TheRPGSite

Ive been noticing some strong (ish) similarities to Traveller in teh Dark Matter TV show, so I thought I'd start a conversion thread where I can talk about how to do it.  Because damned if I don't need to do more gaming related posts around here, eh?

Whazzat? No? I don't?

Well... TOO BAD! Cause I am!

Right, where was I?

Right:

Setting:

DM doen't give us a lot of details on world building, but I'm going to say that the settled 'universe' is probably equivalent to the size of the Spinward Marches... though setting it around earth means the Terran... umm... sphere? Sector?  Hey, I'm tired and slightly tipsy, so sue me.   This 'sector' sized patch of space largely seems to consist of a few well developed but small principalities, a vast 'frontier' zone with sparsely occupied worlds, and a more settled 'Corporate' sector that officially is run by the Galactic Authority, which is analogous to the Imperium, though without an Emperor and very little political power.  It appears that authority over the GA is a board style arangement of the Mega-Corporations who are the true powers of the setting, they hold a number of voting seats, which are determined by a political process (seen on Eos-7 in the season 2 finale), presumably linked to financial power.  

There appear to be roughly a dozen voting seats in Eos-7, including the 'league of (minor worlds)', which in the episode is fronted by the Emperor of Zairon.  Note that several small principalities must form a bloc to even compete as an equal to one Mega-corporation.

Known Mega's are Ferrous, The Mekkei Combine, and Tralgaut Corp, but a few others could be teased out of the Eos-7 meeting.

One adaption of the Traveller settings is that Social Status is not dominated at the upper ranks by Nobility, though nobility does play a role. Ryu Ishida is not particularly respected by Commander Trufant, for example, until he attains the rank of Emperor, despite having a SOC of a prince.  Commanders appear to be the dominant force in the Mega-Corporations, presumably a cross between diplomatic and military style work, we can assume their role in the Eos-7 meeting is as proxies for the actual shareholders... though one cannot dismiss the possibility of the Commanders attaining rank by acquiring Shares.

Carrying this forwards, the Mega-corps, the smaller principalities and the Galactic Authority all have fleets independent of one another. Presumably the GA does not regularly interfer in Mega-Corp business unless the victim is another Mega and a crime (mega vs mega) is being done, and even then.

The GA is hopelessly corrupt, though pockets of stalwart ideologs do hold office, they are often either poorly supported or promoted based on acknowledgement of of some personal flaw that makes them managable (such as the Chief Inspector's utter inflexibility, which makes him predictable. An excellent investigator, a bulldog with a bone, but unable to adapt to changing circumstances means the corrupt Mega's can always outmanuever him if necessary.  Frau Potente's character was also an ideolog but had less support and an antisocial personality.)

The Mega's tend to do influence peddling and manipulation of bad actors (Zairon is losing its war against Pyr due to Mega support of Pyr, presumably because Zairon was strong enough to unite other principalities into a voting bloc, while Pyr couldn't...)


Military:
At least as of season 2 we have only really seen police forces and some naval forces, so it IS possible that things like Battledress are in use, though presumably very rare.  Fleets are smaller... six cruisers is a major show of force for the capital of Zairon, three cruisers is the Emperor's personal fleet... in fact we rarely even see Cruisers.

Based on the evidence shown, it seems likely that 'capital ships' in the Traveller sense are simply not in evidence.   I'm going to say that Cruisers, the biggest ships seen (fitting naval use, when Cruisers were ships of the line, actually. THe term Batttleship is simply not used in DM, nor dreadnaut.) are 2000 ton ships, while the more commonly seen Destroyers (such as the Raza) range in the 500-800 range, with unknown ship classes lying between the poles, and smaller ships being generally relegated to civilians... note that the Raza is a stolen military vessel (GA), used by 'Mercenaries'... who undoubtedly make up a good portion of ground troops for the Mega-corps.  

For ship to ship combat, Missiles do seem to be most prevalent... in fact the Raza has launchers, but no ammo, according to an early episode, backed by Railguns as the primary armament.  To my knowledge, Railguns start in Barbette scale and go up, meaning smaller turrets are not in use (and the Raza has no point defense weapons!)   Nuclear missiles should probably be scaled up, or the possibility of torpedoes often being referred to as 'missiles' in common parlance... I favor the later I think.

The lack of turrets means that the common small weapons are either fixed mounts, or Barbettes. Lasers are possible but concern should be made that they don't overshadow the railguns in terms of power/utility... unless we assume the Raza has an unusual design.  It IS possible to presume that standard Traveller weapons are used across the board (see Tech Levels later), and that the Raza is simply an older ship using outmoded tech for its primary guns, but since the lack of missiles is of more concern than 'out of date tech'... and when the Raza does fight (Late in Season 2...) it does well even with just guns.

Tech/Techlevels:

I'd suggest that in the main Dark Matter appears to be generally lower tech, say TL12 or so, with exceptions in medical technologies and androids, but there is no reason to keep to that idea.  Frankly there are some significant differences between Traveller's Imperium and Dark Matter when it comes to tech, at least some of which could relate to 40+ years of real world developments since Traveller's setting was designed.

We never see anything like contra-grav, though ships and stations clearly have artificial gravity. We never see Battledress, or for that matter heavy weapons like PGMPs, which does not mean they don't exist (though we WOULD have seen them in the second ever episode if ever...). Small arms don't seem to have advanced much, though clearly some energy weapons do exist (and are common), so laser weapons could and should exist. Its perfectly acceptable to include gauss guns as well, depending.

For ships the big issues are shields, which should be treated like Dampener for installation, absorbing d6 'hits' per Dampener, but requiring repair actions to bring back on line (taking an action at the least... and shield emitters do seem to be the first thing to go so they should have a strong Crit entry on the table....). The other big issue is FTL drives, which seem to work... similar... to jump drives in many ways (away from the world etc), but are a bit more flexible. There are some alternate 'warp' rules that might be used in Mong-Trav (2 especially). Among other things, travel time seems marginally shorter, and ships can enter and leave FTL much easier than Jumps. I'd assume very little fuel use compared to Traveller as well.  As I go through MT2 High Guard I may actually work up some numbers (later posts...), based perhaps on energy usage.

Robots: I have no idea what the plan is for MT2, but MT has an excellent Robots book (well... useful anyway).  Androids (human like robots) appear to be the only ones in use, but the difference between robots and androids is known in setting.  Androids would generally make use of adaptive nano-technology (which is prevalent in most materials tech, actually!), as Moe-droid (see the drinking game thread for that reference) is known to be an older model and yet is fully self healing.  Emotional emulator technology.. software... is available but illegal.  Androids appear to handle much of the crew duties on board starships, though we can assume that this is 'uncommon' in military vessels as a point of weakness. They also appear to work as security forces, relying mostly on brute strength and durability... though emotional upgrades also include 'dex' upgrades that make them far more capable combatants... or at least more elegant.

Medical Tech: For the most part medical tech seems slightly advanced of our own, with short recoveries from life threatening injuries, but still requiring chancy surgery. Note, however, that the Raza's medical bay is routinely denigrated as inferior and understocked, so its possible better tech exists.  Cybernetics should be quite possible, for example Portia/Two could be considered the equivilent of a Total-body-Replacement from the MT Supply Catalog, which would cover most of her 'nanite' based powers as demonstrated.  One important 'upgrade' from core Traveller is the greater use of neural technology... the Amnesia virus upload, the neural imprints and links in several episodes... the Transfer Clones...

