Let us move discussion of stuff over here so we do not clog the poor recruitment thread list with our discussion, yes?
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If, whilst generating your planets, you run into writer's block and just can't think of what planet x should be, this might help. Maybe. It's a spreadsheet planet generator for a Traveller game I'm in. Just roll some dice and - BAM - planet.
It's not perfect, but it might help get the juices flowing as it provides a nice skeleton to build on. And you get to roll d6's, so that's fun.
This looks interesting.
I am strongly considering playing around with this ridiculous software.
This guy basically made a procedural-generated universe (following a lot of astrophysical laws to prevent stupid generations) you can fly through and make screenshots and whatnot.
You can basically click anywhere and jump to the selected system which is then on-the-fly generated, filled with all kind of planets, moons, asteroids etc, complete with weird orbits, chance to host life-forms, multi-star systems, dark holes, ........
Nice!
I, choon, made an alias to keep my stuff in one place. I'll still post it here, but having it at the ready is nice.
As for planet ideas for me (and feel free to piggy back, of course. Everything is better together)
1) Shipyard: I love the megastructure thing mars has going on, but I don't want to be Mars 2.0
2) Resource world. Crust is getting gobbled up and sent to orbit. There are massive, active drill operations tapping directly into the planetary mantle as well. Promethium galore.
3) Knight world. Megafauna everywhere. If you didn't know better you'd think the Tyradids are involved. There is definitely tech here, but it's not detectable from orbit. Knights train with the building size predators. I am also trying to servitor-ize some megapredators. No luck so far.
Our Playground
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Is the warp passage we're focusing on in the far east?
I need to look up cirillo prime.
Jep.
It actually does not have a name in the fluff yet.
So it will simply be know as 'The Passage'.
Cirillio doesn't have much fluff going for it.
It actually does not matter much as it is discovered to be a major genestealer hub, having spread the taint to several nearby systems, some of which already have been purged.
And it probably attracted a small tendril of Hive Fleet Kronos .
You know ... your basic bug paradise.
Oh. So it's going to need some attention from the Omnissaiah's gaze, eh? Fine by me.
@All: There is also a local Astartes Chapter the "Tigers Argent" towards the upper-western edge of the map, their home planet is called "Icefang".
And that's it. Wow. It's surprising to find such an empty canvas in such a lore rich setting.
sfrpgtools.com has a bunch of fun stuff including a system generator that can be used to generate a whole bunch of planets.
Hrm, can we standardize resources on OneNote or Google Slides or PowerPoint online or a wiki or something? I find Google Docs oddly hard to work with on mobile.
If this area has a history of problems with Tyranids then I'd imagine the local IG has fewer infantry than usual and is way more reliant on armored units, both heavy and mobile, as well as air and long range support. The standard 'throw fodder into the meatgrinder' approach just doesn't work on an enemy that lives on meat. Which means the sector needs to keep the Mechanicus happy. Everything's coming up Coghead...
How does the IG even deal with genestealers? Do they leave that up to Inquisitors?
Reading up on some of the latest lore it seems like this area is important because it's a passage between the Imperium and the Dark Imperium split by the Cicatri Maledictum. As such having the major planet in the area being a Tyranid spawnground seems like it would be a major obstacle to be removed as soon as possible.
Maybe we should start the game off with an Exterminatus on Cirillo Prime? Really clear the deck so to speak.
Thoughts?
I added the maps to OneNote under galaxy as well.
Commenting is not as easy there as under google drive but maybe that is not to interesting if one can simply dump the comments directly underneath anyway.
@Guard + Genestealers:
If they know what is coming, they can fetch scanners (think full-body-scanner found on some airports nowadays) to check their own as well as other people.
Usually they just cordon-off suspected area and have ALL citizen tested and those infected ... taken care of.
Mutant, hybrids and purebloods are to be handled like any other vermin-alien one might find in the skewers.
In game I would just have you fetch scanners from some capable production world as if it was a strategic resource.
If you'd like, you can have a specialized regiments for that as well.
@'nids: We are in their way. But let's face it, everyone is in their way towards terra. They did not really have much tyranid problems up to recent years, when the taint was powerful enough to call in the fleet which is approaching ever closer...
Maybe we can abstract 'scanners' and other types of internal security to general guard units that are assigned to a world. I don't think we want to get crunchy enough to delve into different 'types' of PDF. But it does seem important to have some simple formula whereby the more forces assigned to protect a planet the better it runs (resource generation) and the less chance there is of something bad happening there and leave it at that.
We do have to decide what to do with Cirillo Prime. In our game is it still a major genestealer hub? I don't think we want our game to bog down in micromanaging a ground war to take back Cirillo Prime.
In the fluff it is not considered purged, so I guess it went pretty ploin-shaped, with pretty much your usual civil war going on between implanted and loyal pdfs.
