Inactive AURORA: The Great Game - Gauging interest

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Game paused on 1st June 2020, waiting for critical input from India, Johannes.

I find the recent developments very exciting.

Game running again. In fact:

Global News Network
Breaking News
1st July 2020

MEXICO ALLIES WITH USA TO REACH STARS!

Exciting news from Washington DC, where the Presidents of the United States and Mexico have signed a binding treaty of co-operation, friendship and alliance between the two nations. The new treaty is effectively joining the industries and economies of the two countries, in hopes of becoming a powerhouse in this new Space Race.

Game stopped, waiting for EAF, Kalin.

Live report, CNN, 1st July 2020

"Karin Seward speaking here for CNN. We are witnessing scenes of absolute madness here at the former borders between Arizona and Mexico as barriers are opened and free circulation of people is restored after years.
Second and third generation immigrants are rushing to the border to embrace relatives who didn't follow them in the U.S. years ago. Border guards, both Mexican and American, are trying to keep the human wave under control to avoid accidents and injuries, but the climate is joyous."



"Similar scenes are reported in New Mexico and Texas. The announcement earlier today came as a great surprise. Strong opposition from the Republican Party was overruled by the Democratic majority. President Tetje, at this morning's ceremony, said 'In this new era of space exploration there are no Mexico, no United States, but just Americans. We will from now on march on, united, under the banner of a real, enlarged United States of America. We will do our utmost to help the struggling economy of our new brothers under federate laws and, I give this as a warning, there will be a policy of zero tolerance towards any possible racist outburst...'"
"Parallel to the political ceremony, a corporate meeting of States and Mexican industries is currently underway to study the measures that will be necessary in the following years...."

This is all like that thing Alex Jones was talking about.

ITZ COMIN'

PS: I'd rather do a vault-co styled news on that but cb.

Just imagine what Cleve would say on news like such were it to happen IRL.

STELLAR REPORT - 2020

Sol system, the cradle of humanity, asteroids being switched off to avoid clutter:


Don't worry about the tooltip. You can see the three comets way outside Pluto's orbit. Let's zoom in:


Okay, Pluto isn't visible but its orbit is, partially. You can see most of the outer system. There you can also see Comet #1, on its way, leaving the inner system. Closer:


And here is the inner system. Moons aren't visible but trust me, they are there. Orbital mechanics are ON, so each planet, moon and asteroid keeps moving on its own orbital path, meaning that the distances between bodies change. The Deep Space Tracking Stations that each player started with can only see a tiny amount of the system, around Earth:


Note that the blue circle, for passive sensors, is calibrated to spot the only human space craft existing - the mysterious European ship, of which only one thing is known: it's thermal signature (500). So for targets with more/hotter engines, the circle would be bigger, whereas for less/cooler engines it would be smaller. But everyone should understand that humanity cannot even observe the inner solar system reliably at this stage.

Onwards to planetary bodies. Independent scientific bodies have all agreed that Infrastructure built out of TN-minerals allows colonization of planetary bodies previously though uninhabitable. For measuring such things, a new measuring system has been created and approved by the United Nations. It's simply called the "Colony Cost" and Earth, with all of its variety, is 0 - meaning that while there are very inhospitable places on Earth, no specialized infrastructure is required for human habitation. Other bodies in our system have now been scanned through civilian telescopes and previous NASA/ESA missions and all objects have been rated. First criteria is gravity. If a body has a gravity lover than 0.30 or higher than 1.70, then human life - for extended periods - is just not possible. This weeds out already all but four objects in the system. Secondary, the atmosphere and environmental hazards are counted. Thus UNSPA - the United Nations Stellar and Planetary Agency - has published the following, short list:

1. MARS - x2.18
2. TITAN - x8.09
3. MERCURY - x17.41
4. VENUS - x25.00

All experts agree that trying to colonize Mercury or Venus at this stage would be extremely costly and foolish - but that through extensive (and expensive!) terraforming, one day these planets could become somewhat Earth-like.

