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Worldbuilding: Children of a Frozen Earth: A 'Day After Tomorrow'/Frostpunk inspired Setting

Discussion in 'CW Index' started by Aaron Fox, Dec 27, 2018.

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  1. Threadmarks: OP, Basics, and Inspiration of Timeline
    Aaron Fox

    Aaron Fox That Crazy/Not-Crazy Guy

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    So, a brain bug hit me and I wrote it down... it's pretty bleak as a whole to us moderners though... but there is a light at the end of the tunnel however.

    So here are the basics:

    Children of a Frozen Earth
    A World of Survival in the Frozen Tundras of Earth and through the Harsh Mistress of Space

    Basics
    • This is a universe where Global Warming takes a turn for the ‘Day after Tomorrow’ and ‘Frostpunk’.
    • The Calendar switched from AD/CE to ‘Post-Cataclysm’ -or PC for short- in 2070.
      • To put things into perspective, the year 0225 PC is the year 2295 AD/CE.
    • The average temperature outside the citadel city-arcologies is -60 degrees Celsius with severe storms able to make it drop down to -100 and it is considered extremely warm at -40.
      • These temperatures is part 'Earth going Snowball', part 'high-powered nukes have been used far too many times', and part 'extreme eco-terrorists deciding that humanity must die'.
    • There are three primary factions in this world and they consist of:
      • The American Dominion
        • A (in pre-Cataclysm standards) semi-benevolent AI Dictatorship made up of much of the former US and Canada. What is considered basic rights in the pre-Cataclysm days are now heavily monitored and restricted.
          • Aesthetically, it’s a mix between Earth 21X0’s United Civilized States, Battlefield 2142’s EU, Deus Ex: Human Revolution/Mankind Divided, and Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex.
          • From a government standpoint, it’s basically Earth 21X0’s UCS after the events of Earth 2150, where the AI basically took over.
            • The reason for this is that initially the American Dominion started out as an AI augmented Cyber Democracy, but that failed as democratic leaders kept killing off segments of the population and tribalism sprang up. The AI pulled a coup against the democratic government with the military and thus the current government. Far better than what was done previously. AIs run pretty much every aspect of governance.
      • Neo-Prussia
        • A monarchy where the Monarch is spliced with an AI. Made up of northern Germany and Northern Poland. While rights are not as restrictive as the American Dominion, they are still pretty restricted.
          • Aesthetically, it’s a mix between Front Mission’s EU, a Teutonicized/Prussianified version of Earth 21X0’s Eurasian Dynasty, Satellite Reign, and Syndicate (reboot).
          • From a government standpoint, it’s an odd mixture of ‘Cybernetic Republic’ (where only those with cybernetic implants can vote or take office) and ‘Cybernetic Monarchy’ with a hefty dose of AI-driven bureaucracy.
      • The People’s Republic of China
        • The continuation of the pre-Cataclysm government with a few caveats. Mostly nestled in the Himalayas in a grand underground arcology and a smattering of major and minor surface cities.
          • Aesthetically, it’s a mix between Battlefield 2142’s PAC, Cyberpunk 2077, and Generals China.
          • From a government standpoint, it’s a ‘Cybernetic Dictatorship’ and police state.
    • Each of the main factions have an orbital elevator, each with shipyards, material processing facilities, low-level orbital research and development facilities, habitats, and power generation facilities. These also serve as the gateway to the various interplanetary holdings that the three main factions have.
    • There are numerous minor factions on Earth, but the only reason they still exist is due to cost being too much to be worth conquering. If push came to shove, however, they’ll get crushed if a major faction decides it’s worth it.
    • The total human population in 0225 PC is barely 1.56 billion across Earth and the space colonies barely add .44 billion to that number… or barely 2 billion in total.
    • Technologically, mankind is more advanced than pre-Cataclysm Earth in many ways, particularly in the fields of AI and robotics, automation, cybernetics, genetic engineering (although extremely limited after the lead up to the Cataclysm, and much of the wildlife that now inhabits the surface of Earth is because of various groups trying to wipe out mankind), hydroponics/vertical farming, space travel, energy, nano-tech, among others.
      • In the case of the American Dominion, they have perfected quantum entanglement communication technology to the point where compressed messages (which can be in the Terabytes when uncompressed) can go through with ease. This is mostly used to keep the various AI mayors connected to the overall polity. They’re not that compact though, so this is only used for spaceships, habitats, stations, space colonies, cities, and military outposts.
      • Fusion and/or fission energy is the primary power source of all remnants of humanity with natural gas being a close second.
    • The Cataclysm is simply a reference to a series of atomic conflicts, global warming disasters, epidemics (both natural and artificial), resource wars (over arable land and drinkable water as well as vital resources like oil and metal), and eco-terrorism.
      • The Cataclysm is also responsible for killing about 7.3 billion people (out of a population barely over 8.2 billion) over a period of three decades thanks to a combination of wars (both conventional and nuclear), global warming side-effects (including famine), disease (both natural and synthetic), and eco-terrorism (be conventional, biological, nuclear, or exotic).
        • This is partially the reason why the various remnants of humanity -be the major factions or the minor ones- are extremely authoritarian compared to the governments of the Pre-Cataclysm era. When the technology exists where one can create an unnatural monster from whole cloth or make horrific synthetic diseases with a handful of common equipment and a little know-how on the biotech end or create black goo weapons with a nano-fab and a little know-how on the technological end, the moral calculus shifts well into the authoritarian direction.
        • Another reason for the high amounts of authoritarian rule is due to the fact that any act of sabotage or willing destruction of equipment can kill an entire city-arcology during the early years.
          • This has led to aspects of an omnipresent omni-surveillance state in practically every remnant of humanity. This isn’t because every remnant wanted to go with ‘1984 as a guide book’ -as pre-Catacylsm people would think- but due to survival and sadly practicality.
      • Thanks in part to the Cataclysm, not a whole lot of animals and plants made it. The few that did were only done because of their ability to provide food.
      • A lot of culture had been destroyed in the Cataclysm as well. While history does remember culture from the pre-Cataclysm era and a tiny sample of it does exist, it is a far cry of what came before.
        • What little fiction that remains tends to be sadly bleak in outlook with most of them with no end in the bleakness in sight of the characters, a character a few generations down the line might find the metaphorical ‘light at the end of the tunnel’.
        • Franchises that were remade in the Post-Cataclysm Era (like Mass Effect) tend to be very bleak with a very ‘fight the bleakness’ undertone overall.
      • Military forces in the Post-Cataclysm world are incredibly small when compared to their Pre-Cataclysm counterparts in terms of genuine human manpower. This has been true for much of the Post Cataclysm Era, and only recently (i.e. the last two decades) that practical autonomous combat androids and cybernetically augmented clones have become commonplace.
        • This is exacerbated by the fact that people only live until the age of 60 on average for the last two centuries, with the average only going up in the last decade.
          • A good portion of the problem is due to what is known as the Age Plague that was released by eco-terrorists during the Cataclysm. It is only recently that -after starting practically from scratch- this plague has been cured.
        • Due to the conditions on Earth -and later across the solar system- walkers in the vein of Battlemechs, Wanzers, and Palabors exist. While always part of a combined arms formation, they’re incredibly effective in the Post-Cataclysm World.
        • In order to stay outside in the unpredictable conditions outside the citadel city-arcologies, one must wear what is essentially a powered space suit (i.e. a space suit mated with a powered exoskeleton) when they go outside.
          • Infantry utilize a heavily armored version of these suits known as Battlesuits which range from 'make the wearer slightly bigger' to 'proto-mecha' in size.
    • Space travel is fairly standard fare, as ships tend to look like they’re straight from the pre-Angelwing portion of Nexus: The Jupiter Incident, starships and dropships from Battletech, and the Earth Alliance ships in Babylon 5. Like the Earth Alliance ships, they also have inertia dampeners to minimize problems from the lack of counter-rotating grav-blocks and the shear mass that many ships have or haul around.
      • Space combat is similar to Nexus: The Jupiter Incident in that they batter each other until the ship’s structural integrity is too fragile to allow it to keep going, which then the crew evacuate or surrender depending on the situation.
        • The average spaceship that all major powers can accelerate to is 3 Gs, with anything resembling a fuel economy. For the most part ships tend to accelerate at the starting quarter, coast for half, and decelerate at the remaining quarter.
        • All spaceships -regardless of manufacturer- have retro-thrusters as standard. The type of retro-thrusters might vary, but all ships have them as standard. This is mostly to minimize the need to simply flip and decelerate that way.
        • It should be noted that artificial gravity does exist, but it is currently extremely power hungry and only available to colonies on planets and planetoids like Mars, Luna, and elsewhere, i.e. where volume isn't as much of a problem.
      • Strikecraft (aka ‘fighters’) play a supporting role in most combat scenarios. They are usually used as part of a defensive screen to eliminate things like missiles and ‘torpedoes’ (basically missiles with a genuine ship drive attached to them). If there are no missiles in play, then they can damage lightly armored components like sensor arrays, armament, among other systems.
        • Most strikecraft have horrific -compared to their parent vessels- drive range, forcing them to stay within a battlefield (which can range from 10 megameters (Mm, 1 Mm equals 1,000 km) to 100 Mm depending on the conditions) to ensure they don’t get left behind or vanish into the black.
      • Most of humanity living off-world lives in either domed cities that are partially underground or in O’Neil Island 3 habitats. All dangerous facilities -usually RnD labs in fields that are fuck-off dangerous- utilize a less resource-intensive Stanford Torus.
        • Any habitat or space-borne facility utilizes autonomous weapon platforms for defense, which are incredibly dangerous to fight without a plan to eliminate them from play.