If you want to end it quick without nuking a hive world in round 1, your best bet is to get the Astartes to finish off their primarch and the better part of their purebloods, then leave a guard regiments or two with scanners behind to oversee the purge-and-restore-of-order following in the wake.
In general yes, more forces is more civil order and reduced chance of bad events.
In the case of mass-scale scanner equipment, I'd consider that to be a matter of 'Dear AdMech, I'd like to make an order of three million, easy-to-use-very-accurate gene scanners, deliverable to the world Cirillo Prime at the earliest convenience'.
Such mission specific gear will have some value assigned by me and can then be produced by someone - might even be in the same system for fast deployment if you have the capacity. E.g. you could as a first stage conquer a manufactorum and start pumping out scanners from there, killing any delivering time.
Luckily for you you happen to have a mini forge world in the area, generally speaking. ;)
And its a hive world? That's... troublesome. You'll need to deal with the underhive. Somehow.
I just found out that Warbringer Nemesis Titans are within my weight limits! I might have to switch something up! Because Quake Cannon.
I have come across a map of forge and knight worlds that may inform how we design our sector of space:
Here it is.
Maybe decide a theme for the area?
Certainly being the site of the temporary rift corridor makes it NOW a very important bit of the galaxy, but before that, what was it besides Cirillo Prime and the centre of a genestealer outbreak?
Should we make it a backwater or just a somewhat stable part of the imperium that quietly pumped out recruits and resources from a collection of not too small and not too large forge and hive worlds with enough agri-worlds to be self sustaining. I think the second option gives us more leeway to plonk down planets that we need.
Cirillo Prime should be the largest Hive World by a good amount though. Large enough to get on the map!
Sound points.
Still, from the size alone, it probably has at least 200 inhabited planets.
We're not going to model every single one for starters but start with the major industrial and population centers and consider the rest to be mostly backwater planets.
Being pretty much forgotten by the larger part of the Imperium.
Maybe a major resupply waypoint for troops heading from and to Ultramar? Would make sense from a strategic viewpoint.
If I am reading the notebook correctly, you are allowing a fleet-based Astartes chapter to have a single battle barge?
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From the map I saw there are two official forge worlds and a Knight world in the region, or very close to the region you outlined. That would make sense if this were a rather quiet region up until now. I intend to add at least one more forge world/shipyard from my planets.
Edit: It would also fit the Ark's lore of tending toward production.
I can go around some silly restrictions by using portable Firefox
May work at your place too.
And it is actually my husband more secure than outdated 'supervised' versions or the not-a-browser by the name of is...
@Fleet sizes:
Still a point of debate to be honest.
The sources are just quite annoyingly inconsistent when it comes to numbeea, especially with navy units...
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As for Navy, the way I see it, the Imperial Navy should probably have several battle groups. The Navy is going to be responsible for doing a lot of logistical work, especially with the guard in the region. So the Lord Admiral should probably not make up one individual large Fleet. You should probably make up several smaller battle groups and one boss battle group that can all come together into a big fleet, but most of the time you have it in splinters around the sector doing a bunch of different stuff.
My instincts tell me one two three Cruisers and a handful of Destroyers and one or two support ships transport spur group, but I'm not extremely familiar with the numbers. And you say they're inconsistent anyway, so let's just make it up. If they're a little big then it's probably okay because we have a LOT of chaos on our doorstep at the moment.
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I also have thought about the guard. The leader of the guard should probably be the one deciding what plants we're fighting on at the moment so he can start the game with his troops active somewhere instead of twiddling their thumbs on a transport or something. That would also let him to find what units that he currently has engaged or in reserve or whatever. Then we could build out a naval conflict and other conflicts around the active hotspots that are defined by the guard and possibly then navy. The Navy could Define general enemy Fleet movements in the area and how they're going to counter them with their initial battle groups. That way we don't start with everyone at home being bored.
It makes a lot of sense to start with a coordinated effort to retake Cirillo Prime as a starting point to bring all of us together but that's a GM decision.
Don't expect to be able to focus all you got on one theatre of war.
For the initial situation, expect at least three more, pain-in-the-ass warzones to tackle asap, but otherwise, yes, Cirillo will be one of those I imagine you will want to tackle in round 1.
As for start situation, I imagine we start with the forces en-route to their assigned warzones, arriving in round 1 in-system.
@Choon: Yeah, careful with those adjustments. I am still struggling with fleet numbers.
My idea was to give the Navy two full sector battlefleets and every fleet-based faction (Astartes/Admech) the equivalent of one sector battlefleet.
I probably have to up the number of cruisers the navy gets though.
Maybe give the navy a 'third' battlegroup, without the heavy stuff, so only cruisers with their escorts to cover more ground...
In my eyes, the AdMech is not the faction to go on 'small' missions.
