@darthkev, on 16 July 2011 - 01:35 AM, said in EV Nova: United Galactic Federation:

My guess is Hans van der Putte.

Spoiler

After doing a simple Wikipedia search, however, I know I am incorrect.

Fleet Admiral Hans van der Putte is fictional. He was commanding officer of the United Galactic Navy from 955 GSD to 972 GSD. He took personal command of the First Battle Group during the Galactic-Varellavite War in 972, and was killed in action during the Battle of Obrala when several Krakens concentrated all their fire on the command ship UGNS Constitution , which was lost with all hands. Despite this, the battle was a Galactic victory thanks to the chain of command: Fadm. van der Putte's death put Fourth Fleet' CO, Vice Admiral Sami Abdul-Wahid of the UGNS StarSword , in command of the Galactic forces in the battle. By early the next morning, the UGN had forced the remaining Varellavite ships to withdraw; the planet surrendered that afternoon.

As you've no doubt guessed by now, Claus von Stauffenberg (above) was the real one. Colonel Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg was a German army officer during World War II, and lost a hand and one eye as part of General Erwin Rommel's Afrika Korps. He was one of the masterminds of the July 20, 1944 assassination attempt against Adolf Hitler, during which he tried to blow up the führer with a briefcase bomb left in a conference room. Hitler survived the blast, and Stauffenberg (along with most of the other conspirators) was shot as a traitor the next day. A recent, very good reenactment is the 2008 movie Valkyrie , with Tom Cruise as Stauffenberg.

And would you believe that one of his relatives was in my high school graduating class? Justin Stauffenberg did his senior thesis on Claus von Stauffenberg and the July 20 attempt. I don't quite remember how, exactly, Justin said he was related, but I know he said it during his presentation.

In other news, I redid the Ganba destroyer.
Old Version
Ganba Destroyer old.jpg (52.69K)
Number of downloads: 6

New Version

H.A.V.O.K. Destroyer, Ganvor -class
Fire Support Vessel, Ganbar Imperial Fleet

The Ganvor -class H.A.V.O.K. Destroyer is a powerhouse light capital ship that excels at search-and-destroy missions due to its high speed and long range. Capable of dancing in and out of enemy gunfire, its craggy hull conceals an array of weapons that is quite impressive for a vessel of its size. Though little match for the larger Galactic capital ships, it makes hash out of pirates and frigates.

It's a smallish vessel at only 635 meters (compared to 4700 for the command cruiser), and was designed without any measure of aesthetics in mind. Like most large Ganba ships (the wedge-shaped command cruiser is a notable exception) it looks like a stick with the engines on the aft end.

My original Ganvor -class destroyer model was based on a clump of LEGOs my brother was using as a gun turret of sorts. After finishing the Krogon -class escort carrier, however, I went back and severely altered it to its current form purely because I thought it was ugly. I raised the height of the command deck and added an additional section to the bow. Then I started on weaponry, since the model is small enough for them to be visible. The Ganvor -class mounts a single fixed neutron beam at the bow (its main weapon), and six mass driver turrets along its flanks and at the stern. (Thanks go to Meaker VI for the components I used.)

Oh, that is MUCH better than the old destroyer. Its shape kind of reminds me of a submarine, actually. Any chance there's a cloaking variant?

@darthkev, on 16 July 2011 - 10:09 PM, said in EV Nova: United Galactic Federation:

Oh, that is MUCH better than the old destroyer. Its shape kind of reminds me of a submarine, actually. Any chance there's a cloaking variant?

The submarine similarity crossed my mind.

Sadly, the answer to your question is no: the Ganba don't have cloaking technology. (Though maybe I should write a mission where the player gets to steal it from the UGF.)

All the Ganba capital ships are finished now. I've got fighters and freighters left, and then I'll have finished five of the six superpowers.* Still to come are the Varellavites, whose organic-looking**, super-curvy ships are going to be a bitch and a half.

