Left-facist anarchist

There is no single 'Terran Empire'- the Cold War expanded out into space with the invention of the Terrance-Fuchida Effect Field in 1972. However, trying to rule over an interstellar empire taxed the Soviet Union to its breaking point, until- faced with the rebellion of its colonies and having spent all of its budget on a space program that was rather shit- it folded peacefully under Gorbachev in 1995. The dominant power in space is the United States of America- now with 57 states thanks to the addition of colonies- with scattered newly-independant Soviet colonies, formed into the League of Independent Soviets, and small colonies founded by other NATO countries. Democracy is the order of the day in space- although not necessarily capitalism, as the former Warsaw Pact colonies have retained communism to ensure the proper distribution of labor and vital supplies now that they're cut off from resupply from Earth. Expansion further into space, however, has nearly halted now that there's no longer the impetus of outdoing the Dirty Commies. Only the occasional scientific expedition.

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It started as a Corporation run anarchocapitalist hellhole, with only a token public government. Then the Board members started to be considered nobles and to be called such, as they got more and more removed from the "plebs" culturally, intellectually and biologically/technologically too due to their early adoption of transhuman tech.
Basically the fabled NWO succeeds. Everything goes worse than expected.

>>23839655
You. I like you.

>>23840090
MAy I ask what, exactly, earned me your approval? I like worldbuilding, and constructive feedback is good for improvement.

>>23840130
I liked the plausibility of it a lot; the way you put it out matched with the single point of departure you stated. You also managed to put enough info to make it compelling and not too much to make it too dense.

tl;dr:I WANT MOAR

>>23840130
>>23840463
Don't leave me hanging, anon.

>>23839655
I like this, never really like the concept of a single unified goverment on one planet that much anyway. Will they unite to fight a common enemy though?

>>23840578
Okay. You want anything specific, like an expansion of the setting, or should I just start writing?
>>23840700
That depends on whether or not that enemy attacks humanity as a whole, or just a specific power. For example, if aliens attacked a New Soviet colony, the U.S. and NATO wouldn't exactly rush to help, and vice versa.

>>23840863
Do whatever you want to.

>>23840863
Ah, I see, but does the former Warsaw Pact colonies help the New Soviet out if they're in trouble?
Oh, and does the new Independent Soviets still have close ties to Russia?

>>23840932
Okay, I'll elaborate on the development of space travel.
While the Terrance-Fuschida Field Effect was an immense breakthrough, it was, to the dismay of the U.S. Government, published in an internationally-available scientific journal. The Space Race, already winding down a bit after the U.S.'s victory at the moon, suddenly kicked into high gear again. The U.S. was the first to put a working Field Generator into orbit in 1975, which successfully travelled into Lunar orbit in a mere fraction of a second. The Soviets, not to be outdone, launched an honest interplanetary ship via Orion Drive in 1977, with the U.S. following in 1978. Both sides set up permanent colonies on the Moon and Mars by 1980, with the U.S.'s colony being admitted to the Union as the proud state of Armstrong in 1981.

>>23841101
How did the development of space habitats go? Lightweight and strong materials, hydroponics, UV shielding, etc.?

>>23840995
I should have been more clear, the 'New Soviet' is another term for the League of Independent Extraterrestrial Soviets, which comprises all of the Soviet Union's former colonies. And while other Warsaw Pact nations may officially have had their own colonies, they were Russia's in all but name. The LoIES does not maintain close ties with Russia, as neither has enough of a space fleet to maintain more than intermittent contact. Ironically, the New Soviet is far closer to the U.S., as the U.S. has the largest space fleet and thus can support a far greater volume of trade.

>>23841162
Space habitats on say, the Moon were typically dug deep into the lunar regolith to protect against radiation and meteorites. Orbital stations typically rotated to provide centrifugal gravity. Construction in this time period tended to be blocky, sturdy, and heavy, as the brute power of the Orion Drive made concerns about mass irrelevant. And yes, most extrasolar habitats were designed to be self-sufficient in food and water. Interestingly, the Space Race also made the field of genetics advance much faster, in order to create crops that would thrive in space.

Interesting. I'd actually make the first point of departure to be the creation of a defensive technology that basically invalidated the ICBM as an effective weapon. Consequently, The Cuban crisis goes hot and a general war commences. End result is a bipolar world between The USA and NATO on one hand and the ROK and its alliance of Asian dictatorships on the other.

