The Stars Beyond

[Aury]

Now introducing: CW's autonomous collective

Project Collective
[CLASSIFIED]
This aim of this project is to provide the Commonwealth Fleet with an edge over the Ares Sects. As is known, the Ares are capable of creating an astounding number of soldiers and ships through the use of their cloning facilities and numerous shipyards. The Commonwealth Fleet, with the exception of the Pacifica-produced C286 auton, relies on recuited soldiers and money to purchase the ships that are used in its military operations, thus severely taxing the Commonwealth's economy and ability to wage war. [...] The Collective Project is designed to even the playing field. [...] The Collective is essentially started by a single self-replicating factory, capable of harvesting its own materials and resources to create both new factories as well as other ships that would be of use to the collective, at the cost of only the quantity of raw materials they harvest themselves. Given the abundance of material in even a small asteroid belt, there is essentially no end to which they can reproduce. Harvesting materials from planets is also an option. With this, the Collective stands ready to even the odds by giving the Commonwealth Fleet the ability to play the 'numbers' game as the Ares can, all without cost to the Commonwealth's economy and human lives. [...] There is no chance of the AI rebelling - the AI has been stripped down to the basic functions it needs, such as piloting, and all critical systems involved with IFF are hard-wired components using ROMs, thus preventing any of the firmware from being hacked without physically changing the ROMs. [...] As of the publication of this report, the Collective Project's development team are still working on correcting a number of key systems, however, once these issues have been dealt with, full scale deployment of collective factories would be advisable. The issues are as follows: [...]

So there you have it; the Commonwealth Autonomous Collective; a self-replicating fleet of robotic ships designed in secret by the Commonwealth's military in order to even the odds against the Ares. And no, they DON'T rebel against their masters, as 'AI is a crapshoot' is played as a defied trope by the designers, though in doing so, they ended up complicating the development process. Thus enters the player: the player can choose to help out the designers in their project, expediting the completion and deployment of the Collective against the Ares (and other enemies of the commonwealth). The Collective will still get completed if the player doesn't help out, but it will take much longer (thus it will be too late to help out in the battle for st.k's), and the player will not get the reward item.

The Collective's ships are extremely minimalistic in design, taking a 'zerg rush' sort of approach, even more so than the Ares do with their sandstorms. They have reserves. The ships are designed with a rather sleek and spartan design; nothing frivolous is included, so as to maximize production.

Here is a rundown of their ships:
1) Collective Drone Factory: The largest of their ships, it basically wanders around asteroid belts and builds ship after ship after ship. It's large and well armored, and sports a decent amount of defensive weaponry and is only one of two collective ships with shielding. They are also self-repairing.
2) Collective Miner Drone: These little ships act just like ferian miners; they mine asteroids, and they don't do much else. They are utterly defenseless, but killing them is not a good idea, as hoards of fighter drones come bearing down on you. Not to mention they carry rather low-quality ores, seeing as Drone construction was designed to go as cheaply as possible.
3) Collective Drone Carrier: Little more than large plates of armor around engines and docking clamps for fighter and bomb drones, these are far more trimmed down than normal carriers would be; not to mention they don't need a crew. At any rate, they have enough armor and shielding to get to the battle and drop their payload of combat drones into the fray, before getting out - they do not wait for their ships to return. They carry only nominal defensive weaponry as they themselves are not designed for combat.
4) Collective Bomb Drone: A fat, tubby little ship, it's basically engines, some armor, and as much explosives as can be packaged into them. Due to their disposable nature, little resources is put into anything other than their explosives and armor; thus they are unshielded and unarmed. They have a moderate speed to allow them to get close to their target, and just enough armor to survive the inbound trip, afterall, they don't need to make a return trip.
5) Collective Fighter Drone: In form, the opposite of the Bomb Drone - it's thin, sleek, and swift - in function, its not all that different. It's designed to get in, swarm the target along with its compatriots, and shoot for as long as it can before it is destroyed. It is little more than an engine and a gun, with just enough armor to prevent itself from ripping itself to shreds, traveling faster than essentially any other ship in the game. It too is unlikely to be making a return trip home from combat.

