I love the art you’ve drawn alongside your campaign report, it really helps set the scene. It makes my mind wonder with the worlds we play in. Imagining it from the level of a mere citizen is really interesting.
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Thanks very much! I have to say it has made it much easier to motivate myself to draw when it’s for this!
I was worried that the short stories were too self indulgent and not “gameplay” enough, but it’s good to see I was wrong about that
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This is what makes Aurora so great. There is so much room for storytelling left in it.
The Manufacturing Sector Breakdown for instance completely glosses over the existence of children, the elderly and the disabled.
“Available workers” can be anything from homeless bums to self-employed embroidery specialists.
Financial Centers can be casinos or banks or datacenters mining cryptocurrency (if you believe in that stuff). They can be incentive packages supporting start-ups in the non-Trans economy (and the bureaucratic infrastructure to support them).
The transnewtonian elements themselves can be actual kilotons of ore - they can as easily be trace amounts used to lace other material in amounts counted by the atom and the kiloton amounts are just the purest form which is practical to handle before their actual use (Why though? Is the pure form volatile? Poisonous? Both or something else?)
Every player can answer that for themselves.
Of course it is a perfectly valid way to play Aurora as a complex and rewarding operational simulator, but when you stick to the gameplay, deep though it may be, you don’t get much farther than A killed B and C, was in turn killed by D (in insanely complicated ways admittedly), the end.
Sorry if this latest one is quite brief - I had a story all written up for the first jump transit only to… well… I think you’ll understand when you see how we fared!
When you say “must be jungle before terraforming stops”
Does that mean they must be jungle before any terraformers, ground and or orbit, can be removed? Or does it mean orbital can be moved elsewhere now that the colony is in a safe zone for humans to finish it off with just ground terraformers?
I am treating this as
“It doesn’t matter if the planet is habitable or not, you have to keep terraforming it until it is a jungle before you remove any terraforming capability”
So any terraforming capability I apply to a colony cannot be taken away until it’s a jungle.
[If I am right and jungle is the highest fortification level terrain]
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What does the standard blueprint of a military capital look like? No mines, labs, construction. But what is allowed on them?
Good question:
Military shipyard
Ground unit production facility
Maintenance factory
Fuel production
Ordinance production
Mass driver
+/- infrastructure & terraformer
Construction brigades (troops)
That’s broadly what I imagine - receiving minerals from civilian mines, other bodies, probably routing them to the ‘civilian capital’ of the system for other building.
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Also, in case it wasn’t clear on the post -you can vote for multiple options.
If that isn’t clear, please let me know and I’ll update the text.
I can use a weighted randomzier to then pick which combinations, with the most popular certain and the others weighted proportionally to their votes.
“Her enemies, those left behind by her metoric rise, godsip about stem cell treatments and black market plastic surgery.”
Metoric Rise, where the gods sip. Must be a competing franchise to the Restaurant at the End of the Universe.
Hahaha new colony name added to the board. One of the systems is even called Elysium so GodSip, the fuel hub, makes a lot of sense
Metoric Rise definitely another colony name too
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I’d argue Research facilities.
Super secret military black labs are such a trope in SciFi, you almost HAVE to have them.
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Oh, hi. 
I was just editing the post, but here goes:
Construction capabilities are another necessity - it would never do to have to ship in everything from a civilian world, where nobody could even spell “operational security”.
Finally I’d recommend crewed mines to stick your fuckups for periods of penal service (to satisfy the headcanon).
Could we maybe compromise on a ratio?
How about this for a compromise:
Research, yep, as many as we like
Construction factories never more than 2x build points of construction brigades (don’t want civilian softness infecting our troops)
Unlimited forced mines / factories but no manned or automated ones (better simulation of prisoner labour?)
[I like the idea of forced mines on inhospitable places like Venus with orbiting overseer class]
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“Climbing the mountain of conflict: Autobiography of Fae O’Brien”
Pacifists and other anti-violence Moralists
Somebody certainly has read their Cicero.
It was he, who advised orators to attack the weakest argument of their opponent, inventing a weak argument their opponents not even used if need be, and ignoring the stronger arguments to make it seem like their opponent did not even have them.
Ms. O’Brien ignores the core opponents of stratocracy - the complete middle class: white collar workers, small and medium business owners, everybody who has a stake in the well-being of the Republic.
Even parts of the Military itself, mostly in the General staff.
Those who for practical reasons foster a strong military, which - like fire - is an indispensible servant, but a horrible master.
Those who therefore chain the military to Civilian oversight, before it gets out of hand.
She also builds a strawman: The existence of disgruntled veterans is contingent on them being hung out to dry in the first place. Which inevitably happens when Veteran affairs are part of the military budget and the choice between a prosthetic limb for a veteran who will never fight again and a gun for the recruit replacing them occurs.
If, on the other tentacle, Veterans are treated like the Citizens they are and covered by civilian health care, the military is left to do its actual job and nobody gets shorted.
At least not out of proportion to everybody else.
And Youth? Youth have the prerogative to be stupid. In fact exist for the sole purpose of being stupid. How else could they acquire the experience and wisdom to become productive members of society? Compounding this, Youth that choose to test radical ideas tend to be a teensy minority.
The Industrial Corps is another strawman.
Of course it is possible to make it an arm of the armed services. Possible but not necessary.
Case in point: The pre-stellar German “Technisches Hilfswerk” (Federal Agency for Technical Relief), which was an alternative to drafted military service for those of an engineering bent and proudly civilian in its outlook.
Orbiters and Deep Space populations.
O’Brien does another Cicero here. Those very same skilled and motivated (and proud of being skilled and motivated to boot) people can be bound by treating them equitably, much better than by threat.
Which is what Unions are doing at their core.
Go one step further and make them shareholders. Like the (even more pre-stellar than the Germans) Romans said: Only those who will suffer when the Republic does will strive to make it thrive.
Religious and political Extremists.
The tinfoil hat brigade. We all love them.
The solution is spelled out repeatedly:
Give people a stake in the Republic and they will strive to make it thrive.
Those that still don’t, need our compassion more than anything.
While putting them with their peers out among the stars is one viable option, this is what we have Police and Social workers for.
The Military has other things to do and we’d be well served relieving them of such extraneous cares.
That the Starborn were duped by such cheap demagogouery is nothing short of regrettable. 
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User participation: Command
Over the weekend I reached out to a few of you who kindly volunteered to help with the campaign by leading one of the new Stratocracy branches.
There are currently 3 vacancies:
Army
Fleet
Industry
Please message me or reply if you’d like to lead one of the remaining branches
What would leadership mean?
In a sentence, whatever you like. Some have written characters with back stories, strategic aims and design choices. Others have given simple two or three sentence answers.
I wouldn’t expect more than once per week replies, answering something like:
You, army, are leading an assault with the navy on planet z. When you write your report to your seniors, how much credit are you gonna give your navy colleagues?
Or
How do you feel about genetic modification in the army?
I’ll then use this to inform my gameplay and writing.
Why bother?
Some people, like me, find world building fun, and, if you’ve enjoyed things so far, adding to it could be fun too.
Perhaps you want to see how a certain strategy might work in the hands of somebody less experienced, or show off a trick you use that is under utilised?
From my perspective, it’s educational and inspiring to develop cooperatively and makes the writing and drawing and gameplay all more fun!
Thanks for reading and contributing! I’ll do a follow up post if we fill all the vacancies
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