Post by Ravished Improbability on Apr 5, 2018 3:36:07 GMT
Tau Ceti Ascendancy
The original Tau Ceti colony was one of the fastest failures to ever succeed in its mission. The colonization expedition to Tau Ceti was officially organized by a union of large corporations. For the corporations, the undertaking was prestige, glory, and marketing. The media coverage would ensure their stocks would climb, their products would sell better, and they could market specialty items themed after the mission. There would be plenty of money to be made for such a huge public undertaking.
Corruption within the corporations quickly allowed an alliance of powerful criminal gangs to subvert the planned colony to their own needs. It was a gamble for power on a new world for the underworld gangs. Once outside the restrictive thumb of the world governments, they can make their own world and make their own rules. Those loyal to the gangs would hold the power and the wealth.
The Tau Ceti colony is one of the successful colonies in the early wave of expansion. The corporate money as well as pressure from the gangs ensured that this expedition would be well equipped with the tools needed to set up a permanent colony. What could not be bought by the corporations through normal means was simply stolen by the gangs and sold to the corporations to be included in the missions supplies.
The colony consisted of bright men and women with the skills needed to put together a successful colony in an unforgiving alien star system. Not all of them though, where people loyal to the corporations. A large percentage of the colonists were members of the criminal underworld. Entire gangs left the Earth for Tau Ceti, and they made sure that part of the cargo going with them was a stash of weapons only the leaders of the gangs knew about.
The creation of the colony went according to the publicly announced plan, right up to the point it was time to land and occupy the colony on the planet. The initial colony was constructed underground inside ancient lava tubes to shield it from heat of the star by an army of robots produced by the automated factory landed after the first wave of survey probes mapped the planet. The basic space base industry is set up to mine and construct everything the colony will need in future.
With the survival of the colony pretty much ensured but most of the colonists still trapped on board the ships, the gangs staged a coup to siege control of the colony. The original leadership was largely taken prisoner or killed, and the gangs took over. The next stage of the planned road map for the colonization remained the same after the little hiccup in the leadership. The shape of the colony future though greatly change with the gangs successful hijacking of the ships and stations.
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By the time sol returned to the stars after the great war and sent out FTL equipped exploration ships to reestablish contact with the colonies; the Tau Ceti Ascendancy had matured into a star empire complete with two other thriving star systems, YZ Ceti and Epsilon Eridani.
The Ascendancy's government loosely fits in with the definition feudal stratocracy, a type oligarchy, where the military is the government of the empire and nobility controls the land.
The big cat clans rule the districts of the Ascendancy, and cats are the only ones able to own land. Land in the Ascendancy being defined as ships, stations, asteroids, sections of planets, or even regions of space. Craftsmen and merchants can apply to set up shop. Well established or respected artisans and sellers may be encourage to setup shop within a nobles territory with gifts of better shop spaces and even better materials and profits. The opposite may also happen where those with a bad reputation my be run out of the nobles territory, or face death.
The nobility may also sponsor ship captains. They get to share in the captain's glory and wealth to boost their own prestige, in exchange of making it easier for the captain to keep their ship and crew in fighting shape. Sometimes the nobility supplies the ship to the captain. Really successful ship captains may find themselves with the funds to run multiple ships and would effectively sponsor the captains they hire to command the other ships of their fleet. Large fleets are outside the budget of even the most successful captains, but are common among the upper ranks of the nobility.
These sponsored captains are effectively the Ascendancy's equivalent of knights, as such they are tested much the same way. Their fitness, loyalty, ship handling, and personal handling are all tested before the noble. Those captains up for sponsorship are tested in simulated ship combat to verify the stories the noble may have heard. Should they pass the ship handling sims, they must duel against the noble's champion in personal combat. A medical physical is given to the captain to ensure that the noble will be able to have a long, and hopefully partnership with the captain. While the physical tells the noble all they need to know about the captain's health, it is traditional and symbolic for the captain to stand undress before the noble and other witnesses so they may determine the captain's level of fitness with their own eyes before they are made to give their oath of loyalty.
The are four major clans, each populated by one of the large cats species. Their are also minor clans founded my members of the other cats. The clans draw their history to one of the founding gangs. While they may have children with other of the cat clans. Those not of pure enough blood to reproduce can not inherit property or titles. Those of hybrid blood are often kept as exotic additions to the harem, as gelded advisers and scholars, and for more powerful hybrids as powerful warriors for the clans. The often infertile nature and exotic coats makes them perfect companions for young princes and princesses not yet wedded off.
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The people of the Ascendancy lives in various space stations, and on the rocky planets. They have started on terraforming many of the planets, but the process is decades from completion leaving most of the planet a barely survivable badlands.