Collective Bomb [Kamakazi ship]

Collective Fighter

(carrier and factory soon to be added)

[Aury]

So some TX2 todo stuff:
- get all of the ranx models and stuff done - get the weapons coded over vacation
- get all of the collective models done - and code those - make the module over vacation
- get the old EI and Pacifica capships modeled and in-game
- complete the auton module over vacation
- make the shield patch and publish the finished centuari module package

[Aury]

Collective Miner:

Collective Carrier:

[Aury]

Ok, so here's info on how to get the collective in-game (their mission-hook)

1) there will be rumors floating around about some secret new sung fighters - also some rumors about a secret new sung warship (but that's a DIFFERENT mission hook!)
2) ask around enough, and you may get some concrete info; if not, you may bump into the system where the CW is conducting secret tests with the early prototypes
3) once in the militia, you can tell them about the alleged "sung" - if you tell the fleet, you skip the rest of the steps and go right into the collective project mission line - anyways, if you tell the militia, you will be sent to take them out (afterall, it's a SECRET project, so lowly militia commanders wouldn't have the security access to know of it).
4) once you begin attacking the drones, they will begin to fight back, but almost immediatly the aquila will come in, deactivate the drones as well as order you to stop shooting at them - if you kill every single drone, the aquila will attack you, and the collective WILL NOT appear in game - if you stop shooting and dock as the aquila orders you to, you will enter into the collective project mission line.

[Song]

Woooo....that carrier is pretty sweet looking!

[Aury]

draft time-line:

2026 – a small group of genius trans-humanist separatists go into cryogenic hibernation, expecting the world to collapse, and for them to be there to pick up the pieces
2106 – they emerge from hibernation to find the world didn't end as they expected; realizing the escape the stargate offers, they immediately gain the fast ship they can, outfit it to withstand the harsh world of the universe, convert it into a sleeper ship and go into stasis again, programming the ship to recharge at each star with its solar panels and to travel as far away from earch as possible
2156 – having traveled far from earth, they find a barely habitable icy yet mineral-rich world, they call Therrus, managing to modify themselves over the years to adapt to the harsh environment
2180 – Canis Industries is founded and begins producing light combat ships
2192 – the Ranx Republic undergoes a coup becomes the Ranx Empire and launches a massive offensive into Sung and Hauri space
2225 – the Ranx Empire encounters massive resistance from the Sung who have made sudden leaps in technological prowess due to their own conquering of the Hauri
2228 – EI produces large capital ship which becomes the mainstay of the Commonwealth's forces
2230 – the Ranx Empire's offensive slows and grinds to a halt, causing their conquest-based economy to falter – many of the conquered systems revolt as the military leaders there take control
2234 – the old Ranx Empire collapses back down to a few core stars, where Ranxia's system defense fleet can exert control, leaving it with a territory comparable to each of the warlord states it generated.
2244 – With the Commonwealth reeling from the loss of Earth and the Syrtians making great gains agains the Commonwealth, a number of border colonies unaffiliated or loosely affiliated with the Commonwealth as they were beyond it's sphere of influence band together and form the IPC as a mutual defense pact – one of the member states begins selling ships to the others, leading to the creation of Python Space Systems, llc, modern-day supplier of the IPC's ships
2245 – Pacifica unveils its largest capital ship yet, the precursor to the aquila
2247 – the leadership of the old Ranx Empire are forced to step down; new leadership, something inbetween the Old Empire and the Republic (an Empire and Senate system) forges military alliances with the commonwealth and establishes trade relations; in exchange for ship building materials, the Ranx Empire would aid the Commonwealth in the war against the Syrtians.
2249 – The Ranx Empire manages to create a fairly large fleet and uses it both against the Syrtians and the warlords – they begin to expand again, if slowly, system by system
2250 – IPC forms a similar alliance with the Commonwealth, looking for additional funds in exchange for their newly built fleet [during this time of uncertainty, they were ruled by a metal-eater mentality; living standard suffered as funds were diverted to ship and weapon production]
2255 – The Ranx Empire begins to design new ships; alliance with the Commonwealth is solidified.
2252 – Enraged at the destruction of Sol during the war, a fanatic religious organization, the Solarites as they later became named, attempts to use modified civilian ships to re-take the Sol system: it fails miserably. They retreat to uncharted regions beyond both the Commonwealth and IPC.
2257 – the Charon leadership; the brains being anti-corporatist Tansov Pireo and the money being the House of Charon get into in-fighting over ideals. Pireo's supporters are exiled from the charon system after the House of Charon launches full-scale attacks on their ships. Pireo dies in the attack.
2260 – By now, the colonists of Therrus have been modified far beyond any recognition of human; the modifications to their genetics necessary to allow them survive became a part of their culture
2268 – Pireo's former supporters, now lead by Kado, band together under the name of the Shadows of Charon, still a pirate group and still with Pireo's ideals. Lowly charon pirates still pay tribute to whomever exerts the most dominance in their region, however have not been directly drawn into the conflict.
2290 – The IPC suddenly comes under attack by the Solarites, who now have their own fleet run by clones – not unlike the ares in that respect – the IPC loses several systems to them but manages to establish a blockade; the blockade can't hold forever though.
2291 – The IPC's requests for military aid from the Commonwealth go unheeded; the Commonwealth is already too busy with the numerous threats they face on their other boarders. They have the gall to request additional IPC support. Feeling completely betrayed (the IPC helped the CW in their hour of need, yet the CW flat out refused to do the same), the IPC breaks off the alliance and instead diverts all their forces into maintaining the blockade. Newly formed IPC terrorist groups launch attacks on outlying Commonwealth colonies for a month following. An extremely tenuous 'peace' exists between IPC and CW. Only the mutual use of the silent treatment and the strains on both nations already allow them to peacefully coexist.
2292 – the blockade fails; the commonwealth didn't give a hoot, but the Ranx did (they continued trading relations with the IPC as the IPC was their primary source of weapons technologies): the Ranx Empire sends in a number of ships and manages to drive the Solarites back out of IPC space – secret treaties are drawn up that establish a military alliance between the IPC and the Ranx Empire.
2294 – the Ares develop a new carrier, rather than the old monstrosities that were a massive waste of resources; the old carriers are mothballed and scrapped; one Sect 'embezzles' the recycled materials, causing a minor in-faction rift
2297 – the Solarites suddenly ease up on the IPC – the IPC thinks something is wrong, but decides to charge ahead, reclaiming the 3 systems they had previously lost, encountering minimal resistance. The Solarite homeworlds are still heavily fortified and the IPC fails to penetrate the defenses.
2300 – the Solarites make a massive push utilizaing a newly designed battlestation/ship through the undefended Commonwealth boarderlands lying between the CW and the IPC. The Ranx are the only ones who manage to stop the invasion, due to their presence in the IPC's blockades and the IPC's refusal to aid the CW.
2301 – the CSC Australia was sent to reinforce the border lands, however a run-in with the Solarite Battlestation presumably destroys it. The only evidence was a signal saying how they were under attack and taking heavy damage as well as unreasonably little amounts of hexphase P1300 (the ship was officially said to have lost orbit and fallen into the Sun). Only weeks before, the wife of the captain of the CSC Australia is killed when her ship is attacked by pteravores in Heretic while studying the Iocrym Manipulators.
2307 – Kado steps down from command of the Shadows and is replaced by Konnor. Hostilities continue between the two Charon leadership factions. Konnor opens up secret deals with Canis Industries, in exchange for launching risky attacks against the Ares and other heavily armed factions in the 'ungoverned territories' to steal military weapons and the like, Canis Industries provides them with technological advances derived from the stolen weapons. Needless to say, Canis Industries is also using the advances, and keeping the juiciest to themselves.
2311 – a successor to the wildly popular, if ancient, Wolfen design is finally released – aimed at the military; release enthusiasm is dampened by Pacifica's new Britannia, which was found to be stronger over-all, if somewhat more expensive.
2312 – Canis Industries redesignes the Wolfen II drastically and rebrands it the Wolfen III, a gigantic and costly super-gunship, filled with automation and the size of a small frigate or corvette. Although the Fleet is already buying the new Britannias, Admiral Decker is so impressed he manages to pull money from somewhere and buy a small order of them.
2315 – the pteravores and the Luminous AI encounter each other. Seeing the other as mutual sources of 'food', they immediately begin a massive campaign against the other.
2316 – Pacifica creates a massive new monitor designed to punch through Ares blockades.
2317 – Makayev attempts to out-do Pacifica with its own design, a smaller cruiser, substantially cheaper off-the-shelf than Pacifica's; the commonwealth does not like that the cruiser requires proprietary heavy omsk armor (which they would have to buy at a premium from makayev to maintain the cruisers), rather than readily available hexphase. Unfortunatly Makayev had already built a large number of the cruisers. The cruisers end up being hired out to frontier stations for security against the ares and other such threats. Makayev still loses a large amount of money on the debacle.
2318 – the commonwealth orders the first batch of monitors from Pacifica.
2319 – the Ares launch a gigantic offensive towards st.k's; they are stopped only 1 system before – the CW establishes blockades the st.k's side of the gate, preventing the ares from invading.
2320 – a small-known yacht-constructing firm which had its roots in a swedish furniture company suddenly halts all business, packs up and heads off to a secure location.
2321 – soon after the first of the new Wyvera living ships are released to the general public, the corporate hierarchy suddenly closes off an entire system, for reasons of 'product testing and development'; anyone attempting to violate the blockade is shot. The lead scientist and developer of the Wyvera project is missing, presumed dead after a sudden pirate strike against his research station in the neighboring system.
2322 – reports of experimental sung ships are heard, none of which the commonwealth's
intelligence can confirm. One rumor tells of small ships, about the size of autons, quite possibly modified slave-coffins designed to be used as combat ships instead; another of a swift and deadly capital ship armed with advanced weaponry.

