This document outlines the resources in Starscape, and how you acquire or spend them.

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Starscape features only two Resources; Money and CHON. Money is a representative value of how much of an empire’s economy something takes to build and support, while CHON(Carbon, Hydrogen, Oxygen, Nitrogen) represents how much a ship takes at creation, and needs periodically.

These resources are gathered on Planets, Moons, Asteroid Belts, and generated in Habitats.

Planets

While a very wide class of object, planets can be grouped into a number of distinct classes. For the purposes of this game, Planet and Moon are interchangeable; the only difference is that Planets orbit a star, and Moons orbit a planet. Each class of planet is followed by a real-world example, and then the basic Resource values it produces. Anything that produces or consumes resources produces or consumes those resources every five days.

Airless: Barren chunks of rock, usually large enough to pull themselves into a sphere but too small to hold a substantial atmosphere. Airless worlds are valuable for manufacturing, thanks to their free and abundant Vacuum, highly useful for industries, and low gravity. A good example is Earth’s Moon. Your species may not have its Homeworld on an Airless World.

Money: 3

CHON: 0

Reduced Atmosphere: Thin atmosphered worlds, smaller than a terrestrial world, with lower gravity, less capable of holding an atmosphere, and only rarely having a planetary magnetic field. Reduced Atmosphere Worlds can be colonized with the appropriate measures to keep air pressure strong, such as underground habitats or pressure domes. Many Reduced Atmosphere worlds are actually large enough to hold an atmosphere, but had it blasted away in wars of eons past. These planets are particularly enticing to archeologists, and treasure hunters, who hope to find the occasional sample of technology from ancient empires. Mars is an example of an average Reduced Atmosphere world.

Money: 2

CHON: 1

Terrestrial World: Rare and valuable, but heavy and hard to lift goods off of, Terrestrial Worlds are always found with a thick atmosphere, and almost always found with oceans or ice caps, depending on the temperature. Rich in fissile materials, heavy metals, and organic substances, Terrestrial Worlds also make better living space than any other class of planet, provided the atmosphere suits one’s needs and they fall within a species’ preferred temperature range. A vast majority of races evolve on these worlds, as they also produce more life than any other sort of planet. Earth is a typical example of Terrestrial Worlds.

Money: 5

CHON: 3

Pressure Cookers: Hot, dense, with extreme atmospheric pressure, moderate to heavy gravity, and often close to a system’s sun, Pressure Cookers are created when a planet’s atmosphere exhibits a Greenhouse Effect, retaining heat faster than it loses it. Aside from making wonderful trash dumps, Pressure Cookers often have useful elements which can be harvested from their upper atmosphere. They can have valuable minerals on the surface below, but these are difficult to reach given the rest of the world’s traits. Venus is a typical Pressure Cooker, though not all share the planet of love’s corrosive atmosphere.

Money: 0

CHON: 2

Ice Balls: Cold, small gas giants commonly found at the edge of star systems, Ice Balls are around the middle of size as far as planets go. Ice Balls are mostly useful for the elements which can be scooped from their upper atmosphere, and occasionally for the valuable metals found on their moons. Neptune is a typical Ice Ball.

Money: 1

CHON: 2

Gas Giants: Massive, not very dense, taking up a large chunk of a solar system’s mass, Gas Giants are what they say; gigantic planets made up of gases. Often, a Gas Giant’s gravity allows it to capture dust and asteroids, leading to thick systems of moons and beautiful rings. Gas Giants are excellently useful for industrial purposes, as their moons often contain useful metals, and even fissile materials. The atmospheres of the Gas Giants themselves, however, are where the real riches can be found, mining and refining useful gases. Saturn is an excellent model Gas Giant

Money: 2

CHON: 5

Proto-Stars: The largest class of planet, a Proto-Star is a Gas Giant of exceptional size, known because they emit more heat than they absorb. Proto-Stars are often just a few masses short of becoming a Dwarf Star, and can actually be made into Dwarf Stars artificially if Fusion is ignited in their core. Proto-Stars feature the same attractions as Gas Giants, though their higher gravity makes elements more difficult to recover from the atmosphere.

Money: 2

CHON: 4

Other Features:

Asteroid Belts: Leftover detritus from the formation of a solar system, Cosmologists are interested in Asteroid belts because the thinner they are, the older the system is. Merchant corporations are interested in Asteroid Belts because they provide all the advantages of an Airless World without being so heavy that it’s expensive to lift ships off of them. Asteroid Belts are often critical to a system’s economy, however, they are dependant on planets for organic elements.

Money: 4

CHON: 0

System Upgrades

System upgrades are constructs you build to make your system more effective at its industrial tasks, add new capabilities to your system, or protect it better. Each System Upgrade costs a fixed amount to build for a fixed time; once complete, it has a Resource effect. This is written in the format.

Build Cost/Time(In real-world time)

Resources

The Resource effect, if positive, means that this upgrade produces resources. If negative, it means this upgrade is a draw on resources.

Interstellar Launch: An Interstellar Launch takes the form of either a Launching Laser, which propels Light Sail Craft to enormous speeds by means of hitting the Light Sail with a laser, or a Mass Accelerator, which uses magnetic rings to do the same. They are necessary for use of the Superlight Drive.