Transfer Clones and FTL Comms: Another big difference is the lack of communications lag, which... among other things, allows, in conjunction with neural scanning, for people to use FTL comms to visit places via clone proxy while their body is safely 'home', or close to it.  This is used by the GA for rapid deployments. The Clones themselves appear to be highly unstable, with lifespans measured in hours (several hours, at least), and they tend to disintigrate when killed, suggesting an unstable energy construct more than a true biological organism.  

Eh. That's a starter post. I'll try to expand on various ideas as I go forward, and I may have missed some points along the way that I'll try to address.  This is brainstorming.

That's pretty cool stuff there. I've been wanting to play in a game inspired by Dark Matter and similar media, and you're not the first to point me towards Traveller. I'd have no idea what edition to get, though, since there have been a lot. I hear good things about MongTrav(which I assume extends to 2), and bad things about Trav5. Oh, and it was suggested to me to get the Mindjammer book for AI and stuff.

Also, I've said it before, and I'll likely say it again: Numbah 4 / Ryo is the element that initially made me view Dark Matter as a game setting. You have mega corps, a galactic authority, and . . . Space Japan. I got one whiff of that stuff and went "They invited the guy who always insists on playing a ninja regardless of the setting!" Classic, that.

Mongoose Traveller Second Edition and the Mindjammer supplement = Dark Matter.

I'm trying to think of what to say. Traveller works very well for lots of space-based sci-fi settings, Dark Matter included. Like most of these re-tools, DM has different expectations than Traveller in terms of how much fuel and food are kept on board/how often ships need to return to civilization, but otherwise it pretty much fits. Unfortunately, since fuel space is a big part of ship design in Traveller, it does require some significant retooling of the ship system math (although I suppose you can just dedicate one jumps worth of fuel space as part of the larger engine system or something else easy).

Quote from: Willie the Duck;979096I'm trying to think of what to say. Traveller works very well for lots of space-based sci-fi settings, Dark Matter included. Like most of these re-tools, DM has different expectations than Traveller in terms of how much fuel and food are kept on board/how often ships need to return to civilization, but otherwise it pretty much fits. Unfortunately, since fuel space is a big part of ship design in Traveller, it does require some significant retooling of the ship system math (although I suppose you can just dedicate one jumps worth of fuel space as part of the larger engine system or something else easy).

Yeah, those flying gascans sure tank* attempts at using that system with other settings.

*poor pun intended. :D

Quote from: CRKrueger;979266Yeah, those flying gascans sure tank* attempts at using that system with other settings.

*poor pun intended. :D

Did Traveller ever allow for alternate fuel supplies like Nuclear Fusion or Fission for Jump Drives?
The venting of liquid hydrogen to create a thin hydrogen bubble encasing a ship about to jump, which Traveller version had that?

I lost internet for a day, and I'm not quite as spacey (har har) as I was when I posted originally. I'm mocking up a design for the Raza and some 'own creation' backstory stuff that I don't think will ever be contradicted by the show.

Thoughts.

First: I'm not going to bother adjusting the actual rules for Tech Levels. DM works fine I think with the Traveller defaults, though I think getting 'high tech' parts in the frontier is much easier than in the Imperium.  Second, and on point, I think ship design should MOSTLY remain the same, excepting Jump Drives.  I'll point out that I think I'm right to remove Traveller's Capital Ships, as even the Emperor of Zairon uses ships comparable (though definitely somewhat bigger) than the Raza, and the Raza is no capital ship.  I'll simply point out the cultural expectations revealed by the show, where military ships stick with bays over turrets.

I have been going over MongTrav 2, High Guard in prep for reviewing it, and I'll stick with what I know: Mong/Mong2 ship designs.  I mean, I've played TNE and I've fondled gently various other editions, but MongT is 'my home' when it comes to Traveller.

FTL Drives:

Mong2 (and 1, but less clearly) offers a Warp Drive that maps well to Dark Matter.  However, as we have a good scale for the setting (160 light years, or somewhat less than 80 parsecs), and we know that ships can take months to get from point a to b (necessitating occasional use of low-berths), I'm making at a few adjustments.

Now a 'Warp Drive'... FTL drive (20 tons per 'Thrust', up to T3 (at prototype TL15+ level), allows one parsec per Day of travel instead of per hour. They use power equal to a jump drive, but consume no fuel (per Warp Drives, and the FTL drives do not seem excessively fuel hungry).  That's a brief. I've been contemplating slowing them down slightly, but that causes problems with the timing of teh second episode.

Shields: MT2 (and yes, 1, but again... not as well explained) offers shields that work like Sci-Fi sheilds, so those are in play, though the TL needs to be reduced (as with Warp Drives) to bring the setting on a single Tech scale.

Bubba: Heavy Weapon, some sort of Shockwave cannon. My first thought is to make it a 'Destructive' weapon against structures (but not people. Still dangerous, but we've seen two definite survivors... Marcus Boone and Makita (?)), but as I've only got the Beta PDF for MT2 I'm a bit reluctant to fall back on anything from 2 for people scale... just yet.

My general thought is to pull the Supply Catalog Total Body Replacement as teh default for Android bodies and, though this should not be 'player' default, Portia/Two style experiments... but I'm lazy... I still do have the Robots supplement for MongTrav 1 I can do a proper design exercise there if need be.

My thought on the Raza itself is that it was a rare model Destroyer, an older design meant for a strategic picture that no longer exists, and was abandoned, resulting in only a few of them.  One big thought is that in the show you really only see Android doing any ship crew duties, any tactical failures in the first two seasons largely come from the crew (the characters) actually not being space-crew types, rather than a failure of the ship.  Clearly its shields are a bit weaker than usual, based on the exchanges we've seen, but it's a tough ship, thus probably has armor (that we never hear about because why would Android mention armor, and why would a bunch of ground pounding merc types think about it?), suggesting an unusual design philosophy for the setting as shown.

I may, or may not, get around to posting some background ideas on the Service Class 3 Droid models and other fun stuff... but I do look forward to reading more feedback. I had though this thread would be buried and dead, so imagine my surprise!

Right.

So lacking any timeline information as part of the show I've been pondering. Well, that too, but one thing at a time, Pinky.

Anyway: Whenever possible I like to keep things simple, so sticking to fairly standard Traveller dates (not timeline, just the calendar dates) makes things simpler, so for MongTrav that puts around a 'stardate' of 1106-1114, if I recall correctly, with the Imperium falling to war in 1114, which makes a great replacment date to swap the assassination of Strephon with the bombing of Eos-7.

Which matches up nicely with my idea that we've gone pretty far from the modern day, so a millenium of Space History.

Which ALSO matches up nicely with the fact that the Ishida Dynasty of Zairon is, canon, 400 years old prior to the start of the series.

So my suggested timeline for the setting is that 'mankind has been in space for 1114 years (as of Eos-7), though the exact dating method was applied later, providing some convienent fuzz from AD to DM conversions, as necessary.  Presumably early FTL drives were much slower (we know that from Zairon to their research facility in some random nebula is six days travel for military (presumably reasonably fast) ships. Nebula would be parsecs away, as Nebulas are big fucking things by default... still trying to hash out a playable, yet accurate, scale for all this), and faster drives came on later. We can presume the early forms of the Mega's and the Galactic Authority are actually equal, or greater, in age than the Dynasty of Ishida... just as we might presume that Zairon wasn't founded by Ishida (else they'd have named it after themselves, or at least given it a more japanese style name!).