[Aury]

Here's an escape pod



ATM I'm still working out their mechanics for the player; in all likelyhood they will appear as background atmospheric ships for a while before proper implementation for the player (balancing it would take a while)

Escape pods come in multiple flavors; this is one of the more intermediate pods; better armor, possibly very light shielding. The basic version(s) are little more than the equivalent of an unarmed hornet with slightly better armor and a smaller profile.

[Aury]

Smaller escape pod!

16x16 ship; as small as I'm willing to go; any smaller and it would be too difficult to see.

This variant is armor-only, unarmed.

[Aury]

garbage ship - a demonstration in functional uglyness; its a BOX, because that's what it needs to be to get its job done well.

[Aury]

I'm planning on reworking Canis Industries (history, ships & style) today.

The original wolfen is being relegated to the predecessor corporation of CI.

Canis Industries has its roots in the Atlantic-Pacific Shipyards corporation, the ancestor of both CI and Pacifica. APS was a military contractor for small fighters and gunships, operating out of a pair of shipyards, named Pacifica and Atlantica, a larger and smaller one respectively. The wolfen was one of these designs. However, given the production costs of the ship, it was deemed to be "too expensive" (this was back in the day when the Antares (The "I" came later, with the introduction of its up-armored cousin a decade later) was considered to be THE state-of-the art freighter; virtually immune to the pirates of the day, capable of carrying more cargo more quickly than any other contemporary freighter.), and the project was scrapped. The lead designer then quit, took the designs to a wealthy doctor (who was a close relative of his) living on mars at the time, and managed to get enough money to built the ship himself, though this prototype lacked the military grade weapons of the day. He took the prototype to the military, and explained what a formidable craft it would be if outfitted with an EI Type II or III shield (The "type" designation was for EI's very old line of shields, that preceeded the newer "class" designated shields; any shielding at all on a ship at this time was entirely military, with the exception of the expensive Type I civilian model [PLAYER'S NOTE: the type I has a measly 10 HP, but back in the day when the very best military armors (heavy titanium) were 45HP, a 10HP civilian shield was a lot]), and perhaps a pair of the new bolide blasters and the rumored NAMI missile system, this ship would be a ship to be feared. The military decided to downgrade the order to using just dual lasers, but the order went through, and money was granted to begin production. Meanwhile, APS decided to sue (as the wolfen was designed while the lead engineer was working for them). Considering that the military had switched sides and was now more interested in the wolfen than in APS's older ships which may have been cheaper but now under performing for their price [APS was getting a bigger profit margin than the proto-CI was], they decided to spend a "little" money on a good lawyer, who managed to get the lead engineer off on a technicality; but not after APS had sunken a large amount of money in the case, trying to get their design back. APS, now in financial trouble decided to sell off their larger shipyard, which was bought off by a wealthy banker who founded Pacifica Corp, carrying along APS's role as a military contractor (but that didn't happen till later; as a matter of fact, Proto-pacifica started off making yachts, as Pacifica Yachts Inc.). The Atlantica shipyard, with APS now renamed to Atlantica Shipyards, floundered for a while and eventually was bought out by Earth Industries.
But back to proto-CI. At this point, it was still a relatively small operation, relying on ground-based shipyards on the cheap martian land on the doctor's great estate. Realizing they would need to step up production, they managed to secure enough funding (after selling off the estate) to buy funds to build a larger, space-based shipyard near the Ceres shipyards, allowing them to share mining contractors, and cutting down on shipping costs of the mined materials. Time passed, the wolfen became immensely successful when it was finally allowed on the civilian market, and the two became ridiculously rich. Eventually as more time went on, the riches and designs were passed on to their descendants; they forgot the wolfen gunship and moved on to other things, and eventually the company went defunct as it was sold off for assets. The designs to the wolfen however were not, as the data roms were lost in a box of old family heirlooms, and were not found until about 7 decades later (by now about 20 years prior to the events of the game), by one of the distant descendants and her brother as they were exploring one of the old shipping crates of family possessions in some mass-storage facility in the st.k's arcology. The two of them, Modok and Sakarri [bonus points if you know where I got the names :3], decided to revise the old designs and restart the business. Afterall, they had the money...
Thus was born Canis Industries. They started up operations in a barely inhabited system outside the commonwealth, the only residents being a single Coalition colony and a few miners. Though the area was rich in ore, it was so far from anywhere that nobody bothered to really mine it, except for those supplying the nearby colony. When Modok and Sakarri started their business, a few companies came in, interested in mining ore for Canis. Though their first adaption of their anscestor's design, the Wolf (I), was a large and expensive civilian ship, the Commonwealth's fleet took interest and began refitting some of the highly-upgradeable ships with military grade weapons. As the sales of their Wolf I's began to pay off their investment, they quickly looked to expanding out into other markets, creating a wide spectrum of ships, some civilian, some military. However, the corporate hierarchy, which CI was not a part of, due to its original isolation and expansion into other territories, such as the ringer's, coalition's and even ranx's, became very interested in their designs, leading up to a massive attempt at industrial espionage. This resulted in a huge scandal, and the resulting fiasco left CI with a deep grudge against the corporates. No corporate ship was ever again allowed into the Canis held systems where their shipyards and other facilities were located.