    Timeline Inspiration:

    Really, when I started thinking up the setting, the Polish-made series Earth 21X0 made a hefty amount of influence... to the point where the base idea is 'what if Earth 21X0-verse and Frostpunk had a baby'.

    If you don't know what Earth 21X0 series is, the basic summary is the same as Russian history: it got worse. Earth 2140 has the Eurasian Dynasty (basically the worst of the Mongol Khanates and the USSR blended together, shortened to ED for brevity's sake) and the United Civilized States (basically AIs run pretty much everything and what would be normally elected positions would be put into a lottery that would happen every eight months with AIs assisting the winners, shortened to UCS for brevity's sake) fight a major conflict that ended with the Earth's orbit being destabilized, which wasn't noticeable until a decade later. The game itself plays like a heavily modded version of the original Command and Conquer, with infantry being genuinely useful thanks to a garrison mechanic with buildings.

    Earth 2150 is the second game of the series and is split into three parts based on their own plots: The Escape from the Blue Planet, The Moon Project, and Lost Souls. The plot for Escape from the Blue Planet is simple: you choose a faction (be the ED, UCS, or the new faction that is the Lunar Corporation or LC for short) and lead said faction to get the prerequisite resources to build your faction's mode to escape the doomed Earth and must do so within a year. The Moon Project focuses on the titular project that the LC is developing for their scramble for resources on Earth with the LC trying to complete the project while the other two factions try to stop it in it's tracks. Lost Souls probably influenced Tiberium Wars in the fact that it used a similar parallel story structure and the plot centers around citizens that the factions left behind on Earth...

    The Lost Souls intro is pretty somber to say the least:


    Then there is Earth 2160... which has the ED fighting the LC for control of the Solar System. Mars hasn't been properly terraformed yet, strange shenanigans relating to a satellite and a group called the Edenites happen, alien technology a plenty, and ancient alien weapon systems run a muck. Oh, and the UCS doesn't properly show up until three-quarters through the four part campaign. Instead of all the conspiracy theories that everyone came up with, the AI of the UCS Phoenix pretty much told the UCS president where to stuff it and implemented it's own plan to dominate humanity, until the player characters and the Edenites give the AI an alternative and the AI jumps at the chance to be as far away from the ED and LC as possible.

    The trailer for 2160 gives a rather quick overview of the timeline of the game series:
     
  2. Threadmarks: Geology of the Post-Cataclysm World
    Aaron Fox

    Aaron Fox That Crazy/Not-Crazy Guy

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    [​IMG]
    [​IMG]
    [​IMG]
    The world in the Post-Cataclysm Era pretty much looks like this with no end in sight. Thick layers of ice and snow dotted with little islands of civilization in the form of various Citadel City-Arcologies and Citadel Outpost-Arcologies.

    What is an arcology you may ask, and the answer to which is definition you are going to ask for, as there are two definitions: Original and Modern.

    (A rather informative video on Arcologies)

    In this world, arcologies are a mix of it's traditional/original definition (communities that have minimal ecological impact and are moderately self-sustaining) and the 'modern' definition (i.e. giant towering structures that can house entire cities in). Due to the rather unique circumstances that these great structures are residing in, every system has to be carefully monitored to ensure their continued operation. In the older arcologies, if the primary system goes down then it must be fixed post-haste as the auxiliary systems can't keep up with the demand for long. There are many ruins of arcologies that either failed to get their systems fixed in time or died because the systems were sabotaged (usually by 'Eco-Purists' whom have a vendetta against humanity).

    While the Citadel City-Arcologies house the vast majority of humanity, the Outpost-Arcologies are usually remote RnD facilities for hazardous projects, centers of resource extraction, or military facilities. Despite originally not designed to tank nuclear explosions, both City-Arcologies and Outpost-Arcologies are oddly immune to anything less than a 10MT nuclear warhead... and it is this durability that allows them to survive the most dangerous weather phenomenon of the Post Cataclysm world: Death Frost Storms.

    The first recorded Death Frost Storm was recorded in Central Africa in 0024 PC by the City-Arcology of New Sibut. The initial temperature was -40 degrees Celsius, it dropped 60 degrees in nominal temperature (making it -100 degrees Celsius) within 6 hours with winds in of excess of 177km/h (to put things in perspective, at 177 km/h, the wind chill factor is 165.7 degrees Celsius). Now at this wind chill factor, a person not clad in a Cold Suit -what amounts to being the desperate love child of a space suit and a powered exoskeleton- will die in seconds at most. Ever since 0024 PC, Death Frost Storms are a regular occurrence to the point that having a Death Frost Storm warning is a fact of life on Earth.

    This also makes resource extraction incredibly difficult, as one has to go through a lot of ice and snow to get to the surface of Earth on top of all the dirt and rock needed to get to these deposits. More often than not the mines get utilized as the base for arcologies, to save on space and resources. This also influences human recycling policy from 'good if we can' to 'vital'. Every broken part is to be recycled, no matter what for example. There are no burials anymore but dead bodies of humans and animals get processed for their proteins and minerals for fertilizer and other vital non-food products. No watt of electricity is wasted, especially during the initial days where there is only a handful of powerful fission and fusion power plants.
     
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  3. Threadmarks: Economics in the Post-Cataclysm Era
    Aaron Fox

    Aaron Fox That Crazy/Not-Crazy Guy

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    The Cataclysm destroyed many things and the economy in general is one of them. For almost a century the various factions and remnants of humanity have utilized largely a command economy with very little free market due to the needs of the period. Survival was paramount over little things like politics and commerce (politics and the excesses of Capitalism would not only kill everyone in quite a few cities and outposts, but cause coups and revolutions in others). After that period, commerce started making a slow comeback as survival became easier and easier.

    Like the first beginnings of commerce, it started small and localized. This is partially due to transportation requiring a massive overhaul to work in the new world, the other is that within a hundred years the institutional knowledge of large-scale transportation networks pretty much vanished (partially thanks to the Eco-Purists, partially to the Luddites, and partially to the lack of actual infrastructure). The weather conditions in the Post Cataclysm era made transport of any kind hard to say the least, let alone communication. Rail was out of the question due to the fact that the required materials in the required quantities weren't available until 0135 PC with a combination of inventions including Plasmalloy (for the rails, locomotives, and rolling stock) and micro-scale (i.e. can fit into a car) hydrogen-hydrogen fusion reactors (to power for the drive-train and to heat the compartments into livable conditions without using helium-3 or Deuterium/Tritium (hydrogen with a single and two neutrons respectively) fuel). Air was out due to the new weather conditions forcing any fixed-wing aircraft to have heating elements in the wings to prevent the wings from literally turning ice-solid while rigid/semi-rigid lighter-than-air craft require heating elements to ensure that the lifting gasses -sadly hydrogen due to the lack of helium- actually provide lift. Water travel is impossible for obvious reasons. That left with treaded vehicles as the primary mover of materials, people, and communication.