>>23841101
Colonies on the moons of Jupiter followed in 1982, with Titan in particular becoming an immense source of fossil fuels. However, the real jackpot would not be hit until the discovery of 'leylines' in 1984, channels in hyperspace that allowed for immense speed. Interstellar travel became possible, and by 1985, the first colonies were being established outside of the solar system.

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I really like this setting anon's fleshing out here. I see it as a kind of Infinity-like skirmish game, but with more lowtech, grimy 90s style sci fi aesthetics rather than the current not-quite-transhumanist Mass Effectish one.

>>23841226
Ah, I see. So the U.S. is humanity's main space force if a war every broke out with a race intent on exterminating the human race.
So who's the second and third power?
Oh, and thank you for answering the questions.

>>23841429
Dozens of colonies were planted within the decade, lunar and orbital shipyards churning out immense 'highliners,' ships with Field Generators specifically designed to 'attune' with the interstellar leylines. Several habitable planets were discovered and settled by 1990, with dozens more airless rocks having colonies planted on them. Back in the solar system, plans were drawn up to terraform Mars and Venus, and put into motion. Artificial plants freed up the oxygen trapped in the red Martian dirt, while immense mirrors were constructed in microgravity to adjust the temperatures of both worlds.

Colonists were scattered to the winds in 2070, after a bevy of human-life-supporting planets were discovered. Most of the colonization efforts succeeded with minor success. A few were disastrous failures. It was all the same to those still living on Earth; no word was heard from any of the colonies for over a hundred years.

One colony, on a desert planet nicknamed Arrakis from an ancient story from Earth, succeeded beyond anyone's expectations. A previously unknown material was discovered below the desert sands that contained a massive amount of energy: enough to power the fusion reactor containment fields indefinitely. Instead of slowly regressing like the other colonies, the Arrakis colony flourished. New tools were created for work in the mines, new energy weapons were created for hunting and protection from the desert predators, and new life support systems were created to enhance the biodomes. Eventually, new propulsion drives were created to warp spacetime and travel impossibly far distances in unbelievably short times.

The colonists returned to Earth in Earth Year 2304 CE, where they were shocked by what they found. In the colonies, everyone had to work together to survive, and criminals were punished harshly. Back on Earth, the criminals were granted public office in sham elections, and law abiding citizens were crushed underfoot. It was immediately evident that things had gone all sorts of wrong here from the first day that the colonists arrived back, and the Earth leaders were already making plans to exploit the Arrakis colony.

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>>23841488
These style does have its appeal, bulky armor look wonderful.

>>23841545
would you consider adopting a trip?

>>23841490
Second power currently would be China, who's determined to ascend beyond the 'me-too' status they had during the Cold War. Close third would be the LoIES, who inherited a lot of the Warsaw Pact's space infrastructure. However, that infrastructure, while extensive, is old and decaying, and the League doesn't have the industrial facilities to fix it up themselves- Soviet Russia did its best to make the colonies dependent on continued contact with Earth. That's why the League is friendlier with the U.S. than with Russia- they traded one supplier for another. There's a lot of tension there, though- the League needs continued trade with the U.S. to not die of equipment failure, but at the same time they're determined not to become an economic vassal of the U.S. It's a delicate line they walk.

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Got some pics that seem appropriate to that space race setting. Could dump'em.

The first people to go up were heroes. They were the very best our scouts and scientists could find. They were legitimate adventurers, people who could go out and discover things for the greater good. They were geniuses, they were paragons, they were the most spectacular people mankind had to offer.
The second people to go up were the rich and eccentric. They went up, funding the program out of their own pockets for glory and for bragging rights. They broke the atmosphere in luxury, explorers with their hands held by an auxiliary crew. They paved the way for those who came after them, powered entirely on desire for glory and a place in history.
Then they sent us up.
When they ran out of people who had the money to pay their own way, they turned to the government. It was tangible, more than just the airy promise of science happening. This was land for grabs. This was power, a step up on their neighbors and “allies”. It was more immediate than military spending, and a similar show of power and status, so it found funding.
They found us hungry and tired and weak, and they built us back up again in preparation for the flight. They promised us a half year program and endless opportunities. They told us we would not only finally have a home, but be know in the history books for our trouble. They picked us up in the streets, and sent us off into the sky.
They colonized space on our backs. We were never the Columbus of our time. We were the backs that paved the way, sent in without anybody to care if we failed or if we died. We were sent up disposably, and though they deny it, we died in droves.
We thought we started out homeless, but we soon realized we had no idea what it meant.

