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The Nebula War
For centuries the nebula had protected the inhabitants from outside influences. With the aid of an ancient alien sensor array, the inhabitants were finally able to traverse the nebula without serious ill effects of their early attempts. Though there had been some minor conflicts among the inhabitants, eventually a confederation was formed. This confederation had lasted for a few centuries, but has recently been dissolved. The dwindling resource and countless accusations of hording has caused the Confederation's collapse. Now each race must guide its own destiny. With resources depeleted and very little to build with, each race must employ the best use of their resources for, expansion and defense of its holdings. It is time to build new alliances and conquer new enemies in order to further the goals of your empire. |
Politics
In keeping with the simple is better system. The politics system has only 3 settings for each race playing the game.
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AllyThis marker is used in politics to show you are allied with a specific race. Any race that you have set as an ally will be immune from *your* attacks and defensive measures. This works one way and would allow that race only to initiate attacks. If both races are set to ALLY neither side can initiate any types of attacks against each other. |
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NeutralThis marker is used in politics to show you are neutral with a specific race. This setting will allow restricted offense and defense. Ships and planets encountered this way will only fight under specific circumstances. If a planet or ship in a system where you have at least one planet is set to aggressive defense or aggressive offense; your forces will defend against any races set to neutral or war entering the system. If you have a ship that is set to aggressive offense and it is in a system with another race that you are neutral with. It will attack. |
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WarThis marker is used in politics to show you are at war with a specific race. Setting war against another player will mean that any ship set to any type of attack will attack when encountering that player. Also, any ship set to any defense in a system where you own at least one planet will also attack any player set to war that enters the system. |
ShipsThe ships take care of all missions expect for building of ships. They can engage in offensive and defensive maneuvers, transport resources, escort other ships, and transport colony, personel and attack pods. A ships capability is determined by the size of the ship, number of parts and type of parts used to make a ship. |
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FighterFighters are the smallest class of ships. While they can be very quick to accelerate and are very nimble; they lack a high maximum speed and usually have little armor and few weapons.
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ScoutScouts are light, flexible support ships. Being slightly larger than the fighter class these ships are still lightly armed and lightly armored; however, their extra size allows them a better chance to be designed for faster than light travel.
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Patrol ShipPatrol ships are a step above scouts. The extra mass allows faster speed, or more weaponry and armor. Their mass also allows them to have decent faster than light speeds, and even nebula drives.
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CorvetteCorvettes are the smallest ship size to be an effective warship. Their mass allows the to have decent speed, weapons, armor, and faster than light or nebula drives.
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FrigateFrigates are light warships. Their mass allows them to cover many different roles.
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DestroyerDestroyers are medium sized warships. Their mass allows them to function in many different ways. Due to their cost, versatility, and the building materials required, these ships will be the main fighting ships of most races.
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CruisersCruisers are heavy warships. They are the first ships that can effectively serve as light carriers and combat ships at the same time.
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WarcruiserWarcruisers are heavy warships. These ships can deliver a serious amount of fire power onto the battle fields, however, as these ships are large they are somewhat less manueverable then smaller ships.
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BattleshipBattleships are the big ships. These ships are big enough to have weapons, armor, point defense, and still have some room for cargo.
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DreadnoughtDreadnoughts are the largest and most dangerous ships able to be produced. These ships can have a tremendous top speed, but normally lack a lot of acceleration and manuevering. They can be highly armored and carry a lot of weaponry.