• Unlike the original scenario, where three of the main storylines put the player in the employ of minor factions pitted against a major power (the Vell-os are enslaved to the Federation and seek their freedom, while the Rebels and pirates fight the Federation overtly), the geopolitical (and narrative) landscape of EVN:UGF is dominated by the six superpowers: the UGF, the Ganbar Empire, the Balcrusian People's Republic, the Varellavite Imperium, the Axe-tail Star Empire, and the Klavar Republic. True, three of the superpowers are fighting civil wars that affect the plotlines (and one of them suffers a coup d'etat partway through three plots), but the minor governments, whether they be Galactic member governments like the Orion League or independent powers like the Turadoc Consortium, have little effect on the overall scenario.

** There are no actual organic-tech ships in EVN:UGF unless you count the Wraith. The Polaris were the masters of organic tech, and Polaris has left the building. Plus, there's this argument (scroll to the middle of the page).

I highly recommend you read at least some of this guy's website. Quite apart from the sheer entertainment value of pitting the Federation against the Galactic Empire (result: Federation gets pwned), this guy pulls absolutely no punches where real-world physics are concerned. He even calculates the amount of energy it took to blow up Alderaan in A New Hope : 1 x 1022 megatons, minimum. I can't begin to imagine how long it took him to compile all the material he has here.

@starsword, on 16 July 2011 - 11:59 PM, said in EV Nova: United Galactic Federation:

Sadly, the answer to your question is no: the Ganba don't have cloaking technology. (Though maybe I should write a mission where the player gets to steal it from the UGF.)

That would be fun. Especially since one would expect the Ganba to have to sneak through the hypergate linking the Andromeda and Milky Way galaxies to do it.

Quote

I highly recommend you read at least some of this guy's website. Quite apart from the sheer entertainment value of pitting the Federation against the Galactic Empire (result: Federation gets pwned), this guy pulls absolutely no punches where real-world physics are concerned. He even calculates the amount of energy it took to blow up Alderaan in A New Hope : 1 x 1022 megatons, minimum. I can't begin to imagine how long it took him to compile all the material he has here.

I read most of it but lost interest when my brother brought over Megamind.

However, I totally agree. Onli ships are essentially 'space whales' in that they are living creatures in space. Like Tin Man in TNG. But they aren't superior in the least. Onli shielding is superior because the Onli race has been around longer than humans and has thus researched it longer. Their propulsion and weapons systems are augmented by inorganic implants. Their armour is extremely weak compared to human armour and the recharge rate, while present, is slow. The only ways Onli tech is superior to human tech is in their inorganic systems.

@starsword, on 16 July 2011 - 11:59 PM, said in EV Nova: United Galactic Federation:

All the Ganba capital ships are finished now. I've got fighters and freighters left, and then I'll have finished five of the six superpowers.* Still to come are the Varellavites, whose organic-looking**, super-curvy ships ...

For Curvy-stuff, you'll need to use something with subdivide and smooth; and sketchup doesn't have it (naitively). You can get a plugin, but I think that costs $20. I recommend using Blender; it's not too difficult, and if you only S&S a time or two, you can import the geometry back into skecthup- just save as a .obj or .3ds file.

The process is something like taking the existing cube you get in blender, entering object-edit mode, hitting "e" with some faces selected(I think; it the button for extrude faces or something), and going to town with the scale (s), rotate , and move (g) tools. Once you've got an object you like, exit object edit mode (I think) and apply a modifier to the cube - Subdivide and Smooth. While blender should be able to handle an S&S factor of 5 and up; skecthup probably won't be able to import anything over 2.

I decided to start going around the various Nova TC's and offering a little help. Getting a bit bored in RL while I wait for classes to start again. Anyway, I don't really have any technical skills, but I'm a fair writer. For some reason or another, I'd particularly like to write the descriptions of planets. Not really sure why, but it's something that appeals to me.

Yes, I'm copying and pasting this post in several threads. Trying to be visible.