So a generalized Timeline, perhaps working backwards?

For the sake of my sanity I'm not going to try to pin down exact months, and I'm going to put a high gloss on events in the show, since you can and probably will argue about timetables, and I'm not going to rewatch thirty hours of TV with a notepad to get every time hack I can out of it, okay?

So, 1116 (correction from previous post).  Eos-7 conference is destroyed.  Beginning of Corporate War. Assume War lasts approximately 1 year (season 3 is ongoing, but Ferrous Corp seems to be on a schedule. Wars don't work that way, but its TV, m'kay?)

1115: Crew of the Raza awaken with Amnesia, show begins.  

1114: Crew of the Raza consists of Portia Lin, Des (The Kid), Marcus Boone, Ryu Ishida and Griffin Jones. At some point Des helps Portia program an emotion code for the ship's Android.  Des joins crew in this year.  

1113: Crew of the Raza consists of Boone, Lin, Jasper and Shrike (name check). Lin kills Jasper and Shrike during this year over personal conflicts.  Presumed also to be the year Lin escaped Dwarf Star Technologies and joined the Raza. Presumably Jasper or Shrike was the acting Captain at that time, and Lin's murder assured her control over the ship. Ryo presumably joins crew after.

1112:  Death of Emperor Ishida.  "Griffin Jones" "steals" the Raza from the Galactic Authority en route to decommisioning for The General, goes rogue briefly after due to stress. During his three months of medical leave, the Raza drops off the GA radar, and Jones is returned to active duty with a mission to recover the ship.

1106: Last formal meeting of the Principles of the Mega Corps in person to vote on Board Memberships in the GA.

1090~: Ferrous Corp begins a period of slow decline as other corporations, notably Tralgot Corp, begin making great strides in technological development. Ferrous's Exclusionary Principle philosophy begins costing them major customers for the first time. Ferrous Corp begins planning for a major Corp War. Commander Neiman is recruited from Ferrous Corp territory and begins a rapid rise in the Corp.

1030~: Ferrous Corp begins taking a dominant position among the Mega Corporations due to sheer industrial power and brass balls.  Ferrous official begins adopting Exclusionary Principles as their guiding philosophy, seeking total economic dominance over the galaxy.

900~ The Galactic Authority is formally founded by the Mega Corps to check their rivals growing power.  Several independent world-states formally participate in the process.  Economic might is compared, and a treaty determining the number of Directorate Seats of the Galactic Authority is distributed accordingly.  The League of Unaligned worlds, made up of many smaller states holds a large block of seats that will ebb and flow over the next two centuries, with Zairon playing a large role in the size of that bloc.  As the GA is responsible for holding Mega-corps accountable for the various laws and contracts... and even treaties... that they sign with each other, and with independent worlds, control over director seats is seen as a true measure of power by the Mega-corps, giving them carte blanche to ignore inconvienent laws, or to selectively enforce laws against their rivals.  This measure is most importantly viewed as a means of staving off open warfare between the growing military mights of the Megas... who in turn sell ships and weapons to the independent worlds, leaving the supposedly soveriegn independents dependent upon the Mega-corps for their own military might.  While their mandate is corporate law, mission creep begins almost immediately, as the GA is viewed as a more or less universal police force, especially for criminals operating in space.

800~ the Mikkei Combine officially becomes the first true Mega Corp, followed shortly by several others. The Age of Mega Corps begins officially.

700~:  The Ishida Family takes control over the Principality of Zairon, naming themselves as Emperors and instituiting a neo-classical Japanese Revival in Zairon.  

500~ The Principality of Zairon, a multi world state is formally founded with some help from the nascent Mega-corporations.  

350~:

Quote from: CRKrueger;979268Did Traveller ever allow for alternate fuel supplies like Nuclear Fusion or Fission for Jump Drives?
The venting of liquid hydrogen to create a thin hydrogen bubble encasing a ship about to jump, which Traveller version had that?

They must have. Porting the system over to play Star Trek or Star Wars is an iconic part of the games' history. I bet there is an article in one of the... was the magazine called JTAS?... where they spelled out an option. Probably behind a big disclaimer tag about what using these rules would do to the standard Traveller setting.

Quote from: Willie the Duck;979716They must have. Porting the system over to play Star Trek or Star Wars is an iconic part of the games' history. I bet there is an article in one of the... was the magazine called JTAS?... where they spelled out an option. Probably behind a big disclaimer tag about what using these rules would do to the standard Traveller setting.

Mongoose Traveller 1st Edition has alternate drives for starships.

The G.A.S. Elegy Class Destroyer, The Raza:

In 1058 the galaxy was wracked with spasms of War. A relatively new strategy developed and employed by Ferrous Corp was threatening the balance of power. Backing each of their Indomitable Class Heavy Cruisers with a squadron of Striker Class Gunships (200 ton flying cannons), Ferrous was able to stretch their forces thin without greatly weakening their naval forces.  The Galactic Authority, tasked with enforcing the detente between the Mega Corps was no better off, and in fact was more vulnerable than ever to Ferrous Corp ignoring their contractual obligations and Corporate Law.  To combat this new strategy, the GA empaneled expert strategians, ship designers and experts in a dozen related fields, and designed the Elegy Class Destroyer to counter the Striker/Indomitable task forces.  The Elegy, a masterpiece of new technologies, blended hard hitting guns, more than the usual amount of armor, and the most advanced shields available. It took five years to design and moedel proof of concept, but the Elegy was believed to be able to defeat an entire Striker Squadron and drive off or destroy the Indomitable by itself in 5 out of 6 encounters.  

The GA shipyards in Novus Terrum were given the honor of building the first dozen ships.  Halfway through the build, however, the galactic powers came up with a far more practical counter to the Striker/Indomitable task forces... simply refitting their existing warships with lightweight missile launchers, filling space with dozens of small seeker missiles that, while little threat to an Indomitable, could eliminate the fragile Strikers en mass. By the time the first Elegy rolled off the yards in 1068, it was already obsolete, and no more were to be built.

Still, the GA crewed the Elegy's that had been built, allowing them to be named by their crews, and tasked them to anti-piracy patrols throughout the galaxy, as Ferrous Corp had found it advantageous to sell off their stockpiles of Striker Class ships to independent contractors.  The Elegy class served with quiet distinction, the GA doesn't advertise their anti-piracy efforts as a matter of security, and all survived their first ten years without a single loss.  Slowly the ships were decommissioned, some were disarmed and sold off as cargo vessels, others were scrapped, a few simply disappeared.

The Raza, and others, continued to serve in light duty positions for decades before the Raza itself came to the attention to the newly commissioned Chief Investigator Ignacio Garrus, in 1091, who requested it as his personal vessel.  He removed the point defense turrets, the internal capacitance and command/control space was converted into a combination of a medical interrogation bay and brig, he removed the internal ammo spaces for the torpedo launcher, seeing no need for the sort of direct combat endurance, and converted the bays into cargo.