MY EMPIRE IS THE BROKEN FLEET OF SPACE BUMS!

>>23841559
Rather than sell out their brothers and sisters back home, the returning colonists invaded Earth to bring justice and order back to their homeworld. With their superior weapons and the harsh training of life on a desert planet, they easily crushed the Earth military. But they quickly found out that it's not possible to regulate the workings of billions of people on Earth in the same way as a few tens of thousands in the colony, and found themselves making ever harsher restrictions on the people until they had secured the position as the single ruling power over the entire world, under the rule of the leader of the return expedition.

Then a bunch of other shit but I'm bored of typing, and Earth is the center of a galaxy-wide monarchy that rules over every habitable planet ever discovered.

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>>23841656
>Second power currently would be China
As expected. The League situation is pretty tense, hope they'll be strong enough to develop their own industries and be less dependent from U.S. trades.

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>>23841656

What about US corporations trying to muscle in on the colony business? How do the Soviets view business?

>>23841640
I am a total newfag who cannot into trips. Anyway!
Alas, even a continuous tide of propaganda reveling in the New Soviet Man's successes in space could not paper over the cracks. The Party, determined to be the one in control of interstellar communism, designed all their extraterrestrial holdings to be dependent on the Motherland for vital supplies. However, that meant the Motherland had to use its own industrial base to support its colonies- and since it was the Space Race, there were a lot of colonies, and some of them were very far away. Bread lines grew longer and longer. Amenities were nearly nonexistent, even for the Party commissars. Meanwhile, since the U.S.'s colonies were almost entirely self-sufficient, they could focus all of their effort into expansion and improvements. Gorbachev, determined to change this state of affairs, started a policy of 'glasnost' in 1995 to garner support for subsequent economic reform. Instead, revealing the dire straits the Soviet Union was in caused the citizenry to abandon it. Outside of a few Third World countries no one outside them gave a shit about, Communism was dead on the homeworld.

>>23841780
Tripcodes are easy. Just type in "[]##password" into the name field where [] is a name (you don't need to put a name), and password is your password.

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>>23841896

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>>23841908

>>23841692
That would be excellent. Dump away!
With the collapse of the Motherland, the Soviet colonies were in a bind. Post-Soviet Russia, without the total command of the economy needed to sustain its extraterrestrial colonies, would either bring them all home and mothball the settlements the cosmonauts sweat and bled for, or hang them out to dry entirely. Neither of those were acceptable. A vote was called, and even the most diehard party apparatchiks and commissars were swept up in the revolutionary fervor. They would either forge their own path in the universe, or die trying. The League of Independent Extrasolar Soviets was born.
With that decided, the new nation- the first without any presence on Earth- swallowed their pride and went to the United States. Fortunately, the referendums and meetings where the new nation had been created had been televised across the world, and even the Commie-hating American public had been deeply moved. Many commentators compared it to the American Revolution. The League would have its supply chain, and the U.S. would have a hold over the second-largest space empire in the known universe.

>>23841984
Excuse me, I'll be AFK for around 30 minutes to an hour. Keep this thread alive until then, there's still some stuff I need to write.

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>>23841917

>Supply ship arriving in mid-afternoon, Korolev Kosmodrome, Alexiya IV

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>>23842079

>Long-awaited freighter carries genestock to Agronom-5 Experimental Agricultural Facility, Valentina III

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>>23842131

Dimitry Chesnokov, sole human caretaker and chief astronomer of the TT-65 orbital observatory, on EVA repair assignment after a drone malfunction

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My Earth-centred empire extends only as far as saturn's moon Titan. It is an alliance of space stations and habitats built on the surface of planets and moons. Earth enjoys no sort political supremacy, it is governed by it's wealthiest space colonies. The real power in the system is split between two blocs dominated by Mars on the one hand, and the rich cluster of space colonies at earth's furthest lagrange point. The balance of power between these two blocs is maintained by diplomacy and by the knowledge that a war between humanity's various settlements could easily eradicate our species entirely.