The vast cities on the planets are built around the giant greenhouse domes containing a garden or park. Outside the oasis of the dome the cities are typically a crowded tangle of boxy prefabricated habitat modules. Residential and commercial districts cluster near the greenhouse domes. The modules use to build the city range from just big enough to install a family home inside to entire sky scrapers.
The modules are kept to a few layers, though the smaller residential modules can be stacked up into small towers. Green houses or other entertainment modules typically top the residential modules. The rich live in villas built around a private garden dome. Typically the bigger the garden the wealthier the owner. A private bath is also a sign of wealth. The nobility live in palatal mansions with private baths, large gardens, and separate quarters for their harem. The wealthy live in the nicer areas near the domes, while the poor live in cramp apartments close to the edges of the city.
To save on resources, private bathing facilities are generally limited to a bucket and washcloth. Public bath houses provide a social hub and pools to soak away aches. They are something of a mix of Turkish and Japanese baths. A residential district would share one or two common bathhouses for their cleaning needs. The bathhouses have showers for washing up, and baths and saunas for soaking well worked muscles. They generally offer massage services as well. The public facilities are separated by gender, but may have common areas that all can use.
Most commercial modules are large enough that they are not stacked up except to make larger malls. They have rearrangable walls inside to fit multiple shops inside or leave it open to fit a larger market. They are fitted with one or more loading docks. Above the shops though are stacked office modules or even residential modules to form towers.
The main industrial sector is primarily on the pole ward side of the city. Smaller industrial districts also grow around the cargo docks at the edges of the city. The sectors produce everything from coffee cups to additional modules to expand the city.
The underground cities constructed in lava tubes are typically stacked to the roof and have expanded out through the original walls of the caves as they mine for more resources.
These cities are anchored by the industrial sectors. The oldest and biggest being built at the surface opening that serves as the main loading dock and entrance to the city. The other industrial sectors grow and move to support the mining operations. The rest of the city grows to fill the mined out space between the industrial districts.
The districts are roughly cubular in shape. At its core is a bath house. Around that are the commercial modules. Outside are the residential modules. The residential clusters are smaller cubes with a vertical hydroponic garden or other social module is at the core, and apartments forming the surrounding shell.
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Up in space its much the same on the space stations, crowded and densely packed. The difference is how the different modules are arranged. On the stations the industrial modules form the foundations of the gravity ring, the workers apartments just above that. Merchants and craftsmen live and work in the nicer middle strata of the spinning habitats. On top of it all, closest to the center, are the rich.
The central hub of the station contains the power cores and bulk storage. Ships and shuttles dock to the outer armor shell. The outer shell is mostly made of armor to protect the spinning gravity ring from damage. It is also studded with weapon emplacements, shuttle bays, and ship handing facilities.
The largest station in the Ascendancy is the massive orbital ring complex around the capital planet of the Tau Ceti system. At over 40 thousand miles in circumference the station houses a good chunk of the Ascendancy's total population. The station part of the orbital ring is not spinning and gets its gravity from the planet itself. A high-speed rail system runs under the ring where trains travel at speeds fast enough that the up and down flips and the passengers are treated to a view of the planet above there heads as they circle around the station at faster than orbital speed.
The station links up the many elevators raising up from near major urban areas and even out into space to the various spaceports parked in stationary orbits around the planet. The spaceports provide stable microgravity docking facilities for star ships as well as a shipyard to build new ships.
The orbital ring sports a massive amount of defensive weapons: flak towers, missile batteries, mass drivers and railguns. The defensive weapons also includes the monster laser arrays normally used for pushing around the solar sail powered in system craft but will handily slice up enemy ships.
There are also massive umbrella shape shield stations that screen the terraform planets from the effects of the solar wind. The solar power collected by the shield stations are used to continue the terraforming process.
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Food Production
Basic food production is done in huge electroprotein reactors to generate a synthetic biomass that is by weight half protein, a quarter carbohydrates, and the rest a mix of fats and nucleic acids. The energy efficient process directly turns electrical power to biomass without the inefficiency of photosynthesis. The process can be tuned to produce powders of various flavors and consistency.
The high energy powder is used to make cheap compact ration bars for ship crews. It is also used to make protein shakes and as the main ingredient of a thick gravy like soup. Even if it is not the main ingredient, the protein powder is used as a filler material in many products. It can be used as a thickening agent in its basic powder form. Various noodles made from the material are often served with sauces even it the homes of the wealthy.
While the highly efficient bioreactor produced food is more than sufficient to feed the people, it doesn't sate their taste for the real plants and animal. Products made using these powders was generally seen as low class by the wealthy and nobility.