I've brought waladil on as a SPOB DESC writer, which has given me the impetus to take a break from ship modeling and finish the mapmaking. I've placed four NEBU's so far (the Orion and Horsehead nebulas in the Milky Way, and the P1 and P2 clusters in Andromeda), and am currently placing planets.

I decided to make a change to the status of the Polaris. They're still gone, but they left one planet behind. In stock EVN, Nil'ar Riai is located in the Ne'ritai System on the northeast edge of Polaris space, one jump from the P'aedt System. When the Milky Way Union Navy began building the Rift Stations in 638 GSD, they discovered that, alone of all the stars in Polaris space, the Ne'ritai star remained, and so did a Class M world orbiting it. However, it was abandoned, and the Nil'kemorya station orbiting it had disappeared.

I decided to write Nil'ar Riai's DESC myself because I was feeling inspired.

DESC 241 said:

The only remaining Polaris world is uninhabited save by treasure hunters and archaeologists seeking to unlock the secrets of this vanished civilization. Evidence from the ruins of their cities indicates that this planet was once a training ground for the Polaran military caste, the feared Nil'kemorya. According to the few recovered records, trainees lived here from the ages of twelve to sixteen, cross-training with members of the other main castes to gain an appreciation of their value to Polaran society. Radiometric dating of artifacts found here puts its year of abandonment at 1224 NC, or -1 GSD. Oddities of the planet's orbit and rotation indicate it once hosted a major orbital installation as well. Exactly why this single Polaris planet remains when all others disappeared from the universe is a mystery beyond Galactic science at this time.

My source for the info on the Nil'kemorya training camps is Nil'ar Riai's DESC in stock Nova.

The Ne'ritai system is now officially known by the Galactic space station in orbit, Rift Station Quebec.

This post has been edited by StarSword : 22 July 2011 - 06:09 PM

Several more SPOB DESCs. I'm feeling talkative today, so forgive the Wall o' Text.

I wrote this one for Luna. I couldn't understand why they brought Jupiter and Europa into Nova, but left Luna out (especially since it was present in both EVO and EVC), so I added Luna to the Sol System.

DESC 258:'Luna' said:

Earth's single moon was the first extraterrestrial body colonized, almost two centuries before the development of the first generation of the hyperdrive. Luna is too small to hold an atmosphere of its own, so lunar cities (of which there are relatively few) tend to be mostly underground. Nevertheless, Luna has booming mining and manufacturing industries; many of the structural components of UGN warships are fabricated here. The moon's low gravity is great fun for tourists from Earth and elsewhere, but for those who have to work here it can be a pain, so the cities and manufacturing complexes feature Earth-normal artificial gravity.

Next up is Houseless, the former base of the Houseless Aurorans located in the Kipa System. I say "former" because after Tekel was destroyed during the United Powers War (1225-1236 NC), the Dani had no one to argue with them about the fate of the Houseless, so...

DESC 318:'Houseless' said:

Located deep in the Rochak Dust Field, this asteroid was formerly home to a supply base for the Houseless, Auroran warriors who were cast out of their families for dishonorable deeds. Until the United Powers War, they could operate with impunity because the two Auroran Great Houses in proximity, Dani and Tekel, each wanted the honor of stamping out the menace (or wanted the other to do it; reports vary). But with Family Tekel having been obliterated by the Anz'kalarads in the United Powers War, there was nothing left to argue about, and so in 8 GSD, Family Dani attacked this station and all but demolished it. In retrospect this was a poor strategic move: the surviving Houseless scattered to the four winds and now simply raid at will all over the southern Milky Way, with no central base to attack. Over the centuries, what valuables survived the explosive decompression have been picked clean.

And then there's Abralok, a marginally Class M world inhabited by a pre-space civilization. I say "marginally" because it is cold enough to straddle the boundary between Class M and Class L, which are basically giant snowballs. I'm using the planetary classing system from Star Trek for EVN:UGF, since it's useful and effective, and I don't have time to come up with my own.

