Blood of the Fallen Stars (Closed)

[Tezkat]

Welcome one and all! As you may have noticed, two space-empire-controlling RPs have been started at the same time. This is not a coincidence. Tezkat and Ghost were discussing ideas for an RP based on the premise of the players controlling an entire empire. This is where their similarities ended, and their differences of opinion on how to run the RP surfaced. Since both of them, of course, think their was is better, it was proposed that instead of endless hearsay and philosophical debate, they simply put their respective ideas to the test.

Both of these RPs have their intros below this paragraph in their respective threads. This is NOT a time for actually posting profiles. This is a dual call-for-interest contest. This 'contest' will run for two weeks, from today to Friday the 21st. Please read -both- of the threads and their respective introductions. Then, decide which one you like better, and state "I am interested in this RP" in whichever thread you like better. Please, do NOT post interest in both. The reason for this is that it is known the CMF roleplaying population is -extremely- low, and running both RPs simultaneously will likely put too much of a drain on the players, and may lead to the end of both. This is what has lead to this being a contest in the first place. The 'winning' RP is the one that has the most individual unambiguous statements on interest at the end of the two-week period. The other RP, in deference to the winner, will close down. However, that's only the expected outcome, and the other two possible outcomes have been accouned for as well. In the event that one "wins", but neither have enough interest to actually start (four players or less is the rule of thumb), then it will be accepted that the basic premise of both RPs is flawed, and neither will start. If both RPs tie with the same situation above, neither having enough interest to really start, tat will lead to the same situation. In the quite unlikely, but accounted for, event that both RPs tie -and- have enough individual interest each to start (five or more players, rule of thumb), then both RPs will begin, and signups will be unresricted, i.e., people who have already expressed interest in one RP may sing up for both if they wish.

And without any further ado, You Be The Judge, roleplayer. Read both threads, and decide which one you think is better. Happy roleplaying!

BLOOD OF THE FALLEN STARS


They came from beyond the rim.

Like a Swarm of locusts blotting out the sky, they descended on your worlds. Your forces fought as bravely as they could, but for each one you destroyed, a thousand took their place. The enemy was merciless. Unrelenting. Unstoppable.

In the end, you had no choice but to abandon your homes. You gathered survivors, salvaged as much of your resources and technology as possible, and fled coreward, away from the carnage. A once proud civilization reduced to a convoy of homeless refugees.

The same bloody story was retold a hundred times on a hundred worlds across the Outer Rim. The ending never changed. Those who stayed to fight died. The rest scattered across the stars. Those with the courage to look back beheld the horror of their homeworlds being carved up for scrap. The blood and sweat of generations vanished, nothing more than food for the Swarm.

And now, it seems, your flight is at an end. The heavily militarized borders of two warring factions bar further progress through the sector. Some members of the Confederacy of Free Worlds have offered you sanctuary within their territories in return for military aid against their enemies. The Vox Imperium, for their part, will grant you the status of valued slaves should you surrender. Neither seems inclined to allow potentially hostile aliens into their space otherwise.

Will you take sides and put down roots in this sector? Will you backtrack and try to make a new home on one of the worlds you passed on your way? Will you try to circle around inhabited regions, adding years to your journey without knowing what lies beyond? Or will you try to sneak, sweet talk, or muscle your way through? And could you ever hope to convince these people that their domestic squabbles mean nothing in the face of an enemy that devours entire worlds?

The fate of your entire race--perhaps even your entire galaxy--rests in your hands.

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Welcome to Blood of the Fallen Stars, an RP where you take the reins of an entire spacefaring civilization... or what's left of it, at least. You roleplay the leader(s) of your people and anyone sent to negotiate with other races, be that with words or with nukes. You begin the game with no homeworlds or colonies (unless you want to take sides at character creation), only the proverbial clothes on your backs and enough resources to make a fresh start. The task falls on you to restore your race to its former glory, ever wary of the Threat looming on the horizon.


Race creation follows a rudimentary stat system in which you describe your race's characteristics according to nine general attributes:

LEADERSHIP
How does your race structure its government and chain of command? How effectively does it maintain order, efficiency, or morale? How well do teams cooperate and coordinate activities? What technologies support their control systems? From bloated bureaucracies playing broken telephone with their troops to hive minds that move a thousand ships as one, Leadership is about getting things done.

ADAPTABILITY
What was your race's homeworld like? How do their unique physiologies (or lack thereof, in the case of machine intelligences or energy beings) tolerate environmental variability? What tools have they developed for controlling the habitability of their surroundings? How do they maintain their health and grow their populations? Adaptability determines where your race can survive without life support and how easily they colonize new worlds.

KNOWLEDGE
Knowledge is power... if you use it wisely. How does your race gather, preserve, and protect it? Do they have any special senses or sensor technologies? What priorities drive their scientists?

XENOTECH
Universal translation is a given. Universal understanding is not. Are your diplomats securing peace treaties or inadvertently starting wars through cultural faux pas? Do you have agents collecting intelligence on other races and spreading propaganda about your own? How much will you invest in learning how to use--and how to beat--alien technologies? Whether you're developing trade routes or electronic countermeasures, Xenotech is essential for dealing with other races.

PRODUCTION
Ultimately, all life and civilization boils down to transforming raw materials and energy into something useful. Whether they build things in factories, grow them from seeds, or conjure them out of pure energy, Production measures the potential output of your race. (Other factors like the number and size of your colonies, once you establish them, will heavily influence total productivity.) What kind of economy and industries do they have?

PROPULSION
Propulsion is the science of getting from point A to point B. There can be as many different ways to break the lightspeed barrier as there are races. Do yours warp space, travel through hyperspace dimensions, or something else entirely? How do they handle tactical movement? Do they emphasize speed or maneuverability?

WEAPONS
Laser cannons, proton torpedoes, giant robots with beamswords... all of these and more are Weapons. What are the toys in your arsenal, their strengths and limitations?

DEFENCE
How strong are your shields? How tough are your hulls? Do you employ active defence grids? What about exotic technologies like cloaking devices? What kinds of attacks do you prioritize defending? The various means of soaking and mitigating damage fall under Defence.

INFANTRY
Fleet battles get all the glory, but it's Infantry that wins wars. How does your race handle colony invasions and boarding operations? Perhaps they're a race of natural killing machines. Perhaps they sit back and let droids do their dirty work. Which segments of the population are trained to fight? What kind of antipersonnel technologies do they field?

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Attributes will reflect your race's playstyle. There are no unimportant attributes, merely differing priorities and paths to a goal. Say you need more dakka, because there's never enough of that. Will you have better guns? That's Weapons. More guns? That's Production. More people firing at once? That's Leadership. Bigger armies? Probably Adaptability. All of the above? Well... that's also doable, but no advantage comes without a price. The higher you reach, the less grounded you'll be.