    These 'Truckers' -as initially they used converted semi-trucks before more modern designs came out- became the lifeblood of factions consolidating in the Post Cataclysm world. Large, armed convoys of mail and material regularly traveled across the landscape with regularity in the Post-Cataclysm era. Cities and outposts lived or died because of these convoys as despite these arcologies being largely self-sufficient, they're just that: mostly self-sufficient, not entirely self-sufficient. They still needed resources or products (more specifically, spare parts and fuel) that they can't produce themselves effectively, thus many cities and outposts bartered with each other for almost a century before currency returned via the various factions of humanity consolidating their power and capabilities. This made commerce far more efficient than a simplistic barter system that dominated for practically a century.

    All currencies on Earth are based upon food rations and the calories within them. Due to various factors, the average human in the Post-Cataclysm era requires 3,000 calories (or 3 kilo-calories) a day to survive with 2,000 being 'iron rations'/'starvation rations' grade. Across all factions on the planet, all families get 4 nutritionally balanced meals and numerous balanced snacks per day in a Basic Income Guarantee style system. While food rations didn't start out as a currency, they heavily influenced the currency. This influence created the Kilo-calorie backed currencies that those of the Post-Cataclysm era know today. Manipulating this currency is incredibly hard, given that there really no such thing as privacy in the Post-Cataclysm era. These currencies rarely have much in terms of exchange rates, making the pre-Cataclysm currency dynamics impossible in every way...

    After about a century into the Post Cataclysm era, most factions and remnants of humanity have switched to a mixed command/free economy. Corporations of the vein of the Pre-Cataclysm era don't exist, as they died in the Cataclysm and the destruction of the world trade networks. Corporations in the Post-Cataclysm era are vastly different and incredibly limited compared to their Pre-Cataclysm counterparts. Practically all factions have similar standards on corporations, and this includes the methods to ensure that they don't gain much in terms of power ever again. One of these methods is the Corporate Charter in it's myriad of forms.

    The Corporate Charter is actually a pretty simple thing in concept: it is a charter for the very existence of the corporation. Break it and the corporation is seized by the government, those that caused the events that led to the breaking of the charter given life sentences or executions (including stockholders), and cleaning up the damages that result in the charter's breaking. This is partially a control measure, to enforce some level of sustainability. Only a literal handful of corporations broke the Corporate Charter, and the fallout of their shenanigans caused thousands to die for the sake of more power and hundreds more in the cleanup as they resisted.

    The orbital and space colonies in this new era tend to be mostly self-sufficient like their Earth brethren, but this self-sufficiency isn't vast enough to make them able to expand as quickly as needed on their own.

    [​IMG]

    (an American Dominion 'quick and easy' colony on a rocky Jovian moon, these usually serve as the nucleus for more advanced and permanent colonies dug underground)

    This has created a dynamic between the space settlements and their Earth-based nations, as the City-Arcologies can produce far more material than their space-based counterparts. One factor into this is economies of scale, the City-Arcologies have the immense industry and manpower to rapidly expand while their space-based counterparts don't have the industry and manpower to do so. Another factor is the conditions on these colonies. While the colony facilities are actually quite nice from an atheistic and efficiency standpoint, it is the conditions forced upon these facilities that is the problem. Solar flares can kill anyone in a modern space suit (which is a Cold Suit but adapted to space) due to the immense radiation incurred, Martian sandstorms can shred a suit (or throw rocks at high enough velocity to penetrate one) if given half a chance, meteors make it particularly difficult to expand across the landscape, among other reasons.

    This leads to the overall trade situation across the solar system: it's mostly internal trade. This is partially due to the Cold War situation between the three main factions, and partially due to the fact that there isn't much of an economy to realize effective inter-factional trade for the most part. Despite humanity surviving over two centuries in this hell of a reality, the economies haven't recovered even a fraction of their pre-Cataclysm heights... and this isn't helped with the focus on sustainability over growth at all costs...

    [​IMG]

    (a well-off American Dominion Martian Outpost)

    The main reason that many of these space colonies and outposts exist is simply material supply. Despite everything, a lot of Earth's resources are incredibly hard to obtain in the Post-Cataclysm landscape. These include rare earth metals, 'precious' metals like platinum and gold, and your standard metals like iron and nickle. While others have either evolved since then or were built for a specific purpose (like hazardous RnD), most space colonies and outposts are for resource extraction and recently material refinement (as certain alloys can only be produced in space).
     
    Last edited: Dec 28, 2018
  4. Threadmarks: Humanity and it's Children in the Post Cataclysm Era
    Aaron Fox

    Aaron Fox That Crazy/Not-Crazy Guy

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    Humanity has changed a lot in over two centuries in the Post Cataclysm era, and a lot of it is because of unregulation and allowing people to do their own thing... and not for the better in some respects.

    With the explosion of viable gene-engineering before the fall of civilization pre-Cataclysm, the price and expertise of utilizing said technology dropped like rocks, causing numerous groups to try to cook up all sorts of synthetic plagues to annihilate whatever ethnic group or genotype they saw as an enemy or impediment to utopia. This has caused the practical extermination of numerous ethnic groups across the planet on top of the conditions of the Cataclysm and the Post Cataclysm world. Jews and (sane) Palestinians aren't part of that list however, leading to some more religious minded people to think that they've been touched by the divine or something... but most say that both the Jews and Palestinians make mules look like they're not stubborn.

    This has caused several problems. One of which is the previously mentioned 'Age Plague'. That was cooked up in the years leading up to the Cataclysm, utilizing a CRISPR vector to force humanity's lifespan to only 60 years and kill them in very ugly ways. These bio-terrorists -whom were a part of an increasingly violent radical environmentalism movement- died during the Cataclysm, alongside with practically all their research leaving the various new powers of the Post Cataclysm world to practically reverse engineer (then cure it) from scratch. However, this would take almost two and change centuries to complete but had the added benefit on improving humanity biologically. Better mental capacity, better reflexes, simply making humanity better and more capable as a side effect of the research. This also upped humanity's general caloric intake as a result. Instead of the usual 2k caloric intake that pre-Cataclysm humans have, modern humans have a 3-4k caloric intake.

    This has also caused certain abilities to show up, and one of those is psionics. Psionics was generally discovered after 0092 PC after a series of genetic 'upgrades' activated continuous control of it. Many studies were carried out and it was discovered that humanity is basically psychic albeit at a very low level, basically only empathic abilities and indications of a subconscious 'psionic net' that causes deja vu. As humans with active psionics increased in population, so did humanity's psionic abilities. While it would appear that the energy comes out of nowhere, the reality is that for psionics, there is a cost to using psionics. One of the most notable costs is that a psion's food intake is almost double than a normal human's. Most of this added energy is for simply manipulating psionic energy, leading to the fact that there are no fat psions unless their genes have a predisposition for being overweight (and even then they're barely that)... which leads to the rumor that psions have some magic weight loss plan or something.

    Another thing is that in attempts to counteract the various horrors that the Eco-Purists would cook up, cybernetics advanced in leaps and bounds. Modern cybernetics at their most basic are essentially limbs that are simply made out of metal and nanotubes than flesh and bone. The more advanced ones goes well into Ghost in the Shell and Deux Ex territory. Thanks to cybernetics, nanotech immunization augmentations were perfected, insuring the numerous non-Luddite populations from dying out of whatever synthetic plague that the Eco-Purists have cooked up. One of the things that all cybernetics have in common is the 'cyberbrain', a term from a Pre-Catacylsm manga/anime series. Basically it's function is life support and medium for mind-machine interfacing. This is a requirement for practically all cybernetics, and there are those that used to have a genetic predisposition to outright reject cybernetics in general, including nanotech immunization augs that don't require a cyberbrain. That... is very problematic due to the various synthetic plagues that still remain to this day as many of them are able to simply 'lolno' any unaugmented immune system and kill you painfully.