Below is a more detailed report on Mars and Titan, and Earth for comparison:
Surface temperature: -48.0 / -178.0 / 22.0
Gravity: 0.38 / 0.53 / 1.00
Atmosphere: Nitrogen 70%, Carbon Dioxide 30% / Nitrogen 95%, Methane 5% / Nitrogen 79%, Oxygen 20%, Argon 1%
Orbital distance: 229 mkm / 1.22 mkm / 150 mkm
Pressure: 0.010 / 1.60 / 1.00
Diameter: 6800 / 5150 / 12,756
Hydrosphere: Ice Sheet / None / Liquid
Extent: 10% / NA / 70%
Day: 24.6 hours / 15.9 days / 24.0 hours
Year: 1.88 years / 15.9 days / 1.00 years
Axial Tilt: 25 deg. / 0 deg. / 23 deg.
Tectonics: Earth-like / Minimal / Earth-like
Mass: 0.1074 / 0.088 / 1
Density: 0.71 / 1.30 / 1.00
Escape velocity: 5.0 / 5.2 / 11.2
Magnetic field: None / 0.15 / 1.00
Tidal Lock: No / Yes / No
Albedo: 1.00 / 1.00 / 1.00
Greenhouse Factor: 1.00 / 1.00 / 1.10


The following planets have moons orbiting them:

• Earth
  • Luna
• Mars
  • Phobos
  • Deimos
• Jupiter
  • Metis
  • Amalthea
  • Thebe
  • Io
  • Europa
  • Ganymede
  • Callisto
  • Himalia
  • Lysithea
  • Elara
  • Ananke
  • Carme
  • Pasiphae
  • Sinope
• Saturn
  • Atlas
  • Prometheus
  • Pandora
  • Epimetheus
  • Mimas
  • Enceladus
  • Tethys
  • Dione
  • Rhea
  • Titan
  • Hyperion
  • Iapetus
  • Phoebe
• Uranus
  • Cordelia
  • Portia
  • Belinda
  • Puck
  • Miranda
  • Ariel
  • Umbriel
  • Titania
  • Oberon
  • Caliban
  • Sycorax
• Neptune
  • Naiad
  • Thalassa
  • Despina
  • Galatea
  • Larissa
  • Proteus
  • Triton
  • Nereid
• Pluton
  • Charon

Aside from Titan, none of these are suitable for long-term human habitation. But all of the could have precious TN-minerals and they might turn out to be useful as listening stations or other reasons - like the 367 asteroids and 4 comets.

THE RACE IS ON FOR WEST AFRICA, THE KEY TO THE SPACE RACE

Do the asteroid belts between Earth and Mars in consideration? While it's hard to colonize, it's a good region to mining.

Yes, there are 367 asteroids in Sol system. Naturally, none of them can be colonized but all can be mined.

Global News Network
Military News
22nd October 2012

RUSSIA BUILDING NEW MISSILE BASES

Reliable sources from several world-class militaries have confirmed to the GNN that Russian Federation is building a new type of missile bases. These are significantly different from older, ICBM-housing missile bases. No comments have been heard from Russians, yet.

Game paused on 7th November 2020, waiting for Libertadores, Cassidy.

The ARF (Army of the Russian Federation) informs both the general RF population and the world that the bases in question are built for purely protective reasons, and that RF does not intend to engage in warfare with any other bloc.

Global News Network
Breaking News
18th November 2020

SECOND EUROPEAN SHIP EMERGES!

Yesterday amateur astronomers, the so-called "Orbit Spotters", who spend their free time observing the orbital construction projects, buzzed the Internet in excitement as they had spotted and later confirmed a second European space ship emerging from the shipyard. Interestingly, this new vessel has a smaller thermal signature to the first one, even though optical telescopes have confirmed that it's roughly three times as large as the first one. Could this be evidence of advanced thermal dampening technology amongst Europeans? Our experts are divided on the matter - whether it's some new stealth technology or just a smaller engine block.