An abstract rating from 1 (Poor) to 5 (Amazing) accompanies each attribute. They all start at 3 (Good) by default, and you can reallocate points (lowering one to raise another) as you see fit.

1 - Poor
2 - Fair
3 - Good
4 - Excellent
5 - Amazing

Ratings help compare vastly different alien technologies. Can your hyperdrives outrace their slipstream engines? Can your photonic missiles defeat their ultraphasic barriers? Even then, there's wiggle room within ratings. Maybe your hyperdrives sacrifice interstellar speed for tactical agility. Maybe their ultraphasic barriers being particularly good or bad against missiles can make up a small difference in levels. Specialization may result in performance above or below nominal ratings in certain circumstances. It's all about tradeoffs.

Lowering ratings introduces limitations or vulnerabilities. Raising them creates areas where your race stands above the pack. Even a Poor rating isn't necessarily handicapping, but it will create challenges for you to overcome. Conversely, Amazing ratings are impressive but never unbeatable.

Say you drop your race's Adaptability to Poor to shift focus elsewhere. That might mean a dependency on exotic breathing gases. Or perhaps they're cold blooded and can only tolerate narrow temperature ranges. Maybe alien microbes will collapse their immune systems. Whatever the reason, they're normally secure in the safety of their starships. But damage to life support which would leave hardier races breathing room to enact repairs might be immediately life threatening. And environmental issues will present challenges to away missions, colony building, and diplomatic ventures--all of which can influence the long term viability of your civilization.

Some technologies transcend even Amazing levels and won't be in the hands of player races without significant drawbacks. You could build a planet killer, for instance, but in practice it would sap years worth of production, have limited use, and be vulnerable to kids slipping by your downsized fleets to drop a torpedo down the exhaust port. Likewise, stargates that instantly traverse interstellar distances should drain a large chunk of colony incomes and perhaps carry other limitations. Such toys are normally meant for older, established empires.

[Tezkat]

Sound fun so far?

Here's an example of a race created using the above system, one of the many interesting aliens you'll meet in this RP.


SAMPLE RACE: TRIBES OF THE COLLECTED SHARDS

The first of the refugee races to arrive in this sector, the colourful roaming caravans of Tribes have been a fixture of the Free Worlds for years. They are collective intelligences composed of small telepathic creatures known as Shards (a name coined when a Confederate researcher poetically described them as being "like shards of hologram that remember the whole"). The four to ten Shards that make up an individual Tribe each have only simple, childlike minds, but bonded together they form an advanced spacefaring race.


LEADERSHIP (LEVEL 5 - AMAZING)
Tribes employ living, telepathic technology. A nomadic people, each Tribe treats their ship not only as a travelling home but an extension of their bodies. They're quite social and maintain telepathic contact with any other Tribes in the area. They have no centralized government. Decision making typically consists of all Tribes within range debating an issue until they reach consensus. That's not necessarily as chaotic as it sounds, given that they can literally share each others' points of view. In combat, Tribes fully relinquish individuality, merging into a Battle Tribe in which hundreds of ships become the hands of a single superintelligence. Such joinings rarely outlast the battle itself, as maintaining these intense connections risks serious personality damage.

ADAPTABILITY (LEVEL 2 - FAIR)
Shards are semiaquatic predators about the size of a housecat. Through generations of spaceflight and genetic engineering, they've developed a symbiotic dependency on their ships. Although they can survive outside for extended periods in oxygenated atmosphere or water, they must return to their ship's nutrient baths to rest and regenerate. Population growth is limited. As Tribes are effectively immortal, imprinting identities on new generations even after a complete turnover of Shards, they see Shard reproduction more in terms of extending their own lives than growing the race as a whole. The have no permanent colonies in this sector.

KNOWLEDGE (LEVEL 4 - EXCELLENT)
Tribal technologies mirror the holographic nervous systems of their Shards, allowing them to easily store and transfer memories. Many Tribes have personal memories dating back centuries, even millenia, to say nothing of the ones borrowed from others, and they rely heavily on tools to search, index, and generally keep their minds in order. They typically treat scientific research more as a hobby than directed, results-oriented R&D.

Their most notable long range sensor technology maps the entropic shadows that all mass projects onto local spacetime. It's FTL and extremely accurate but not very precise, so while it can effectively detect the presence and movement of objects (even defeating some cloaking devices), identification depends on slower, more traditional sensors. Networks of sensor nodes can monitor everything moving through a region of normal space.

XENOTECH (LEVEL 3 - GOOD)
Tribal telepathy rarely works with other races without significant technological intervention, presenting serious challenges in translating their experience for the lonely "Tribes of One" in alien civilizations. They regularly frustrate diplomats with a failure to grasp the nature of hierarchical government. Nonetheless, their friendly, curious natures tend to make cultural misunderstandings seem more charming than insulting. Tribes enjoy collecting and taking apart alien technology to see what makes it tick, although interoperability with their own telepathic systems remains somewhat limited. Their fleets migrate from system to system, trading in raw materials, salvage, cultural artifacts, and information. They've earned a reputation as eccentric junk dealers, and their often unpredictable notions of value bring all sorts of deal seekers to their markets. (Famously, they once traded a salvaged warship for an art history database.) Tribes avoid military conflicts when possible, but many hire themselves out as scouts for border worlds.

PRODUCTION (LEVEL 1 - POOR)
Tribal modularity extends not only to their Shards but their ships as well. Multiple ships can physically combine and reconfigure themselves for specific purposes. As the ships merge, so too do their resident Tribes. Although temporary joinings (as in battle) are common, stable marriages are rare. They're also permanent; breaking apart a long term collective is quite traumatic for the newly divorced Tribes. Tribes grow most personal tools aboard their own ships, but only a stable queen can support the multivessel hives needed to nurture new ships to maturity. Their scarcity greatly limits large scale production.

PROPULSION (LEVEL 5 - AMAZING)
Blink Drives can instantly teleport a ship thousands of kilometers through space. The moment before the ship appears, its "shadow" destabilizes any matter about to be displaced. Rarefied interplanetary space poses little threat, but larger quantities of matter can release enough energy to seriously damage the ship on arrival. Travelling in a straight line, thousands of blinks per second can cross interstellar distances in days. Tactical movement involves fewer, more measured blinks with complex direction changes. Reaction thrusters based on deliberate matter destabilization provide atmospheric propulsion and compensation for impacts or gravity (since blink movement is inertialess).

WEAPONS (LEVEL 3 - GOOD)
Entropic Destabilizers, a weaponized application of the Blink Drive, project blink shadows onto enemy vessels, effectively converting portions of their hulls into energy bombs. Although devastating to unshielded targets, strong energy fields inhibit blink shadow formation, so most shields offer complete protection. Shields must be slowly whittled away by blinking in reaction mass beyond the field to detonate with a second shadow--tantamount to trying to kill someone with warning shots, albeit surprisingly effective with a hundred ships focusing fire.