The Ascendancy has huge agriculture stations devoted to the production of all the animal and plant derived foods. The mega space farms provide much of the food for the stations and ships, for it is uncommon for regular stations to have enough onboard food production to feed everyone. The mega farms produce large variety of crops in huge aeroponic and hydroponic chambers. They also farm seafood, eggs, and chicken. The meat of larger animals like cows, pigs, and goats are cultured in large vats.
Rice and soybeans are major crops in the Ascendancy. Though a large variety of fruits and vegetables are grown on the main worlds. The traditional method of farming the land is still fairly common down on the planets where soil and land is more readily available. To help with the terraforming on the planets, there are large herds of cows and goats being raised for food. Chicken is also raised both on the planet and in space. Chickens are the most common form of livestock found up in space as the birds take up very little space and eggs provides an easy source alternative of protein.
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System Defenses
The Ascendancy's borders are defended primarily by the many space forts scattered about. They are station size warships with heavy armor and heavier weapons. Their acceleration can be measure in fractions of earth gravity. Their drive pack is only there to allow the stations to maneuver around the system.
Around each planet is typically an array of military satellites with primary weapons too large to mount on any ship. The mega sized lasers and mass drivers are powerful enough to obliterate any conceivable hostile ship that could threaten the system. They are slow firing and difficult to aim over the long interplanetary distances without the powerful guidance radars to give them pin point targeting information.
Major stations typically have a few real warships to defend them and can draft the local raiders into the defense fleet. The stations also have their on board weapons for local defense.
A scattering of warships and raiders serve as rapid response teams to reinforce the sectors under attack.
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The raiding ships of the Ascendancy are various forms of carriers with large numbers of specialized shuttles to hunt down and capture targeted ships. While their shape and design can vary wildly, they have design features in common. The biggest is that they don't waste mass on a gravity centrifuge for the crew. At best they have a small one for exercising inside. They also have a limited ability to make fresh food on board. Any fresh food production capacity is reserved for the ship's officers. The rest of the crew must make do with rations taken on board from the stations. They do have chemical air and water recycling systems, as the recyclers weigh less than carting large amounts of disposable water and air. Waste is generally dried and stored in special modules for recycling next time they are in port. They are one of the first to be jettisoned if the ship needs to shed mass for to increase their acceleration.
The noble cats of the crew are genetically modified and augmented to be resistant to the effects of the microgravity exposure. They also have tweaks to make them stronger and faster. The rest of the crew wear various exosuits to counteract the worst effects of the prolonged microgravity exposure as well as give them a strength boost when working inside the ship. Some captains spin their ship while in transit to provide a low level of gravity to make it easier to work.
They use two main types of shuttles:
-- The Ascendancy's assault shuttles are heavily armored and shielded to be used like fighters. They are armed with autocannons, laser turrets, anti-ship rocket pods, and heavy missile launchers. The missile launchers use a mass driver system to kick out the massive missile with a good boost of speed. The missiles payload is usually clusters of mini missiles or flechettes, but might also carry actual ship killing warheads.
-- Boarding shuttles are tough little ships design to breach the hull of the prey and unload teams of raiders into the interior of the ship. They lack the heavy weapons of the assault ships, instead equipped with anti-missile and anti-armor weapons for defense. They may also mount small machine guns to provide covering fire for the raiders.
There also have a variety of utility shuttles.
-- Standard shuttles to move move people and supplies quickly and efficiently between ships and stations. Some may double as landing or cargo shuttles with swappable mission modules.
-- Large boxy container shuttles to quickly move large amounts of supplies in quickly swappable cargo pods.
-- Tugs have a small command pod, huge powerful engines, and huge magnetic lock pads to move oversize cargoes, and even ships.
The raiding ships are built from largely prefabricated modules held together with trusses, cables, and structural plating. With ships being constructed from linked together modules, asymmetric ships are common as the captains upgrade and add modules to there ships. Some symmetry is typically designed in to make the ships more aesthetically pleasing. The ships range in length from 500m to 2km with the smaller ships being more common. Large ships are typically in the hands of those captains skilled enough to earn the money purchase one.
The modular nature of the ships means that each module is independently airtight, and in general the whole ship is compartmentalized. Weapon modules and critical systems are typically armored against collision damage and made tough enough not to be damage by the destruction of adjacent modules. Other modules typically have no built in armor beyond the basic micrometeoroid plating. The exterior modules of a ship are generally non-critical and can often include means of easily jettisoning them should they become to damage to lighten up the ship. Some ships may even be design to jettison reaction tanks, supply modules, and even crew quarters before combat for recovery later after the battle is won.
Proper armor comes in the form of plates that are layered over the exterior of the ship. The typical raider's armor is heavily concentrated across the front of the ship and around the central citadel area containing the vital systems. Most of the ship is not armored against enemy fire. This all or nothing armor scheme keeps the raiders light enough to chase down ships that tried to flee. Some captains though sometimes install ribbons of additional armor down the sides of the ship they can rotate toward the enemy when caught broadside to a hostile ship.