MOST MAJOR POWERS NOW HAVE SHIPYARDS

"Orbit Spotters" have also confirmed that there are eight shipyards in orbit - two of them above India, though there is some speculation that these are actually part of the same complex. GNN can reliably confirm, thanks to anonymous sources that Libertadores, China, European Union, East-Asian Federation, Russia and USA all have a single shipyard. But details are hard to come by, as none of the nations have published any information about these constructs and feverish work seem to be happening at all of them.

Game paused, waiting for critical input. I'm off to bed, the game will continue tomorrow - today was quite an productive day for The Great Game!

If you want to read something relevant, there's a thread over at Aurora forums which debates the merits of Asteroid Mining Ships versus Auto-Mines/Mass-Driver combo, with actual math and a conclusion and everything!
http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php/topic,4887.0.html
Might give you some ideas for future.

Global News Network
Industrial News
1st January 2021

FIRST IMAGES OF EUROPEAN FREIGHTER "SCHARNHORST"

Today, Sailer Freight Lines, the European conglomerate, launched its first ship. The CEO, Herbert Frankel, proudly took a group of journalists to see the ship. It is a massive construction, over 33,000 tons actually and has cargo holds for 25,000 tons. It is hard to believe that just few years ago, the best humanity could do was the American Space Shuttle that massed barely over 2,000 tons and had room for barely 24 tons - and that only for Low Earth Orbit! Scharnhorst, as the class of cargo ships is called, is able to journey 26.5 billion kilometres from Earth! That is over four times the average distance between Earth and Pluto! And this trip won't even take months and months, as the ship is able to accelerate up to 460 km/s!

Mr Frankel was also proud to show off the ultra-modern Cargo Handling System, that utilizes TN-minerals in novel ways to allow mere 10 workers to rapidly load or unload the vessel, to the waiting shuttles of the space port. The ship itself never enters the surface of an planet but unloads itself at Low Orbit, utilizing small shuttles to ferry cargo down to surface. On Earth, the Bavarian space port makes things easy - but how will Scharnhorst manage on other bodies? Mr Frankel would not speculate on that.

Being asked what jobs would the ship be doing in near-future, Mr Frankel became tight-lipped but he did hint that he's initiating negotiations with EU officials over some contracts.

Read our full profile of Sailer Freight Lines on page 39.

While I'm wrestling with a technical problem, feast your eyes on the complete system report of Sol, since I found the button that copies it all to the clipboard: -updated for 6.21

SSol-A G2-V Diameter: 1.39m Mass: 1.00 Luminosity: 1.00

Mercury: Colony Cost: 16.21, Temperature: 427.0, Gravity: 0.38, Orbit: 58m

Venus: Colony Cost: 25.00, Temperature: 462.0, Gravity: 0.91, Orbit: 108m
Nitrogen 65%, Carbon Dioxide 35%, Pressure: 100.00

Earth: Colony Cost: 0.00, Temperature: 14.0, Gravity: 1.00, Orbit: 150m
Nitrogen 79%, Oxygen (0.2) 20.0%, Argon 1.00%, Pressure: 1.00

Luna: Colony Cost: 2.00, Temperature: -20.7, Gravity: 0.17, Orbit: 384k
Carbon Dioxide 100%, Pressure: 0.12

Total Moons: 1

Mars: Colony Cost: 2.00, Temperature: -48.0, Gravity: 0.38, Orbit: 229m
Nitrogen 70%, Carbon Dioxide 30%, Pressure: 0.01