DEFENCE (LEVEL 2 - FAIR)
As one of the few races with solid tactical FTL capabilities, the Tribes rely heavily on extreme maneuverability and the difficulty targeting systems have in tracking a rapidly teleporting target. They have decent shields and self-regenerating hulls, but their vessels are otherwise rather fragile, even in multiship gestalts.

INFANTRY (LEVEL 2 - FAIR)
Shards are small and relatively weak. Their own shipboard habitats are fairly secure and too cramped for most alien marines. Tribes have telepathically bonded drones acting as extra sets of eyes and hands. They carry personal barrier shields. Their big guns aren't effective inside atmospheres, and most close quarters weapons are just repurposed tools, like cutters or plasma torches. Nonetheless, their FTL nervous systems boast faster reaction times than many computers, and most Tribes can draw on centuries of tactical experience.

[Railock]

Since I just got this forum account to start participating in these rp's...As I said I would, I vote for both and will happily play in either or both should such a happy event of them starting take place.  So...I want to rule an empire, count me in!

[Cogidubnus]

This looks really cool, but I don't think I'm nearly clever enough for this. I do find it quite interesting, however.

[Azlan]

I share the same sentiments as Cog, and am far less clever then he is.  It strikes me that you lads should bend your skills towards writing a good strategy and empire building game.  Do you know Niall Shapero by any chance?

[Arcalane]

's not that complicated, you silly gits.

[Corgatha Taldorthar]

It looks reasonably interesting. Is there any sort of baseline, however, as to what the various scores in the abilities mean or represent? If I have a fully nomadic species, who have a fairly tight environmental requirements but are fully capable of keeping those more or less indefinitely on their ships that they now live on, where does that fall on adaptability? Does that make me a 2-3ish or a 5?


Also, how "hard" of a sci-fi setting is this? Will our weapons have to deal with more or less realistic physics? For your own sample race, I was left unclear as to how able they'd be to detect say, an incoming laser weapon fired at them, since some of their sensors could "report back" FTL, while others couldn't.

[Ghostwish]

Not clever enough? You're selling yourself short man. It's not that hard, after all. You just think about it one step at a time. Basic concept, stats, execute! Here, lemme post up my race as an example.

Ra'Kuul

There is no word for 'subtle' in their language.

The Ra'Kuul (Rah-cool) are a large, carnivorous species of hot-blooded reptiles. The male stands an average of nine feet tall with a broad, powerful chest, two arms, two legs, and then a tail about as half as long as they are tall. While roughly humanoid in configuration, the hand, a massive clawed thing, sports one thumb and five fingers, all ending in deadly, retractable claws. The head, perched atop a thick neck, appears to be naught but muzzle with nostrils perched on top from the front, although the side profile reveals the six, hexagonal arrangement eyes ranging in color from yellow to orange to red, and the large, extendable frill of bright oranges and reds that would serve as hair in a human but only serves as an intimidation factor with the Ra'Kuul. The entire body is covered in thick, flexible, scarlet scales that serve as both a second skin.. and a suit of armor. Combined with the razor sharp scarlet talons on their hands and feet, and their three rows of pearly white serrated teeth, the male is a variable engine of destruction.

The female is nearly twice his size and ten times as mean. It shouldn't come as a surprise that the Ra'Kuul are by large and part a matriarchal race.

The Ra'Kuul have been warriors for as long as their written history has existed. They started off as extreme survivors on the incredibly hostile biosphere of the massive planet, Ra. On Ra, everything and anything is trying to kill you. A lot. And the only time it isn't is when it is trying to kill something else, but stay on your toes because some of them multitask! This is the world that shaped and raised the Ra'Kuul, a hot, steamy jungle planet filled with death, disease, death, predators, death, and a lot of death.

The Ra'Kuul, however, were exemplary in their evolution. Not only did they manage to fight, claw, and nuke their way to the top of the food-chain, but during their development they also forged out an iron-clad sense of honor, and also managed to stick themselves squarely on the path of the warrior. The history was covered in blood, conquest, and triumph, but you'll find the stories strangely lacking of the suffering, slaughter and mistreatment of civilians. It seemed the Ra'Kuul had hammered out a true sense of honor, and not some silly tack-on excuse of the privileged. Even their wars were apparently agreed upon beforehand, with clearly stated boundaries and rules. Honor had pervaded their very society to its core, and result in efficient, deadly, yet moral killing machines.

The Ra'Kuul culture is simple enough. Their religion revolves around worshiping their ancestors, their music is punctuated heavily by percussion, particularly the sound of a struck anvil, and their language has many clicks, hisses, and even some growling in it. Everything in their society hinges on honor, from the great King all the way down to the rank and file soldier. Also, unlike many warrior societies, the worker caste is not down-trodden. Simply because all Ra'Kuul are warriors, and anything that is not fighting is basically seen as preparation for the next fight. They approach all manner of labor with the same discipline and focus they march into battle with.

The command structure looks like it would fly apart at a passing glance, what with being made up of different 'tribes' and 'clans' they must come to an agreement for the race as a whole to move, but it is surprisingly efficient when put the test. Apparently, all of the Ra'Kuul politicians are also warriors, and also approach diplomacy with the same discipline and focus that they march to battle with. Who would have thought that would work?

Also, in a very odd turn of events, a strange child was born to the Ra'Kuul. It's apparently a recessive trait of sorts, but it is so rare and so difficult to trace that the Ra'Kuul are a bit baffled about it.. but ever so rarely, a male, albino Ra'Kuul is born. The Ra'Kuul see this as a spiritual sign of a great leader, and are quick to nominate the purple male as the singular leader of all the different Ra'Kuul factions. Prince Dac'Ka was born.

However, he came of age and power right as the Swarm arrived.. The Ra'Kuul dubbed them 'Locusts'. The fight for their homeworld was brutal to the very end, all the way up to when, in a fit of angry spite, the last defenders detonated the planet's core, refusing to allow the Locusts any victory at all. The Ra'Kuul knew their home was gone beyond a doubt, and had struck out as pilgrims to a new world.

Tentative reaction to the Confederacy of Free Worlds would likely be a polite (as polite as a snarling lizard can get) refusal, the Ra'Kuul simply stating that their tribes are their own, and they will find a new home.

Tentative reaction to the Vox Empire: Probably violent. Only beaten and down-trodden races are enslaved, and then only for their own good, so this offer probably came across as an insult.