The raider's ship to ship weapons are tuned to cripple and disarm instead of raw destruction, focusing more on smaller weapons able to pierce deep into a ship to snipe at critical systems and large weapons design to sweep away large sections of exterior fittings.
The most common raider ship are frigates and cruisers under a kilometer in length. Small and lean, they are built to get in close to the target before launching their shuttles. They mount a heavy laser forward and multiple turrets for railguns. They have one or two large hangers from which to launch and land shuttles. To make up for the small number of shuttles they mount large numbers of mortar, missile and rocket batteries to saturate the enemies point defense clear a path for the shuttles. They directly support the shuttles with short and medium range defensive fire.
The kilometer long assault carrier has a bird like appearance with a narrow center section for the crew and wings to either side with many catapult tubes to rapidly deploy assault and boarding shuttles toward the targeted ship, large hangers to store and repair the many small shuttles, landing pads, and large cargo holds for supplies and loot. The front of the ship is the primary weapons array housing the carriers heavy lasers and mass drivers. They are sometimes equipped with additional modules above and below for additional hanger space, heavy weapons, cargo capacity, or drive power.
Some captains equip themselves with ships design to carry something larger than shuttles to launch into combat. At over a kilometer in length gunship carriers have cradles for small warships instead of the hangers and launch tubes lining the side of the ship. The parasite warships typically ranges in size from 500m to 750m, though some may spot smaller ships. They still carry shuttles to escort the small ships and assist in boarding operations. The mothership stays back to provide long range fire support with its limited arsenal of weapons.
The gunships are able to deal and survive more damage than assault shuttles. The gunships are equipped with proper antiship lasers and railguns. They are armed with a single heavy weapon and turrets arranged to maximize broadside firepower. They have strong broad side armor as they are design to pull parallel to the target and fire lines across to allow boarders to cross. They typically do not carry their own shuttle bay. They also do not waste mass on large stocks of food, supplies, or even a proper water recycler; instead relying on the mothership to supply the ships long term. Ton for ton the gunships pack more firepower than the equivalent frigate or cruiser.
Light carriers are fast like cruisers. They are roughly tubular with multiple shuttle catapults around the outside. Like all ships they have a heavy weapon in the nose. The remaining anti ship weapons are clustered around the rear of the ship, leaving the middle clear for shuttle operations.
Drydocks are one of the largest type of raiding ship, they feature a huge expandable unpressurized hanger able to secure ships up to 2km in length. They are cheap for their size, but are expensive to set up for operations independent of a fleet. Originally design to be a tow truck within the Ascendancy, the design has been modified to drag back from the raids entire disable ships. To make the ship raid ready, hangers and catapult tubes have been added around the outside of the ship. These ships typically have to launch the shuttles in multiple waves due to the limited number of catapults. Typically in three or more waves set up to bring the entire shuttle fleet into the combat area at the same time. The various launch speeds has it that the last launch would have the highest closing velocity and thus the be first to engage the enemy, For tougher targets the follow up waves may need to brake to match speeds with the first wave before entering point defense range to make it difficult to pick out priority targets.
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The Slums
Many a times a cash strapped captain can find themselves hunting for second hand parts to repair the ship. Sometimes the parts are traded in after another captain upgraded his ship, other times the parts came from a less well documented sources. If the budget gets to tight a ship and crew are forced into change ports to a less reputable station.
The slums of space come in many forms. They may be built into a mine out asteroid. Or simply stacked onto the surface of one. They can be an old station on the fringe of a system that has fallen out of favor. They can be a collection of derelict ships and parts lashed together into a semblance of a station.
No matter the station's appearance, they are filled with people simply scraping by to make a meager living and willing to do what ever it takes to make the few credits that would mean the difference between life and death. The stations are lawless places where the only law enforced is self preservation. Anything and everything can be bought and sold within these stations. The stations make heavy use of both slaves and serfs. In the run down stations the difference between the two is marginal at best. It is common to find the station supplementing barely running bioreactor with traditional dirt farming and even imported food.
They have a lively market for ship parts, personal weapons, slaves, and recreational substances. Even food and raw materials can be found. There is also lots of booths offering locally made items and services. The stations do not offer everything that a more well equip station would have though, and many times a crew would have to go out to do things that would be automated outside the slums. The stations are home to the more criminally incline captains and crews.
The raider ships at these stations are often more varied than then the ships at a station closer to the core. The ships decay into a patch work of modules as destroyed modules are replaced with what ever is available to replace it. Sometimes the captain needs to go without replacing the module do to lack of success and money. Those that look to escape the station may find themselves arming up a decommissioned freighter or other non-combat ship. The ship captains may even finding themselves bolting on weapons and parts carved from foreign made ships.
