Jump Drives Whether Alcubierre or Fold (or some other exotic technology), jump drives are ubiquitous in FTA. Ships have a Jump Rating, which determines how many hexes they can cover in a single jump, though not all ships with jump ratings can mount jump drives (ie: battleships if you don’t have the relevant tech). Due to the empty hex penalty, ranging off grid can rapidly become expensive, especially over longer range distances and the need to exit warp between jumps. Empty Hexes The destruction of the space lord Einstein-Rosen Bridge has incidentally ruined centuries of charting data, subtly warping space to increase and decrease the distances between systems, and thrown existing charts into a blender. Pre-collapse charting data can no longer be relied upon when calculating FTL jumps except insofar as determining safe routes through a hex. If you go anywhere in the black that isn't mapped and you aren't at home in the stars or using a fold drive, it's a quarterly fee of $1000 per sortie's weight. Not per jump. Just binary did you do it? Yes/no. Red Hexes Perhaps a last ‘fuck you’ by the space lords, the detonation of their Einstein-Rosen Bridge caused significant snarls and twists in spacetime surrounding the jewel worlds of humanity. Each Jewel now occupies a Red Hex, which is so fucked up that Alcubierre and Fold Drive (and Gatepunch) have significant difficulties traversing or jumping while in it. You cannot jump through a red hex, but may jump into or out of one. When you jump out of a red hex, your effective jump range becomes 1, so you may only jump to adjacent hexes. Additionally, the time before you can jump again after you jump out of a red hex is doubled, representing time to repair your drive coils/blown EPS power conduits. Exotic forms of FTL can still penetrate these hexes (D-Engines, Starburst, Tachyon Drives, Dislocation Engines, to name a few) Orange Hexes These are theorized to exist, and expend 3 jump worth of movement to traverse or exit. Yellow Hexes A recently discovered phenomena, these locations are easy to jump to, requiring three less jump rating, but difficult to jump away from, requiring three additional jump rating. Jumping through a yellow hex equals out the difficulty. Charting Charting is all about finding safe/fast/cheap routes through the tangle that is spacetime in the wake of the Space Lord Gate’s detonation. Charting has a $$ cost of $750 per mission, which includes the cost of jumping into/out of an Empty Hex, and when complete provides accurate Charts for the hex, obviating the cost of operating within it. States can also be assumed to have charted any hex adjacent to territories they hold, as well as any hex on the grid. Keep track of your charting value, it’s valuable intel that can be used against people. Hexes with Beacons do not need to be charted. Exploration With the rendering of old charts obsolete, exploration too has changed. Now, primarily for safety and economical reasons, exploration is conducted primarily via drone shot- frigate sized drones with single use Alcubierre drives, deployed cheaply en masse. A nation may run one exploration effort per year, of a rating from 1-3 in increasing likelihood of finding a system candidate. These efforts involve surveying many hexes for systems that meet a minimum threshold for investment (ie: There might be less good systems but there won’t be ‘bad’ systems). Exploration I ($2500/year) 25% chance to find a system candidate each year. Exploration II ($5000/year) 50% chance to find a system candidate each year. Exploration III ($7500/year) 75% chance to find a system candidate each year. System Survey ‘Old’ Exploration, as it were. These cost $1000 and take a year to survey a candidate system found using the above methodology. Upon completion, the number and type of holdings, along with system traits are revealed. Resources and encounters are also rolled. These are also how Hypergrid Explorations are rolled. You are not limited to the number of system surveys you can run of candidate or hypergrid systems, though system resources/holdings will only be rolled once. Loot Surveys These surveys search about abandoned trade routes and hunt down missing ship reports, seeking to recover fortune, or at least a load or two of hypercocaine. Loot Surveys cost $500 each. Other surveys- notably salvage types- also exist, and are dependant on their location and the mod running them for rolls. Colonization and System Resources Limits on colonies per holding are gone. Having them was initially a matter of game balance I believe, but ultimately resulted in a system that encouraged a ridiculous level of exploration with super shallow investment. There was no ability to build tall like one would IRL with a real system that holds resources that cannot be fully expended in the entire lifetime of a species, let alone twenty years of development. So that’s changed. You can build any number of projects in a system’s holdings, however now there exists a cost penalty for concurrent projects. For each concurrent construction project beyond the first in a holding, the cost of that project increases by a cumulative +20%. Some technologies may modify the interval at which this increase occurs. If multiple polities share a holding, they ignore the first interval when determining if a cost increase is caused by concurrent construction of another polity. Resource Supplies and Field Density Nations no longer have ‘multiple’ sources of a specific in a given system. (ie: no duplicates). A system either has a resource or doesn’t. Resource fields also have a density value. Most resource fields are low density, and act like resource sources previously have. However