Right, now for stats. Copying this for quick reference.
1 - Poor
2 - Fair
3 - Good
4 - Excellent
5 - Amazing

LEADERSHIP (LEVEL 3 - Average) Some great aspects with a few Achilles heels.
Ra'Kuul have superb fleet control, able to field a large number of ships efficiently and quickly, with excellent synergy between different ship classes. However, when it comes to home administration, they tend to chaff a bit with each other. Large, overly dominant females often bicker over politics, and there's often infighting. Also, there are many who contest the current leader, Prince Dac'Ka.
ADAPTABILITY (LEVEL 3 - Average) Much like leadership. Great and powerful.. but a few gaping holes..
The Ra'Kuul are the super predators from planet Ra, all but immune to disease and easily one of the most dangerous species in the galaxy, and there's very little short of a planet made of acid that will keep them from attempting to establish a foothold. Their terraforming technology can be described as efficient, persistent, and effective, but there's a terrible catch. The Ra'Kuul are super predators.. which means they have a -voracious- appetite. They must have large worlds to colonize, for pastures with which to grow and slaughter their food, or at least a viable bio-sphere ripe with prey. Anything else will require constantly supplies from one of these two suitable scenarios.
KNOWLEDGE (LEVEL 1 - Poor) Slow, but stubbornly persistent.
The Ra'Kuul approach everything with discipline and honor.. which.. in some ways.. can be called very single-minded (although not to their muzzle, mind you). Thus, their research into new technology, while taken as seriously as war, tends to be a bit hampered by the fact their culture is somewhat limited, and thus their trains of thought are a bit monotonous. Regardless, if they set their minds to a goal in research, they will get it. Eventually.
XENOTECH (LEVEL 1 - Poor) Sometimes, honesty is a bad thing...
The Ra'Kuul are honest to a fault. To be blunt, they ARE blunt. They also have very little understanding (or patience) for corruption or the more obtuse politics some species engage in. With something isn't decided upon quickly, Ra'Kuul tend to get impatient, angsty, and, ultimately, violent. Also, lacking a word for subtlety, they can come across as very crass and sometimes outright insulting. While they do have an appreciation for art, music, and forms of dance (and these can often be used as chips in a bargain) this does very little to balance out their cons. Their one-track minds also makes their understanding of xenotech very poor, which is explained later on.
PRODUCTION (LEVEL 4 - Excellent) Busy, busy, busy 'little' lizards.
Ra'Kuul are very dutiful in their chores, and have a robust, adaptable economy to show for it.. if you gloss over the fact the economy is basically a war factory. The Ra'Kuul can mass produce anything needed on the field of war, from weapons to medicine, from ships to armor, and do it without any fuss or barking over costs.
PROPULSION (LEVEL 1 - Poor) Chugga chugga choo choo!
Ra'Kuulian ships tend to be a bit on the slow side, weighted down by their armor and guns, and also by the fact they're also quite large. Now, where FTL is concerned, the spin-up time for their hyperdrive system is a tad bit long, but once underway, it's nothing terribly appalling or amazing. It works, it's efficient, and it moves along at a decent clip. Apparently, the brain child of a previous albino male.
WEAPONS (LEVEL 5 - Amazing) BOOM.
Pray to whatever deity or concept you worship if you find yourself in the sights of a Ra'Kuul type 34 Skull-Crack cannon. The Ra'Kuul have refined the design of the kinetic, mass-launching gun into an art form complete with its own museum and gift shop. The Ra'Kuul have always appreciated the statement 'overkill' and it seems tobe the design precedent of their warships. They can stack more guns, bigger guns, and deadlier guns onto their ship than many would think possible. As it stands, short-range combat and point defense is handled by rotary guns, and long-range packed with punch is handled by large artillery style guns. Currently, the Ra'Kuul are working on rail-gun technology, but many are debating the idea of a flak system to better handle the Swarm. It stands to note that Ra'Kuul only have kinetic weapon tech. Their missiles serve as ECM, mimicing the ship they are launched from, and it has never occurred to them to try and hit their enemies with the very lasers they use to shape their hulls.
DEFENSE (LEVEL 4 - Excellent) Was that supposed to hurt?
Ra'Kuul use armor, more armor, and then some armor beneath that armor. They have nothing in the way of shields, and with the defenses mentioned in the weapons section, you can quickly get a grasp of what their defensive tactics consist of. There is also the robust construction of their ships to consider. To put it simply, the ships mirror the stubbornness of their constructors so well that there is nary such a thing as a crippled Ra'Kuul vessel. That is called 'debris'.
INFANTRY (LEVEL 5 - Amazing) Melee combat with these guys? Might as well kill yourself.
Eons of warfare have tempered the Ra'Kuul soldier into the perfect fighting machine. Everything between defense and offense is mastered to a pinnacle, and the huge size and nay invincible nature of the beasts themselves only compounds this fact many, many times. To put it simply, if the Ra'Kuul board you, or make landfall, it is going to take a LOT to come out of that conflict alive.  In defensive considerations, practically everything they make was made in a tactical mindset. So their ships are like fortresses, their cities are practically one bunker after another, even their laboratories have defensive positions!

[Tezkat]

It looks reasonably interesting. Is there any sort of baseline, however, as to what the various scores in the abilities mean or represent? If I have a fully nomadic species, who have a fairly tight environmental requirements but are fully capable of keeping those more or less indefinitely on their ships that they now live on, where does that fall on adaptability? Does that make me a 2-3ish or a 5?

Given the amount of creative freedom players have, the benchmark is to ask yourself: In practice, will these features advantage or disadvantage me? If the benefits outweigh the limitations, it's a net rating increase. If the limitations dominate, it's a net decrease. Ratings don't really mean anything mechanical. They're intended to provide a framework for considering racial balance and allowing players to compare the relative strengths of their technologies.

In other words, it's not about this...

"I fire my cruiser's main ion cannons at the mothership."
"Alright. You score a direct hit on their starboard shields. Roll damage dice equal to your Weapons rating."

... but rather this...

"Captain, those are Class 5 shield generators. Our ion cannons are having no effect!"
"Damnit! If we don't stop that mothership, the colonists will never make it past this blockade. Engineering: Give me ramming speed!"


If you asked me, for instance, how fast your ships will go at Propulsion 5, my answer would be: They move at the speed of plot. For storytelling purposes, the exact acceleration of your ships should be less important than the fact that they'll get there before everyone else because that's what they're good at. Just so that everyone's in the same ballpark, however, I will say that interstellar journeys are normally supposed to take days to weeks (in the neighbourhood of a lightyear per day). Ship combat usually takes place at a significant fraction of lightspeed, since maneuverability and weaponry are both limited at FTL.


Adaptability incorporates several related components:

- Biological (or equivalent) factors affecting ability to project influence onto the outside world
- Ability to expand into environments capable of providing the resources and space needed for sustenance and growth
- Health of the population (in a demographic sense as well as a medical one)

Together, these factors add up to provide a rough indication of the challenges to your race's survival. With your homeworld(s) gone, your little fleet is all that's left standing in the way of complete extinction. Adaptability feeds into all aspects of your civilization. The more easily you can grow and care for your people, the larger your workforce, the larger your armies, and the greater the strain on your adminstrative system.