Either it is worth their time (aka: there is some tech to loot or AdMech places to defend) - and if it is worth their time, it is worth bringing the big guns anyway, because why wouldn't they.
Or it does not interest them very much anyway and they are glad to let the guard handle it. Obviously you have the odd Magi trolling around on some fool errands with a couple of servitors and lower-tier adepts but that really is below the threshold of this campaign.
If you want something, you REALLY want something, and if the AdMech REALLY wants something, that means the Legios will walk.
Feel free to argue with me if you see that different :-)
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But yeah, of course you can deploy your skitarii forces without the titans (I changed it up a bit just now, you may want another look).
You can also deploy knights quite fast (in-game they will not have a deploy delay as the other titans) and they don't need special titan deploy ships either. So it is perfectly possible to have a household and two skitarii regiments waging a minor war while thes rest of your fleet and Legio are roflstomping a 'minor' Ork-WAAAGH! on the other side of the sector before it can reach one of your supplying-forgue worlds...
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Btw, how are your systems going Choon?
Remember that every player can come up with 5 'holds' for his faction.
The 3-major-system rule, was me reinforcing grimdark, aka preventing you guys to set up only a couple of allmighty systems with all the good stuff inside and have half your troops in there all the time gunning down anything that looks funny in the general direction.
One of the major problems of the Imperium is the fact that their systems are THAT scattered all over the place, making defending all of their territory a nightmare...
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That second section is really what I meant. Is it possible to have a few knights and maybe a couple skitarii regiments doing mop-up duty or something on one planet while I go do something else. I'm mostly concerned with using my forces efficiently and not dedicating warlord class Titan where they're really not needed if they could be better used somewhere else.
I figure, at most, I would have a couple knight detachments separate from my forces at any given time. Like you said, if it's worth doing, the Titans will walk.
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As for the planets, I'm going to get a lot of that hammered out, I hope, today. Right now I'm thinking of three worlds, but I also have vague ideas for two more minor worlds that aren't forges doing some other things.
Probably still not entirely clear, but with 3 major systems, I mean 3 systems where multiple players have important holds within one system, making the system as a whole 'major' in a strategical way.
So every player can define 5 holds of importance to his faction.
And: the group as a whole can create 3 major systems where there are more than one player 'hold' in it. (let's say up to a total of 5 player holds per system)
Lets make an example to make it clear:
- Choon decides to go with 3 forge worlds a shipyard and a research station
- Azih goes with two IG recruitment worlds, tow bastion worlds and a space bastion housing his HQ
Choon and Azih decide that they want to cooperate to make a truly powerful bastion system and incorporate a forge world, the shipyard, the HQ and a bastion world into one of your 3 major systems.
Choons other two forges and his research station as well as Azih's recruitment and the other bastion planet will have to be located elsewhere.
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Got it. Here's draft 1.
1) Manifold Radiance of the Omnissaiah Shipyards and Shipbreaking Yards.
Formerly a moon measuring 600km across, but completely hollowed out leaving a crust 100km thick and an interior diameter of 400km providing around 1,260,000 sqkm of interior surface space. Not all space is utilized.
2) Forge World Fires of Industry
Smaller rocky world focused on producing Titans, titan grade weapons, and titan replacement parts. Also a major source of Promethium.
3) Forge World By Iron Wrought
Large rocky world with large, mixed metallic mantle and core. Deep drilling and excavation operations have tapped directly into the mantle of the planet, drawing superheated metal straight into the refineries. This world is responsible for providing raw materials to other worlds and the Ark, but also produces vast amounts of IG supplies.
4) Agri-World Bread for the Flesh
One of the few examples of a Mechanicus-operated Agri-world. The planet's entire ecosystem, atmosphereic conditions, and natural resources are all carefully controlled and coordinated to maximise agricultural output. 99.23% of the planet's land surface has been effectively turned into some kind of farming, forestry, fishing, or agricultural output. The other .77% is star ports, processing facilities, and infrastructure.
5) Research Station A4439-238C. Research Station focused on the effects of Chaos on Imperial tech. The entire place is rigged to go nuclear at a moment's notice. Failsafes are in place including orbital backup failsafes.
Nice one!
And it even includes a: That's no moon!
EDIT: Although a 'major Promethium' site will have to be counted as an extra site. With major promethium I consider a refinery able to supply half the IG battlegroups INCLUDING the ships moving them around.
It can have a typical promethium refinery in one of its moons or gas giant in the same system but a REAL big one, will be a separate site.
Well there will be promethium, but if no one fleshes one out as 'his' asset, it will be placed *somewhere* by me *harharhar*
Basically, you can have it a do a bit of both.
As we're talking systems, it can be a rather remote system, with a rather new mining colony on an asteroid pumping out quite some ore and a Promethium refinery on the gas planet below.
It will not provide awesometastic amounts of either, but a decent bit of both.