DESC 263:'Abralok' said:

Discovered and named by the Orions, chilly Abralok is home to a humanoid mammalian race with a Level IV civilization on the Blenn-Strelling Scale, equivalent to early 20th-century Earth. They have acheived powered atmospheric flight, and have heavy industry and a modern, peer-reviewed scientific community. The Abraloki civilization has been declared a Galactic protectorate under the terms of the federal Evolutionary Noninterference Act, and a spacer who makes any contact with the planet's denizens may be sentenced to up to 20 years' imprisonment. The few scientists allowed to study the Abraloki up close do so from holographically concealed camps, and reported recently that the Abraloki have discovered radioactivity.

The UGF's Evolutionary Noninterference Act is similar to Star Trek's Prime Directive in that spacers aren't allowed to make contact with races below Level VII (manned travel to other celestial bodies in their system), barring extreme circumstances. Even a Level VII First Contact is iffy (and only allowed because of the chances that a manned spacecraft may spot a starship passing through the system), and the UGF prefers to wait until they reach Level IX by developing hyperdrive.

Next, waladil's handiwork on three of the Galactic stations on the edge of the Polaris Rift.
Rift Station Golf is on the northwest edge of the Rift, bordering Wraith space (five jumps to either Hot'A'Tanius or Hel'A'Forius, the two systems inhabited year-round by the Wraith). The UGF has had little diplomatic contact with the Wraith, mainly since neither side possesses anything of value to the other. They don't fight either, for much the same reason.

DESC 227:'Rift Station Golf' said:

On the edge of Wraith space, Rift Station Golf has an air of mystery around it. The space outside the windows seems ... blacker than most space, as impossible as that is. Something about the Wraith makes this region far more terrifying than anything logical tells us it should be. The people walking are subdued and morose on the boardwalk, yet in the bars people are almost ritualistically partying, trying to keep the darkness at bay. Thankfully, stints on this station are short, which is easier on the people assigned to live and work here.

Rift Station Mike is on the northeast edge of the Rift, and its only real value is because ships pass it on the trade route between Betelgeuse and Marathon Sectors.

DESC 228:'Rift Station Mike' said:

There's a reason Rift Station Mike got nicknamed "Misfit Station." After being considered an easy posting due to having little strategic or scientific importance, it became the perfect place to put any professionals who were incapable of holding a regular posting, but not abnormal enough to get thrown into an institution. FLETCOM considers it the perfect post for a lieutenant who only became an officer because his uncle is the leader of some minor race, or a scientist who insists on all of his meals being served with exactly three sprigs of parsley per side, with one extra in case of extra unobservable dimensions. For some reason, one Old Earth "Corporal Klinger" character has become an unofficial mascot. Showings in the bar every evening.

Finally, Rift Station Sierra, on the eastern side of the Rift, is a major regional base of the UGN, partly because it is only three jumps from the Balcrusian People's Republic, and thus sometimes has to send forces in two directions: west into the Rift to fight pirates, or east into Marathon Sector to fight the Balcrusians.

DESC 243:'Rift Station Sierra' said:

As a nearby chief petty officer informs a squad of raw recruits as you debark your ship, "Rift Station Sierra is here to put some <expletive> hurt on some <expletive> pirates and <expletive> Balcrusians who get in our <expletive> way. And it's my job to turn you <expletive> maggots into real <expletive> fighting machines!" Immediately following that, there was dropping and the giving of twenties.

You later learn that watching boot camp is pretty much normal disembarking procedure. Rift Station Sierra is the home of seven battlecruiser squadrons, and is the cornerstone of combat efforts around the Rift. It's been the stated goal of Sierra's CO to ferret out the pirates deep in the nebulae, but all the various anomalies have made that impossible to date.

I'm currently placing SPOBs in the Orion Nebula (mainly governed by the Orion League).