Total Moons: 2

Ceres: Temperature: -105.0, Gravity: 0.03, Orbit: 415m

Jupiter: Temperature: -148.0, Gravity: 2.14, Orbit: 780m
Io: Colony Cost: 5.75, Temperature: -148.0, Gravity: 0.18, Orbit: 422k
Europa: Colony Cost: 5.75, Temperature: -148.0, Gravity: 0.13, Orbit: 671k
Ganymede: Colony Cost: 5.75, Temperature: -148.0, Gravity: 0.15, Orbit: 1.07m
Callisto: Colony Cost: 5.75, Temperature: -148.0, Gravity: 0.13, Orbit: 1.88m

Total Moons: 20

Saturn: Temperature: -178.0, Gravity: 0.74, Orbit: 1.43b
Titan: Colony Cost: 7.00, Temperature: -178.0, Gravity: 0.14, Orbit: 1.22m
Nitrogen 95%, Methane 5.0%, Pressure: 1.60

Total Moons: 28

Uranus: Temperature: -216.0, Gravity: 0.86, Orbit: 2.88b
Total Moons: 27

Neptune: Temperature: -228.0, Gravity: 1.10, Orbit: 4.5b
Total Moons: 13

Pluto: Temperature: -233.0, Gravity: 0.07, Orbit: 5.9b
Total Moons: 3

Quaoar: Temperature: -230.0, Gravity: 0.04, Orbit: 6.5b
Total Moons: 1

Orcus: Temperature: -233.0, Gravity: 0.03, Orbit: 7.2b
Total Moons: 1

Haumea: Temperature: -233.0, Gravity: 0.04, Orbit: 7.6b
Total Moons: 2

Makemake: Temperature: -238.0, Gravity: 0.04, Orbit: 7.8b

Sedna: Temperature: -248.0, Gravity: 0.04, Orbit: 11.4b

Eris: Temperature: -258.0, Gravity: 0.08, Orbit: 14.5b
Total Moons: 1

Asteroid Belt: 478

If when you reach extra-solar systems, they will be reported in this form.

Pretty useful tabs. You might want to link them in the OP for ease of access when the time comes.

Global News Network
Space News
27th January 2021

EAF BECOMES SECOND NATION TO LAUNCH A SPACE SHIP

Orbit Spotters have just announced that they observed a vessel detaching from the EAF shipyard, though the craft is still remaining in Low Earth Orbit. We have reached EAF Publicity Ministry for comments.

Global News Network
Space News
7th February 2021

LIBERTADORES THE THIRD NATION WITH A SPACE SHIP

Over-excited Orbit Spotters have flooded the Internet today as it was confirmed that a ship, under it's own power, detached from the Libertadores orbital shipyard above the Amazon rainforest. There have been some speculation over the yard as it looks definitely smaller than the other shipyard that other Powers have but apparently it is functioning normally. We have asked the Libertadores Press Office for comments.

Game paused thanks to technical difficulties and also for waiting critical input from Commonwealth, @K3zr0.

Jornal Independente(English Version)

Syndicalist Confederation debuts its first spacecraft "Filosoraptor", first of many Filosoraptor Class Geological Survey Spacecrafts.

The Libertadores have finally taken their first small step towards this new age. The deployment of their first vessel was concluded as now it heads towards the unknown to map Sol for potential Trans-Newtonian mineral resources. The Filosoraptor is a small, nimble and specialized spacecraft for the specific purpose of suveying stellar bodies for TN materials, and was built on 7th February in the Mikhail Bakunin Spaceyard. Dismissing any mysteries, the Space Forces were eager to answer most questions about the spacecraft, giving a clear idea on what it was. When asked why they didn't start with something with weapons that could give the Libertadores a short-term edge instead, specially given the recent disrespect by the Co-Prosperity Sphere and British Empire to the sovereignty of South American peoples, the Chief of Space Forces answered:

"Our borders are open to those who seek refuge from the oppression and exploitation of the Co-Prosperity Sphere and of the British Empire. Once the time comes, we will settle so much land in new planets that such squabbles over minor countries of Earth will become irrelevant, and to focus on them is to doom our long-term success, past which we will again remember these injustices, and bring seven times greater consequences to the imperialists and exploiters, for we will never forgive and will never forget those who oppress our comrades and conspire to attempt bringing our dream down. Knowledge is power, and in knowing the resources of Sol, we will be better prepared for the future. And if any crimes against mankind are to happen meanwhile, we will, once the time is right, bring those responsible to justice and ensure their rotten governments will burn to the ground and never rise again!"

