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[mendonca]

PLEASE NOTE: This mod has been integrated with the Junk Pirates mod, single faction support has been discontinued going forward:

FIND THE P.A.C.K. HERE!

Post-Anarchist Canis Kollective

HEGEMONY CIRCULAR - 189.11.17

Non-standard signals have been detected emanating from Canis 3 (Gas Giant).

The planet is confirmed resource non-viable as recorded within the current quarter-cycle assessment, ratified by guidance note X2.13.6a.

All Hegemony Fleets and those supporting our cause, with encryption access level 6a or above, who are scheduled to pass through the Canis system within the next quarter-cycle should report to your nearest Hegemony Station for a detailed itinerary of instructions.

Any Tri-Tachyon contact in this area should be treated with added vigilance. Additionally, contact with non-standard technology should be reported immediately.

GAMEPLAY VIDEO

(Requires ShaderLib)

The Fleet

Spoiler

Bedlington class frigate. Harasser.


Wirefox class frigate. Glass jawed with a nasty jab.


Schnauzer class frigate. Agile frigate with excellent flux dissipation, but again - very lightweight under fire.


Samoyed class frigate. All purpose freighter.


BRT class destroyer. Guard dog.


Pitbull class destroyer. Giant killer.


Komondor class destroyer. All round ass-kicker.


Shar Pei. Capable of wrinkling through p-space.


Ridgeback and Ridgeback X. Jack of all trades.
 

Mastiff, heavy hitting light cruiser.

[close]

About the P.A.C.K.

Spoiler

The P.A.C.K. are a group of like-minded individuals who fractured from the Domain of Man at some point during the Expansion Epoch, as a sociological experiment in Anarchy as a valid method of governance. After intermittently rising and falling, with minor successes punctuated by spectacular failures, over many cycles, a step change in engineering knowledge and technological brilliance allowed them to subsist entirely from the matter within the inhospitable atmosphere of Canis 3, a corrosive gas giant.

The technology allowed them to harvest matter from the elements within the atmosphere, from where they were able to synthesise many types of matter and energy, to a point where they became able to retreat from the rest of the Domain. Slowly the technology became more advanced, and they fell in to hiding to refine their ideals outside the corrupting influence of the Domain. The Anarchy (eventually) settled in to a well balanced, but insular, society, where capital became redundant and equality thrived.

The P.A.C.K., as they were then, were forgotten - and generally speaking - this society forgot about the Domain.

With time, the synthesis plants are becoming less and less efficient, and the dangerous by-products of these processes are becoming more and more prevalent in the atmosphere. The slowly-floating arcologies where the P.A.C.K. have lived out their lives, under the protection of the acid blanket of Canis 3, are starting to be smothered.

Some eminent sociologists amongst the group preach a do-nothing agenda, declaring their social and technological experiments a success - and asking for acceptance of death - leaving an archealogical testament to their brilliance.

Those with a more practical bent accept a need for action.

[close]

Design Philosophy

Spoiler

The P.A.C.K. fleet are formed by smaller, light craft - the core based around frigates and destroyers. They are typically light on OP, but generally have reasonable armament capability if operated by high level characters. A beginner will have to compromise on what to fit in those mounts, and may struggle to operate them at their capacity. With additional OP, higher level weaponry and increased flux management come in to play - the medium mounts become more flexible - and the craft become more deadly in combat. The P.A.C.K. fleet are generally in line with Expansion Era craft, and the available technology reflects this.

The principal design decision has been to try and create a complementary fleet who are pretty awful when considered on their own (probably only the Pitbull can stand as a sole operator), but far more dangerous when encountered in a group. The Bedlington is fast and manouvreable, with a 'free' ion-cannon courtesy of its drone - great for harassing and causing a nuisance, but needs the support of a well-armed Wirefox to finish off targets. The Pitbull is great for sustained pressure on shields with the Ripsaw, and delivering a mixed ordnance via the extensive missile mounts, but again without support is liable to become stranded. All of these pretty much need a variant of the Ridgeback to support them outside Battle.

A P.A.C.K. fleet will be quick to recover outside of battle, they carry a lot of crew - enabling them to recover CR quickly, but all those ginnels, tunnels and life support systems mean that once armour is compromised, there is very little in the way of hull integrity to protect these crew from the harsh void of space.