It's assumed that all spacefaring races have sufficiently advanced life support and recycling to keep people alive for interstellar flights, though some may require more frequent stops to replenish resources than others.

A "baseline" race is generally good to go if they can survive somewhere on a world with liquid water (most of which will have oxidizing atmospheres if home to complex life). Chances of finding a "perfect" world that's just like home are slim, and aliens walking around with breathers are a common sight on the more cosmopolitan planets. If your race is merely picky about its atmospheric mix and wears filters to let only the right amounts in, that's usually more of a quirk than a limitation. On the other hand, if you require a rare element to catalyze metabolism, and portable tanks only carry a few hours supply, that's a significant limitation, because it limits the amount of time you can spend outside safe habitats and creates potential challenges related to replenishing your supplies. By contrast, if your people commonly sport implants to convert various hostile atmospheres into breathable air, that's a significant edge.

Obviously, the weirder your race concept, the more challenging it will be to fudge ratings. If your race can't set foot on terrestrial worlds but is native to gas giants, that's probably a net benefit if they can easily set up shop on common worlds other people aren't using.

If you plan to play a nomadic race, it's important to explain why they refuse to put down roots and reap the benefits of an established colony. What is their strategy for maintenance and rebuilding? Are they following the hyperspace buffalo? Do they stop to strip mine a world and then move on? Do they depend entirely on trade with friendly races? A nomadic race that never leaves their ships because they no longer need to may surpass even Adaptability 5 if they've transcended mere mortal concerns for the resources that everyone else will be fighting over.

Also, how "hard" of a sci-fi setting is this? Will our weapons have to deal with more or less realistic physics? For your own sample race, I was left unclear as to how able they'd be to detect say, an incoming laser weapon fired at them, since some of their sensors could "report back" FTL, while others couldn't.

Physics should get dinner and a movie before you have your way with it. The underlying universe functions more or less according to our limited 21st century scientific understanding, but you can concoct whatever phlebotinum you need to justify your sufficiently advanced technology or weird biology so long as you're consistent.

As to whether the Tribes could sense and dodge laser beams anime style, I'd say no. That would be kinda overpowered. Just as radar on fighter jets isn't designed for evading autocannon fire, Tribal FTL sensors are geared for a different purpose. Granted, certain attacks may be detectable, depending on descriptors. And if they saw you pointing a laser turret at them, they could certainly run away, and no lightspeed beam could catch them (unless they inadvertently blinked into it).

I might add that most races will have sensors attuned to whatever FTL technologies they use. So with Star Trek style warp drives, they can follow warp signatures. With B5 style hyperspace travel, they can detect jump points forming. And so on.

[Corgatha Taldorthar]

Race: Katashi

The Katashi were one of the first races to lose their Homeworld to the Threat. Even in their earliest histories, it had been the herdsmen and their descendants that had dominated the societies, and when it became clear that Homeworld could not be defended, they packed up what they could, and fled to another planet some 15 light years coreward. Half a generation later, the Threat found their sanctuary, and the Katashi fled again. After four of such cycles, the Katashi realized that only the dark depths of space were safe, and strip mined worlds and asteroids in their path to construct a gigantic Worldship, capable of housing many, many of their people more or less indefinitely. They now live mostly as a kind of horde, stealing resources or technology when they can, and disappearing into space when they cannot.

Leadership 2 (fair)

The Katashi are run by a military junta. In theory, there's a High Commander who rules from the first Worldship, and orders are passed along the chain of command. In practice, individual  ship captains, especially of the larger capital ships, are essentially vassal kings to a high king. They tend to go off on raids and trades on their own, although there is some cohesiveness in the society; Katashi almost never fight one another, and generally don't stray too far out of contact with the Worldship.

Adaptability 3 (good)

The Katashi are humanoid, and have a fairly strict Nitrogen-oxygen atmospheric need, and a necessity for temperatures that require liquid water and a gravity fairly within 1g. However, their ships are climate controlled, and it is very rare for Katashi to leave them. Rotating sections provides artificial gravity, recycling systems are very advanced. Larger ships maintain hydroponic gardens for food and solar panels are often stuck on vessels not expecting combat for extra energy intake. Raw materials are obtained by overrunning  undefended or  under-defended worlds and stripped of any useful resources. Asteroid belts are often mined for metals, and nebuale are used to harvest hydrogen for fusion reactors.

Knowledge 3 (good)

Katashi maintain extensive computer libraries on their ships and have holographic projections that can communicate through hyperspace. Their ability to detect things faster than lightand through hyperspace is limited. They can usually pick up something is coming and from what direction it is, but not how many or how fast they're coming.

Research is highly motivated among the Katashi, and they're very good at adapting new technology, or at the very least making copies of something they've captured. However, individual ships again tend to operate as separate fiefdoms, and cooperation between them is not always the best unless there's some emergency binding them together. As a result, a lot of research effort is wastefully duplicated and it is not uncommon for technological trades to occur between ships to find that they actually knew what the other ship was offering. Katashi science is very concerned about practical, short term goals. They don't do a lot of resarch into things like pure physics or math.

Xenotech 2 (fair)

Katashi are somewhat able to communicate with other species, but they tend to have a nasty reputation of people who have heard of them and tend to be openly Machiavellian. They don't really believe in friends or enemies, only interests that are to be defended. Their goals are also pretty open. More metals, more biomass, to be able to build more ships and expand their population, spiraling into infinity. They're generally pretty willing to deal, although they have little compunction about stabbing their trading partners in the back the second they stop being useful.

Production 5 (amazing)

Every Katashi extra-capital ship is a factory as well. While a new Worldship would need to be constructed with some kind of impromptu docking facility on a planet, a Worldship contains the abilities to construct other capital ships, and most capital ships can construct strike craft. Some of the larger corvettes can even build their own munitions, provided raw materials are available. Several worlds have fallen, thinking that the incoming Katashi siege fleet might be able to blockade them, and not defeat them, only to find that after a month mining out the asteroids in the system, there are now twice as many ships facing them.

Propulsion 2  (fair)

Katashi capital ships are forced to use a dual-engine system, one for Hyperspace jumps, and a second in normal space. The Hyperspace jump bends a little tear in the fabric of realspace, which the ship slips through to emerge somewhere else. Travel is fairly reliable, with ships generally emerging within a few hundred thousand kilometers of where they aimed at, but it's rather slow. The Katashi are generally not in any huge hurry to get anywhere though, so it's a problem that hasn't been a high priority for their researchers. Realspace engines use more or less classic Newtonian physics. Bigger ships accelerate and decelerate more slowly, and often have trouble turning. Both engines are fusion based, and Katashi fleets generally are interested in where all the nearby nebulae are in case they need to go grab more fuel.