At his request information on the class was restricted by Director Authority, and over the next twenty years the Raza would fly under a dozen names, a dozen classes and almost every conceivable registration that could be flown, as CI Garrus and his men flew the space lanes doing undercover investigations of various anti-GA forces and conspiracies.   No doubt it would still be under his command, but as CI Garrus began investigating the terrorist known only as The General, he was nearly killed by a bomb, and retired from active investigations. Rather than see the Raza, which had served him so faithfully, relagated to the Scrapper's Touch, the Chief Investigator conceived of a plan to lure The General out, or at least seriously harm his organization.  Recruiting the ambitious Lt Kal Verrick, he arranged for the Raza to be officially decommisioned, knowing that the Rebellion could not help but desire a capable warship to make them a far more dangerous and competent foe... and knowing that The General himself might be lured out of hiding to command the ship.

As planned, on her way to the Scrapper's yard, under a skeleton crew, the Raza was stolen by the Rebellion, with an undercover Verrik ensuring the op went smoothly.  Unfortunately, Verrik had a mental breakdown as a result of the decision to allow the Rebellion to bomb the station successfully, and he killed the Rebellion cell he had been working with and went rogue, leaving the Raza untended.

The Raza was eventually taken from her berth and, through various means, came under the control of a merc, or pirate, who went by the name Shrike.  Shrike was an experienced ship hand, as was his right hand woman, Jasper, and they recruited a gunhand, Marcus Boone, and eventually picked up a 'stray', Portia Lin.   Portia eventually turned on Shrike and Jasper, spacing both of them and taking the ship for her own, and picking up the rogue prince of Zairon, Ryo Ishida as her own right hand.

Around this time she acquired a discontinued Class 3 Service Droid to handle the duties of flying the ship and handling basic maintenance chores, as none of the existant crew had any appreciable skill flying a starship.  Later Lt Verrik was tasked to recover the Raza for the GA as a prerequisite for being reassigned to the Anti-Rebellion task force.  Unable to replace the torpedoes that were expended quickly in early battles, due to cost, she simply left the launcher empty, relying on the ship's massive railguns.   A stowaway, a young girl with a knack for technology, was later impressed into the crew, and the ship's android was given crude programming upgrades, illegal emotion mods, possibly to overcome the notoriously twitchy OS of the Class 3 Service Droid.


I'll have an actual writeup, using MongT2, this weekend.   I may post other fluffy background stuff before I get to that, so stay tuned.

Androids:

Automation has been a big part of industry for centuries. Most miners, industrial laborers and and other colonial workers rarely get their hands dirty with the actual work, their jobs are maintaining and running the machines that keep the economy of the galaxy humming.  

Shortly after colonization of space began there came a call for more general purpose automation, and what followed was the slow development of the General Purpose Humanoid Robot, an awkward and ungainly machine that nevertheless could work for hours performing some of the grueling and unpleasant tasks that settling a new world often required, and it proved one of the most popular products on the market for decades.

Over the centuries the GPHR was updated and improved as technology progressed, almost a century after it was first introduced a new personality program was implemented, carefully modeled after the popular perception of the machine, stoic friendly and eager to help.

Roughly two centuries ago, the GPHR and its many descendents, was finally phased out when the first Androids were released.  The original Android, the Class 1 series, were little more than minor upgrades of the older robots with moderately realistic fake skin and other cosmetic upgrades, along with a powerful OS upgrade that gave the Androids what some have called Artificial Intelligence, the ability to think beyond its programming, to solve problems and learn tasks it was not programmed for.  Class 1 Androids were not terribly convincing 'humans', and there were numerous problems with 'rogue' androids, spontaniously developing 'emotional matrixes'... many having little to no relationship to human emotions.

Fifty years later the Class II series was introduced, using bio-mimetic design, synthetic tissue for cosmetics, and most importantly a widely touted upgrade to the CPU that prevented spontanious emotive matrix development.  

Eighty years ago the Class III series was introduced, making widespread use of nano-technology, non-specific structural composition, and most interestingly, the first fully human appearance, though their behavior and posture was not 'passable'. Nevertheless, this caused the passage of the Android Marking Statue by the GA, along with strong guidelines on legal avenues of research, banning the development of 'artificial humans' outside of android specific lines.

Twenty years ago the Class IV series was introduced, after approval from the GA. Class IV androids are distinguished from Class III androids by actually using an artificial but living tissue and advanced artificial 'organs' to handle many functions. The use of non-specific structures was eliminated, but the functions of the nanites were greatly increased.  Artificial behavior limits were installed to keep Class IV androids in line, behaviorally, with the older Class III models.   Most people are unaware of a significant difference between Classes III and IV, as most of the improvements were 'internal', though it is harder to detect a Class IV android with an external scan, due to the fidelity of their synthetic tissues.


Types of Androids:

While there are dozens of types of androids, classified by purpose, in truth there are only three true types.

Military/Security:  Rarely found, and technically illegal by GA law and Corporate Treaty at least in most of the galaxy, Military androids are much more solidly built than most, including a layer of armor under the skin, which can be detected by a simple touch, and improvements in reaction speed, power supply, and so forth.  As these are not mass marketed and possession is technically a Class Three Violation of Galactic Authority Law, it is difficult to say more about them. Some are classified as 'assassination' androids, with built in weapon systems, such as blades and guns.

Service: Also referred to as Industrial, or Work Androids, these androids are primarily meant to work at the sorts of tasks that GPH-Robots were designed to do. Service Androids are much sturdier than usual androids, with more solid internal construction, advanced self repair functions and usually very limited interpersonal abilities.   Most are made by Ferrous Corp, at least in the Mining and Industry fields, while a minority are made by other industrial Mega-Corps and a tiny handful are turned out each year by small mech shops.  Class III Service androids are notoriously prone to resetting to their factory defaults after hard reboots, losing all memory, this makes them unpopular with users who require their android to perform security duties, as they will often treat their owners as intruders.

General Purpose:  While Androids serve as pleasure units, manservants, receptionists and a variety of other tasks, there is rarely any hardware difference between these many models, merely different suites of 'skill' software, though pleasure androids may have some minor upgrades specific to sexual encounters, these do not appreciably alter the mechanics of the androids.  Even the comparatively cheap and common GP androids are stronger and tougher than any human, and may be considered 'smarter' despite the limitations of Android mentation.


Special Purpose/Custom Androids: This includes covert ops models (which are often the source of Emotion Upgrades), personal companions of the wealthy and pet projects of mad scientists and tinkerers.  Each of these would be unique, or nearly so, and may not fit entirely in the Class system either.


Ubiquity: Androids are not terribly common, even the Mega-Corps generally do not keep 'hordes' of Androids around.  Even a fifty year old Class III android can run into the Mega-credits (Bars, in DM).  Many are employed in the private sector, on board privately owned ships, due to their utility as 'crew', while Corporate Facilities may only have one Android on hand at best.  

Onboard Ships:

An Android requires a proper Charging Station, which is a 2 ton, 1 power 'dock', costs .5MCr.   This does not need to be linked to the Ship's Computer, but due to the need of a powerful external computer to 'run' the nanites through their paces, it often is. A secondary Computer for the Android Station alone (which can handle multiple androids) (NB: Need Software with bandwidth...), is .5t

Neural Links: Most ships have a Wireless network internally, that any Android can link to, though this usually requires a process of syncing the Android's 'Neural Imprint' to the computer manually, as a security procedure.  Once Linked, the Android may take a free action to perform any sensor operations actions, and may take two other ship tasks (piloting, gunnery, Remote Ops for Repair Drones, etc) a turn.  However, it should be noted that Androids have a -2 Initiative Penality and may not have, legally, a Tactical Skill software (nor can androids LEARN tactics...), making them poor choices for combat crews.