The original Tau Ceti colony was one of the fastest failures to ever succeed in its mission. The colonization expedition to Tau Ceti was officially organized by a union of large corporations. For the corporations, the undertaking was prestige, glory, and marketing. The media coverage would ensure their stocks would climb, their products would sell better, and they could market specialty items themed after the mission. There would be plenty of money to be made for such a huge public undertaking.
Corruption within the corporations quickly allowed an alliance of powerful criminal gangs to subvert the planned colony to their own needs. It was a gamble for power on a new world for the underworld gangs. Once outside the restrictive thumb of the world governments, they can make their own world and make their own rules. Those loyal to the gangs would hold the power and the wealth.
The Tau Ceti colony is one of the successful colonies in the early wave of expansion. The corporate money as well as pressure from the gangs ensured that this expedition would be well equipped with the tools needed to set up a permanent colony. What could not be bought by the corporations through normal means was simply stolen by the gangs and sold to the corporations to be included in the missions supplies.
The colony consisted of bright men and women with the skills needed to put together a successful colony in an unforgiving alien star system. Not all of them though, where people loyal to the corporations. A large percentage of the colonists were members of the criminal underworld. Entire gangs left the Earth for Tau Ceti, and they made sure that part of the cargo going with them was a stash of weapons only the leaders of the gangs knew about.
The creation of the colony went according to the publicly announced plan, right up to the point it was time to land and occupy the colony on the planet. The initial colony was constructed underground inside ancient lava tubes to shield it from heat of the star by an army of robots produced by the automated factory landed after the first wave of survey probes mapped the planet. The basic space base industry is set up to mine and construct everything the colony will need in future.
With the survival of the colony pretty much ensured but most of the colonists still trapped on board the ships, the gangs staged a coup to siege control of the colony. The original leadership was largely taken prisoner or killed, and the gangs took over. The next stage of the planned road map for the colonization remained the same after the little hiccup in the leadership. The shape of the colony future though greatly change with the gangs successful hijacking of the ships and stations.
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By the time sol returned to the stars after the great war and sent out FTL equipped exploration ships to reestablish contact with the colonies; the Tau Ceti Ascendancy had matured into a star empire complete with two other thriving star systems, YZ Ceti and Epsilon Eridani.
The Ascendancy's government loosely fits in with the definition feudal stratocracy, a type oligarchy, where the military is the government of the empire and nobility controls the land.
The big cat clans rule the districts of the Ascendancy, and cats are the only ones able to own land. Land in the Ascendancy being defined as ships, stations, asteroids, sections of planets, or even regions of space. Craftsmen and merchants can apply to set up shop. Well established or respected artisans and sellers may be encourage to setup shop within a nobles territory with gifts of better shop spaces and even better materials and profits. The opposite may also happen where those with a bad reputation my be run out of the nobles territory, or face death.
The nobility may also sponsor ship captains. They get to share in the captain's glory and wealth to boost their own prestige, in exchange of making it easier for the captain to keep their ship and crew in fighting shape. Sometimes the nobility supplies the ship to the captain. Really successful ship captains may find themselves with the funds to run multiple ships and would effectively sponsor the captains they hire to command the other ships of their fleet. Large fleets are outside the budget of even the most successful captains, but are common among the upper ranks of the nobility.
These sponsored captains are effectively the Ascendancy's equivalent of knights, as such they are tested much the same way. Their fitness, loyalty, ship handling, and personal handling are all tested before the noble. Those captains up for sponsorship are tested in simulated ship combat to verify the stories the noble may have heard. Should they pass the ship handling sims, they must duel against the noble's champion in personal combat. A medical physical is given to the captain to ensure that the noble will be able to have a long, and hopefully partnership with the captain. While the physical tells the noble all they need to know about the captain's health, it is traditional and symbolic for the captain to stand undress before the noble and other witnesses so they may determine the captain's level of fitness with their own eyes before they are made to give their oath of loyalty.
The are four major clans, each populated by one of the large cats species. Their are also minor clans founded my members of the other cats. The clans draw their history to one of the founding gangs. While they may have children with other of the cat clans. Those not of pure enough blood to reproduce can not inherit property or titles. Those of hybrid blood are often kept as exotic additions to the harem, as gelded advisers and scholars, and for more powerful hybrids as powerful warriors for the clans. The often infertile nature and exotic coats makes them perfect companions for young princes and princesses not yet wedded off.
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The people of the Ascendancy lives in various space stations, and on the rocky planets. They have started on terraforming many of the planets, but the process is decades from completion leaving most of the planet a barely survivable badlands.