It all plays out like a cold war, with earth in the place of Partitioned Germany. Space combat guarentees Mutually Assured Destruction and there is NO FUCKING FTL

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>>23842189

>US Geological Survey team caught in violent sandstorm on Reagan Prime

>>23841984
However, with one of the two nations trying to keep it out of the Space Race gone, China saw its opportunity to get into the space game, and began constructing its own highliners. At the current time, it holds only a wide and varied assortment of rocks and a single habitable planet. China's greatest impact on the interstellar stage (Beyond being a place for America to get cheap stuff from) has been providing an alternate market and supplier to the League, allowing it to begin asserting its economic independence from America and play one side against the other- one of the causes for the current tension between it and America, which doesn't want to let go of its vassal.

>>23842215
Why do you hate FTL so much?

>>23841101
Armstrong pride. ;_;

>>23842476
On the Terrance-Fuchida FTL system: it requires that the generator be in microgravity conditions. Orbit or a Lagrange point are sufficient for entry into superspace. (Not hyperspace- this is before Star Wars popularized the term.) However, the ship can only exit superspace at the same conditions it entered- if it entered at a Lagrange point, it must exit at a Lagrange point. If it entered in orbit, it must exit in an orbit of equal velocity. (Fun fact- artificial Lagrange points have been created by moving around asteroids to allow easier passage through the solar system.) Also, outside of a leyline, superspace only allows light speed travel- unless exorbitant amounts of energy are pumped into the system. Normal engines cannot use leylines- only tunable highliner engines can. However, highliner engines require more energy to travel in non-leyline superspace, making them more expensive.
Non-superspace travel is achieved through either the Orion Drive- most frequently for lifting heavy cargoes out of the atmosphere, or a nuclear fission saltwater rocket. Chemical rockets are only used near delicate orbital infrastructure that can't take radioactivity- and most orbital structures are designed to take quite a bit of radiation.

>>23842506

I'm a minimalist. I like to paint a picture with a lighter sort of touch. FTL ruffles my feathers because it's a very BROAD stroke.

>>23842764
So you're not a physics purist, you disapprove of it from a storytelling standpoint. That's cool. I thought I was going to have to lecture you about how physics can and should be ignored in favor of telling a good story.

>>23842691
So far, most of the 14 'living' planets discovered have been far less complex than earth, with 5 having nothing more than microorganisms. Early colonists would use invasive species to clear out local flora and fauna to make room for Earthly crops and livestock. The Unites States, however, banned the practice in 1988 after public outcry. The Soviet Union continued the practice up until its collapse. While the League hasn't officially banned it, pressure from the U.S. has meant it's been effectively discontinued. China continues to use it. A more modern technique, however, has been to use genetically modified gut flora to allow colonists and livestock to digest the alien life. It hasn't proven very popular, though, as the vast majority of alien life is either as nutritious as cardboard even with new gut flora or tastes like shit. Nonetheless, some alien life has proven to be delicacies and become cash crops for the colonies. The League has also adopted the gut-flora method with enthusiasm, due to the relative precariousness of their own hydroponics.

>>23843065
Industry has flourished in space. Asteroid mining has proven to be a valuable source of metals rare on Earth, and solar power transmitters in orbit provide low-cost power to much of the world. Orbital foundries create crystalline structures and smooth alloys hard or impossible to create in gravity. The hydrocarbon seas of Titan ensure that 'peak oil' won't come for centuries, while orbital mirrors prevent the ravages of global warming. The medical industry has benefited- both through research done in space, discoveries related to alien life (although these have been rare) and side-effects of the immense amount of money pumped into space. Genetic engineering has benefited in a similar manner, along with many other industries.

>>23842833

I'm woefully underqualified to comment on the physics. I can't even do calculus, so for me it is primarily an aesthetic choice.

I do think that it's a good idea to ask for advice from a real physicist though, not to verify whether something is impossible or not, but to be warned about the other implications of the changes that you are making.

I think, for instance, that if I wrote a setting with FTL, I would also include time travel and causality violations, because I've heard very persuasive arguments that the latter are likely implications of the former. I'd make a real effort at following everything to its logical conclusions. Perhaps civilizations would double back on themselves and use their technology to defend their chronological borders as well as their physical frontiers. Perhaps the first civilization to develop time travel would censor all other races out of existence.

There are a lot of implications to consider if you want to maintain perfect internal consistency, so you can see why my preference is to just avoid touching anything if I don't have to.

Has everyone left?