INT/EDU:

Androids function as if they had an INT of 15 except for creative thinking. Without an Emotion Upgrade of some sort, Androids are incapable of creativity of any sort (This is not widely known outside of Android Programmers!), though they may be programmed with 'creative' skills, though they will only be able to recreate known senarios/recepies etc.  

An Android only knows what is in its database (outside of any programmed skills and most common knowledge, it is up to the GM to adjudicate this), but as they have 'perfect' memories, their EDU may be considered 15 as well.  All Androids can expand their Database by default, so if an Android has been exposed something it may be assumed to have 'stored' the information it learned.  




Androids as Characters...

I'll get back to ya!


EDIT:::: Hmm. It occurred to me that I've been mucking about pretty heavily with Mong2 for the ship... having fun working on The Raza, then making absurd versions of it for myself etc, with High Guard.  The point is that I'm probably going to stick to Mong2 then for this thread... problem: I only have High Guard and the Beta Test PDF of the core book, so any 'character' stuff has to wait on Amazon.  I'll dig through my Mong1 Robot book, since I'm pretty sure that we won't see a Mong2 Robot book for a several years, but I'm not sure when I'll get to it.  I hate relying on PDFs for rulebooks, but I gotta admit... they are portable!

Love your stuff Spike!

Throughout the 800's (Space Era), the growing Mega-Corporations expanded to become larger economic powers than any single sovereign state, and began using their might to force laws and exploitive contracts on various nations, ending briefly the concept of fair trade throughout human occupied space.  As a result many of the sovereign powers, lead in part by Zairon under the Emperor Hanya Ishida, banded together and forced the Mega-Corporations to the negotiating table.  They were helped in part by the growing tensions between the competing Megas, who could grow no greater without conflict with their peers, at the expense of the other Megas... something that lead to increased friction and numerous armed conflicts between the Megas.

After twenty three years of hard negotiations, including three assassinations and one bombing attempt, at last the Mega-Corporations agreed to the Treaty of Novus Terrus, which established the standards of Galactic Law, invalidated the many of the exploitive trade agreements, and, perhaps futilely, established a peaceful means for the Mega-Corporations to contest one another.  It would take another five years, in 887, for the Galactic Authority to be created in accordance with the terms of the Treaty, and another thirty beyond that before the Galactic Authority was a power capable of holding the Mega-Corps accountable for breaches.

From the beginning, however, the Galactic Authority was compromised.  

In accord with the Treaty of Novus Terrus, each 'power' of the Galaxy, be it a Corporation or a State, was assigned a Director's Seat for the GA, based on their economic strength.  The vast majority of Directorates were assigned by the Mega-corporations, and as a result the majority of the Directors of the GA are beholden to at least on Mega-Corporation... explicitely and openly, while most owe any number of favors under the table to the others.  

As a result the GA as a whole has always been somewhat more pro-Mega than the Treaty intended.  What keeps the GA from being completely corrupt is that the Directors beholden to other Mega-Corporations can, and do, enforce the laws against the rivals of their masters, as do the notionally purer Directors appointed by the States and the smaller, independent Corporations.

Structure:

At the top of the Galactic Authority is the Directorate, which structurally appears to be a lose sort of congress. Directors hold their appointment 'at will', and many, most even, have never served in the Galactic Authority or any other police or military force.  The Directors do have broad authority over the GA, both as a body and as individuals, but rarely directly intervene in GA affairs. Instead they meet to debate and pass laws and policy guidelines.   Directors who have seniority in the deliberative body (The Directorate) collect important secondary positions and duties, which often makes their corporate masters less willing to remove a recalcitrant pawn over minor disagreements, giving the Directors some autonomy from their masters.

Below the Directors are the Chief Directors, who are appointed by Directorate Votes, and normally from within the GA itself. Chief Directors (often simply called Directors within the GA itself, which views the Directorate as more of a legislative body and nuisance than part of their organization), are responsible for running entire divisions within the GA. Many of these Divisions are 'geographic', making the Chief Directors the galactic equivalent of a Police Chief or a Sector Admiral, other divisions are more duty specific, such as Research and Development or Diplomatic Security.  A Chief Director can only be removed from office by a super-majority vote of the Directorate, but appointments may be defined, and most are, as limited, ending after a specific period of time, typically ten years.

GA Marshals: Like the Chief Directors, the GA Marshals are appointed directly by the Directorate, and appointments are for life.  GA Marshals do not report to anyone, they have a broad remit to track and eliminate threats to galactic order, usually criminals, but many chose to focus on Mega-Corp violations.  The Directorate, usually through a sub-committee, will normally pass on orders to any available Marshals to deal with threats that have come to the GA's attention. The primary means by which the Directorate controls its Marshals is through funding, though the Marshal's salary is garaunteed.  Marshals may request assistance from local GA forces, but their authority over such forces is limited to what the appropriate Chief Director will allow.

Police/Security: In order to grasp the GA's structure below the level of the Division, it is necessary to look at specific types of missions the GA conducts.  The most visible GA force is the 'police'.

The highest rank in the Police is the Chief Investigator. Chief Investigators have a broad mandate to pursue lawbreakers, and can usually command significant task forces, perhaps hundreds of men, in their duties, though they are still nominally beholden to their Chief Director.  Most Mega-Corps consider many Chief Investigators to be loose cannons, as at any time they may chose to pursue ends that would reveal shenannigans... and the usual political forces rarely dissuade men or women who have risen to this rank.  

Captains: There is usually a GA Police Captain responsible for a single world or major station, though not every world is large enough to actually have a Captain in charge.  This is the single most political post in the GA within the divisional level, and many Captains are eying a post as Chief Director, or worse, a post to the Directorate itself.  Captains are largely administrators and beaurocrats.

Lieutenant: this is a field rank. Most Lieutenants run squads of lesser officers, though some Lieutenants hold more of an honorary rank, as their duties (such as undercover work) preclude command.  A Lieutenant will often be in charge of criminal investigations, though they will delegate many investigations to their subordinates.

Investigator: This is a lateral rank, or rather a designation that replaces rank in conversations, denoting a specially trained officer responsible for solving mysteries. Investigators are authorized to wear plainclothes in all but formal GA events. Investigators are rarely politically minded, and if driven to seek promotions will seek to become Chief Investigators, rather than Captains, and Investigators tend to look down on their fellows who seek promotions for their own sake.

Sergeant: Sergeants are exclusively veteran officers who have proven themselves competent and free of corruption, at least officially.   It is usually the sergeants who have Desk Duty, or who handle the meat-and-bones of investigations.  Most Investigators (but not all) will have, or will quickly achieve, this rank and most Sergeants retire at this rank in one role or another.

Officer: The vast majority of uniformed GA agents are 'officers'.  While the GA doesn't really do 'beat cop' patrolling, they still have a very large cadre of Officers.  Notably, the GA police force is heavily militarized.  It is possible for an Officer to retire at that rank after thirty years of service, as there is no automatic promotions.



Military:

The GA military 'Division' is actually larger and more potent than the Police 'Division', but is less well known to the common man. Since they wear the same uniforms and fly the same ships it is easy to see why many would simply assume the forces are one in the same. As with the Police, the 'Division' is actually a collection of regional divisions, though, as with the Police, the Chief Directors of the regional divisions coordinate to ensure proper responses and uniformity of forces.

