Fanstorm Armada - Background technology...Weapons & Shields

Hello again to another post on background for Fanstorm Armada. This time I'm going to be talking about technology, since that underpins a lot of the writing as well as game effects that are used in any game. I started this waaaay before I became involved with Spartan games, and I kept it bubbling ever since. It really came out of wanting to create a better ship customisation tool than existed in v1 at the time, and then disappeared in v1.5 (which was a shame since it fostered a lot of community involvement, creativity and discussion).

The first part of this was weapons technology, since that is a pivotal part of the game. Although there were small hints as to the technologies involved, like Dindrenzi using railguns, Aquans using lasers and the dirty Terrans using nukes...those dirty, dirty terrans....This is a bit like saying the US military uses missiles, ships and aircraft in its military - it's not really engaging. So I started looking at weapon development by looking at my ship construction, and I derived this from the physical models and the stats at the time.

A prime example are the mass-drivers on the Terran Battleships and Dreadnoughts - there are two of these, so its possible to reverse engineer the stats of a single one assuming that weapons "link" internally in the same way they do if ships in a squadron do. This makes sense, since multiple weapons on a single ship do anyway (think broadsides and turrets or multiple broadsides and so on). As it happens, this works out quite nicely for the terran main weapons - not quite so well elsewhere because it wasn't thought of in the model design phase - models are designed on the "rule of cool" rather than hard stats, though when I was in the FFG Chris (the model designer) did usually get the stats before finalising designs so that they aligned - something which i also think is important...model stats should reflect how the model looks.

Now the document I present to you is a WIP which I shelved because of other commitments and the likelihood of it ever being officially implemented...now of course I am free from such strictures so I can let you all see this little view on my mindset and I will update it to make it relevant to the current/future rules (Fanstorm v1). So here it is, my views on weapon development in the FA universe, part 1 v1;

Weapons in FA

Next a few musings on shields, since that's another underpinning technology of several races. This is a bit harder to make seem "real" since the underlying principles are, of course, much more fiction than science. Still, putting something down on paper seemed like a good idea

Shields in FA

Another area that is hugely overlooked, yet pivotal, in FA is the concept of the Foldspace drive. Why is this so important? Well, the workings of this drive determine the size and nature of the conflict in the FA universe, since this will determine how communication works, what the combat radius of a ship is, tactics employed etc. This also has to mesh with things like in-game mechanics of Fold-Space entry, Fold-space escape and battle-shunts. It also has to explain why the Terrans abandoned their wormhole network, which seems like a pretty big deal - instantly travelling from one system to another vs spending time in foldspace...

I posted on the Spartan Games community about this as Spartan Alex, but as "my thoughts" rather than canon, since it wasn't an official Spartan announcement. I haven't yet collected these together in a conherent document, but it quite neatly deals with most of the above issues (it being incredibly laborious and random to get any official sanction on anything). This also explains the existence, size and shape of Fathom's Reach and the Storm Zone, and the border zone between the Zenian League and the Kurak Alliance. It was also essential for developing my narrative for the ongoing direction of FA, which would incorporate the Leviathan class ship - so more on that in another blog post :-)

Fanstorm Armada v1 - Background

I've done a lot of work in Firestorm in the past, and that produced directly for SG was only a very small part of that. I'm also fortunate in having a network of people across the globe to critique my work and provide alternative ideas and suggestions to refine that work. Rather than let all of those hours go to waste, I'll be posting up my thoughts, background and developments here for the community to share.

Before I get to mechanics and rules, the big area I (and many of you out there) have felt is lacking in Firestorm Armada is background. Now approaching this requires more than just sending a whole bunch of freelance writers off to get some stories together, or even asking an active community for content. Why? Let's have a look...

Freelancers tend to do one of two things - they either write to a tight brief with good guidelines, or they're given freedom to write what they like with much looser reigns. One of the first things I started working on, therefore, was a set of writer guidelines to shape the universe. This is important because there are basics of technologies that will affect the whole shape of how the universe is written about. Let's use an example to illustrate this.

Have you ever watched Buffy the Vampire Slayer? It was a huge hit in the 90s and a lot of it still stands up as good, silly, fantasy fun. However, it was written at a time where mobile phones were not omnipresent, and many of the plot lines would simple be answered by having one. A modern equivalent would be written from a different perspective and would follow a different line just because of that one simple difference in communications technology.

It's the same with a game like FA and its background. SG have never been that interested in the technological background of their universe, which then makes it problematic to shape the universe coherently, which means any freelance or fan based content will vary on approach and not produce a cohesive, immersive universe. This doesn't matter for some, but it does matter for most gamers, who tend to be of a similar detail-oriented ilk within their hobby sphere.

Communications is one example - is it possible to contact a planet from another planet? Is it possible to contact a ship in FSD? Can a ship in fold-space be detected? What is fold-space? All of these basics affect any story written in or for the universe, so its important to nail this stuff down.

Another facet of this are the various races in FA - what is their background? Where did they evolve, and how? Evolution shapes the way creatures act hugely, and much more than we recognise. Our "fight or flight" mechanism comes from our evolution, the propensity for males to have better spatial awareness than females comes from the evolutionary branch of it being selected for as males went out to hunt...every aspect and nuance of our underlying behavioural mechanisms has come from our evolution from single-celled organisms, shaped by the changing environment and evolutionary pressures of millions of years.

Even where we have humans in the Firestorm universe, we have different interpretations of the seven or so human factions (Terran, Dindrenzi, Directorate, Hawker, Works Raptor, OSO and RSN). Are the Dindrenzi space nazis or not? Is that the role of the RSN? What is life like in the Directorate? The unanswered questions are almost infinite.

This is also highlighted in game instances, like the so called "Fleet Admiral". Now Admiral is a very high rank in a navy, and really this doesn't make much sense in a background and real-world sense, but this is just an in-game reference. Even so, when trying to put in the invasion "Commanders", it puts you as a designer in a corner, so one of the things I looked at before giving titles to these Commanders was to create a full military structure for all of the core six races, and place the Commanders logically within them. This provides consistency both now and in the future. Unfortunately the recent posts by SG have ignored this, introducing the rank of "Pioneer-Marshall" and "Monitor-Commander" - which sound cool but don't actually sit with any prior background.

As such I will be presenting the work I've done independently as a Fan-derived version of Spartan's universe, and nothing within it is meant to challenge any of SGs licences or IP, but merely to provide an alternate and fully fleshed-out background - let's call it an alternative interpretation - of their game. I hope you enjoy it, and I'm always open to feedback and discussion on any aspect. if people have better or cooler things to add, then I'll add them.