Strike craft, on the other hand, are too small for fusion reactors, (and the radioactivity would be murder), and generally resort to some kind of chemical reaction, usually a liquid oxygen based engine. This keeps them bound to the capital ships for both refueling and the ability to carry them through hyperspace.

Weapons 4 (excellent)

The most common Katashi shipboard weapon is a mass driver of some sort, noting that when it comes down to it, accelerating a piece of metal really, really fast, is a good way to break something. Missiles are somewhat common, especially on the larger capital ships (Generally, they convert sensor probes, taking out the sensory package and putting in something that blows up), and energy lances are uncommon but hardly unheard of, although limited to the larger vessels that have the room to put a large needle shaped firing platform in the spine somewhere.

Katashi targeting systems though, are where they really excel. Because of their entire species focus of "waste not, want not." Katashi prefer to capture hostile ships as intact as possible, both for research and for scavenging. Towards that end, they develop and install advanced targeting computers, capable of not only tracking and scoring hits, but of determining where the weapons and engine ports on a hostile vessel are, and striking to specifically disable those systems, securing them for capture when a boarding frigate attaches itself and fires up the factory systems.



Defense 3 (good)

Strike craft are mostly expected to defend themselves with speed, maneuverability, and ECM and chaff, but tend to be vulnerable to actually getting hit. Katashi do not have any kind of energy shield defenses, but make up for it by heavily armoring their capital ships, often with multiple belts of armor plate and redundant systems to switch over if something got damaged to keep anything important running. Capital ships have the facilities and crew to build and apply armor repair and replacement in the heat of battle though, and provided sufficient materials are available and no crew was lost, a badly damaged frigate or destroyer can often be brought back up to full battle readiness in a few days. Their ECM is also very strong, and while they often move in fairly predictable trajectories, it can sometimes be hard to convince a targeting computer that is actually the case.

Infantry 3  (good)

While a few teams of elite commandos do exist, in general, the Katashi do not fight hand to hand. Instead, cheap, mass produced "wheelies" basically a small armored frame with some weapon stuck on (usually a light machine gun or something similar) are sent en masse to repel invaders when their own ships are boarded, or to carry out boarding actions of their own. In addition, Katashi capital ships tend to be modular, and it is not hard to seal sections off from the bridge and then vent the atmosphere.






I'll put up some more history and maybe a few sample ship designs, but I'm out of time right now.


EDIT 10/21/2011

Changes made to Propulsion section.

[Cogidubnus]

Race: Katashi

I'm kind of reminded of space mongols, for whatever reason.

[AmberCross]

So this is something I've actually been interested in and have had my eye on for a while. I have most of a species outline worked out, but my main concern is that the plot is so open ended right now. I've already got a random 'you control many minions and can do whatever you want' RP (aka Halleluyah) so my question is this: What will I get out of this that I'm not getting in the god thread? If you can come up with something convincing enough, I'll probably join.

[Tezkat]

Some interesting race proposals...

Do keep in mind that the time hasn't yet come for submitting character applications. Since there does seem to be enough interest to go ahead with at least one space RP, the purpose of this contest is to decide whether you guys prefer my or Ghostwish's visions of how such a game should proceed. Mind you, we don't have enough interest for either game to be viable yet, so if you'd really like some kind of space race game to happen, please show us your support by expressing interest in at least one of our RPs. The contest officially ends Friday.

Propulsion 2  (fair)

Katashi capital ships are forced to use a dual-engine system, one for Hyperspace jumps, and a second in normal space. The Hyperspace jump is a brief hop through, and can generally move between 10-30 light years at a time. Jumps under the 10 year minimum are very tricky to achieve, and "backing away" from a target is common, although this represents a massive drain on the engines. Realspace engines use more or less classic Newtonian physics. Bigger ships accelerate and decelerate more slowly, and often have trouble turning. Both engines are fusion based, and Katashi fleets generally are interested in where all the nearby nebulae are in case they need to go grab more fuel.

Hmm... I'd need to know more about the limitations of your hyperspace drive before accepting something like that. As I mentioned earlier, a 30 light year trip is normally expected to take around a month--faster or slower depending on tech levels, of course. Depending on tradeoffs, aggregate speed should average out to something in that general range (including recharge times or being forced to take the scenic route to a target). This is a war story--or at least a story set against the backdrop of interstellar warfare on a galactic scale--and the ability to beat a hostile fleet to any given destination represents an enormous competitive advantage.

As indicated in the opening post, instantaneous travel between stars (or anything that takes less than a day, really) is normally ascendant level tech (beyond Propulsion 5), but a BSG or Mechwarrior style jump drive could be reasonable if it takes a very long time to calculate coordinates and/or recharge for a new jump--i.e. getting there first in exchange for being screwed if the destination is more "interesting" than expected. Something that could cross tens of lightyears in a single trip should be even more constrained--at least requiring a lengthy refueling stop between jumps.

So this is something I've actually been interested in and have had my eye on for a while. I have most of a species outline worked out, but my main concern is that the plot is so open ended right now. I've already got a random 'you control many minions and can do whatever you want' RP (aka Halleluyah) so my question is this: What will I get out of this that I'm not getting in the god thread? If you can come up with something convincing enough, I'll probably join.

This RP isn't about controlling minions. Your race is your character. Your people are its hands, your ships its legs, your diplomats its voice. It's your job to give personality to an entire civilization. You'll create the face of this scarred, weary traveller who escaped the frying pan only to wander into a wall of fire. But at least you aren't dinner. Yet. 

And it's not about doing whatever you want, either. At times, you'll have to pay a heavy price to seize control of your own destiny. Your little survivor fleet is but a small player in a grand opera spanning thousands of stars. But even the ripples of a single pebble will eventually touch the entire pond...

[Arcalane]

"The avalanche has already started. It is too late for the pebbles to vote." — Kosh

I have a couple of ideas in the works, although I've been busy with other things lately.

In order of creation;
Concept #1: Keepers
Concept #2: Nomads (Current favourite)
Concept #3: Knights of the Adamant Star (Second favourite)

[Corgatha Taldorthar]

I vote for this one to, which I was planning on before I heard the B5 quote.


I'll edit up the thing about the propulsion when I get a minute, or more likely whenever we have to do official  submissions

[Angel]

I have a race I want to try, but I need the permission of a friend to do so. Is it cool if they come from an outside RP? Also, THIS ONE GETS MY VOTE. No offense, Ghost. They're both good.

[Ghostwish]

Eh, I rather gave up Space Race the moment folks started calling this too complicated or hookless. ^.^;

[Tezkat]

I have a race I want to try, but I need the permission of a friend to do so. Is it cool if they come from an outside RP? Also, THIS ONE GETS MY VOTE. No offense, Ghost. They're both good.