[close]

Credits / Thanks

Spoiler

xenoargh - spriting help and input, direct credit to the Pitbull sprite
LazyWizard, of course, for the implementation tutorials for 0.6a

[close]

[NITROtbomb]

I look fowards to this man love to see what you develop

[mendonca]

Captain's Log - TTS Schema - Apogee-class, en-route to Leipzig Station, 189.10.26

An unusual, yet most welcome surprise hit me just dropping out of hyperspace around the uninhabited Canis system. Detecting low-level, unidentifiable signals, I ordered further investigation suspecting piracy - and hoping for something more. Why would a no-mark, lightly armed pirate be kicking about a dead-end system like this? It HAD to be something more.

A timid approach from a craft with signals approximating a Vigilance-class - similar age and profile - proved to be something else entirely. I welcomed the odd-looking craft in to our fold, but barely understood a word from the captain of the ship. I guess he wanted to be my friend, so I played along until he was in range of my Ion cannons.

The shell of the ship is sitting in my hangar, itself carrying something approaching our own sensor drone, but markedly more primitive. The survivors are locked up awaiting processing. I'm always happy when my hunches prove to be correct.

Who knows where this ship has come from, but it's nothing I have seen before. If I didn't have this (rather lucrative) contract to close out immediately, I would stick around - in the meantime have put down a nominal personal investment that a temporary post should be set up in Canis immediately - to investigate further - and subdue Hegemony intrusion in to my discovery.

[mendonca]

DIARY ENTRY – PROFESSOR JOHN NETTLES [date translated to ~189.10.10]



Damn those short sighted morons.

History will repeat itself, the cycle continues, and our people refuse to learn to accept a finite lifespan. The unstoppable hubris of the human race shows itself again, just as some of us thought we had figured it all out.

The key to it all, I guess, was the compelling dream of an indefinite decoupling from other natural things, a removal from the unhealthy parasitic relationship we have historically held with each other and other living things, and hoping we could live in some sort of overriding peace and harmony outside of it. This existence was never designed to go on forever – that was never what it was about. It was about ideals, a curve – a parabola of existence. We have been sinking so quickly for the last three dozen cycles that even this desperate move by our deluded and tired military arm will do nothing but ensure some of our children become subsumed in to whatever dystopian filth the rest of our kind have managed to cobble together whilst our culture has been self-isolated.

They talk about diplomacy, sending out envoys, and maintaining our way of life with some kind of agreement. An unlikely – bordering on imaginary – best-case condition with whatever faction or culture these other people belong to.

But I know what those things – those starfaring vessels – that pass our planet are for. They probably say peace, or defence – transport, or trade. Whatever they will call it, I call it violence.

I know enough about the human condition to say that WE are the ones that have made this work. Even in inevitable death - WE are the lucky ones.

[mendonca]

DIARY ENTRY – ENVOY JACK KLUGMAN [date translated to ~189.10.23]



The maiden voyage of the newly anointed PSS Wonder, a Ridgeback-Class exploration vessel went as well as can be expected yesterday, although the decompression of a cargo bay on the way back in to Zero-Three (which was put down to human error rather than a manufacturing fault – presumably the error of the young woman who was ejected during the process) gives us all the mood of caution.

I am amazed the technology could be brought up to anything like operational, and whilst I would like to put that down to personal success on behalf of one my brothers or sisters – I suspect the plaudits are due to someone long departed. Nevertheless, a successful run has seen us emerge from this soupy atmosphere for the first time in many, many cycles, and the subsequent fracture and tension amongst those over-cautious buffoons in the socio-political arms of our organization is something else - a true joy to behold.

My job from hereon-in is pretty clear – make contact with another culture, and persuade them to help us in our cause. It remains to be seen whether the goal is a realistic one.

I am leaving from the very same dock in the PSS Rover, a Bedlington-class frigate, in a couple of days hence with a full complement of wide-eyed and poorly trained crew members, and hopefully I can clear the system prior to any meaningful contact.

[mendonca]

DIARY ENTRY – COMMISSIONER PETER FALK [date translated to ~189.10.22]



Life as we know it has been good for the last couple of hundred cycles, the material of our dying planet providing all the base goods we need to live out a simple and joyous existence, in the artificially-lit underbelly beneath the viscous, toxic skin of Petra, the third planet orbiting our red star Canis.