    Now, please note that I said 'children' in the title as well... well that is because there are uplifts built upon human and digitized animal DNA. In most factions, they're treated with at least some respect (even the People's Republic of China does this) but that doesn't mean all factions do so. This is partially due to the fact that quite a few of these uplifts were engineered to be weapons by Bio-Purists. While some uplifts created by the Bio-Purists, all of their uplifts turned against their mad creators and killed them. While this hasn't completely killed off the entire Bio-Purist movement, it heavily gutted them. Many of these uplifts are pretty friendly and all of them are comparable with humans, although how uplift-human couples are treated varies from faction to faction. Some -like the American Dominion and Neo-Prussia- simply go 'go ahead', others have restrictions but generally allow it, and there are those that ban such couples.
     
  5. Threadmarks: Undersea Habitation (will update constantly)
    Aaron Fox

    Aaron Fox That Crazy/Not-Crazy Guy

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    Undersea habitation had been originally proposed in the pre-Cataclysm as a method to alleviate the situation and a few prototype 'underwater towns' had been set up before the Cataclysm, but the Cataclysm pretty much cut them off from any and all support if not outright destroyed them one way or another.

    A handful of outposts of several different factions -including the American Dominion, the Japanese Dynasty, and the British Union- exist in 0225, and they're all incredibly specialized for extreme-depths due to the thickness of the ice eliminating the 'Sunlight Zone' of the oceans. While the oceanic ice can support tens of thousands of tons of metal and equipment, it (thankfully) isn't glacier thick... allowing the possibility of establishing undersea habitats in the first place. To access the few undersea habitats, one must go to an above-land outpost with a modified version of a space elevator. While these aren't quick due to things like Nitrogen Narcosis, they are high-volume (well, high volume in a world where thousands is considered 'a major city') elevators placed in tubes to minimize the possibility of damage.

    These undersea habitats are similar to their space-based cousins in the fact that they utilize a 'tower with a dome' structure, with the tower portion being mostly underground, although some (like the American Dominion and Japanese Dynasty's sole undersea habitats) are slightly raised due to increased space needs for support equipment.

    These undersea habitats are considered a vital component for the future, particularly due to the fact that (thankfully) all the non-depleted natural gas and oil deposits had been sealed during the Cataclysm, two the untapped mineral resources of the ocean depths, and 3 those with aspirations in space want to use these to prepare for the inevitable extrasolar colonization of a world, and with what little preliminary data that the probes have sent (each probe usually sends a signal detailing the planets in said system) doesn't give hope for an Earth-like world.
     
  6. Threadmarks: Crime and Punishment in the Post Cataclysm Era
    Aaron Fox

    Aaron Fox That Crazy/Not-Crazy Guy

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    Crime and punishment in the Post Cataclysm era is an interesting aspect when compared to it's pre-Cataclysm counterparts. While many of the nastier laws had been rescinded after the first century PC, quite a few of them are still in effect, particularly those about sabotaging vital systems or being an Eco-Purist. There aren't much in terms of drug laws in the post-Cataclysm era, and those that exist tend to be of the "don't buy unsanctioned drugs" and "Don't arrive to work high/drunk" type... rarely is a drug outright banned... but those that are tend to have the worst effects on the human body.

    Thanks to the widespread use of electronic omnipresent surveillance technology, all crime is caught as it happens and there is very little doubt about the hows, but the whys are still needing to be answered. As such judges and courts still have a place in the Post-Cataclysm era, as they establish those whys and assign punishment accordingly, and in many factions they force any and all judges to have AIs in their heads to maximize fairness. Lawyers (or juries for that matter, as every hand not working on some important job was a disaster waiting to happen before the first century PC) don't exist in the Post Cataclysm era, partially because their skills cost millions of lives due to the fact that most lawyers simply want to win and not justice. Since on many occasion those that the lawyers helped escape justice would eventually kill them anyway due to the Eco-Purity movement, eventually the job of lawyer was removed from the job pool. However, if you want to be technical the AI are effectively lawyers in this case.

    Punishment in the Post Cataclysm era runs the gambit of only getting basic substance and hard labor to execution of not only the perpetrator and everything in between. The latter is rarely used, however, as it is usually reserved for 'enemies of mankind' (whom are usually Eco-Purists) and high treason. Sometimes entire families get executed because of what a good portion of their family did is 'enemy of mankind' worthy.

    Brutal? Yes... but sadly necessary given how far the Eco-Purists are willing to go before and after the New Mexico City Detonation (a cobbled 25 megaton nuclear device had been smuggled into New Mexico City in 0075 PC, the results are as horrific as it implies, 15 million people died in that event). You are more likely to see someone having a collar and uniform donating that they're serving hard labor time than outright execution.

    Prison in this case is simply a home for those with specific sentences, usually 'isolated hard labor' of some sort, with facilities for psychological evaluation, detox, and other care facilities to minimize returning inmates.
     
  7. Threadmarks: Planetary Combat in the Post Cataclysm Era (will constantly update)
    Aaron Fox

    Aaron Fox That Crazy/Not-Crazy Guy

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    Combat in the Post-Cataclysm era is much smaller than those previous, this is mostly due to the fact that there isn't much left of humanity and that the conditions on Earth made it incredibly difficult for combat to occur. This is exuberant with the fact that civilization is heavily concentrated around the Citadel-Arcologies on Earth and whatever outposts and habitats in space. Independent movement is also incredibly hard in this new world, and eventually a viable solution was created: The Snow Ship.

    [​IMG]
    [​IMG]
    These 'snow ships' were based on concepts from pre-Cataclysm fiction, particularly video games. The largest of these 'snow ships' are called Carriers and are the size of pre-Cataclysm Super Carriers (300+ meters). These Carriers can support up to a full brigade of troops with two squadrons (or 32 aircraft) of multi-role strike craft, one squadron (16 aircraft) of bombers, and one squadron (16 aircraft) of gunships each. Their shear size makes them capable of sustainable traversal over the vast majority of the landscape. Part of the reason why there are so many of them in operation in not only the main factions but also any minor faction that can afford the resources needed to operate them.

    Part of the reason why there are so few aircraft on a Carrier is that they're far larger than their pre-Cataclysm counterparts.
    [​IMG]
    [​IMG]
    Since Post-Cataclysm conditions have forced certain constraints on designs, the focus has been on engine power for aircraft, and aircraft have incredibly powerful engines to offset their new size. This new size also allowed for larger armaments and larger combat loads, allowing them to be far more effective and stay in the field longer.

    Due to the prevalence of sensor technology to even the lowest of 'grunts' (although that is a misnomer, as a 'grunt' in the Post-Cataclysm era would be a tech-savvy specialist in the Pre-Cataclysm era), combat is as much as a 'muscle' game as it is 'cerebral' one. One must master their sensors and counter-sensors in order to maximize their effectiveness on the battlefield, as without them you might be just as well be blind and death. The weapons they can use are varied and have their advantages and disadvantages. For example kinetics are perhaps one of the most powerful and efficient direct-fire weapons in the Post Cataclysm era be electromotive (i.e. rail/coilguns) or utilizing some form of Electrothermal Chemical technology (most commonly the Triple Coaxial Plasma Igniter variant of the technology, which can easily throw a projectile at 3km/s+ with ease), but at the cost of recoil while lasers don't have any appreciative recoil but they require large power cells at best and a power cell that requires to be hauled around by two men in power armor if not on a vehicle.

    Each weapon or warhead type has advantages and disadvantages.

    Vehicular combat in the Post-Cataclysm era is similar to infantry combat, but with the addition of snow ships. Most vehicular combat oddly starts out similarly to antiquity combat, where both sides get ready for battle. Most vehicles might have the fuel capacity to cross large swathes of the landscape, but due to their size they don't have the navigation gear necessary (let alone being able to do the required maintenance in the field!) to safely navigate across that landscape or to survive in the conditions of a Death Frost Storm. Most vehicles either close to their assigned static base or on their assigned snow ships (usually the various snow ships that can carry vehicles like the Carriers), as infrastructure like roads and rail are rare.