You can take your character concepts from any source that inspires you so long as you recognize the constraints of the RP's backstory and race creation system. It's a big universe out there, and the fact that all of your races originate from "outside" of the region in which the RP takes place should give you a fair degree of freedom in establishing the history of your civilization.


Anyways...

The contest is officially over! It looks like there's enough interest to proceed, and my RP proposal garnered significantly more interest than Ghostwish's. Thank you everyone for supporting my first RP venture on this forum.


Expect to see an official OOC thread with expanded background details and signup information to go up sometime midweek.


I've made some changes to the stat system for the final release. A few of the old attributes turned out to be slightly more confusing than anticipated, and there are certain racial features that I'd like to emphasize more.

The original set of nine attributes has been consolidated and expanded into five categories, each with three associated stat ratings:


PEOPLE (Habitat, Population, Xenoculture)
SOCIETY (Coordination, Efficiency, Militarization)
TECHNOLOGY (Productivity, Intelligence, Development)
SHIPS (Toughness, FTL, Agility)
COMBAT (Weapons, Defences, Army)


Balancing ratings between the 15 stats works just like before. Most of the new stats are explicit divisions or mergers of old attributes, so overall point distribution of races created under the old system shouldn't change too much. Hopefully this arrangement is a little more manageable and easier to understand.


PEOPLE (HABITAT, POPULATION, XENOCULTURE)

The core of the original Adaptability has been renamed Habitat. It's basically your life support/terraforming technologies coupled with the natural hardiness and adaptability of your race.

In an RP about the survival of your species, Population deserves its own stat. After all, it determines crew size, production, and whether you'll be going extinct anytime soon. How healthy are your demographics? How good is your medical technology?

The diplomacy and trade aspects of Xenotech became Xenoculture, a measure of your ability to understand--and exploit--alien cultures.


SOCIETY (COORDINATION, EFFICIENCY, MILITARIZATION)

The Leadership attribute turned out to be rather murky and confusing, so I split off its two most operationalized components. Most command, control, and communications aspects went into Coordination, essentially a measure of how smoothly your people work as a team. Efficiency reflects how reliably they do what you want them to do (influenced by factors such as worker satisfaction, troop morale, management skill, and bureaucratic red tape). Vague notions like quality of leadership are just a matter of roleplaying.

Militarization was a concept barely touched on in the old Infantry attribute, but it's important enough to stand on its own. Remember that you're flying around with your entire race in tow--military, civilians, and children. How much of your population can you mobilize for battle? How many vulnerable non-combatants do you need to protect? How well armed/armoured are habitats and support ships? How secure are they against attacks from the inside?


TECHNOLOGY (PRODUCTIVITY, INTELLIGENCE, DEVELOPMENT)

Productivity encompasses the core of the old Production stat. What tools/systems drive the economic and industrial output of your people?

The old Knowledge attribute and portions of Xenotech were spread across two new stats:

Intelligence covers all the ways you gather information about the universe around you. How sophisticated are your sensors? How clever are your scientists? Do you employ spies?

Development reflects your ability to improve tech, including both original engineering research and facility with adapting or countering alien technology.


SHIPS (TOUGHNESS, FTL, AGILITY)

Toughness incorporates aspects of the old Defence and Production attributes.
Basically, how much punishment can your ships endure? How fault tolerant are the systems? How easy are they to maintain and repair?

Propulsion is now explicitly divided into FTL performance and tactical Agility.


COMBAT (WEAPONS, DEFENCES, ARMY)

Weapons are still Weapons. Do keep in mind that you can be fairly creative with your arsenals.

Defences now mainly covers active damage mitigation, like force fields, point defence grids, ECM, cloaking devices, and so on. Armour is part of Toughness unless it has additional special qualities. Evasion is part of Agility unless you have abilities specifically related to avoiding attacks.

For the most part, Infantry is now Army, which covers personal and ground combat capabilities along with any associated tech.

[Railock]

Well..based on the new rules, here's my race, the Idaals.

The Idaals race is a race that most likely did not evolve naturally.  More likely the result of some elder race tinkering with reality and then casting off possible failures, the fact they gained sentience seems to have been a fluke, or perhaps a joke on their creator.  They are little more than an amorphous blob of matter, with nothing that would normally classify them as organic at all. 
   They are able to consume almost anything, inorganic or organic, even energy to sustain themselves and their internal chemistry, though this process is slow, and large or quickly moving amounts of matter or energy are more likely to cause their weakness to trigger.  While they have no need for atmosphere, should they lack matter or energy to consume on a daily basis, they quickly go into a catatonic state, where they lock up, unable to move without new incoming stimulus.  While they can be revived within a few weeks of lock up, they often suffer memory loss, and anything past that they seem to lose their ability to intake surrounding matter and energy, and are effectively dead.  They also have the  ability to form themselves into any shape or consistency they wish.  These two traits would seem to be almost the perfect adaptation for any situation....if it wasn't for one small problem.  If an Idaals is exposed to a shock...such as a sudden strike by fast moving matter, or a large amount of energy, the ability to hold it's shape is quickly loss, and they collapse into a pool of goo that acts little better than a pool of water, running downhill, through channels, splitting and joining with other pools from other Idaals that have also experienced shock.  They can reform themselves, but this process takes days, and often are not given time to reform if in a hostile situation.  This has colored their lives to avoid all dangerous situations at all costs.
   Idaals are, if they live the way they seek to live (shock free), for the most part, immortal.  They do not age, they do not forget, but nor do they breed.  But when in a state of shock, this all changes.  In pool form, they can easily become split, merge with others, or even be fully disintegrated.  If a Idaals is able to reform, but has lost some of his body, he also tends to lose an equivalent portion of his memory.  Also, if their pool is mixed with another Idaals, they often end up with a memory mix incorporating both of the originals, and a brand new personality.  This has lead to those who undergo shock and do not reform the same taking a new name and acting as a new Idaals, and the old Idaals belongings are distrubuted in what manner it's will had set out for them to be.  Should an Idaals be split too much though(less than half of a normal adult Idaals remains), they are unable to reform, as there is just not enough of them to be sentient.  If this should occur, and other Idaals are around, some may attempt to donate a part of themselves to restart the slain, or just take up the parts, and thus the memories of the dead.  This brings us to the only real method of reproduction amound the Idaals.  Should two or more Idaals go into shock and pool together, but are then split into smaller portions before they reform...they can often be split into more viable pools than originally were shocked.  Usually on a 2 in, 3 out basis.  While all three will have a mix of the "parents" memories, they will all have new personalities, and will be able to grow to full size over time by consuming more matter.
   Due to this strange quirk, the Idaals have taken a hell no view to combat, taking care to learn methods of detecting threats a long way off, and ability to get away from them, as no amount of armor or shields will prevent them from pooling should the ship be shaken by incoming weapon fire.  They have thus also ignored any attempts at weaponry besides that which might help them avoid incoming shocks.
   Instead of combat, the Idaals seek to peacefully contact all sentient life, and if possible, form profitable mercantile agreements.  Trade tends to make more friends than war, and is far less likely to lead to accidental pooling.  This worked well for them until they encountered the swarm, at which point they quickly packed up and abandoned their planet without a thought, anxious to keep themselves from being the swarms next snack.