This post has been edited by StarSword : 09 October 2011 - 05:23 PM

Very entertaining reads. Out of curiosity, have you actually come up with an explanation as to how/why the Polaris left, or was it simply to keep their advanced technology from unbalancing gameplay?

@darthkev, on 22 July 2011 - 09:55 PM, said in EV Nova: United Galactic Federation:

Very entertaining reads. Out of curiosity, have you actually come up with an explanation as to how/why the Polaris left, or was it simply to keep their advanced technology from unbalancing gameplay?

In Real Life, yes, that's a big part of it (though I'd like to think an Aegis -class command ship could go toe-to-toe with a Raven and win). I'm trying to keep a better balance among the superpowers than EVN did. Federation, Rebel, Pirate, and Auroran ships were pretty evenly matched (I once took out a Fed Carrier in a heavily modded Pirate Enterprise*). The Polaris, however, took the "organic tech = better" notion to an extreme, and the Raven was easily the most OP'd ship in the game. Then there's how fast they developed this advanced technology (550 years according to the timeline preamble, give or take). An extrapolation for a thousand-odd year interval brings Clarke's Law to mind. I just couldn't figure a way to keep them in the Nova universe and not have them OP'd.

Not to mention the fact that trying to make a Polaris-looking ship using SketchUp is nuts. I have enough trouble building something like the Prominence -class gunboat.

There's also the question of their disposition towards the UGF, which surrounds them on all sides by 1002 GSD (Sol and Tekel Sectors on the west, Betelgeuse Sector to the north, Marathon to the east, and Anz'kalar to the south).

In-universe, I honestly haven't come up with a satisfactory explanation, one that wouldn't involve lots of weird technobabble. One of my favorite Star Trek characters is Voyager's conn officer, Lt. Tom Paris, mainly because he speaks in plain English instead of technobabble. Somewhere along the line in ST, "more complicated" came to mean "better," when in reality the more straightforward something is, the better it usually works.

Anyway, one of the theories you'll run across near the Rift, on the planet Cyteen**, is that the Polaris somehow traded places with a piece of another universe.

• This was my Auroran character. I flew the Orion Shadow for most of the string, until I unlocked the Thunderforge. I mass-modded it, got all the Sigma upgrades and so forth, and fitted it with several fusion pulse batteries and a Pirate Viper bay, on top of the 150mm railguns it came with. In this fight, I let the Heraani forces the carrier was attacking draw its fire, while I moved to its stern (a blind spot), then leaned on the space bar and blew him to Kingdom Come inside of five seconds.

** Cyteen, incidentally, is named after a planet created by real-life sci-fi author C.J. Cherryh. That goes for in-universe, too: the guy who discovered the planet was a fan.

Here's some more SPOB DESCs I've written.

Princeton Station, located in the Princeton System, is a major UGN base occupying an important strategic crossroads between South Auroran, Orion, and Anz'kalarad space.

DESC 261:'Princeton Station' said:

Princeton Station is the United Galactic Navy's central command base in Princeton Sector. Princeton SDF's commanding officer, Vice Admiral Sir Kal Rovin of the Kes'vantorai, has his office on Deck 5. Despite the sector's lack of strategic importance, three battlecruiser squadrons and supporting fleet elements are based here, mainly to help keep the peace between the forever-feuding Orions and Anz'kalarads, and to fight the growing numbers of pirates in the region. For Galactic service members assigned to this command, life is characterized by long periods of boredom, punctuated by frequent drills, and spiced with occasional threats to life and limb whenever Vadm. Rovin receives actionable intel on pirate activity.

Isis' sister planet Osiris is uninhabitable (in fact, it's not even advisable to exit one's spaceship in a standard pressure suit).