The vast cities on the planets are built around the giant greenhouse domes containing a garden or park. Outside the oasis of the dome the cities are typically a crowded tangle of boxy prefabricated habitat modules. Residential and commercial districts cluster near the greenhouse domes. The modules use to build the city range from just big enough to install a family home inside to entire sky scrapers.
The modules are kept to a few layers, though the smaller residential modules can be stacked up into small towers. Green houses or other entertainment modules typically top the residential modules. The rich live in villas built around a private garden dome. Typically the bigger the garden the wealthier the owner. A private bath is also a sign of wealth. The nobility live in palatal mansions with private baths, large gardens, and separate quarters for their harem. The wealthy live in the nicer areas near the domes, while the poor live in cramp apartments close to the edges of the city.
To save on resources, private bathing facilities are generally limited to a bucket and washcloth. Public bath houses provide a social hub and pools to soak away aches. They are something of a mix of Turkish and Japanese baths. A residential district would share one or two common bathhouses for their cleaning needs. The bathhouses have showers for washing up, and baths and saunas for soaking well worked muscles. They generally offer massage services as well. The public facilities are separated by gender, but may have common areas that all can use.
Most commercial modules are large enough that they are not stacked up except to make larger malls. They have rearrangable walls inside to fit multiple shops inside or leave it open to fit a larger market. They are fitted with one or more loading docks. Above the shops though are stacked office modules or even residential modules to form towers.
The main industrial sector is primarily on the pole ward side of the city. Smaller industrial districts also grow around the cargo docks at the edges of the city. The sectors produce everything from coffee cups to additional modules to expand the city.
The underground cities constructed in lava tubes are typically stacked to the roof and have expanded out through the original walls of the caves as they mine for more resources.
These cities are anchored by the industrial sectors. The oldest and biggest being built at the surface opening that serves as the main loading dock and entrance to the city. The other industrial sectors grow and move to support the mining operations. The rest of the city grows to fill the mined out space between the industrial districts.
The districts are roughly cubular in shape. At its core is a bath house. Around that are the commercial modules. Outside are the residential modules. The residential clusters are smaller cubes with a vertical hydroponic garden or other social module is at the core, and apartments forming the surrounding shell.
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Up in space its much the same on the space stations, crowded and densely packed. The difference is how the different modules are arranged. On the stations the industrial modules form the foundations of the gravity ring, the workers apartments just above that. Merchants and craftsmen live and work in the nicer middle strata of the spinning habitats. On top of it all, closest to the center, are the rich.
The central hub of the station contains the power cores and bulk storage. Ships and shuttles dock to the outer armor shell. The outer shell is mostly made of armor to protect the spinning gravity ring from damage. It is also studded with weapon emplacements, shuttle bays, and ship handing facilities.
The largest station in the Ascendancy is the massive orbital ring complex around the capital planet of the Tau Ceti system. At over 40 thousand miles in circumference the station houses a good chunk of the Ascendancy's total population. The station part of the orbital ring is not spinning and gets its gravity from the planet itself. A high-speed rail system runs under the ring where trains travel at speeds fast enough that the up and down flips and the passengers are treated to a view of the planet above there heads as they circle around the station at faster than orbital speed.
The station links up the many elevators raising up from near major urban areas and even out into space to the various spaceports parked in stationary orbits around the planet. The spaceports provide stable microgravity docking facilities for star ships as well as a shipyard to build new ships.
The orbital ring sports a massive amount of defensive weapons: flak towers, missile batteries, mass drivers and railguns. The defensive weapons also includes the monster laser arrays normally used for pushing around the solar sail powered in system craft but will handily slice up enemy ships.
There are also massive umbrella shape shield stations that screen the terraform planets from the effects of the solar wind. The solar power collected by the shield stations are used to continue the terraforming process.
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Food Production
Basic food production is done in huge electroprotein reactors to generate a synthetic biomass that is by weight half protein, a quarter carbohydrates, and the rest a mix of fats and nucleic acids. The energy efficient process directly turns electrical power to biomass without the inefficiency of photosynthesis. The process can be tuned to produce powders of various flavors and consistency.
The high energy powder is used to make cheap compact ration bars for ship crews. It is also used to make protein shakes and as the main ingredient of a thick gravy like soup. Even if it is not the main ingredient, the protein powder is used as a filler material in many products. It can be used as a thickening agent in its basic powder form. Various noodles made from the material are often served with sauces even it the homes of the wealthy.
While the highly efficient bioreactor produced food is more than sufficient to feed the people, it doesn't sate their taste for the real plants and animal. Products made using these powders was generally seen as low class by the wealthy and nobility.
The Ascendancy has huge agriculture stations devoted to the production of all the animal and plant derived foods. The mega space farms provide much of the food for the stations and ships, for it is uncommon for regular stations to have enough onboard food production to feed everyone. The mega farms produce large variety of crops in huge aeroponic and hydroponic chambers. They also farm seafood, eggs, and chicken. The meat of larger animals like cows, pigs, and goats are cultured in large vats.