    Outside the fact that vehicles deploy in a similar manner to antiquity combat, at least in terms of assembling for combat, vehicle combat is quite similar to pre-Cataclysm combat in that it is a game of fire and maneuver. To get to the best position to eliminate the target. Infantry are usually not deployed in this sort of combat as there isn't much in terms of cover outside the Arcologies and outposts... and the equipment that allows infantry to harm snow ships (which are usually deployed in the snowy wastes between arcologies and outposts) require a lengthy amount of time to set up (not to mention requiring two to four people -in battlesuits I might add- to haul the weapon itself with the rest of the squad hauling the batteries, capacitors, and/or ammunition) and that means that they will be vulnerable to anti-infantry weaponry that vehicles all have equipped (usually some HMG). So IFVs, APCs, and infantry are usually kept in reserve.

    Snow ships are another story.

    Due to their size, they can utilize weapons that normal -for a degree of 'normal'- vehicles can't hope to fit onto their hulls. This size also affords them the necessary volume for various bits of equipment that allows them to practically go through any weather condition, making them viable in Death Frost Storms. In addition, any anti-'Snow Ship' weapon that is mounted -or hauled by a squad of foot soldiers in battlesuits- on a snow ship or Citadel-Arcology/Outpost Turret will annihilate any normal vehicle (and large groups of infantry if applicable) with one shot. A Snow Ship's armor is also thick enough that most 'normal' weapons simply do minimal damage at best, requiring more massive weapons. In a sense, these Snow Ships are like the old naval ships of yore, their massive size affording them to take chances that would otherwise ensured their destruction. This ability has allowed Snow Ships to pull victories out of defeats... and besides long convoys of 'vehicle trains' -basically a non-rail vehicle that is basically a train- Snow Ships are the only way to haul immense amounts of cargo reliably over ground.
     
    Last edited: Dec 27, 2018
  8. Threadmarks: Space Combat (will update constantly)
    Aaron Fox

    Aaron Fox That Crazy/Not-Crazy Guy

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    Space combat is more interesting than all what was assumed in reality and what is assumed in fiction. While elements of 'battering ships into submission' is prevalent in reality, it should be noted that this isn't entirely due to the armor. Between modern compartmentalization techniques and modern structural materials, it is far harder to get a 'one hit kill' that was prevalent what is left of old 'Hard' Sci-Fi. It also should be noted that it isn't anything like the ancient franchise Star Wars either where warships can fire at each other for, essentially, days on end. At the end of the day, the reality is more of 'in between' those two extremes... with the occasional ammunition detonation. That sort of thing can happen oddly enough.

    Now the biggest obstacle for any anti-ship munition is the layers of defense that any ship has. The outermost layers of defense consist of various interception seekers (designed to mostly go up against enemy seekers with a high effectiveness against strikecraft as a bonus) and ECM. Between that and the ship is countermeasures and CIWS guns be energy or projectile based. Countermeasures run the gantlet of simple ablative chaff and flares to sophisticated 'quantum' chaff and holographic decoys. Countermeasure launchers all have at least one reload in addition to the countermeasures loaded in the tubes. The ablative chaff is actually quite useful as a whole, as it can be used against all sorts of energy weaponry as well as decoy radar guided missiles. While deployed countermeasures might not be entirely successful, they do help the electronic countermeasures in doing their job. Electronic warfare is incredibly sophisticated in the Post-Cataclysm era, so much so that against pre-Cataclysm era nations (let alone fictional ones). ECM is more than simple jamming, it is also misdirection and information denial. All modern ECM suites utilize various systems including a 'capture and false return' system (where the sensors on a ship analyze the incoming sensor wave and send a false reading back to deny conventional radar as a primary sensor), a 'Q-Radar Effect Scrambler' (which affects how Quantum Radar is formed), and various holographic images (to either 'fudge' the IR signature or make false IR/UV/X-Ray images)... but these aren't 100% perfect and are vulnerable to light lag. CIWS guns are small caliber weapons that are rapid firing and are on extremely responsive mounts. While larger weapons can be used (especially if they're specifically designed to both a light anti-ship role and a point defense role), they aren't as effective. Most ships tend to have quite a few CIWS mounts on hand.

    The last line of defense of any ship is armor. While shields do exist, they are usually 'anti-radiation barriers' which are only effective against radiation, not weapons. The shields that are similar to stereotypical sci-fi shields are heavy, power hungry, and fragile. Despite what many people say, shields aren't simply 'massless ablative armor', there is a surprising amount of mass to utilizing such technology. Between the fact that you'll need more power generation to keep them charged, eat spare parts like pigs, need more heat management systems to keep them cool, and are massive themselves... they eat volume like a pig and increase your mass at a near exponential rate. This is bad because you need that volume for other things and mass hurts your propulsion capacity. Shields that do effect weapons generally disperse the energy of the incoming weapon before putting energy in stopping the weapon.

    Armor is shockingly similar to armor from a pre-Cataclysm videogame called 'Homeworld' with elements of the pre-Cataclysm franchise Battletech and the pre-Cataclysm TV series Babylon 5. The armor itself is an advanced composite with numerous, repeating layers with voids for shock absorbers between major layers. There are ablative layers designed to only ablate when sufficient energy is put upon them, there are layers of metallic crystalline material that attempt to disperse as much energy (mainly kinetic but can be somewhat useful against directed energy like particle beams or lasers) as possible before failing, various metal foams, a through weave of carbon nanotubes and artificial diamond, among other materials. While somewhat heavy, the armor is actually quite effective in protecting the ship and crew from dying from combat, debris, or less focused (i.e. 'natural' or 'not used as a weapon') forms of radiation. It should be noted that some armor variants also have a dispersive energy field for energy weapons called 'Energy Web' or E-Web for short. E-Web vastly enhances the armor's ability to resist energy weaponry but doesn't do anything to improve kinetic or radiation resistance.

    Now each ship is compartmentalized to minimize damage to key systems and these compartmentalized compartments are surrounded by bulkheads. While these bulkheads aren't as effective as armor, they do help in limiting the damage. This allows ships to not immediately detonate when certain modules are destroyed. For example, a fusion reactor won't take out a significant portion of the ship after getting damaged enough to have a containment failure.

    Weaponry is rather simple overall, as there are only three primary categories: Kinetic (made up of electro-motive weapons like railguns and coilguns), Energy (made up mostly of lasers and particle beams, but there is the occasional plasmoid weapon), and Seekers (i.e. missiles and heavier missiles called 'torpedoes', usually armed with a shaped nuclear warhead or some sort of nuke-pumped laser... although AHEAD style PD missiles do exist). These weapons have their own advantages and disadvantages. Kinetics are the most straight forward, require the least amount of energy, and most efficient when it comes to damage (nothing really beats an object going at sufficient velocity), however, kinetics aren't as popular as energy weapons due to their high mass, high mass of ammunition, and large amount of volume to internal ammunition... which adds a lot of mass at the end of the day.

    Energy is more widely used as it relies on capacitors, particle medium, and power production which allows them to connect with targets near-instantly (or instantly with lasers) and give a lot of damage over time, however, that comes at the cost of immense heat production, immense energy consumption, and requiring particle medium tanks and capacitors.

    Seekers are somewhere in between, as they can seek out their target, allowing the user to simply fire and forget. In addition, they have the longest effective range of all weapons for the lowest cost. However, they are massive things and require equally massive magazines to keep the launchers going. One advantage they do have over energy and kinetics is that they have penetration aids, which help a seeker get through to the target. These aids include ECCM, decoys, and more which allow better penetration of enemy defenses.
     
  9. Threadmarks: Construction of Vehicles in the Post Cataclysm Era (will update constantly)
    Aaron Fox

    Aaron Fox That Crazy/Not-Crazy Guy

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    Vehicle designs in the Post-Cataclysm Era is vastly different than those in the pre-Cataclysm era. This is in part by the fact that the numerous conditions that these vehicles have to face. In this informational, we're going to be only dealing with planet/planetoid side slash habitat based vehicles and not spaceships, strikecraft, and shuttles.

