The Divergence: In the beginning of the 22nd century the Orgus voted-in a more assertive and anti-isolationist government that not only began to trade with nearly every known race including the Loroi ... but that also in late 2110s found about a massive Umiak military build-up. This government seeing the war coming, having a bad astro-strategic position in regards to the Umiak and knowing that their own expanding industry being only able to slow the Umiaks down if they ever decided to invade, immediately send out secret scout units to find a fall back position for their people ... barreling straight into Humanity in early 2120's.

At first shocked at their apparent similarity to the telepathic Loroi, but later learning that they are just a new emerging specie, decided to help them if only to make them better meat shields for themself. The Orgus made a complete presentation about the Galaxy as they know it and informed the Humans what is happening, that the Umiaks have a rabid hate of telepaths and that their massive war machine will be mostly concentrated on the more advanced and telepathic Loroi ... for the moment.

Still they share with them their fears that the Umiaks will probably attack Humans if they found out about them just for physical similarity they share with the Loroi - something that is highly improbable, which confirms the suspicions of some scholars that Humans/Terrans were manipulated by aliens in their pre-historic past. Also some people will say that Humans are probably telepathic too - if only latently - if we go with legends and myths that is. If the Umiak find out about that - the Human race is toast.

Information about anything related to the scout units and Humanity was compartalized by the Orgus government to an absurdly paranoid degree to prevent the knowledge leaking out. The Orgus population and traders do not know anything at the moment.

Meanwhile, in the highest echelons of the Orgus government, a very furious debate is going on. If the Orgus evacuate their people they will practically become beggars overnight and will need a lot of help to re-industrialize and increase their population to current levels - they will need better protection - so even thicker meat shields. They will need a protector for the time being. In the end a secret Co-Prosperity and Protection treaty is signed with Humanity - that will later bind the traders further to the even more assertive and aggressive Terrans. Orgus shared most of their technology with Humans and their traders will scavenge the markets and known space for information and technology that they will funnel into Orgus and Terran space while Humanity will prepare itself for the coming War In Heaven.

It was then decided to amalgamate Earths governments into a stronger supra-national body that will represent ... not Humans ... but Terrans now as a whole in the galaxy. The Terran Alliance was born.

You, players, are now put into the roles of a 9-member council of directors and decision makers:

Science Councils of the Terran Alliance:
- Director of the Natural Science & Engineering Council,
- Director of the Martial & Physical Council,
- Director of the Humanities & Sociology Council,

Government branches of the Terran Alliance:
- Chairman of the senate, Legislative branch,
- Councilor-Coordinator of the Executive branch,
- High Judge of the Judicial branch,

Chief decision makers of the Terran Alliance:
- Chief of the Admiralty Board,
- Liaison-Director of the Intelligence sector,
- Chief Administrator of the Terran Colonial Administration.

Your mission will be saving the Terran ... ... ... and Orgus races and wither down the oncoming storm.
The year. 2121 Common Era. And the greatest technological, military, industrial, infrastructural and colonization build-up in Terran history has begun.

If this works right for you then you could get close to 40 years to prepare yourself.

Oh, ok. Right then.

It seems to me that even with the Terran/Orgus military cranking out starships for military purposes (very nice picture, by the way, absolutely splendid, Arioch is our god), there'd be some sort of contingency plan in place just in case things go pear-shaped during the upcoming conflict. (Despite everything, the Orgus were still the galactic equivalent of a third-world, second-tier power, and the forces of Humanity aren't exactly the most advanced in the world, even if we might share some latent telepathic traits with our distant Loroi cousins and be awesomely human derp herp.) If I might throw an idea into the mix:

The Terran Alliance (and the Orgus, to some extent) are keenly aware that they might not end the war in a favorable position. (By which I mean ending up as Umiak slaves or getting exterminated.) As a result, a project has been set up to preserve as much of Terran/Orgus culture as possible, just in case. The humans, to the bemusement of the Orgus, have insisted upon naming the project "Noah's Ark," after a minor aspect of their mythology, and have selected certain species of Earth organisms to preserve by sending them/their embryos/their genetic code/whatever along with the "Ark." In addition, there are plans to send actual humans and Orgus into space should the Umiak be in a position to crush the Alliance in order to continue the two species.

Too cliche sci-fi for this? Thoughts/comments?

I admit I like RP in general
But Dislike Politics.

Also: VERY HARD scenarios typically imply 'mess up one move and the entire mission was for naught' scenarios.
I'd pass as well.

in contrast, a family member of mine has done DnD with a number of people... their GM has a tendency to like big dangerous creatures, and to throw only one or two at them at a time.
There is a reason heros find defeating large hoards appropreate rather than dragonslaying...
When Dragonslaying if you make a bad roll, you can easily die...
If you fight a hoard and make a bad roll, you get an arrow in your arm, -1 to hit... wow :p

Lets just say the local preist (aka the DM NPC) routinely called for donations to resurrect the poor heros who fell in the line of duty to protect their humble town...

It was then calculated by my older brother out of curiousity, that in 3 months of heroing they probably cost would the town more than the king received in taxes from the town each year (based on average time to complete quests, average morality rates and the cost of resurrection...) So often did this happen that something amusing occured: He had in fact been a Dragonspawn character, he had tons of fun with it, but apparently a priest failed a listen check and reincarnated him instead, into a weak puny pink human.
Needless to say the character was not impressed (but did gain a bunch of free level upgrades to spend to become more proficent at what he was already good at... how 'convenient')

Needless to say, while HARD may be nearly impossible, being impossible can in fact be fun as well, particularly when the reward for living is high and the penalty for dying is minimised.

Aren't good DM's on spacebattle's about how quickly they can kill the PC's without making it too obvious?

Of course if you are so adamant about me having to be a total a**hole GM then I can be, no problem.

This sounds good enough that I decided to register. I'll probably end up regretting this (I'm going to be busy enough as it is for the next month or so) but count me in. That natural sciences/engineering post sounds good. If we have to be characters in addition to portfolio-holders, I think I already have something in mind.

By the way, how fleshed-out are the rules this thing will run according to be? Is it going to be pretty structured (i.e. regular turn structure, etc.) or will it be fairly loose, with just a few ad hoc dice rolls? Will there be a strategy-game style map?

*groans*

Did actually anyone of you read the title of this thread to its end - "ideas thread" - which means I am just fleshing things out and need input from you.

Yeah, I realized shortly after, heh.

Well - I guess you're going to have to model several different aspects of the Terran polity. The economic model can be fairly simple. I think you'd need to represent GDP somehow, and also industrial capacity, the way some of Paradox's games do it. I'm not sure if they'd even necessarily be separate, but there would be other sectors of the economy besides what IC would represent, and they'd all be a source of revenue. All of this is going to be funded by taxpayer money, right? The simplest thing would be for 1 IC to equal 1 IC, whether it was Loroi, Umiak or Terran. You'd commit so much IC to a certain purpose for however long and get whatever out - basically, IC would produce points you could accumulate to buy things. But technological advancement would make new purchases possible and make IC cheaper.

Possibly IC might require inputs - energy and raw materials and labor. Could we look at having a workforce, in abstract terms, anyway?

I'd personally go with an even simpler model.

MIlitary output/military output effectivity.

The first being your total military economic output and the second being how much of your actual infrastructure is geared toward military output.
a MOE of .2 would mean that only twenty percent of your industrial base is putting forward military ouput. Can simulate fairly simple the war gear up that's been pretty common in all our larger wars. Where in the end a lot of industry gets retooled to actual military output. Probably an aspect we'd excell at compared to other species.

I propose that the US hold out longer than any other country, and still be technically independent of the Alliance :3