Rice and soybeans are major crops in the Ascendancy. Though a large variety of fruits and vegetables are grown on the main worlds. The traditional method of farming the land is still fairly common down on the planets where soil and land is more readily available. To help with the terraforming on the planets, there are large herds of cows and goats being raised for food. Chicken is also raised both on the planet and in space. Chickens are the most common form of livestock found up in space as the birds take up very little space and eggs provides an easy source alternative of protein.
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System Defenses
The Ascendancy's borders are defended primarily by the many space forts scattered about. They are station size warships with heavy armor and heavier weapons. Their acceleration can be measure in fractions of earth gravity. Their drive pack is only there to allow the stations to maneuver around the system.
Around each planet is typically an array of military satellites with primary weapons too large to mount on any ship. The mega sized lasers and mass drivers are powerful enough to obliterate any conceivable hostile ship that could threaten the system. They are slow firing and difficult to aim over the long interplanetary distances without the powerful guidance radars to give them pin point targeting information.
Major stations typically have a few real warships to defend them and can draft the local raiders into the defense fleet. The stations also have their on board weapons for local defense.
A scattering of warships and raiders serve as rapid response teams to reinforce the sectors under attack.
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The raiding ships of the Ascendancy are various forms of carriers with large numbers of specialized shuttles to hunt down and capture targeted ships. While their shape and design can vary wildly, they have design features in common. The biggest is that they don't waste mass on a gravity centrifuge for the crew. At best they have a small one for exercising inside. They also have a limited ability to make fresh food on board. Any fresh food production capacity is reserved for the ship's officers. The rest of the crew must make do with rations taken on board from the stations. They do have chemical air and water recycling systems, as the recyclers weigh less than carting large amounts of disposable water and air. Waste is generally dried and stored in special modules for recycling next time they are in port. They are one of the first to be jettisoned if the ship needs to shed mass for to increase their acceleration.
The noble cats of the crew are genetically modified and augmented to be resistant to the effects of the microgravity exposure. They also have tweaks to make them stronger and faster. The rest of the crew wear various exosuits to counteract the worst effects of the prolonged microgravity exposure as well as give them a strength boost when working inside the ship. Some captains spin their ship while in transit to provide a low level of gravity to make it easier to work.
They use two main types of shuttles:
-- The Ascendancy's assault shuttles are heavily armored and shielded to be used like fighters. They are armed with autocannons, laser turrets, anti-ship rocket pods, and heavy missile launchers. The missile launchers use a mass driver system to kick out the massive missile with a good boost of speed. The missiles payload is usually clusters of mini missiles or flechettes, but might also carry actual ship killing warheads.
-- Boarding shuttles are tough little ships design to breach the hull of the prey and unload teams of raiders into the interior of the ship. They lack the heavy weapons of the assault ships, instead equipped with anti-missile and anti-armor weapons for defense. They may also mount small machine guns to provide covering fire for the raiders.
There also have a variety of utility shuttles.
-- Standard shuttles to move move people and supplies quickly and efficiently between ships and stations. Some may double as landing or cargo shuttles with swappable mission modules.
-- Large boxy container shuttles to quickly move large amounts of supplies in quickly swappable cargo pods.
-- Tugs have a small command pod, huge powerful engines, and huge magnetic lock pads to move oversize cargoes, and even ships.
The raiding ships are built from largely prefabricated modules held together with trusses, cables, and structural plating. With ships being constructed from linked together modules, asymmetric ships are common as the captains upgrade and add modules to there ships. Some symmetry is typically designed in to make the ships more aesthetically pleasing. The ships range in length from 500m to 2km with the smaller ships being more common. Large ships are typically in the hands of those captains skilled enough to earn the money purchase one.
The modular nature of the ships means that each module is independently airtight, and in general the whole ship is compartmentalized. Weapon modules and critical systems are typically armored against collision damage and made tough enough not to be damage by the destruction of adjacent modules. Other modules typically have no built in armor beyond the basic micrometeoroid plating. The exterior modules of a ship are generally non-critical and can often include means of easily jettisoning them should they become to damage to lighten up the ship. Some ships may even be design to jettison reaction tanks, supply modules, and even crew quarters before combat for recovery later after the battle is won.
Proper armor comes in the form of plates that are layered over the exterior of the ship. The typical raider's armor is heavily concentrated across the front of the ship and around the central citadel area containing the vital systems. Most of the ship is not armored against enemy fire. This all or nothing armor scheme keeps the raiders light enough to chase down ships that tried to flee. Some captains though sometimes install ribbons of additional armor down the sides of the ship they can rotate toward the enemy when caught broadside to a hostile ship.