    Vehicles in the Post-Cataclysm Era are significantly larger than their Pre-Cataclysm counterparts. This is due in part by the required heating and anti-freezing measures that are required by the Post-Cataclysm era. Wings have to have heating elements threaded through them to eliminate ice buildup for example. While far more impressive engine power has made these requirements less troublesome, they still have an impact on performance. As such they're slower than what people in the Pre-Cataclysm era would assume would be after such technological advancements. In addition, advanced materials and systems doesn't mean that they're lighter and better. The universe doesn't work that way sadly enough. These new systems and materials tend to be either lighter than their counterparts or simply outright better.

    To give an example:
    [​IMG]

    (A MBT-0150 in one of the American Dominion's training domes during TEST OPERATION EAGLE DOWN)

    This is the American Dominion's primary MBT, the MBT Model 0150 or MBT-0150 for short. With all of it's equipment and systems, it masses in at 125 tons. It is armed with a 150mm coilgun that can throw a 5 kilogram slug at 5km/s every 5 second as it's main armament (or, to put it simply, it can fire a projectile with the kinetic energy of 62.5MJ every five seconds; to put this into perspective, the US M892A3 round -an APFSDS round using a DU penetrator- masses 10kg and goes at 1,555m/s has the kinetic energy of just shy above 12.09MJ). In addition to this immensely powerful gun (which requires vulnerable heat sinks to ensure that the coils don't warp or demagnetize due to heat) it has three other weapons, one of which are 12.7mm HMGs firing hyper-velocity ammo (i.e. 3km/s minimum velocity, to put it in perspective, the M2's 12.7x99mm round barely tops out at 930m/s). The other two weapons include a 5.5cm 5kW UV-B free electron pulse laser and a 10kW 2cm 'plasma repeater' (which shoots plasmoids at 6km/s) for active defense and RWS duties. It's fusion reactor can give the tank enough juice to maneuver at 55 kph and has a range of 1,000 km on one tank, much of the energy output is dedicated to the numerous systems and computers that are needed to operate this vehicle and it's armaments. The armor masses 40 tons alone and is designed to dissipate energy impacts in addition to being highly resistant to them. It has sensor fusion capability and numerous sensors to detect active and passive target acquisition. It also has a full electronic and cyber warfare suite with newer models adding the 'energy dispersion field' (an energy field that increases the energy dispersion of the armor) to the mix.

    To give an indication of it's size, it's the size of a small apartment building.

    The requirements to make all these systems work and function across the Post-Cataclysm landscape are immense and force designers to up the size and weight of the vehicles. In terms of air transport, this means less mass can be used to transport goods and materials and trains are required to have outrageous (in the eyes of someone from the Pre-Cataclysm era) rail gauges to support the weight and size of the locomotive and rolling stock.
     
  10. Threadmarks: Introduction of the Major Nations/Factions of Humanity of the Post Catacylsm Era (will constantly update)
    Aaron Fox

    Aaron Fox That Crazy/Not-Crazy Guy

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    (_________________________________)
    The American Dominion
    [​IMG]
    (The Flag of the American Dominion)

    The American Dominion is an oddity of governmental evolution in the grand scheme of human polities. Originally simply the continuation of the United States of America, the government was overthrown by the very AI that was developed to maximize government efficiency in the 0050s with the help with a very disgruntled intelligence and military communities after the New Seattle Riots in 0045 and New Bismark Riots in 0048 where tens of thousands died after a popular uprising against the local government due to the Nazi-like policies implemented there. The elected government did nothing as they were more worried about their ratings and their chances of reelection than stopping the problem. This, understandably, couldn't stand.

    So in the 0050s, the AI overthrew the elected government of the United States of America and founded the American Dominion, effectively ending the long-held democracy for Americans in the Post Cataclysm era. In it's place is an AI dictatorship. Besides the handful of executions of those who implemented Nazi-like policies and the reeducation and deprogramming of their supporters, the AI quickly went into a crash program to strengthen the American Dominion's position in the world at large, as any perceived weakness can mean disaster for any faction. These worked, and out of the few wars that followed the American Dominion expanded as it conquered other factions in the aftermath.

    The AI quickly deduced that the few remaining extractable resources (as viable boreholes haven't been developed yet) on Earth isn't viable for even a sustainable high-tech civilization, the Cataclysm and the resource requirements to maintain such a civilization saw to that. So, it began the construction of a space elevator and work on building the foundation of the American Dominion's space assets. This crash program kickstarted the Post-Cataclysm era's space race among the most powerful factions in 0075.

    The American Dominion leads the other nations in space development in 0225, and has the most citizens in space outside the other powers with 25% of it's population living in space. The American Dominion's population in 0225 is 300 million humans and 1 million uplifts.
    (_________________________________)
    Neo Kingdom of Prussia (also called Neo-Prussia, Second Kingdom of Prussia, or simply Prussia)
    [​IMG]


    The Neo Kingdom of Prussia (also called Neo-Prussia, Second Kingdom of Prussia, Kingdom of Prussia, and simply Prussia) is an oddity of the Post-Cataclysm world for it mixes the old with the new to make something wholly different. The beginnings of Neo-Prussia starts during the Cataclysm, where the race to set up the initial Citadel Arcologies and Outposts was on. The elected government of Germany at the time was paralyzed between pan-Euros, Russian pawns, Neo-Nazis, the Greens, and more, and couldn't get anything done. Georg Friedrich Ferdinand Prinz von Preußen -then the head of the ancient house- managed to bypass the paralyzed government and started fast-tracking the projects, leading to the construction of Neo-Berlin and a half a dozen other Arcologies before the Cataclysm went into full swing. Georg focused on balancing getting as many people as possible into the Arcologies with making sure every vital specialist was given priority, which -surprisingly enough- was the right call. When the world turned into a giant snowball, it endured quite well.

    Neo-Prussia is a constitutional cybernetic monarchy with a cybernetic republican parliamentary democracy. Each child in line to the throne of the House of Hohenzollern would be given special implants to allow a process that is only available in Neo-Prussia: Neural-Electronic Splicing, the technology and techniques designed to splice an AI with a human mind. This has been quite useful over a century since it was first perfected during the later years of the First Century PC. This 'splicing' is now used by all top-level leaders of all departments within Neo-Prussia and to great effect. This splicing has vastly improved the leaders within Neo-Prussia and -in combination of it's own system of electronic surveillance- has caused corruption to plummet into non-existence. This also allowed Neo-Prussia to reap the benefits of AI without causing problems with many of it's neighbors who are extremely anti-AI (the most many of Neo-Prussia's neighbors have in terms of computing is extremely good expert systems)... just as long as the fact that there are independent AIs within Neo-Prussia is kept under wraps.

    Neo-Prussia is one of the most stable governments in the Post-Cataclysm world, despite the fact that much of the Post Cataclysm era isn't good for stability.

    Another oddity that makes Neo-Prussia unique is actually its large population of uplifts. Out of all the groups on Earth (and in space), Neo-Prussia has a very large uplift population, mostly taking Eco-Purist facilities and instead of simply killing them basically removed much of the weaponization and allowed them into the world. Some factions have outright prosecuted Uplifts, and many of them had found Neo-Prussia home. This acceptance is so widespread that one 'branch' of the royal family is actually uplift-human hybrids.

    Despite being only the third and -currently- final faction to get into space, it has the second largest presence in space with 15% of it's population in space, with it's total population being 100 million people and 10 million uplifts.
     
  11. Threadmarks: Introduction of the Minor Nations/Factions of Humanity of the Post Catacylsm Era (will constantly update) - maybe Part 1
    Aaron Fox

    Aaron Fox That Crazy/Not-Crazy Guy

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    Large Minor Factions:



    Novaya Russia:
    [​IMG]

    At first glance Novaya Russia is only a remnant of the Russian Federation under Vladimir Putin and his successor, Grigor Stoyanovich... but it is more than that.