Technically there are two wings to the Military, the Naval forces and the Star-Marines.  The Star-Marines are functionally identical to the uniformed Police (minus the Investigators), though more heavily armed, and lacking the Captain rank, replacing it with Major for reasons lost to history.   They are far more heavily regimented, with one sergeant for every seven Marines, one Lieutenant for every Eight Sergeants, and one Major for every Eight Lieutenants.

The Naval forces of the GA are, like any Navy, organized around Ships. Each Ship has a Captain, with suitable lesser officers (Commanders, Lieutenants, Ensigns, etc), and a host of 'enlisted' crew, depending on the size of the ship, while ships are organized into flotillas and squadrons. Here the GA largely sticks to classic naval principles, similar to most of the Mega-Corps and several of the States.

The GA tends to stick to ships between 500 and 1000 D-Tons, and most of their ships can serve as people-carriers. In terms of numbers the GA can more than match any of the Mega-Corps, though their forces are spread thin, but the lack of heavier Cruiser class ships (2000 tons) and their doctrine of keeping large marine (or police) contingents on hand means that ship-to-ship they are weak. Compounding the issue is the simple fact that even if you grouped all the GA ships in a sector together, you'd still have two, or even three, separate Divisions being represented, with different cultures, doctrines and training, meaning that organizing large forces is nearly impossible.

So I was all set to work up a list of known powers, along with thumbnail sketches of them in prep for a new round of posts, but I had to go and get caught up on the last three weeks of DM first.

Sigh.

After two and a half seasons of leaving the setting full of holes and back-fill writing, they went and put up three episodes in a row that treated on subjects I've been speculating on.

So.

What have I learned?

Well.  DM is 600 years in teh future (no big, I guess...), and that the granddaughter of a ten year old from 'today' is going to invent FTL, which doesn't leave much room for slow ship explorations, though we can also presume FTL has gotten faster.

Also, we learned a lot more about androids, which are apparently a much newer technology... and also, since the writers are back-filling their stories, now Two/Rebecca/Portia Lin went through a years long phase as an android freedom-fighter soccer mom/lesbian before she became an amoral mercenary on The Raza... which really makes no sense.  I mean: time line aside, it makes sense that a person who has really only known torture and bloody murder escapes might treat the galaxy as a hostile place and, well, be amoral and murderous. It makes much less sense if she found years of love and peace helping the inventor of Androids (played by The Android, Zoie Palmer) spread Free Will to Android-kind with nary a gun to be found in a community of like minded... androids BEFORE joining a mercenary crew.  Also, we briefly see Shrike and Jasper, and I more or less correctly predicted that Jasper was the Previous Captain, killed by Portia to take The Raza, but it was nice seeing it, I guess.

So... I'm torn. Do I keep working, as time permits, on setting details only to risk having to rewrite as the show progresses or do I wait until they finally run out of classic Sci-Fi episodes to remake (oooh... a time travel to the 20th/21st Century episoide... how... original?) and finally cancel the show THEN do up the rest of the setting without fear?

I mean: It was nice to find some deck plans for The Raza that matched conceptual thoughts (three main decks, etc...), only to realize that the plans don't match the show (shuttle bay in the tail, rather than in the belly near the cargo bays? )... so... consistency is spotty. Sometimes its good bordering on great, other times... well...   I mean, practically overnight the Raza went from losing every single fight it was ever in to being dangerous. I can and have explained that to my own satisfaction (posted? Er... maybe not), but doing up the setting means focusing less on the ship and crew.

Quote from: Spike;984843Do I keep working, as time permits, on setting details only to risk having to rewrite as the show progresses or do I wait until they finally run out of classic Sci-Fi episodes to remake (oooh... a time travel to the 20th/21st Century episoide... how... original?) and finally cancel the show THEN do up the rest of the setting without fear?

Why would you have to? Couldn't you play a campaign and say, "okay, we are freezing the continuity to end-of-season two?"

Although it sounds like you're getting turned off of the show, so are you sure you want to do anything with it?

Its not the ongoing changes to the setting that are causing problems... things like the Corporate War, etc, as I planned to set any games (speculatively) in the years prior to the show anyway, which is one reason to try and knock out a timeline of events leading up to the show itself.

No, what they are doing is fleshing out the backstory for the entire setting, pinning down details of the history... in the late half of Season 3, which is, at the very least, oddly late.  Prior to Episode nine, the most information we had on 'when' the setting is was the fact that House Ishida has ruled Zairon for four hundred years in opposition to a similar timeline for the discontinuous 'rule' of the Megacorporations.  


As for my attitude to the show... have you not checked out the Media and Inspiration sub-fora? I've done nothing BUT mock the show since I discovered it!  That's just how I roll.

Quote from: Spike;984928No, what they are doing is fleshing out the backstory for the entire setting, pinning down details of the history... in the late half of Season 3, which is, at the very least, oddly late.  Prior to Episode nine, the most information we had on 'when' the setting is was the fact that House Ishida has ruled Zairon for four hundred years in opposition to a similar timeline for the discontinuous 'rule' of the Megacorporations.  

You could freeze the backstory to 'what we know as of end of season 2.' If it is contradicted by stuff we learn later, well... how many early-90s WEG Star Wars games now have canon-contradicted by the prequels? Not that you have to of course, but it sounds better than either waiting for the season to end (in which case what about season 4?), or retconning your ongoing game.

Quotehave you not checked out the Media and Inspiration sub-fora?

I should. I think I visited the politics fora when I first joined and said, "nope. Just the gaming forum for me."

well, season three ends in.... two weeks I believe, so its not like I've got terribly long to wait to finish out the season, and I'm guessing at least part of the last two episodes will involve the Inkblot Aliens from Another Dimension (they used to be more squidlike. I miss the squiddy-ness of them, actually...).

Okay I haven't watched the most recent Dark Matter episodes so take what I say with some salt...

I am enjoying you build out the background irrespective of what the exact details are. For me what you have written is better than what they have written. So I would encourage you to continue as you like.  BTW - I am hoping to steal your ideas shamelessly for a M-Space game in the future!

I just saw the episode in Season 1 where another merc crew imprisons the crew in the vault, the kid shoots a bad guy, and Portia finds out she is . Towards the end of the show, she says "This is Portia Lin of the Raza..."

How did she find out her name? (If this is revealed in an upcoming episode, just say "stay tuned".)

Quote from: Aglondir;986072I just saw the episode in Season 1 where another merc crew imprisons the crew in the vault, the kid shoots a bad guy, and Portia finds out she is . Towards the end of the show, she says "This is Portia Lin of the Raza..."

How did she find out her name? (If this is revealed in an upcoming episode, just say "stay tuned".)

They all (except the Kid and the Android) found out their names at the end of Episode 1, when they saw their 'wanted' profiles.  Two/Portia Lin preferred not to use her old name, apparently hating her past.

The primary form of money in Dark Matter is known as the Bar, or Bars, which come in hard plastic chits slightly larger than a standard playing card in a variety of colors (Red, Blue, Green etc), signifying denominations.  For all intents and purposes, a Bar should be treated as a Credit on on a one for one exchange*. One primary difference from 'Credits' in the traditional sci-fi usage is that there is no concept of 'virtual' bars, almost all wealth transfer is done physically, even for very large transactions.  Mega-corporations and States do offer lines of credit and engage in trade based on promissary notes, but by old law and tradition, eventually a physical transfer of goods or 'Bars' must be done to complete the deal.  