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Ship PartsSensors
Sensors are used for detection and navigation. There are three types of sensors, sublight, ftl, and nebula. Any ship with a sublight sensor value of 1 or better and a working pulse drive will be able to move from one planet to another in one turn. Those ships without sublight sensors can attempt to move to planets, however, they are subject to random movement and miscalculated navigation. The further you are from the target the more inaccurate the attempt. These type of navigation checks are quite random. Any ship with sublight sensors will be able to tell the basic composition of a system they enter. Any ship with sublight sensors will give the player the star color and size, all planets types and sizes, and any ship locations in the system. In addition, the higher the value the more chance you have of detecting colony levels, planetary ship parts, and actual sizes of ships and fleets. For every full 10 points of sublight sensors the real information detection check raises by 1%. A ship with sublight sensor 100 would have a 10% chance of detecting the actual makeup of ship sizes, and planetary population and defense. Finally, sublight sensors also can have combat modifiers for weapons. For every 20 points, you gain a 1% to hit modifier. Ftl sensors are for detecting faster than light movement. These sensors are quite vague, but quite necessary. They will tell you if an object is moving faster than light and roughly the direction it was traveling when first detected. For every 10 levels of ftl sensors you will gain a 1% chance of getting an actual mass reading on the object detected. Sometime this number may seem extremely high since mass 100 is the maximum for ships, however, this detect roll is for the total mass of the objects at those coordinates when first detected. Nebula sensors are sensors that allow you to cut through the dense particles of the nebula to make a nice clear picture of the surrounding area. Nebula sensors have a penatration and a distance value. The penetration value determines how dense of particles you can see through. The distance value determines how far they can see. Nebula sensors do a sweep for each turn. If at any point of the sweep the particle density becomes greater than the scanning capability that area and the area behind it will not be scanned. Armor
Armor is what keeps the ships systems intact during battle. In Nebula War, armor, like weapons, use the PIK system. All armor and weapons have three main values; penetration, impact and kill. In addition to the PIK values, there are actual armor points for armor. Penetration value determines the reduction in the chance of a weapon doing a critical hit. Any time a weapon hits, weapons penetration value - armors penetration value, will be the % chance of a critical hit. A critical hit is effectively two hits. The damage done by a critical hit is divided 50% external (armor) and 50% internal (systems / hull). Any damage not stoped by armor is also transfered to internal damage. The impact value is the amount of impact damage the armor will stop. If the weapon impact rating exceeds the armors impact rating any excess after the armors value has be subtracted will be transfered to internal damage. The kill value is the amount of kill damage the armor will stop. The kill effect is a little eratic. Basically for every kill point penetrating the armor there is a 50% chance of 1 crew being killed. This does mean that kill protecting armor is necessary for smaller ships or they can easily be captured. With the low crew sizes to keep the from game ending up in a rut of capture and capture back maneuvers, armor is layered. Every piece of armor represents a seperate layer of protection. Critical hits react a little differently to layered armor. 50% goes to the first layer, any excess is added to the 50% that would go to the next layer. And it works its way down through all the layers of armor disipating more and more damage till there is no more damage to be done. Once the armor points of a piece of armor reach 0 the armor is removed from the ship. As with any other destroyed system, you will have to build a new piece. Drives
Drives are used for propulsion. There are sublight pulse drives, which are used to move from planet to planet and in combat, faster than light drives, mostly used for following route guides, nebula drives for direct faster than light movement regardless of nebula density, and maneuvering thrusters, used to increase the turning capability of ships. For ftl and nebula drives the rating is the number of lightyears (xy coordinates) you can move in one turn. These drives are used to go from system to system. Ftl drives are cheaper than nebula drives, but if you aren't using the route guides you will be suject to drifting. Nebula drives allow you to move anywhere in deep space accurately since they adjust for the nebula's particle drifting effects. Pulse drives are the heart of the combat movement system. Pulse drives have two main components, maximum thrust and frequency. The thrust of your drives must exceed the mass of your ship by at least 1 for the ship to be able to move. What this does is make capital ships accelerate and decelerate slowly, but have a much higher maximu speed than light ships. A mass 100 dreadnought must have a thrust of 101 to move. On the other extreme, a mass 1 fighter needs to only have a 2. The pulse drives have a few numbers when installed on a ship. The format is like the following and is a total of all active pulse drives and manuevering thrusters... DriveFactors MaxThrust EffThrust Pulse Mnv Slip MaxThrust