Our scientists are telling us that we are at a tipping point – that we can’t go on much longer. Our sociologists have kept us at bay, warning us of the dangers of interacting with the outside world again, warning us of self-destruction or perhaps destruction at the hands of others. Our delicately balanced utopia, the social structure we have perfected after what records suggest is several hundred cycles of learning, failing, and eventually succeeding – a structure they are telling me is too delicate to expose to outside forces – a way of life that will not be maintainable if we even pop our head above the parapet for a split second.

But I’m damned if I do, and damned if I don’t.

Our technology has kept us hidden, sheltered and fed for this long, at the cost of about a third of the total useful mass of lower order elements in these gas clouds. If we carry on at this rate, we either won’t have the energy to maintain our increasingly inefficient life-giving synthesis processes, or the concentration of heavy radioactive isotopes around our shelter will kill us - all at some point in the next forty or fifty cycles. Opinion varies over what will get us first.

Some of our sociologists are willing for us to die – to leave an archaeological testament to our greatest creations. Some of them are naïve enough to think that we can find a solution to our problems in that sort of timeframe. Those are the ones that don’t understand the pitiful legacy – or lack of – in our extant engineering knowledge.

Our greatest strength will be our cohesiveness, our sense of community, and our desire to carry on living in our own way. Those moving stars that pass us by – blithely ignorant of our presence and manned by hundreds or thousands of other people less enlightened than us – have to be many times more complicated and advanced than our own starfaring fleet which has been idle for so long. Shining blue, humming with huge energy signatures – or coal-black hulking silhouettes against our star, we recognise them but we do not know what or who they represent.

But we have no choice but to kickstart our dormant manufactories, raise a diplomatic envoy, and strike out for new resources and a new life through the stars.

I am the first of our kind for a long while to take one of our Ridgeback exploration vessels out in to the cold void of space. The first test that will break our long held cloak and expose us to the unknown.

[mendonca]

Location: Canis 3
Date: 189.12.05

Our forays outside of our atmosphere have been less than satisfactory thus far, with the loss of all hands in all cases. All ships encountered within the Canis system have proven to be hostile to ourselves, and sometimes to each other.

We have restarted all the manufactories within our control, at great cost to the lifespan of the settlement, in order to raise a fleet capable of taking to the stars.

And we can't lie low and hide for much longer.

We need to take things in to our own hands.



(download v0.01 from the OP - a single mission, and rudimentary campaign integration)

[FasterThanSleepyfish]

Gawd, this mod is so great. It really brings an emotional side to starsector. After reading the entries an logs, I see now the ruthlessness of the TT and Hegemony, preying upon a delicate population with xenophobic tendencies. Anyways, in terms of balancing, P.A.C.K. ships are almost worse than a buffalo mk2. They aren't very resilient or powerful, but they are mobile. I'm sure it's intentional, but I could see them doing more. 2 tac lasers and a pulse laser isn't going to cut it for those poor souls aboard that Ion Ship. Perhaps the drone could have an ion beam instead? Alright, enough of my *****ing. Keep up the good work!

[mendonca]

Gawd, this mod is so great. It really brings an emotional side to starsector. After reading the entries an logs, I see now the ruthlessness of the TT and Hegemony, preying upon a delicate population with xenophobic tendencies. Anyways, in terms of balancing, P.A.C.K. ships are almost worse than a buffalo mk2. They aren't very resilient or powerful, but they are mobile. I'm sure it's intentional, but I could see them doing more. 2 tac lasers and a pulse laser isn't going to cut it for those poor souls aboard that Ion Ship. Perhaps the drone could have an ion beam instead? Alright, enough of my *****ing. Keep up the good work!

Thanks

I've added a bit of bumf and fluff to the OP to try and explain where I am pitching the P.A.C.K. fleet. I'm actually happy you think they are rubbish!

[mendonca]

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/66536185/Pack005.zip

For those who wish to plug in another system in to 0.6a.

Still not sure it constitutes a full release yet, but it seems to be working in a rudimentary manner.

Visit Canis, buy ships, or just get in a scrap with the PACK and see who comes out on top.

[Wriath]

Dude you had me at 'another system' but new Mendonca ships at the same time? aw snap.

[Uomoz]

Added to UsS!

[mendonca]

Added to UsS!

Woof woof!

Cool stuff! Thanks Uomoz

[Uomoz]

They are already raiding Corvus. What a bunch of wranglers!

[mendonca]

Minor update. Some Corvus related integration and strings updated.