Stats
People
Habitat (5) – The ability to change shape, consume anything, and the lack of need for atmosphere to sustain them, they have no problem finding worlds to colonize if they truly wished to step off their world ships.
Population(1) – While they have excellent recovery, and medical technology for dealing with problems, they just do not breed at any appreciable rate, and thus remain a very small species, as they tend to avoid the situation where more might be created.
Xenoculture (5) – Along with their ability to change and adapt, has come an almost innate, they also seems to have an innate, almost Psychic ability to understand other life forms.  While not directly telepathic, they seem to be able to pick up meaning from other intelligent life forms no matter the form of communication, and often pick up alien tongues within hours of meeting a race.   

Society
Coordination (4) – Due to their memories often getting mixed and passed around the race during accidental shocks, the Idaals willingly cooperates with each other, though disagreements due occur as while they may all remember things, and someday might be part of the same person, they are individuals, each with their own thoughts, and are not a gestalt hive mind.
Efficiency (4) – Again, due to memories often being passed around and shared, as well as time eternal to learn anything they wish, most Idaals have a good idea how to do anyone other Idaals' job, and are quick to act in ways that are best to accomplish the goal at hand with minimal fuss.  Though as sometimes memories can be partial or fragmented, they sometimes lack the needed info to be perfect, and mistakes can creep in.
Militarization (1) – As combat, and the mass goo pool that would occur is anathema to them, the race as a whole avoids the thought of militarization, though should the need arise almost any of them could fulfill any role on a warship.  If they built any.

Technology
Productivity(1) – As an extremely small race, they simply lack the ability to produce on a large scale.  They are capable of keeping their ships and keeping themselves in complex tools their bodies cannot simply form into,  but when it comes to sheer industrial output, don't even glance their way.
Intelligence(5) – The Idaals are highly intelligent, and their scientists are always working at new ways to detect incoming threats, then run away from them.  Their sensors have been extended into just about every spectrum and dimension imaginable, all for the purpose of detecting incoming threats in time to let the Idaals run away before possible shock and then pool time can occur.  While shape changing ability and the ability to quickly adapt and understand aliens might make you think they would make perfect spies, the Idaals abhor the idea of sending one their own where they might get accidentally shocked into a pool of goo, thus ruining the spied on races outlook of the Idaals as a whole, possibly leading to war and more shocks....They find it best to avoid the issue entirely, and not spy at all.
Development(5) – The Idaals are masters of incorporating alien tech into their own.  While not bad at their own developments, they quickly take apart and begin replicating almost any new technology they get their hands on, reverse engineering it, and then finding counters, or more likely, ways to detect it's presence, and then make sure they are far far outside of it's range.  They also have a knack for adapting anything they've understood and converting it to be comparable with other races they have encountered, helping with their merchant of technology business.

Ships
Toughness (1)  - As slight shocks tend to cause entire ship crews to gooify, the Idaals have found armor to be pointless, and rely more on the hope that a friendly will come by and pick them up from floating in space before they go catatonic and then dead, more than armor to keep them alive if the ship is hit.
FTL(5) – Detecting a threat before it gets to you is pointless if you can't outrun it, and the Idaals have taken that to heart.  They have mastered every form of FTL they have come across, and their ships often carry multiple types, from personal wormhole generators, to warp space travel, to blink drives...they will use anything and everything to get them from one location to another with minimal time spent in between.  They carry multiple types of drives though, in case the threat has some way to disable some of the other methods, and hey, more is better when it comes to escape options.
Agility(5) – While sometimes speed is all you need, sometimes you get caught in a bad situation, like the middle of an asteroid field, or between two opposing fleets of combatants, and you cant jump to FTL.  Thus the Idaals make sure their ships can manuver as well.  They have mastered a drive that negates the jerks caused form rapidly changing directions (too bad it only works on inertial forces it creates, not shocks from other sources)  and so the Idaals ships can literally zip about the battlefield like a hummingbird, ignoring mass and inertia of their own ship.  They use this to dodge incoming attacks until they can escape, taking up crazy, erratic flight patterns, often keyed to a complex simulation their computers are running, tracking almost everything on the battlefield in the hope to avoid everything.

Combat
Weapons (1) – Weapons is one technology tree the Idaals have all but ignored.  They have discovered a few things such as EMP pulse weaponry to disable enemies and limpet mines that drain enemy power allowing them a better chance to escape, but their weaponry array is overall, heavily lacking.
Defenses(1) – What good are shields when the force can still shake the ship?  Hiding is pointless when some enemies will sweep the entire area with fire to find you out.  ECM?  What about races that rely on visual or psychic senses instead of computer sensors?  The Idaals have researched a few things such as point defense weapons and tractor/repulsion beams capable of rapid lock-on of small objects such as missiles, but their defenses tend to rely more on evasion than damage mitigation.
Army(1) – A pitiful laugh.  If a Idaals in a ship prefers to run away...an Idaals caught on the ground just surrenders.  They can't really fight as a simple punch from most children of most races could send them into goo pool time.  If endangered, they surrender immediately, and hope for a peaceful negotiation and release at a later time.

[Tezkat]

The RP that I was planning to run involved small groups of galactic refugees with strange foreign tech acting as wildcards and heralds of the apocalypse, as it were, in a region embroiled in interstellar war. It was to be a heavily fleet oriented adventure in survival, intrigue, and gunboat diplomacy. I had thought that the theme was clear from the description in the intro, but it's apparently not what my prospective players assumed they were signing on for. As many of them have pulled out, I must regretfully announce that this RP is dead before it began.

Sorry for wasting everyone's time.

[Corgatha Taldorthar]

Really? That stinks, I thought I and at least Railock were still good, and we had prospectives with 3 or 4 others. How many people did you need to make this RP work?

[techmaster-glitch]

Me (I was slated to join), ghostwish, arcalane, and yes, railock all backed out just now when we opened up communication and really figured out what exactly we were getting into, leaving... just you and black_angel. I'm sorry.

[Tezkat]

Long story short... you guys were supposed to be playing what in galactic terms amounted to a small and powerful, if somewhat depleted, mobile city state trying to find its place in a highly developed NPC community. A story where your races get to be the "heroes", as it were, in a storyline driven by NPC conflicts and interactions. What it turns out the players actually wanted was the opportunity to transplant entire planets into my setting and 4X it up until they were strong enough to take on the Big Bad. Basically just an unfortunate misunderstanding all around...