    Between the years 0005 Afore Cataclysm (AC) and 0020 Post Cataclysm (PC), the remnants of Russia were in immense trouble. The Siberian provinces had recently threw out the Moscow-aligned government out of their City-Arcologies and Outpost Arcologies. The Polish-Lithuanian Coalition, the Free Ukraine State, the Scandinavian Union, and the Austria-Romania-Hungary Federation -backed by what would become Neo-Prussia- had been ensuring the destruction of as many Russians as they could in fears of Russia using the situation to their advantage and conquer them and do the same to them like what happened in Ukraine between the years 2020 and 2040 AD (which would lead to Cataclysm). Siberia -which housed many of the vital resources Russia need to survive- broke off from Russia. Food supplies were on the brink of collapse and energy sources were thin at best... and less said about the parts situation, the better. To put things into perspective, practically everyone finds out that they're short of the actual supply of parts needed in the Post Cataclysm Era. The Russians... well... do the words 'ran out of parts to even MacGyver' mean anything to anyone?

    That is where Karyavin Yuliy Vadimovich came in, oddly enough. He and his allies managed to do the impossible and allow Russia to survive in this new world.

    The summary of what Karyavin Yuliy Vadimovich is, effectively, 'pulling a Napoleon'. He was able to push back the combined forces of the Polish-Lithuanian Coalition, the Free Ukraine State, the Scandinavian Union, the Austria-Romania-Hungary Federation, and the nucleus of Neo-Prussia. He and his allies managed to fix the food supply situation and forced new regulations on energy production and use, and mandated laws on the use, manufacture, and storage of spare parts, with punishments running up to and including death of not only the perpetrator but also the perpetrator's immediate family. While harsh, these measures worked just enough to ensure that Russia survived... which caused a series of events leading Vadimovich being crowned Vadimovich the First, as the majority of the elected officials simply tried to do their pre-Cataclysm shenanigans... which would become their last mistake.

    Population-wise, between all the crap that Russia had thrown at it, only 30 million Russians live in 0225 PC.








    Small Minor Factions:


    Republic of India:
    [​IMG]


    The Republic of India is the last remnants of the Pre-Cataclysm nation of India. The original population was a burgeoning 1.5 billion ruled by a government that is steeped in corruption, factional in-fighting, and general ineffectiveness. Despite the Indian government's problems, it was actively working to eliminate these problems... even if it was slow going.

    The problem was the Cataclysm happened first.

    If the Indian government wasn't such a morass of corruption and factionalism, the post-Cataclysm government would be the fourth major faction in that era. Sadly this wasn't to be and only one Citadel City-Arcology and a handful of Outpost-Arcologies were built before the Cataclysm ended. Out of that 1.5 billion, only 3 million survived. Unbeknownst to the remnant of the Indian government, Pakistan is more or less in the same situation. When India rediscovered Pakistan in 0025 PC, it was agreed by sides that to continue the pre-Cataclysm feuds and grudges would not only serve no purpose but also is the epitome of stupidity.

    After the Cataclysm and fight for survival, the Republic of India has managed to claw it's way out of the hole it's pre-Cataclysm problems created, however, this wasn't to last.

    Many of the problems that plagued India pre-Cataclysm showed up once the fight for survival was done and over... leading to a short civil war in 0120 PC. The Republic of India was then forcibly transitioned from a democratic republic to a cybernetic republic and stayed that way ever since.

    The Republic of India has 7.2 million people under it's flag and has some minor internal problems due to the various ethnic and cultural groups within India.
    ___
     
  12. Threadmarks: Small Arms in the Post Cataclysm Era (will be constantly updating)
    Aaron Fox

    Aaron Fox That Crazy/Not-Crazy Guy

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    Infantry combat in the Post-Cataclysm era is both very different and very similar to it's pre-Cataclysm counterpart. Different that each soldiers has a massive (comparatively) array of short-range drones, sensor data links, and other gizmos and gadgets to vastly improve the grunt's sensing capability. Add to the fact that almost every soldier in any military has at least MMI implants and a cyberbrain (which can be used as a sort of 'lifeboat', which allows a soldier to be allowed to survive in situations that they wouldn't otherwise), which makes soldiers surprisingly versatile and effective in combat. Full-conversion cyborgs with power armor with their limiters removed is a frightening thing to face. How frightening? Well, to give you an idea, one platoon of full-conversion cyborgs can take on a company of unaugmented soldiers and come back with nary a scratch, just needing a full ammo resupply. Even gene-augmented soldiers tend to be hard pressed to deal with a full-conversion cyborg. Full-Conversion Cyborgs are an uncommon sight, mostly due to their maintenance costs.

    Most military forces utilize man-sized EW and ADS packages onto their power armor (usually mixing it in a squad to have half of them use the ECM while the other half use ADS), making man-portable 'smart weapons' absolutely useless. Every time man-portable 'smart' weapons gets improved, it was quickly countered with modified and/or enhanced EW and ADS packages. Anyone that's heavily reliant on infantry 'smart' weaponry will not like fighting against any human force from the Post-Cataclysm era as their weapons will simply become useless. Thus why any Post-Cataclysm era military engagement is extremely destructive, as 'smart' weaponry's effectiveness have been severely degraded. While fighting a force without these smart-weaponry degrading capabilities, the opposing force will find out that under such conditions these weapons are incredibly accurate.

    Most conventional small arms have completely converted to using Electrothermal Chemical tech, utilizing the Triple Coaxial Plasma Igniter branch. This allows for a far better velocity (up to and surpassing 3km/s) and fewer stoppages.
    [​IMG]

    [​IMG]
    (an American Dominion 'pulse rifle', which utilizes TCPI (kinetic aspect) and 'Metal Storm' (grenade aspect) technology)

    Small arms that utilize TCPI technology are called 'Pulse Guns'. The weakest 'pulse guns' tend to have a blue-white muzzle flash -and these weapons can fire a projectile at 2km/s at the minimum- while the strongest have violet-white flashes -which can have projectiles achieving velocities in excess of 4.5km/s. The lightest round masses in at 5 grams (a 10mm Auto style round, which at 2km/s has a KE of 10kj) while the heaviest is 50 grams (an HVAPI round for an American Dominion 12.7x105mm HMG, which at 2km/s has a KE of 100kj), which gives them extreme kinetic power even at the lowest velocities. It also ensures that these weapons are incredibly bulky in terms of size (an unaugmented pre-Cataclysm human can barely use an Assault rifle outside of semi-auto and a setup that makes the most powerful of anti-material rifles look absolutely pedestrian) and mass, but this is offset by the fact that only those in power armor are wielding it. This also has made any non-military cover (i.e. constructs that are military grade) only effective as concealment.

    A far less demanding (for some measure of less) weapon is the various laser rifles that are in service since the early 0140s.
    [​IMG]

    [​IMG]
    (the American Dominion Wattz series laser rifle, fully loaded with a thermal clip magazine, an older Metal-Storm style grenade launcher, and a fully charged power cell)

    Laser rifles were slow to become commonplace in the Post-Cataclysm era, mostly due to the fact that the lasing arrays that were made up to that point couldn't even hope to cope with the required energy in such a small package. A few breakthroughs in miniaturizing and hardening the lasing arrays that could changed all that, but to get them that small required a lot of their cooling systems had to be removed or otherwise downsized. That is where the thermal clip came into play. Each energy (most of which are laser rifles, although some plasmoid weapons exist... they're incredibly rare outside of the American Dominion) or electromotive (i.e. coil/railguns) weapon utilizes a simplified cooling system that dumps all the heat into an eject-able heat sink, which after it is saturated with heat automatically ejects (or in some cases, forcibly ejected via the action that loads the first thermal clip of a thermal magazine). Most thermal clip designs automatically eject after two power cells and are mostly pulse lasers with the occasional continuous wave laser (but these chew up power cells like jet fuel). Each 'shot' is really a cycle of 10 laser pulses -usually blue, green, or violet part of the spectrum- that add up to the energy required to penetrate armor.

    Any human being that gets hit by any weapon tends to be either chunky salsa or a bloody smear across the floor.
     