That is the glossy overview. Now lets look at the hard details, including the history** of how Bars came to be the dominant currency.



Physical Description:

A 'Bar' is a rigid block of colored plastic, roughly four inches long, three inches wide and 1/16th of an inch thick, with the 'bottom' two corners being clipped to make an imperfect rectangle. There are no obvious markings on the Bars.  Each Color of Bar indicates an exponential increase in value: Red Bars are 1 Bar, Yellow Bars are 10 Bars, Green Bars are 100 Bars, Blue Bars are 1000 Bars and Violet Bars are 10000 Bars. There are also Black Bars (100,000) and Gold Bars (1Mcr) and some specialty bars have been rumored covering Billions and Trillions of Bars, though that is mostly speculation, and the colors of such Bars is unknown.  

You might imagine that counterfeit Bars would be a major problem, and while some conterfeit operations do exist, including simply pressing simple colored plastics into rough shape, it is surprisingly difficult to do properly.  Bars may be simple in appearance, but trying to match the exact feel of the plastic,  the color palete and weight are all much more difficult than they appear at first glance. Further, the Bar is not simply plastic, inside each wafer is a thin sheet of dense foil, coded with specific details of the Bar itself... functionally a serial number... which can be easily read by any scanner.  Simple inert plastic wafers (the casual counterfeits) simply won't pass muster at any shop in the galaxy, any more than monopoly money would work in today's world.  For high value transactions, the information encoded into each Bar is scanned and is both error checked (to ensure it is properly encoded) and redundancy checked (to prevent simply cloning Bars).   Both the Galactic Authority and the Mega Corporations crack down on conterfeitting operations ruthlessly.  Shockingly, this is one area where no Mega has been known to 'cheat' the system, perhaps because the damage it would do to their own economic stability far outweighs the short term benefits of a quick cash injection.   However, many smaller corporations over the years have been caught engaging in high end Counterfietting. Usually there isn't much of a scandal or punishment... resorting to such means to stay profitable generally indicates the corporation is failing drastically anyway, but the usual punishment for creating false currency is Spacing, though other creative forms of execution have been used.

Source:

Technically any Megacorporation can 'print' and issue Bars, but for the last three hundred or so years the primary source has been the Mekkei Combine, or more specifically the Banking Cartel subsidiary, which took over the duties of Mint and Gaurantor and slowly grew to a behemoth of an organization, nearly a Mega-corporation in its own right. This would normally provide Mekkei with a outsized source of power in the Galaxy, but at the formation of the Galactic Authority a great deal of the Banking Cartel's autonomy was stripped from them, and the BC is so heavily regulated and monitored that it is functionally an arm of the GA, despite being organized under the Mekkei Combine.   It is traditional... even in the state of Corporate War (Circa 1116+) that when any Mega-Corporation mints new Bars to submit them to the Banking Cartel for approval. While not required to do this by law, failure to do so often results in difficulty using said Bars outside of the issuing Mega's territory, as the financial infrastructure is geared to the BC, and each non-standard Bar must be checked individually against the issuing Mega.  

Other Currencies:

Many smaller Corps issue Corp Scrip, of questionable legality, which is virtually useless outside of Company Stores, and is technically a form of economic slavery, though most such Corps provide official Exchange Rates as a legal sop against charges.   This practice is not performed by any of the Megas, who... if inclined... simply practice more direct forms of economic slavery.   Most independent worlds still use Bars, but larger 'states', such as Zairon, often issue their own currency often to explicitly defy the Mega-corporations.   Zairon, for example, issues the Koban, a moderately large gold coin (slightly smaller than a standard Bar), which is indexed to approximately the value of a Blue Bar (1000 Credits), with paper 'chits' assigning fractional values of the Koban for small transactions.   This is highly controversial as the League of Independent Worlds, of which Zairon is a leading member, issues its own Bars, having fought for decades to get legal approval of their 'Bars' through the Banking Cartel and the GA.   This is particularly interesting given the valuation of Bars themselves...


Economics:

The term 'Bar' was not chosen at random. The pre-Mega corporate age was one of drastic economic upheaval caused by long standing reliance on Credit/Debt financing even at the highest levels of government and business, inflation caused by out of control printing of fiat money and a host of other ills.   Many of the earliest space-farers were fleeing the turmoil on Earth, and found in Space that a simple barter economy of real goods was much more practical than attempting to export the financial woes of Earth (or Terra Prime, as it has come to be known in the Age of the Megas).  As raw resources, often in the form of refined mineral wealth, was the most in-demand trade good, as well as the most durable, many goods and services began being indexed to their value in bars of refined metal, with the classic 'Bar' being typically a bar of simple iron (these are relativly small bars, indexed traditionally to one kilogram), and eventually a complex system of relative values emerged, with more rare and useful metals being given specific values relative to one bar.   As this system matured into the Mega era, it became a matter of some pride that any given Bar is indexed to a specific hunk of metal (with higher value Bars being indexed to more valuable metals, or possibly to mutliple bars of multiple metals to its final value), or to the product those resources were put to (such as a Starship, who's Bar cost is theoretically indexed to both the materials used to make it, and the labor to shape it.  In theory if said ship is destroyed, the Bars are pulled from the market, but could be re-issued as scrappers pull 'value' from the hulk. In practice it requires absurd amounts of computer power to even begin tracking every Bar in the galaxy, never mind the difficulty of tracking 'lost' resources.  No one, except the Banking Cartel, even cares except to 'prove' value exists when the Bars are created.).    

At the individual level this does mean that wealth can be directly created by the individual.  Anyone can bring in a hunk of reasonably pure metal to any Mega Corp and have Bars issued in exchange (this includes recovered scrap metal, as well as mining). Anyone can also take any number of Bars and expect to exchange them for raw metals as coded into the Bars, though this is not normally a quick process unless you happen to be near an industrial exchange.

At the State/Mega level a direct exchange of Bars of wealth is rarely done. Bars are a convienent accounting system, but the raw resources (to include human resources) are far more important than markers.  If Zairon trades with Ferrous for ten billion Bars, they are more likely to want the metals those Bars represent, or the goods and services they represent (starships, say) than pallets of colorful plastic chits.  


History/Trivia:

Ironically the Bars, in their modern incarnation, came from Ferrous Corporation, dating back to their earliest days as a mining/industrial concern.  While the practice of trading goods and services in relation to their value in mineral wealth dated back to the earliest space colonists, it was Ferrous who standardized the proxy chit, rather than wheeling out pallets of metal, which they could do as they were the primary consumer of metals in their region. Many of the now standard practices of the Bar chit (even the use of term 'Bar', colorful plastic and the foil layer encoding all originate with Ferrous) date back to those heady day.   As they expanded, their 'Bar' chits became accepted currency even outside their original market, and they eventually outsourced the chits to the still forming Mekkei Combine, who already had a good banking syndicate as part of their Combine.