DESC 262:'Osiris' said:

Unlike Isis deeper into the Princeton System's ecosphere, the Class Y planet Osiris was never seriously in consideration for terraforming. A dense, stormy atmosphere composed of carbon dioxide, sulfur, neon and various hydrocarbons traps heat from the Princeton star very well: Osiris' average daytime temperature at the equator tops 600 Kelvin. Geological scans from high orbit indicate that the surface is poisoned with lethal concentrations of heavy metals, including great quantities of radioactive materials. While it's true that microbial life has managed to evolve on Class Y planets before, the high temperatures coupled with the toxic soil and atmosphere make that extremely unlikely here. You're just glad all that crap can't penetrate your hull...

Class Y planets in Star Trek are often nicknamed "demon" worlds. What life develops on such planets in ST frequently takes strange forms like living rocks and noncorporeal life-forms, forms which I consider to be impossible and do not use. Archaebacteria and such primitive forms are much more likely.

Most of the other DESCs I'm letting Waladil do. SOP is to basically leave him some notes in the DESC, which he replaces with the finished product. An example is Isis, the only inhabited world in the Princeton System.

DESC 260:'Isis' said:

<UPL-era colony; former Class K planet (methane/neon atmo), terraformed to Class M specs by Nirvana Terraforming in 157 GSD>

This post has been edited by StarSword : 09 January 2012 - 09:49 AM

One more, the planet Vuran in Marathon Sector, the UGF's easternmost territory in the Milky Way, bordering the Orizio Union to the southwest and the Balcrusians to the East.

DESC 500:'Vuran' said:

During the Milky Way Union's Terran-led colonization of Marathon Sector in the 3rd and 4th centuries GSD, Vuran was supposed to have been settled by the United States and Canada, but it had been inadequately scouted beforehand. In 379, the American colony ship dropped out of hyperspace in high orbit and nearly flattened the Vuranis' first FTL-capable vessel.

The Vurani proved a talkative and outgoing mammalian race with a matriarchal culture. At first they were reluctant to join the MWU because of concerns for their sovereignty, but after the Balcrusian Empire attempted to annex them in 507, all bets were off.

("Talkative and outgoing" is an understatement; Vurani are typically so optimistic and cheerful that they're easy marks for con artists, and you practically have to shoot them to get them to shut up.)

The John Grimes Colonial Project in the 3rd, 4th, and 5th centuries GSD, spearheaded by Senator John Grimes of Earth, was designed to reduce the population of several overpopulated planets ranging from Earth to Heraan, by moving those populations to newly discovered Class M planets in Betelgeuse, Delphi, Marathon, and Chekhov Sectors. Marathon was mostly colonized by Terran nation-states, including Australia, Greece, the Republic of Persia (Iran's real-life government was overthrown in the mid-2100s AD), and Afghanistan, among others.

The USA and Canada kinda drew the short end of the stick. They were supposed to colonize planet UHP-5775, one jump Rimward of Marathon (Greek/Persian), but it turned out somebody in the Exploration Service screwed up, big-time. Since the planet was already inhabited by an FTL-capable race (barely), it wasn't a legal target for a colony under Union law. (The problem was later rectified when the North Americans were granted rights to terraformed Class K in Betelgeuse Sector.)

This post has been edited by StarSword : 09 January 2012 - 10:03 AM

I'm curious: what was done to the average life expectancy of humans so John Grimes could live 300+ years? Or did he just start it and it was continued in his name for that long?

@darthkev, on 24 July 2011 - 08:34 PM, said in EV Nova: United Galactic Federation:

I'm curious: what was done to the average life expectancy of humans so John Grimes could live 300+ years? Or did he just start it and it was continued in his name for that long?

The latter. Sen. Grimes proposed it to the Union Congress in 220 GSD, and it was continued in his name for nearly three centuries (after which they basically ran out of unclaimed Class M's). It was one of the last great waves of colonization, and it's a big part of why humans are found on so many different worlds in the Milky Way.

Although a genetic treatment called "prolong" was developed in the 8th century which lengthens the human lifespan to around 200 years. (Works by activating genes that produce telomerase, a genome-restoring enzyme. And that's not technobabble -- scientists are working on telomerase anti-aging treatments in real life.) By the UGF era, prolong is cheap enough that all but a handful of humans (mainly those with religious or ethical objections) have undergone it.

