar from nukes, I suppose. Maybe not quite as long on the 'cooldown', if ya take my meaning.

Unless you're salting the nukes and groundbursting, the cooldown is going to be quite brief from nukes. Bioweapons are overcomplicated by comparison, and can be vaccinated against.

[Cynical Cat]

Also, bioweapons don't tend to distribute like you want them. A whole bunch of random people in the target area get sick is the usual result. Some people don't. They're pretty good if you want to just kill a lot of people, but not so hot if you're looking to actually take out a site. Nuke or kinetic weapons would be better.

[frigidmagi]

Seriously if you're to cheap to use nukes and you can be in orbit over the site... Just drop a rock.

[Comrade Tortoise]

You know, Tortoise, don't get on the mountain if you can't dispense correct wisdom.

Shields can be done within the bounds of hard science. It's called an electromagnetic field with the same properties as that holding together particularly durable material. Radar will be nearly useless; you'll be looking at passive thermal and optical.

And...why would radar be practically useless? If you dont care about being detected, your active sensor pulses will probably be radar. Radio waves. You will show up on a radio telescope like a christmas tree, but...

As for the usefulness of a radio telescope, it depends. Depending on reactors and drive systems used IIRC. Also useful for picking up unsecured transmissions.

[SirNitram]

And...why would radar be practically useless? If you dont care about being detected, your active sensor pulses will probably be radar. Radio waves. You will show up on a radio telescope like a christmas tree, but...

That's why. Even with shields, once you're seen, you're dead.

Hard sci-fi runs into the problem of sameness, really. Not entertaining.