They Irony comes from teh fact that by the Corporate War Era, Ferrous Corporation has been using an economic/political model known as the Exclusionary Principle, which essentially invalidates all forms of economic transactions.  In Ferrous Corp's eyes, the Bars are an outmoded system, based on the idea that Ferrous needs to provide an exchange of value. Under EP, Ferrous sees itself as the only valid entity, with all 'others' from the individual to the state as existing only to serve the needs of the Corporation... that is to say, Ferrous sees labor and goods produced outside the Corp as owed to them in the form of a Tax (though no one in Ferrous would ever say it in that fashion!).

The Zairon Koban is not actually worth 1000 Bars in terms of metal value, though it is reasonably close.  It is a measure of Zairon's power and influence in the age of the Megas that the Koban is 'overvalued' as it is, gauranteed by the House Ishida. The actual value of a Koban, by weight of gold, is slighlty more than 700 bars, but Zairon has been able to inflate the Koban's value by backing its value. This also has somewhat inflated the economics of Zairon (as their gold, in the form of minted Kobans, is worth more than gold not minted into Kobans).  While counterfeit Kobans are trivially easy to produce (if you have Gold...), this isn't actually much of a problem, as the purity of the gold is easily tracked and the warped pressure of the inflated Kobans has become something of an economic power of itself.  On the other hand, the paper chits (fractional Kobans) are virtually worthless... even in Zairon, being little more that up-jumped promisary notes and IOUs.  Among the vast lower classes of Zairon they are quite common and useful... in a purely regional transaction.   Any sensible person exchanges their chits for actual Kobans as quickly as they acquire them.  Notably, however, many of Zairon's people make do on four to five Koban a year, with particularly depressed regions and colonies making due with as little at 1 Koban a year per person, existing at a nearly pure subsistance level... though they may, curiously, have quite a bit of practical wealth in locally produced goods and services that simply have little trade value outside the region.












* I considered trying to work out the exchange rate, as Bars do appear to be worth somewhat more than Credits, but I imagine that a: attempting to decipher the value of Bars would be an exercise of imagination more than research and B: cross compatibility is more important than fidelity to minutia.  Being lazy is actually better here, I know. Weird.

**  For the purposes of this and future posts, I will continue using the timeline I established earlier, with a minor adjustment. We can assume that, like many traditional calendars, the DM calendar was back dated to some ill defined and possibly mythical point for cultural or political reasons, so year 1 in the DM calendar would be approximately 400 years in our past.  


NB: If you get really bored and want to get pedantic about relative values of gold and iron by mass, by all means, enact the labor of improving this.  I ain't paid to do more than make it sound good to the rubes. That's you, mano.

One of my upcoming posts requires research I am too lazy to do. Yes, watching an episode of TV is too much work for me.  I've spent years training a baboon to spoon feed me so I won't have to use my arms to eat. Its not going well... apparently Baboons are poor choices for service animals, but...

Oh, right. Anyway, I'm planning to go through and list as many of the major powers and give longer briefs about them, even though we know nothing. But until I do, I guess I should unpack an idea I've been bandying about (and one that might help explain why one of literally a dozen major powers seems to be the designated bad guy, and the sheer brazen 'wut?' of their apparent plans...)







Ferrous Corp and the Exclusionary Principle:

During its heyday, under Executor Balin ( CEO from 790-843), Ferrous Corporation adopted an informal motto of Balin's that is generally summed up as "Everything from the Corp, Nothing Outside the Corp", which to Balin appears to have simply meant that his every action should be ruthlessly focused on improving the position of Ferrous Corp in the galactic stage.  While not the founder of Ferrous (or even close to it), Balin's long and very prosperous tenure as chief executive left a lasting impact on the corporation, and he left many written works for his successors that sadly found little purchase outside Ferrous Corp's elite.  However successful he was as an executive, however, Balin was apparently a poor teacher, as his guiding philosophy... at least as understood by outside observers and historians... clearly was at odds with the philosophy that he inspired in later generations of Ferrous Corp Commanders and Executors.

In 983, tired of losing political fights in the Directorate, despite constant economic victories (as Ferrous Corp saw it), Commander Elgin Valmot wrote a short treatise, summarizing and updating the teachings of Executor Balin, as he saw it, focusing on the then popular motto. It was poorly received, and even at one point banned by the standing Executor (Caldwin, 979-985) as subversive and economically illiterate. Valmot's career, which had been checkered at best, cratered and he is believed to have died in 984 in political exile trying to pacify unruly miners at a distant outpost.

But one of the handful of people who had read his work, Horace Mann*, would rise to the rank of Executor (992-1007), and he began putting Valmot's philosophy into practice, naming it the Exclusionary Principle.  In Mann's capable hands, Ferrous experienced a brief resurgence of success and the EP was believed to play a vital role in that success, a view that is not entirely without merit.  

In its expanded, evolved form, the EP essentially holds forth that the only group that matters is Ferrous Corp itself. All laws, regulations, even traditions... even things to which Ferrous has agreed, are invalid.  Ferrous Corp is the only legitimate body in the galaxy.  Ferrous feeds and houses and cares for its own to keep them, and itself, healthy and happy. Under strict EP guidelines (which not even Mann applied as written) all non-employees are nothing more that resources to be harvested as efficiently and ruthlessly as possible.  

Under the principles of EP, Ferrous Corp is no longer in the business of business. It is not a mercantile organization, it does not seek customers or clients... in its strictest sense,  FC becomes akin to a great organism, dedicated only to its own survival, preying upon everything "Other".  

After Mann came a succession of other Executors, each in some way influenced for good or ill by the EP philosophy, and by 1030, under Executor Lin Gavgras (1029-1031), it was formally adopted as the cornerstone philosophy of Ferrous Corp.  For the next sixty years Ferrous began something of a shadow war with the GA and the other Megacorporations as they put this new philosophy to use. Not openly, of course.  The exchange of goods and services still was conducted, but now rather than as a end in itself, it became a means to seek an advantage to destroy and plunder others, and Ferrous Corp's new ruthlessness proved very, very profitable. So profitable that EP was firmly engrained in the minds of every employee, every child taught on Ferrous Corp colonies, every new Commander and Executor was expected to memorize both Valmonts treatise, and Mann's exegesis.

But the galaxy is not a static and unchanging place, and the other powers responded each in their own way. The other Mega's in turn became more ruthless and less law abiding, waging their own shadow wars for dominance, the Galactic Authority became more focused on keeping the Mega's from their throats, rather than enforcing the fair trade laws protecting the non-Mega denizens of the galaxy, and the various States grew ever more distrusting of the Megas and their deals.

And Ferrous suddenly found that EP was no longer a profitable philosophy, but a straitjacket. The other Megacorporations may have become equally ruthless and exploitive, but they were still guided by principles of profit and trade, and less desirous of a galaxy with no potential clients... they could adapt to the changing face of politics, while Ferrous could not let go of the destructive philosophy they had created, not even when it no longer proved profitable.

So the very thing that had spurred the creation of the Exclusionary Principle in the first place... Ferrous being economically dominant but politically weak... was recreated by that same philosophy.

Rather than reject it... indeed it might be noted that the intellectual quality of the Balins and Manns was not being matched by their decendants... the doctrinal approach of the 'cult' of EP does not encourage thinking outside the box... Ferrous Corp simply started planning to win through sheer brazen might... even if it took a hundred years of planning...






EDIT:::  Forgot the *:  Apparently Horace Mann is the name of a real historical dude. If you're a fangurl, don't yell at me, I just plucked the name from the aether, I got nothing to say 'bout the real mofo.