>>23843265
Nope

>>23843254
So far, no living sentient life has been discovered. However, we have found the remains of two. The first apparently lived on a world like mars. They built a proud civilization, but hadn't yet gotten into space when the planet's magnetosphere began to fade. They died with the magnetosphere, as the solar winds stripped away their atmosphere. There is nothing left but extremophile microorganisms and the shattered remains of beautiful cities and immense construction projects. The landscape is dotted with immense slabs, millions of them. On these slabs appear to be written- everything. The name of every Martian, with records of their birth and death. Every book, play, and story written. Everything they had learned about themselves and the world around them. We have never had so complete a record of a civilization, etched so deeply and thoroughly. Everything that they were is encoded in those slabs. Including, thankfully, a pictographic dictionary. It's a dead world, but it was so thoroughly recorded it is the easiest thing in the world to imagine it alive.

>>23843459
'Sentient' should read 'Sapient' in that.
The other apparently did make it to space. However, they apparently never made it out of the solar system- so when war broke out, they had nowhere to run to. We could track the general progress of the war and their civilization by monitoring their 100-year-old radio broadcasts. We found a chilling tale of what could have so easily happened to us. The war apparently started over a dispute on settlement rights to a continent on the second, marginally-habitable planet in the system, and soon spiraled into full nuclear, biological, radiological, and kinetic war. What few survived the hails of orbit-to-ground nukes and the bolide strikes were finished off by artificial plagues, fallout, and impact winter. The last survivors were, ironically, the military who had started the war, starving slowly to death in ruined asteroid bases after they had run out of ammunition and fuel to continue trying to avenge the deaths of their people. There's nothing more than tiny insects on either of the planets. Radiation and the Long Winter killed anything larger. A painful and messy death. And to think, we were only 200 years removed. It could have so easily been us.

>>23843705
One of the most interesting things about the League, beyond the fact that it's the only democratic, functional communist government, is that it's actually made up in large part of political prisoners. Soviet Russia saw, in space, a convenient place to stick the contents of all its gulags. They were packed in tight in prison ships and sent off to do the hard, dangerous work of founding colonies with shitty gear and no one to rescue them if things went wrong. When the Soviet colonies declared independence, the prisoners became citizens of the new nation, profoundly influencing its politics and demographics.

>>23845338
Am I alone in here?

>>23845346
Well, if there's no one admiring my work, I suppose I'm leaving. I was pretty tapped out anyway.

The Terran Empire (at first called the Anglican Empire) was formed in 2023, when the UK, the US, Canada, and Australia merged with the US as the instigator of the merger.
The rest of the world became panicked, and many other countries formed their own Empires. Thus what became known as the War of Empirical Conquest began in 2027, only coming to an end in 2063.
The years pertaining to the war were marked by global instability. The lesser empires divided, rejoined to form new ones, recombined into their original empires, or economically collapsed and becoming easy prey for the Greater Empires. The only empire to not split itself or be absorbed was the (as it was known then) Anglican Empire.
At the peak of global division, the Lesser Empires were: the Arabic Empire, the North African Empire, the South Africa Empire, The Slovakian Empire, and the brief New Roman Empire. The Greater Empires were: The Anglican Empire, the Russian Empire, the Asiatic Empire, and the Franko-European Empire.
At the closing of the war, only the Russian Empire and the newly renamed Terran Empire remained. The Terran Empire reenacted Sherman's March on the Dynasty, burning and salting the land as they went.
The Terran Empire designated the entirety of the former Russian Empire's lands a vast graveyard/memorial for all who died in the war.
Famous figures were Patrick Frey (US president at the time of the merge.), Nicanor Avdeyev (First Russian Emperor), Ismail Gerasimov (Second and Last Russian Emperor), and Paul Barnes (First and Current "Emperor" of the Terran Empire).
The Terran Emperor is elected by and from the Presiding Officers (Who themselves are elected by the people of their sector. Sorta like the US's current system) of the various sectors of the Empire.

The Great Powers (the European Union, the East Asian Community, the Indian Federation, and the Union of South American Nations) made the fateful decision at the Denver Conference, having intervened against the warlord cliques that had divided the enfeebled United States following the Ecology Wars and the new Great Awakening's rejection of modernism, not to partition the US into puppet states. Instead they restructured the US government as a corporation, a unified entity in which each great power would control shares. This corporation, which would come to dominate the development of space, would become the basis of the Terran Empire.

The sun suddenly became sapient and conquered the Earth, because how the hell are you going to wage war against the fucking sun without plunging the world into darkness?

>>23848839
Find a new sun that isn't an asshole?