OK, that makes sense.
Quick summary of Astro Cross: Star Pioneer Koronis, then, lemme know if it interests you:
The Confederation of Stars is a multi-species interstellar polity. It has FTL, but only between two pre-established generators - the 'Stargate' model. The supplementary equipment and operating conditions of a Gate are large and sensitive enough that they have to be in space if they're to operate even remotely regularly, and setting up a Gate takes the resources of a major colony world. Microgates, capable of sending messages, can be made rather smaller - they can run off of terawatt fusion reactors rather than megascale orbital solar arrays, and structurally capable of supporting their own weight under a planetary gravity field - but are still much too large for a mobile construct massing less than a million tons to support unless that was absolutely all it was doing.
In the current day, the Confederation's members include all five species it has ever encountered, although there are some individual systems that have declined to join. The first two species to meet each other were the Sangrilani (who invented the Gates) and the Mtoket (who were in their Neolithic period when the Sangrilani expedition to their home system arrived). As the Mtoket's uplift was reaching its final stages, the two species ran into Humans, who had been in space for considerably longer than the Sangrilani but hadn't found a way to get their own take on the Gate concept working at the Mat-Trans level yet, instead resorting to massive coldsleep colonization ships with onboard terraforming capability. The Succubi are called that because their Bronze-age civilizations couldn't agree on one of the local ones and they found the comparison the Human xenoethnologists were making flattering, and the Kalima were in their equivalent of Earth's 1950s, with attendant risks.
All of the species bear fairly significant physical resemblances, within same the 'anime pretty blur zone' the Bluo occupy, although none of them are actually quite that close.
Humans are basically as we know ourselves, although generally fitter and prettier thanks to medical tinkering. As the other species are slighter in build, less enduring, and adapted to lighter gravity fields, Humans are the 'Big Guy' of the Standard Five Man Band, a la Elcor or Krogan.
Sangrilani top out at around 5' 7", and can be summed up as cold-blooded aquatic egg-laying space elves. They're stereotyped as 'The Hero', and have tended to use the environmental sex determination of their eggs to favor female births.
Mtoket can be up to 5' 10", and would be biologically closest to humans if not for the fact that they see through compound eyes placed around their torso and use sophisticated echolocation from dedicated 'directional ears' in their face for fine resolutions. Cliche presentations will cast them as 'The Smart Guy'.
Succubi over 5' 1" are unheard of, and look much as the name suggests - Vulcan-pointed ears, slight fangs, reddish cast skin, a prehensile tail, with spade, about as long as the individual's standing height (it's not just a tail), and very large, completely functional wings. Like Asari, they only have one sex but tend to read as female to other species, and are 'The Chick' pretty universally.
Kalima are up to 5' 9", and they have four arms. They also undergo lifestyle-related sex changes, like terrestrial wrasse, which were originally only female-to-male but have become reversible thanks to medical improvements. Their standard role is 'The Lancer'.
Although campaigns set elsewhere in the Confederation, against terrorist groups, Take-Over-The-World supervillains, or invasions by Non-Confederated Worlds would of course be possible, the default game would cast the players as members of the defensive forces of the Human-built colony ship Koronis. Forty-five miles long and seven and a half in diameter, the Koronis has founded dozens of colony worlds in its centuries-long voyage, supports a born-on-board population of about two hundred thousand, and still has billions of sleepers in its cryo-holds as it brakes from interstellar velocity into the outer reaches of the star system its crew has named Merope.
Merope is not uninhabited; the locals, the enigmatic Bugs, swarm in vast numbers, wielding metal-rending claws, powerful acids and venoms, railgun 'teeth' and blasts of light, electricity, and psychic energy. Their reasons and history are mysterious, at least to players going into the game, but it's quite obvious that intruders are Not Welcome.
To protect their home, player characters don the OPA-4 Pioneer 'battle armor', a transforming mecha-suit, modularly designed to allow use by all of the Confederation's member species and equipped with powerful psi-amplifiers, and must somehow beat back the waves of attackers long enough for their home and its precious cargo to escape.
And meanwhile, the ancient protein-computers of the PlanetMinds watch and wonder how this new element will change their long games against each other.
===========
===============================================
"V, did you do something foolish?"
"Yes, and it was glorious."