is the maximum speed the ship can reach. EffThrust is how much your ships speed will increase or decrease each time the pulse drive is activated. Pulse is the number of turns it takes before you can accellerate or decelerate again. The Mnv value is the manuevering value, or how much a ship can rotate on each pulse. This value is 1/10th the EffThrust. If your ship has a Mnv of 20 or more it will also gain a Slip value. A ship with a slip value can move to the left or right without changing facings in addition to normal movement. This will normally only be found on light ships especially in the fighter categories. This value will be 1/20th of your Mnv factor. Since pulse drives provide little in a way of turning the larger ships, Maneuvering Thrusters have been added as an option. Maneuvering thrusters only affect Mnv and Slip factors. Every point of Mnv adds a degree of rotation to the maximum turn of a ship. A ship with a total Mnv of 10 can turn left or right 10 degrees on any turn the ships pulse drive is used. Maneuvering Thrusters power must be more than the mass of the ship to turn the ship. Generators
Generators provide power for systems. Each system can hold the amount of energy in it for one use. After that use the system must be repowered. This is where generators come into play. Generators have three main values; energy generation, energy capacity, and recharge turns. If the generator is not at full capacity it will generate energy points to the level of the energy generation value every recharge value turns. Weapons
Weapons; the primary way of solving problems in Nebula War. Weapons are divided into three categories; beams, projectiles, and seekers. Beams are energy beams, they are infinite use items, assuming you have enough energy to power them. Point defenses have 0 effectiveness against beam weapons. Projectiles, are the bullet classification of weapons. While they take little energy to use, they do have a finite supply of ammo, which requires reloading once it is gone. Point defenses have a 33% effectiveness against projectiles. Seekers are the missile and torpedo classification of weapons. These are bigger, and guided, therefore you will end up carrying less of these than you would projectiles. These weapons also take very little energy to use. Point defenses have 66% effectiveness againts seekers. Seekers normally have a blast radius so that even if they are stopped their explosion may in fact still damage a ship. In addition to the basic factors (see below) for each type of weapon there are to slide bars which control the effectiveness of the weapons. The first is the Point Defense Bar, this is in 25% increments. A weapon with 0% point defense means it cannot be used to stop incoming fire. A weapon with 100% point defense means it cannot be used against other ships. Point defense weapons cannot exceed 20 points of damage. The second is the Minimum Hull Size Bar. Think of trying to hit a patrol boat with the main gun of a battleship. While it is possible, it would be very difficult. On the other hand, using a five inch deck gun vs a patrol boat or battleship would be realitively easy. The minimum hull size bar starts are 0 (point defense) and goes to 100. A weapon doing up to 5 damage (total) would be rank 0 and could easily hit any target. For every 5 points of damage the minimum hull size goes up one. It takes 505 points to max out the slider. Minimum Hull Size Bar effects are as follow. For every 5 points above the minimum hull size you get a 1% bonus to hit. For every 3 points under the minimum hull size you get a 1% penalty. A weapon with a minimum hull size of 50 shooting at a hull size 100 vessel would get 10% bonus to hit. A weapon with a minimum hull size of 50 shooting at a hull size 25 vessel would get a -8% to hit penalty. Damage as above with armor, is rated with the PIK system. Penetration, Impact, and Kill values are valid for all weapons. The higher the penetration value the higher the chance of a critical hit, however, the armors penetration value of the enemy ship can offset this bonus. The impact value is the maximum amount of damage to the target that can be done. The kill value is the maximum amount of crew that can be killed by the weapon. All types of weapons can be fixed facing or have an arc value. With seeker weapons the arc determines the facing for firing purposes and the tracking arc determines the number of degrees in any turn that they can turn left or right. Beam weapons are instantaneous and therefore have a maximum range of one light second 298,530,000m. At first this seems nice, however, since beams are range diffusion weapons (they loose effectiveness over distance), each beam weapon has an optimal range. If you hit a target up to the optimal range it will be at 100% damage. If you hit a target beyond optimal range, as in the case of a secondary hit, the beams effectiveness is reduced. The reduction is a percent base off the optimal range and at distance greater than 2x the optimal range, the effect reaches 0%. Beam weapons are also not very good at penetrating armor. After a beam is designed and race abilities modifiers are taken into consideration, the beam will lose two points of penetration value. without race ability modifiers, a beam would have to have at least a 3 penetration to have a base 1% critical hit chance. Projectile weapons are slug throwers; machine guns, auto cannons, and railguns. While they use a lot less energy than beam weapons, they have a limited ammo supply, which must be replenished when it is gone. Projectiles have a near infinite range in combat, however, since they move slow compared to beam weapons, their target