The raider's ship to ship weapons are tuned to cripple and disarm instead of raw destruction, focusing more on smaller weapons able to pierce deep into a ship to snipe at critical systems and large weapons design to sweep away large sections of exterior fittings.
The most common raider ship are frigates and cruisers under a kilometer in length. Small and lean, they are built to get in close to the target before launching their shuttles. They mount a heavy laser forward and multiple turrets for railguns. They have one or two large hangers from which to launch and land shuttles. To make up for the small number of shuttles they mount large numbers of mortar, missile and rocket batteries to saturate the enemies point defense clear a path for the shuttles. They directly support the shuttles with short and medium range defensive fire.
The kilometer long assault carrier has a bird like appearance with a narrow center section for the crew and wings to either side with many catapult tubes to rapidly deploy assault and boarding shuttles toward the targeted ship, large hangers to store and repair the many small shuttles, landing pads, and large cargo holds for supplies and loot. The front of the ship is the primary weapons array housing the carriers heavy lasers and mass drivers. They are sometimes equipped with additional modules above and below for additional hanger space, heavy weapons, cargo capacity, or drive power.
Some captains equip themselves with ships design to carry something larger than shuttles to launch into combat. At over a kilometer in length gunship carriers have cradles for small warships instead of the hangers and launch tubes lining the side of the ship. The parasite warships typically ranges in size from 500m to 750m, though some may spot smaller ships. They still carry shuttles to escort the small ships and assist in boarding operations. The mothership stays back to provide long range fire support with its limited arsenal of weapons.
The gunships are able to deal and survive more damage than assault shuttles. The gunships are equipped with proper antiship lasers and railguns. They are armed with a single heavy weapon and turrets arranged to maximize broadside firepower. They have strong broad side armor as they are design to pull parallel to the target and fire lines across to allow boarders to cross. They typically do not carry their own shuttle bay. They also do not waste mass on large stocks of food, supplies, or even a proper water recycler; instead relying on the mothership to supply the ships long term. Ton for ton the gunships pack more firepower than the equivalent frigate or cruiser.
Light carriers are fast like cruisers. They are roughly tubular with multiple shuttle catapults around the outside. Like all ships they have a heavy weapon in the nose. The remaining anti ship weapons are clustered around the rear of the ship, leaving the middle clear for shuttle operations.
Drydocks are one of the largest type of raiding ship, they feature a huge expandable unpressurized hanger able to secure ships up to 2km in length. They are cheap for their size, but are expensive to set up for operations independent of a fleet. Originally design to be a tow truck within the Ascendancy, the design has been modified to drag back from the raids entire disable ships. To make the ship raid ready, hangers and catapult tubes have been added around the outside of the ship. These ships typically have to launch the shuttles in multiple waves due to the limited number of catapults. Typically in three or more waves set up to bring the entire shuttle fleet into the combat area at the same time. The various launch speeds has it that the last launch would have the highest closing velocity and thus the be first to engage the enemy, For tougher targets the follow up waves may need to brake to match speeds with the first wave before entering point defense range to make it difficult to pick out priority targets.
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The Slums
Many a times a cash strapped captain can find themselves hunting for second hand parts to repair the ship. Sometimes the parts are traded in after another captain upgraded his ship, other times the parts came from a less well documented sources. If the budget gets to tight a ship and crew are forced into change ports to a less reputable station.
The slums of space come in many forms. They may be built into a mine out asteroid. Or simply stacked onto the surface of one. They can be an old station on the fringe of a system that has fallen out of favor. They can be a collection of derelict ships and parts lashed together into a semblance of a station.
No matter the station's appearance, they are filled with people simply scraping by to make a meager living and willing to do what ever it takes to make the few credits that would mean the difference between life and death. The stations are lawless places where the only law enforced is self preservation. Anything and everything can be bought and sold within these stations. The stations make heavy use of both slaves and serfs. In the run down stations the difference between the two is marginal at best. It is common to find the station supplementing barely running bioreactor with traditional dirt farming and even imported food.
They have a lively market for ship parts, personal weapons, slaves, and recreational substances. Even food and raw materials can be found. There is also lots of booths offering locally made items and services. The stations do not offer everything that a more well equip station would have though, and many times a crew would have to go out to do things that would be automated outside the slums. The stations are home to the more criminally incline captains and crews.
The raider ships at these stations are often more varied than then the ships at a station closer to the core. The ships decay into a patch work of modules as destroyed modules are replaced with what ever is available to replace it. Sometimes the captain needs to go without replacing the module do to lack of success and money. Those that look to escape the station may find themselves arming up a decommissioned freighter or other non-combat ship. The ship captains may even finding themselves bolting on weapons and parts carved from foreign made ships.