  13. Threadmarks: Spaceship Construction (will be updated constantly)
    Aaron Fox

    Aaron Fox That Crazy/Not-Crazy Guy

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    What people assume when looking at spaceships (and to a lesser extent, space stations) is that they should be filled to the gills with guns, ala late WW2 US warships or be basically a giant gun. Those assumptions is factually wrong. A spaceship is not simply a pile of guns or one giant gun, it is a sophisticated machine that is superficially similar to those of the ancient blue water navies of yore. Spaceships are defined by their volume and less so their mass, and there is only so much volume to go around. You have to have to have enough facilities to ensure that you've got the crew to man everything and keep them healthy and entertained, enough storage facilities for the various things that make a ship livable (those being spare parts, water, atmosphere, and food), engines to allow the ship to move, sensors so that you can see, various countermeasures to ensure that you survive in combat, shields and radiation barriers so you don't fry via solar radiation (which is a very painful way to die, even modern armor materials aren't as effective as radiation barriers in the radiation protection department, that is why 1st gen ships had tens of meters of armor and were infamously slow), you'll need the mounts for your weapons and the capacitor/ammo/particle bunkers to feed those weapons, engines to allow your ship to move and maneuver, hangers to allow for at least shuttles and some strikecraft to be available, heat management systems to manage all the heat that all of this will produce, power plants to provide power to everything, and fuel and propellant to keep the power plants producing energy and engines working respectively.

    This, you would notice, would eat up a lot of space that would be simply used with gun mounts.

    Each type of ship is based on it's 'mission', be simple escorts and autonomous defense platforms to behemoth transports and stations, and these 'missions' are basically the role of the spaceship or station. Each of these 'missions' have limitations on how much volume can be dedicated to a purpose. For example: an 'Escort' type ship can only mount 20% of it's volume in armaments and ammo, with power and heat management, propulsion, and fuel stores making up 40% of the vessel's volume.
     
  14. Threadmarks: Psi Memories
    Aaron Fox

    Aaron Fox That Crazy/Not-Crazy Guy

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    This is the closest equivalent of going through a 'Psi-Memory' that you'll ever see in other fiction. One moment, everything is normal, you are doing whatever you're doing and then, bang, you're dragged into the memory. You would think that you were taken back in time to the event itself, your senses going bonkers as they respond to the events of the memory. If you're lucky, you simply ride through the memory with your senses going haywire and your brain getting contradictory signals with some possible PTSD on the side. If you aren't? ... well... let's just say you'll die and get 'stuck' into the memory. Repeating the events again, and again, and again until the memory is contained and removed or the memory is destroyed.

    These things are not to be trifled with, no matter what you think. That is why every faction has invested in equipment designed to limit or negate psi-related events, as they can actually harm people through the senses as the brain is getting the signals despite them not actually happening. People have experienced things like brain hemorrhaging, heart attacks, heart failure, complete organ failure, among other deadly things when experiencing a psi-memory. Containing and removing these things is a complicated process to begin with and takes a lot of resources to accomplish. Destroying them is a hazardous proposition to begin with as in doing so would likely cause a 'psi pulse' which at the minimum gives out concussions like Oprah gives out gifts or kills every sentient being by turning their brains into literal mush.
     
  15. Threadmarks: The Reason Why Eco-Purists are Still a Threat and Why Earth is a Snowball
    Aaron Fox

    Aaron Fox That Crazy/Not-Crazy Guy

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    So, someone that I showed some of my notes to asked why are Eco-Purists still a threat after all this time... and, well, it isn't pretty. By the time the Cataclysm happened, eco-terrorism was becoming more and more violent as the situation deteriorated. As the world fell apart, they gained equipment and technology that would severely screw humanity over. While the ideology of Eco-Purity is self perpetuating (as those of the ideology have hidden themselves quite well) with their own hideouts and bases across the planet, the efforts that the various factions have put into annihilating this ideology would have killed it by the modern day.

    To get into why Eco-Purists haven't been annihilated, we must go with some history. Russia during it's pre-Cataclysm days was ruled by an oligarchy and that oligarchy is ruled by a handful of former intelligence department leaders and officers, the most visible of which is one Vladimir Putin. Putin -no one has a complete picture of this era thanks to Grigor Stoyanovich destroying as much as he could when Karyavin Yuliy Vadimovich 'pulled a Napoleon'- initiated a program that would turn things like freedom of the press and freedom of information against the target and the more 'open' these freedoms are, the worse the effects. From the mid-1990s AD, this slowly evolved into a comprehensive program utilizing mimetic weaponry and was first used in Brexit and the US 2016 Presidential Elections alongside the more traditional 'Active Measures' program that the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) had perfected into an artform with.

    To say that this worked beyond expectations would be an understatement. Brexit caused a disastrous cascading effect with the European Union, as it caused an incredibly punitive Brexit to be implemented. This punitive Brexit not only caused North Ireland have The Troubles again -although what little specific information from that period that is left indicates that mimetic weaponry was used to cause this, but this can't be completely confirmed thanks to the destruction of important documents by Stoyanovich's regime- before loosing it completely but also cause the military to reinstate the monarchy at gunpoint. The punitive Brexit caused ripples within the EU, which led to a series of economic and civic meltdowns across key members of the EU and caused it's dissolution in the late 2030s AD.

    The United States on the other hand fared somewhat better. The Trump-Russia Investigation managed to cause an unprecedented series of court cases started by the Supreme Court that would destroy not only Trump, his family, and his associates (Donald would only survive a year in ADX Florance while serving a life sentence) but also for all intents and purposes annihilate the GOP and it's propaganda infrastructure alongside curtailing social media in general. While this did cause minor bouts of insurrection, it went more or less roughly... before the status of the world became -more or less- defined as 'on fire'.

    Putin then authorized an expansion and perfection of this new form of weaponry. This is where one Chayka Mili Yegorovich enters the picture. Chayka Mili Yegorovich and his team developed a whole new mimetic weapon technology from scratch within eight years and developed an entire suite of mimetic weapons out of that technology. What Chayka Mili Yegorovich and his team managed to create is the closest thing to mind control as one could get. The technology could make anyone who is receptive to the meme into a Manchurian Candidate. The rate that the process takes hold of a person differs wildly from victim to victim, and it has only been discovered recently that those with inactive psionic genes are the most vulnerable (and even then, it is it's own spectrum, as the more powerful the inactive psionic gene, the faster the process goes), but it is 100% effective on those that it takes hold. Now, Chayka Mili Yegorovich and his team understood the implications of this, and decided to defect to the United States. With the help of the remnants of MI-6, the CIA, Poland, Germany, and a handful of others, Chayka Mili Yegorovich and his team managed to get to the US safely with a detailed manual on the technology with the original software and what little of the hardware they could smuggle out.

    Chayka Mili Yegorovich and his team's fate would be that they died after helping the FBI and NSA on creating very basic countermeasures with everything related to the project stolen and let loose across the internet. This coincided with a rash of attacks by a now-dead hactivist group who believed that all information must be free. To say that this technology getting into the wild was disastrous would be the understatement to end all understatements. While most of the ideologies that would spawn from these would be brutally put down, it would cause greater bloodshed later... as what would become known as the Eco-Purists would perfect this technology into it's current form.

    That is how the Eco-Purists have managed to stay alive for so long. With careful planning, they could turn anyone into an Eco-Purist fanatic. That is why things like the freedom of information is heavily restricted and privacy has been annihilated.

    That wasn't the only horror that the Eco-Purists would be responsible for... for it is the eco-purists -more specifically a faction within the ideology known only as the 'Riders of the Apocalypse', a faction that most other Eco-Purist factions hated and feared and whose sole define purpose is to annihilate humanity and everything it created- that caused the Earth to snowball.

    Taking data from various weather manipulation projects that various nation-states were doing (the leaders of the field would be the US and Russia with China bringing up the rear), the 'Riders of the Apocalypse' created a series of technologies that would cause the entire Earth to Snowball in an effort to doom humanity to extinction. The 'Riders of the Apocalypse' managed to go basically comic book villain and created a superweapon that was straight out of a comic book. When this weapon was first activated, it didn't do anything within the first two years like their models predicted... and it wouldn't be until a decade and a half after activation that the effects started to show themselves, which was one of the causes of the Cataclysm. At first, it was only notable for the uptick in polar vortexes... which got worse every year until it caused entire swaths of the US Midwest to be uninhabitable during winter time. That was when various nations started building what would become the Citadel-Arcologies, in preparation if these polar 'super' vortexes get even worse and cover a wider area.

    Sadly, this won't save everyone...
     
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