As far as the story goes, I was trying to include a sense of "things break" in the storyline. (Favorite line from SpaceBalls : "F***! Even in the future, nothing works!")

Time for some bar jokes. No, sorry, bar DESCs. (Though I do have a sizable collection of the former.)

Cyteen is the only planet in the Polaris Rift, a Class H desert run by a coalition of pirate clans.

DESC 10104:'Bar: 232 Cyteen' said:

Unsurprisingly for a desert world, the most expensive thing on this cantina's menu is water. Surprisingly for a pirate world, it is quite quiet here. (The heavily armed robot bouncers might have something to do with it.)

As previously mentioned, Nil'ar Riai is the only former Polaris world left.

DESC 10113:'Bar: 241 Nil'ar Riai' said:

The "Tautology," named after a logical fallacy, is the only source of decent booze for several parsecs in any direction. As luck would have it on a world inhabited mainly by scientists, the bartender has a PhD in xenolinguistics.

Norton Station occupies the center of a small arc of Galactic worlds on the Balcrusians' northern border.

DESC 10379:'Bar: 596 Norton Station' said:

This is a fairly typical officer's club. It's the perfect place for a quiet drink or dinner, particularly since Norton SDF commander Vadm. Jane Coughlin has her office directly across the corridor from the entrance.

Kav is home to a diminutive* race of monotremes called the Kavish.

DESC 10412:'Bar: 540 Kav' said:

Much to your dismay, this bar does not serve alcohol, at least not in any form that seems remotely palatable. The local brew seems to be some form of fermented bloodmeal that the Kavish drink with gusto.

• An adult Kavish averages around 1.3 to 1.4 meters in height, which is barely tall enough to reach the controls of the average starship.

Not sure I agree with the Kav bar. I don't drink alcohol, so a lack of recognizable alcohol wouldn't phase me in the least. My favorite dësc, however, would be Cyteen's.

@darthkev, on 30 July 2011 - 01:11 AM, said in EV Nova: United Galactic Federation:

My favorite dësc, however, would be Cyteen's.

Oh yeah. I was on a roll that day.

Minor status report. I've finished most of the UGF's systems in the Milky Way. Need to finish Delphi Sector (northwest), then I'll do the Balcrusians and Varellavites.

Another DESC preview, this one for Luminous, the Galactic capital world. I got a few ideas from Waladil.

Landing DESC said:

Luminous, a verdant world that played a starring role in the Betelgeuse Civil War, is the capital of the United Galactic Federation. The most heavily defended planet in Galactic territory, with a shield grid capable of fending off an orbital bombardment for years at a time, it houses the President, Senate, Supreme Court, agencies, embassies, and all the people needed to run a bi-galactic superpower. But despite having a year-round population of nearly 18 billion, Luminous is widely agreed to be the most well-appointed, visually appealing, and pollution-free in Galactic space, thanks largely to government policies stressing sustainability. And despite its proximity to the Kyrzakagalans, the planet has enjoyed nearly eight centuries of peace.

This one was hard to write, mainly because I had so much I wanted to say, but so little space to say it in.

Bar DESC said:

The "Twin Suns Diner" is named in tribute to the binary stars Luminous orbits. Located in the geographical center of Colin Johnson Spaceport, it has a large collection of TSA memorabilia including a wing and ejector seat from a destroyed F-37 Jackal interceptor.

In other news, Delphi's done. Now to start on the Balcrusians.

This post has been edited by StarSword : 31 August 2011 - 11:48 PM

Since Luminous has a population of 18 billion, I'm going to assume it's either much larger than Earth, large amounts of the population live underground and/or in the sky, or most of the planet's surface has been taken over by sentient beings leaving little of the planet's original terrain visible.

Speaking of Earth, what's become of Humanity's homeworld by the time the player enters the game? Is it even remotely important to anyone non-human?