10 Money, 1 CHON/10 Days

-2 Money

Floating Habitat: Space stations, floating in space. Valuable for industry or farming, and especially useful because their goods do not have to be shipped out of deep gravity wells. Floating Habitats are very fragile.

4 Money, 4 CHON/5 Days

+1 Money OR +1 CHON

Defense Stations: Armed defense stations use the Ship profile, and are essentially spaceships with less engines. Use the Ship profile for these.

Shipyards: Space stations, designed to both fabricate ships from raw materials and assemble ships which were built on the ground; Shipyards are critical to producing any sort of Space Navy. For each Shipyard a system has, it can produce one Starship at a time. You can only have one Shipyard for each Population Level in a system(Example, if a system contains a Terrestrial World with 4 population and an Airless World with 2, you can have 6)

5 Money, 2 CHON/5 days

-1 Money

Planetary Upgrades

Planetary Upgrades are constructed in much the same way as System upgrades. However, they are obviously attached to a specific planet. Otherwise, they are identical.

Space Elevator: A set of long cables placed on a world’s equator, used to cheaply ferry goods and supplies from the planet’s surface to space.

6 Money, 1 CHON/10 Days

+3 Money

Tiara Ring: Multiple Space Elevators around a planet’s equator, connected to an artificial ring around the planet, whose spin counterbalances the planet’s gravity to make Zero-G. Requires at least two Space Elevators before construction.

4 Money, 1 CHON/10 Days

+6 Money

Developed Factories: Your planet has been colonized long enough that it has a sizeable industrial presence. This upgrade may only be built once for each Population Level, beginning at Outer World. Your Homeworld starts with three levels of this, for a total of +6.

5 Money, 1 CHON/5 Days

+2 Money

Developed Farmland: Counterpart to Developed Factories, Developed Farmland allows a world to put out a massive amount of food and other vitals, allowing it to contribute directly to the space effort. This upgrade may only be built once for each Population Level, beginning at Outer World. Your Homeworld starts with three levels of this, for a total of +6.

1 Money, 5 CHON/5 Days

+2 CHON

Population

A planet’s population is divided into abstract “Levels” These levels are used to represent massive increases of population. There are no set in stone numbers on how populous a planet is, because how are the slow-reproducing sentient whales, the slaughtering rat people, and the race of sentient Nanotech supposed to use the same scale?

Level 0: Colony. Planets begin their colonization at this level. Here, a population is beginning to eke out an existence, often living in a single city.

Level 1: Protectorate: The population is expanding, growing and slowly bending the planet’s environment to their will.

Level 2: Outer World: Your people have colonized much of a continent, and now the world is able to significantly contribute to your species. If contact with the rest of the species has been intermittent, it may have begun developing its own culture as well.

Level 3: Inner World: An Inner World is an industrial and economic power, able to maintain a small spacefleet of its own.

Level 4: Core World: The Core Worlds are the oldest, most settled worlds in an empire, often including a species’ Homeworld, Core Worlds are industrial powerhouses, dominating the local economy, and often having every continent on the world be settled. Your Homeworld begins as a Core World.

Now, with that outlined, the question is, how do you get from one to the next? Obviously, this includes reproducing, raising the new adorable little baby alien monsters, teaching them to be productive citizens, and providing housing and jobs for them. This is represented in game by a single action a planet can take, known as Go Forth And Multiply

Each species will have a different timespan they have to spend increasing a world’s population; the slaughtering rat people will reproduce far faster than sentient whales, and such. To that end, when you make your species, I will tell you the length of time and economic costs this action has on your world.

Strip Mining

Strip Mining is the opposite of colonizing in many ways; it’s not intended to produce a sustainable, long term population, but merely to get at what resources are easily available and move on.

When you begin Strip Mining a planet, its resource production is normal for the first five days, and then doubled. However, after thirty days the planet is Depleted; it cannot be Strip Mined further, and if it is colonized, will produce half as much resources as before.

Treasuries

Resources can be stockpiled, money stored in bank vaults, and CHON elements kept in vats. If a system is not building anything at any given time, its production automatically goes into your Treasury. For example, say you have an Airless World, which produces three Money per turn. You can feed that money directly into building spaceships of some sort, or you can save it up. In that case, it is sent to your nation’s treasury, and can be spent later, and in other places. Resources can be spent all at once, or, if you’re building things, spent in increments, like spending three Money in a week on building a scoutship.

Producer-Ships

Producer ships have two functions; they can sustain a species on an Exodus Fleet by producing food and manufactured goods, and they can serve the same function for Deep-Space fleets in unknown or hostile territory. To that end, Producer Ships are vital for invasions, embargoes, and occupations. However, their massive size makes them vulnerable.

Producer ships work very simply; you feed them a resource, and they give you more of that resource. However, the resources they produce can only be devoted to Upkeep of ships. The numbers vary depending on the size; I’ll tell you when you submit the profile. Producer ships come in two varieties, Forgeships and Garden Ships. Forgeships work with Money, and Garden Ships with CHON.