Quick summary of Astro Cross: Star Pioneer Koronis, then, lemme know if it interests you:
The Confederation of Stars is a multi-species interstellar polity. It has FTL, but only between two pre-established generators - the 'Stargate' model. The supplementary equipment and operating conditions of a Gate are large and sensitive enough that they have to be in space if they're to operate even remotely regularly, and setting up a Gate takes the resources of a major colony world. Microgates, capable of sending messages, can be made rather smaller - they can run off of terawatt fusion reactors rather than megascale orbital solar arrays, and structurally capable of supporting their own weight under a planetary gravity field - but are still much too large for a mobile construct massing less than a million tons to support unless that was absolutely all it was doing.
In the current day, the Confederation's members include all five species it has ever encountered, although there are some individual systems that have declined to join. The first two species to meet each other were the Sangrilani (who invented the Gates) and the Mtoket (who were in their Neolithic period when the Sangrilani expedition to their home system arrived). As the Mtoket's uplift was reaching its final stages, the two species ran into Humans, who had been in space for considerably longer than the Sangrilani but hadn't found a way to get their own take on the Gate concept working at the Mat-Trans level yet, instead resorting to massive coldsleep colonization ships with onboard terraforming capability. The Succubi are called that because their Bronze-age civilizations couldn't agree on one of the local ones and they found the comparison the Human xenoethnologists were making flattering, and the Kalima were in their equivalent of Earth's 1950s, with attendant risks.
All of the species bear fairly significant physical resemblances, within same the 'anime pretty blur zone' the Bluo occupy, although none of them are actually quite that close.
Humans are basically as we know ourselves, although generally fitter and prettier thanks to medical tinkering. As the other species are slighter in build, less enduring, and adapted to lighter gravity fields, Humans are the 'Big Guy' of the Standard Five Man Band, a la Elcor or Krogan.
Sangrilani top out at around 5' 7", and can be summed up as cold-blooded aquatic egg-laying space elves. They're stereotyped as 'The Hero', and have tended to use the environmental sex determination of their eggs to favor female births.
Mtoket can be up to 5' 10", and would be biologically closest to humans if not for the fact that they see through compound eyes placed around their torso and use sophisticated echolocation from dedicated 'directional ears' in their face for fine resolutions. Cliche presentations will cast them as 'The Smart Guy'.
Succubi over 5' 1" are unheard of, and look much as the name suggests - Vulcan-pointed ears, slight fangs, reddish cast skin, a prehensile tail, with spade, about as long as the individual's standing height (it's not just a tail), and very large, completely functional wings. Like Asari, they only have one sex but tend to read as female to other species, and are 'The Chick' pretty universally.
Kalima are up to 5' 9", and they have four arms. They also undergo lifestyle-related sex changes, like terrestrial wrasse, which were originally only female-to-male but have become reversible thanks to medical improvements. Their standard role is 'The Lancer'.
Although campaigns set elsewhere in the Confederation, against terrorist groups, Take-Over-The-World supervillains, or invasions by Non-Confederated Worlds would of course be possible, the default game would cast the players as members of the defensive forces of the Human-built colony ship Koronis. Forty-five miles long and seven and a half in diameter, the Koronis has founded dozens of colony worlds in its centuries-long voyage, supports a born-on-board population of about two hundred thousand, and still has billions of sleepers in its cryo-holds as it brakes from interstellar velocity into the outer reaches of the star system its crew has named Merope.
Merope is not uninhabited; the locals, the enigmatic Bugs, swarm in vast numbers, wielding metal-rending claws, powerful acids and venoms, railgun 'teeth' and blasts of light, electricity, and psychic energy. Their reasons and history are mysterious, at least to players going into the game, but it's quite obvious that intruders are Not Welcome.
To protect their home, player characters don the OPA-4 Pioneer 'battle armor', a transforming mecha-suit, modularly designed to allow use by all of the Confederation's member species and equipped with powerful psi-amplifiers, and must somehow beat back the waves of attackers long enough for their home and its precious cargo to escape.
And meanwhile, the ancient protein-computers of the PlanetMinds watch and wonder how this new element will change their long games against each other.
===========
===============================================
"V, did you do something foolish?"
"Yes, and it was glorious."