on a rare occasion, a system might possess a high density field. High density resource fields provide +100% of resource supply per extractor (This stacks with super extractor additively, so super extractor + dense field = 3 supplies, not 4). Existing systems with multiple unexploited resources of the same type will count as high density, going forwards, and all systems will build extractors using the new system instead of the old. Colony Consolidation At the start of 2437, there will be a colony consolidation, and every five years thereafter. When consolidated, colonies incorporate as minor territories. The minimum number of territories necessary for a consolidation is 3, and can go as high as 5. So five separate colonies will combine to become one minor territory. Their collective $$ value doesn’t change, but this means that systems that are being built up will gradually become easier to defend, their territory taking up fewer partitions. Future consolidations will only consolidate Terrestrial colonies. Major Cynosural states can consolidate minor territories into major in the same way. Holdings Holdings are being revamped as well, with the following options now being available. These options replace the previous options and values for new construction only. Everything costs $2000 base price. Colonies? $2000. Extractors? $2000. Naval Stations? $2000. Civilian stuff benefits from colony discounts, military stuff doesn’t. Military operations are ‘infrastructure’. Civilian operations are ‘colonies’ for the purposes of cost increases/discounts and most other stuff that cares about that stuff, though non-terrestrial civilian operations do not consolidate after 2437. If a trait specifically mentions an option, it still applies to that option (Notably Helium ‘infrastructure’ discounts). Infrastructure and Colonies you build in holdings take up slots in partitions. This includes extractors. Partitions A Partition is a group of three territories or resourcing operations, located in a single holding, that are considered linked for the purposes of orbital and ground defenses, as well as ground troops. Partition size can be increased via technology and/or the Cynosural Ethos, and their contents can be consolidated during colony consolidation to reduce the number of partitions a major colony group takes up. When building World Shields, each world shield covers a single Partition’s worth of colonies and/or resourcing operations in a given holding. Asteroid -Mining Operation (Military): Resource Extractor -Mining Operation (Civilian): $100 bonus income -Zero-G Forges (Military): 25 DI (subject to 'hard' DI yearly addition limit of 25% of your total) Gas Giant -Naval Base (Military): 1 Sortie -Helium Dredge (Military): Reduce Defcon upkeep increase by 0.5% -Helium Dredge (Civilian): $300 Terrestrial -Feral Machine Wilds* (Civilian): $100 & 25 Warmech DI -Hostile Terrestrial Colony (Civilian): $100 -Terraforming Candidate Colony (Civilian): $150 -Habitable World Colony (Civilian): $200 -Garden World Colony (Civilian): $300 -Mining Operation Colony (Military): Resource Extractor *Requires the relevant Taloid tech Categories of Infrastructure THINGS YOU CAN BUILD. These come in a lot of different categories, and we’re engaged in an ongoing effort to centralize those categories and clean up the relevant wording. In general, military infrastructure represents things that directly support the operation of your military and/or vestigial state, and represent large scale guarded operations such as resource extraction or helium mining that serve military or state level interests. Meanwhile, civilian infrastructure is the state itself- colonies, mines, monuments, the neighborhood watch, etc. The last type of infrastructure is logistical, which while fluffwise may be a subset of military infrastructure only receives discounts that specifically mention it . Military Infrastructure -Resource Extractors -Resource Transplants -Zero-G Forges -Military Dredges Civilian Infrastructure -Civilian Dredges -Asteroid Mining Operation -Income Infrastructure -Feral Machine Wilds -Colonies (all types) -Militia Halls -Monuments Logistics Infrastructure -Naval Bases -Forward Operating Bases -Expeditionary Bases System Traits Nebula (+150% stealth) Ion Storm (-50% Tracking, Min 3) Supergiant Star (Can't A-Drive in, only fold or gate) Flare Star (-50% superweapons cost) Gaia (+$100 colony value, roll on rare resources table) Hostile Terrestrial (High chance of resources, low value territories) Garden (High value territories, low to no resources) Terraformable/Habitable (Medium resources, medium value territories) Nuked Gaian (Terraformable -> Gaian) Abandoned Terran (Terraformable -> Garden) Megastructure (roll on rare resources table) Shoal Zone (Densely packed fast moving asteroids -> treated like minefield if uncharted) Sea of Stones (Diffuse slow moving asteroids -> Additional roll on asteroid resource table) Enclave (Small settlement/existing colonies roll 1d6*$100 value) Exotic Tourist Spot (1d10+5 prestige) Debris Disk (x2 DI limit when building here) Shattered Planet (x5 DI limit when building here) Primordial Waterworld Helix Wellspring Helix Graveyard (Make Eidolons for half cost. Multiple Helix Graveyards don’t reduce the cost further) Slipgate Nexus (‘Gates’ out of this system cost $500 base and can’t be destroyed) Shield World (‘Old’ Gaia. High value territories, many resources) Powers which have completed Velan Ascension tier 1 may also build Hives, specialized Colonies populated primarily by Velans and Velan drones. Hives cost $10,000, but provide $1,500 in initial income and count as a Space Hulk Gantry. Hives may only be built around gas giants.