Details on the future plans of the Confederation in regards to space are unknown, except for the clear signs a new shipyard is already under construction. Although relations remain hostile, a potentially devastating war was narrowly avoided and apparently their decision was already made: to give more priority to the new frontier than to Earthly territorial claims, which however will very clearly not be dismissed, as in the case of the Malvinas/Falklands.

As for the name of the vessel, no statements were given although rumors do exist that the first combat spacecraft of the Confederation is going to be named after either a Pokemon, an Internet Meme or both. The reasons for such silly naming remain a mystery for now.

Colombian Guerrillas redirect their efforts to Venezuela after intensification of Japanese Secret Police and Special Forces over Peru, while local partisans are rumored to be preparing for a last stand and to have access to tactical nuclear weapons.

The FALCOM remains strong and active, and although the Libertadores neither confirm or deny to continue funding and heavily supporting the radical armed group and also local partisans over Venezuela and Peru, they still have a lot of steam left to provoke trouble and instigate independence and revolutionary movements of Peru and Venezuela. However, upon the deployment of mobile infantry forces over Peru, they began to suffer heavy casualties over the what they call the "Peruvian front", and took a strategic decision of temporarily retreating from the struggle on Peru, to the demise of the local resistance against the occupation of the traitor puppet government, that is predicted to not last much longer without foreign armed support. To make the situation even more tense, the Nuevo Sendero Luminoso has stated in one of their recent videos that they will "fight to the last man, killing all traitors without mercy", that they have access to tactical nuclear weapons, and "are ready to kill the traitor president as our farewell gift of justice to the people of Peru", stirring a major ruckus and panic over the country local authorities, uncertain on whether such statement is a desperate bluff only or partly true. The rumor mill has gone even more wildly to even suggest the Libertadores are offering a huge bounty on the head of the Peruvian traitor president, although there is absolutely no evidence this is more than made-up exaggeration, considering such claim came exclusively from radical Internet blogs.

Silence has recently been the only answer of the Libertadores to such developments, as the Syndicalist Confederation continues to focus its attentions to outer space, and to ignore any new questions form reporters about the Peruvian and Venezuelan questions besides the already given statement that they intend to liberate both from colonialist oppression as soon as possible, that the Japanese Empire is a mass of hypocrisy, lies and propaganda for accusing the Confederation of totalitarianism while enacting censorship laws, and that they will never surrender from their duties to all peoples of South America, even if unfortunately having to postpone them due to the thread of Mutually Assured Destruction, they will free the continent, no matter the time, no matter the cost. History will eventually tell if such bold words will ever lead to a conflict, but it is clear the as bad as it can get without being a state of war kind of relations between Japan and the Libertadores will never change to more friendly ones.

Global News Network
Breaking News
7th February 2021

INDIA LAUNCHES SHIP SIMULTANEOUSLY WITH LIBERTADORES

A late sighting but it has now been confirmed - the very same day that the Libertadores' ship was launched, India launched her first space ship as well. It looks to be quite a bit bigger. GNN has reached out to India for any comments.

CIVIL UNREST IN LATIN AMERICA

Unrest in both Venezuela and Peru - are Libertadores behind it? Turn to page 21 to see what our experts think. In the last two months, there has been a string of violent incidents in both countries. Peru seems to be calming down, whereas Venezuela is still very active. Tourists are warned to stay away from both countries at the moment.

Game paused, waiting for India, Johannes.