Enough to feed the old, rather small and specialized forge world deeper in-system (but not your arc) and enough promethium to still most of your own needs (unless you go full-armored) or that of half a dozen of motorized guard regiments.
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Okay. I was trying to have a world to supply the Prometheum and raw materials needs of my Ark and maybe another world? I'm not sure the scale on which these things operate but I want to try to get as self-sufficient as I can in the boundaries provided.
Will you be populating the rest of the systems and then we gain resources from those other systems?
Yep, there will be ressources worlds beside yours.
Unless, you know, you go all out and have a lot of ressource-requirements ones...
@Threats: you may want to notice that these maps do not even include chaos... ;-)
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Oh, that rift is about all the Chaos we need.
Second crack at the Planets (already edited in the Notebook). I added explicit statements of their imports. Also, I think that notebook is in another language because that spell check Really doesn't like my English. :P
I also moved the Shipyards to orbiting the Forge world that makes ship parts. Seemed Logical.
1) Manifold Radiance of the Omnissaiah Shipyards and Shipbreaking Yards.
Formerly a moon measuring 600km across, but completely hollowed out leaving a crust 100km thick and an interior diameter of 400km providing around 1,260,000 sqkm of interior surface space. Not all space is utilized. Orbits the forge world By Iron Wrought.
2) Forge World Fires of Industry
Smaller rocky world focused on producing Titans, titan grade weapons, and titan replacement parts. The world is capable of providing it's own metallic and mineral supplies thanks to soaring mountain ranges with plentiful veins of various ores, but depends on imports of plastics and organics.
3) Forge World By Iron Wrought
Large rocky world with large, mixed metallic mantle and core. Deep drilling and excavation operations have tapped directly into the mantle of the planet, drawing superheated metal straight into the refineries. This world is responsible for providing raw materials to other worlds and also produces vast amounts of IG supplies. An ancient ecosystem has been entombed in its crust as plentiful coal, oil, gas, and other crude resources. It is completely dependent on food imports.
4) Agri-World Bread for the Flesh
One of the few examples of a Mechanicus-operated Agri-world. The planet's entire ecosystem, atmosphereic conditions, and natural resources are all carefully controlled and coordinated to maximise agricultural output. 99.23% of the planet's land surface has been effectively turned into some kind of farming, forestry, fishing, or agricultural output. The other .77% is star ports, processing facilities, and infrastructure. Depends on imports of manufactured goods, but it otherwise self-suficient.
5) Research Station A4439-238C.
Research Station focused on the effects of Chaos on Imperial tech. The entire place is rigged to go nuclear at a moment's notice. Failsafes are in place including orbital backup failsafes. Access is highly restricted.
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So, If I'm reading these maps right, There is an ork thrust coming down from the north, a tendril of Hive Fleet Kracken to the south west, and the Necron inhabit the dence cluster to the north just above the orc hook. They are also a little to the south. Also genestealers everywhere.
The good thing? the orks currenly insulate our little infected hive from whatever nonsense is in the Chaos Ribbon.
So we need to secure our footholds, break the orks and drive them back to open a path to the temporary rift corridor and make sure we don't get our butts eaten off by the Tyranids in the process.
Does that sum it up?
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Man, you are going all in Choon! Hope you don't mind the rest of us being laggards.
For my planets. Here's my first idea.
The Agri world of Kachewan-35 is as large as a rock planet can get and is blessed with moderate climate on its one giant continental landmass which sits in a large world spanning freshwater ocean. It is so flat that it is said that you can watch your dog runaway for three years.
Its value as a breadbasket, source of water and seafood is so important that large settlements are not allowed on the surface and the only structures are the space ports that ferry these vital supplies to the rest of the imperium. These ports also contain work camps and the manufactorums that service the giant farming equipment and trawlers used to harvest the bounty of the world.
The planet's atmosphere is so large that it shares it with two of its moons. The first is Grey and covered with tenemant housing. It is in fact a Hive moon that provides the workers that harvest the Agri World and a few recruits for the IG. The second moon is a small orange rock and it is from here that the PDF are organized and the governance of the world and moon managed.
Pretty much.
Although the majority of Orks actually come from South and south-west.
And yeah, the Orks actually are keen to get to the rift as they think it is the grinning face of one of their gods spewing out ugly stuff (aka Chaos) he wants the Ork to fight and kill off for him. Orks. You have to love them, right?
@Notebook: stupid things going tries to be intelligent, divining your input language at page-creation-time according to the system language of your pc/mobile/whatnot (German in my case). And there is no way of changing it easily afterwards, beside marking your text, right-click and set the proofing language to English.
Another workaround: copy the page content. Create a new page (with a system set to english - default for most of you I guess) and paste your text there and delete the old page afterwards. Should work out of the box then. Probably. Unless that stupid thing set the language of the whole notebook at creation time...