[Aury]

New Canis Industries ships coming... eventually!
Descriptions likely coming sooner or later!

Ok, well I'm off to go solidify my new canis ship designs.

[Atarlost]

I liked the old CI ships. They didn't really match the original, but they had a unique style.

[Aury]

The old CI ships will find a new home... somewhere else in the mod.
Perhaps the old Wolfen III will be the CW's plasma ship?

Well, I'll be going ahead and making the new ships, and seeing how I like them. I might actually go back to the old ones, if I don't like what I come up with.

But yeah, the new ones are of a completely different style. The thing was was that I felt the old style simply couldn't scale up to any larger ships than the wolfen 3; it just wasn't working out. The best capship that would come out was nothing more than a thicker, much more massive, victory-class star destroyer-ish wolfen III.
Nor was it scaling down very well. Small 32x32 ships were having a hard time matching the style because of the tiny space to try to squeeze all the thematic aesthetics in

[Aury]

POST 2222!

Canis Coyote-class gunship
This is the first new canis ship I've made. As you can see, I learned how to do glowy things

I also plan on making a custom engine glow for it too!

Can't wait to begin working on the others!

[Canis is a high-level corporation, and their ships, shields, armor and weapons tend to be state-of-the-art. They focus on ion, plasma, and positron weapons; they even make a few low-power, entry-level versions of their weapons, some of which are seen on their playerships. Canis also focuses on its K-line of shields, which sacrifice HP for regenerative abilities, and also pioneer in Nanotube based armors (Bucky plates, ADNR microplating, and ADNR plates, though they have a few specialty lines of both shields and armor. Canis manufactures a line of device-based shield-boosters; at the cost of a spike in energy inefficiency, you can add on extra HP to your shields. Canis also manufactures a line of high-efficiency reactors, though they cost a lot more than conventional reactors. Lastly, Canis has their own line of drives, Ion Pulse, which allow for great speeds & power efficiency at the cost of acceleration.]



Though the Wolf was the first derivative they ever made from the ancient Wolfen-class, the project was halted for technological reasons while they worked on other ships and weapons, trying to build as masterful a ship for their time as their forefather's Wolfen was, and in fact, still is.

The coyote was the first ship to actually go into production, and it was designed to parallel the original Wolfen, however updated. It makes sacrifices in the cargo department so that it may edge out its progenitor ever so slightly.

Specifications & loadout:
Entry level variant;
15MW Base Reactor
Dual ultra-light ion guns (they are an ion:1d3 weapon; not unlike the laser:1d4 in early game, except at a very slight advantage to anything not using an R1 (there are some ships using R1's in earlier game in TX2 that have not been modeled yet))
25 ton cargo hold -> upgrades to 100
4x armor plates
12 tons max armor
5 non-weapon slots (wolfen has 4); no max weapon slots
10 slots total
Max 25c speed
K1 shield generator
4x ADNR microplated plasteel (a kinetic-resistant form of light plasteel)

Military Variant:
500MW Canis Reactor
Dual Heavy Ion Repeater
4x light ADNR plates
K6 shield generator
IPD-5 drive (max 30c speed, substantially less thrust than a megadrive)

[Aury]

Canis Industries Fox-class recon-fighter
A combat-ready reconnaisance ship; its designed to move fast & fend for itself. It might be lighter than their other combat ships, but its still quite capable on its own.



More details to come later