may not be where the projectiles are sent to. To keep the battle system from being too cluttered, projectiles are removed if they have no valid target within the forward 180 degree arc or their path and they are at least 25,000 from the nearest target. Seeker weapons are the missiles and torpedos. These weapons are guided, explosive, long range weapons. These weapons also use only a tiny amount of energy, but also have limited ammo supplies. While seekers have benefits; +2 penetration, area effect (explosion), armor and the ability to keep going till they are out of fuel, they also suffer a few penalties. Since they are normally larger than slugs, they are easier to hit with point defense. Seeker weapons are also subject to fratercide, their explosions can take out other weapons, which can be very bad or very good depending on where it happens. On detonation, a seeker weapon, creates an explosion over a small radius. All objects in this radius will be checked for damage. All ships in the radius, friend or foe, will be checked for damage. Any projectiles in the radius will have a 33% chance of being destroyed. Any seekers have a 66% chance of being hit. One hit can set off a chain reaction if there are enough materials around to continue it. Cargo Pods
Cargo pods are necessary for hauling resources and colonists around. There are six types of cargo pods; crew, assault, colony, carrier, system, and resource. Cargo ships can be made very effective by designing same size pods for each type you will use. This will allow you to switch the cargo pod type when you need to haul something else, without having to build an entirely new ship. Crew pods are for adding extra crew members to ships. This allows more people to be available and lowers the chance of being captured by an enemy. Assault pods hold small amounts of cryogenically frozen troops. During combat assault pods can be fired at enemy ships or planets, however, they are short range weapons and have minimal guidance controls, and a tiny amount of armor. If an assault pod survives point defense weapons and successfully impacts on a ship the troops are instantly released to fight the crew of the ship. All assault pod members have a combat value of 2. Colony pods hold large numbers of cryogenically frozen people for colonizing planets. These crafts are filled with what is necessary to make a small, self sustaining colony on any habitable planet. For landing purposes, colony pods are pretty much large slabs of metal with some thrusters to break their fall. If you attempt to drop a colony pod onto the surface of an already inhabited planet with any working weapons, the chance of survival of the colony pod drops rapidly as the number of active weapons on the planet rises. Very simply stated there is a 1 in # of active weapons chance to survive landing on a planet that is defended. Carrier pods hold other ships, normally these are used to store fighters to create a carrier ship, however, the only real restriction on what type of ship goes in is the size of the carrier pod itself. System pods are made to hold and transport any ship system from one place to another. System pods allow transport without actually having to attach to the ships power and structure. The downside is, however, the fact that they cannot be used to defend, propel, or effect the ship in anyway. Resource pods are used from transporting resources from planet to planet. |
Systems, Stars, and PlanetsSystemsEach system will have at least one star and one planet.Each system may have up to ten route guides to neighboring systems, however, these are not all two-way guides. Some guides will be in, some out, and some both ways. The guides will be marked with the system number which they link to and the in and/or out symbols. These guides get named only once you have gone to the systems in question. Inner systems have a higher chance of getting a lot of guides and outer systems will end up with few or none.
StarsEach star is given a color and a size. These values then determine the negative effects on ship movement and combat within the system.
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| Color | Percent of All Stars | Effect Modifier |
| Red | 10% | 25% |
| Orange | 20% | 75% |
| Yellow | 30% | 125% |
| Green | 20% | 175% |
| Blue | 10% | 225% |
| Violet | 2% | 550% |
| Size | Percent of All Stars | Speed Effect | Combat Effect |
| Super Giant (7) | 1% | -12% | -13% |
| Giant (6) | 2% | -10% | -11% |
| Large (5) | 8% | -8% | -9% |
| Main (4) | 78% | -6% | -7% |
| Medium (3) | 8% | -4% | -5% |
| Small (2) | 2% | -2% | -3% |
| Dwarf (1) | 1% | -1% | -1% |
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The effects of the stars are normally very minimal except in the case of a rare violet super giant
where the effect can be extreme. A few of the racial abilities are able to ofset these effects,
however, all races may not have these abilities.
Ships set to safe combat speed will automatically adjust their maximum speeds to compensate for the star type and color. Ships not set to combat safe speed are subject to random effects in movement. Ships exceeding the safe speed can experience eratic rotation and drifting which can cause structual integrity loss (loss of base ship armor). Combat effects can be very annoying and dangerous. Weapon Type ------ Possible Effects Fixed Facing ----- higher miss %, lower damage Turret ----------- higher miss %, lower damage, fire wrong angle Projectile ------- higher miss %, lower damage, projectile drift Seeker ----------- higher miss %, lower damage, drift, wrong heading There are no safe shots, this game allows 100% damage from friendly fire.
PlanetsEach system contains one or more planets. Planets may or may not be inhabited. Inhabited planets which are owned will convert unready resources to ready resources at a rate of 1 per 100 population. The total amount of resources available on any planet depends on the size and type of the planet. The break down of the three type of resources available (precious materials, technology materials, and building materials) are determined as a random percent of all available.
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Planet Type Modifications
| Planet Type | % Mod | Max % Ready | % Unready | Pop Grow | % of Total Planets |
| Terrestrial | 100% | 5% | 95% | 250% | 20% |
| Ocean | 75% | 2% | 98% | 100% | 15% |
| Ice | 80% | 3% | 97% | 80% | 15% |
| Swamp | 90% | 4% | 96% | 95% | 15% |
| Desert | 100% | 6% | 94% | 70% | 10% |
| Barren | 125% | 10% | 90% | 65% | 10% |
| Gaseous | 0% | 0% | 0% | 0% | 15% |
Planet Size Modifications
| Size | % Mod | Pop Growth % | Max Population (x1000) |
| Super Giant | 200% | 160% | 128000 |
| Giant | 150% | 140% | 64000 |
| Large | 125% | 120% | 32000 |
| Normal | 100% | 100% | 16000 |
| Medium | 75% | 80% | 8000 |
| Small | 50% | 60% | 4000 |
| Dwarf | 10% | 40% | 2000 |
Space Dock
Each inhabited planet starts with a small open frame ship building dock in orbit. The most mass of construction that can take place at any ship dock is equal to 10% of the population of the planet. This means a fully inhabited super giant planet with 12800 population units can produce ships up to a mass of 128 units per turn, whereas, a fully inhabited dwarf planet would only be able to work on 2 mass units per turn. To build a space dock it cost 100 units of each resource and 100 TCs per level. Space docks can be upgraded up to level 10. Each increase in size gives a +10% bonus to the total number of units of work capable of being done each turn.
Planetary DefensesEach planet may also use (up to 25) ship parts for defensive purposes. If all of the available weapons are destroyed the planet will surrender. Planets may also be attacked by landing colony or assault pods on the planet, or direct bombardment of the planets population. Direct bombardment isn't without problems. The smaller the population the harder it is to hit effectively. In addition, planetary bombardment will cause damage to the resources available. Of course there are benefits to planetary bombardment, as once the planet is retaken all ship parts will become available for use in repairs or building of new ships.Planets with no active weapons parts will surrender to the largest ship in orbit.
Basic EconomicsEach planets population will be divided between workers and security. The higher the percentage of population on security detail the less chance spies will be effective.The planetary economies consist of taxation and resources. The taxation system is very simple. It consists of two values taxation and morale. Taxes can be from 0 to 100%. Taxes generate income of 1 TC (Trade credit) per 25000 population per 1% per morale%. 10% tax on a super giant planet of 12800 population, would be (12800 / 25) * 10 * 100% or 5120 TCs. Taxation affects morale. Morale affects production. Morale is rated from 0 to 100%. The higher the morale, the more productive the planet is at converting unready resouces to ready, building ships and ship parts. Any time a planet surrenders the population will lose 5% morale. If the planet fought in a battle and lost it will lose an additional 5%. In addition to these losses of morale, taxation also lowers morale. taxation will lower morale by the square root of the level of taxes times two. At a 10% tax rate the population will lose 6.32 morale. For each turn the people are not taxed a 1% cumulative addition to the morale is added. So if you tax 10% one turn and don't tax till 100% moral you would have to wait four turns before you reach 100%. 93.68 + 1.00 = 94.68 94.68 + 2.00 = 96.68 96.68 + 3.00 = 99.68 99.68 + 4.00 = 100.00 It takes 14 turns to go from 0 to 100 under this system.
SpyingSpies are also available at any race controlled planet, however, you may or may not actually be able to hire one. Spies use the normal method of interplanetary communication and can normally send small bits of information over the alien sensor array. Sometimes the information will be very useful other times it may be vague.To hire a spy you must invest some money (TCs) in hiring a spy at the planet you want. To do this you access the spy info database that will show you what planets have spies and which you still can hire spies at. For each turn 2 TCs will be used to find a spy until you find one or run out of funding. For each spy a 1 TC per turn fee is needed to keep them paid. |