The Coalition Universe

Graham's Coalition Universe stuff
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Re: The Coalition Universe

Post by Monroe »

Bryan Moore wrote:Was there any galactic-wide catastrophic happening or something major that preempted the formation of the Coalition? Love the idea.
If I remember right humanity is conquered and frees itself with the help of the other big dog of th Coalition. One of his first threads talks about it.
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Graham Kennedy
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Re: The Coalition Universe

Post by Graham Kennedy »

Kinda. Around 2400 Humanity was conquered and enslaved by a species called the Saravan. In 2600 that species was conquered in turn by the Turgrans, with a good deal of help from the Human slave populations which both rebelled against the Saravan as the Turgrans invaded each world in turn, and then served as cannon fodder for further attacks (all this prompted by a good deal of covert advance preparation by the Turgrans, who believe as a rule that you don't fight a war until you've already won it.) There was a religious angle to this, because Humans were a pretty barbaric bunch for the most part and the Turgrans used religion as a tool to control them, feeding into a lot of semi-religious stuff the Humans had devised about mystical saviours and such.

After the war the Turgrans set the Humans up as an Empire, since that's the form of government they regard as natural and normal, but with the religious angle they'd worked they were set up as the religious leaders of all, with even the political heads answering to them. Humans were not a subject species, quite, but certainly very much under the thumb. The relationship very nearly fractured when the Humans learned the truth about how they'd been manipulated, and things were icy for a while, but they were sandwiched together, planets intermingled even in a lot of places. There was just no way they could "go their separate ways", and if the Humans had attacked them they would have lost badly.

The relationship gradually warmed again, and the two Empires became allies. That alliance deepened and absorbed a lot of the other "almost major players" within and around their sphere of influence over the next couple of hundred years. It wasn't a great "founding moment" like the US had, the Coalition kind of faded into existence over time - rather like the European Union seems to be turning into a state step by step. They were using the term Coalition by about 2850 or so. In 2906 they got together and wrote the constitution, and the Coalition was officially born.
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Re: The Coalition Universe

Post by MetalHead »

wow, reading that has really got the fires going, I cannot WAIT to see these books (yes, books, you will write many long tales of blitzkrieg action and heartwrenching drama. and I will buy them all.) written and published!!
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Re: The Coalition Universe

Post by shran »

I'll just post whatever i'm missing in the general thread rather than smearing it out over several others.
After seeing the Belgian parade I noticed some vehicles might have their own uses here, as well as other ideas wandering into my head.
1. Transports, on roads, and off roads.
2. Firefighting equipment, both military and civilian
3. Ambulances
4. Field hospitals which are quickly deployable and such.
5. Mobile kitchens
6. Practice vehicles for soldiers and the like needing training.
7. Mine sweepers
8. Recruting and information dispensing units, with so many threats and so many Coalition members, idiots potential personnel should be recruited by the thousands every day, at least.
9. Have we actually seen naval forces yet?
10. Atmospheric fighter craft.
11. Defences against bombardement from space.
12. Planetary-orbital defences, perhaps defences for dstances beyond the gravity field of the planet.
13. Military police and the like?
14. Civilian home guard initiatives, civilians deploying other tasks which may serve both military and civil needs, such as voluntary fire fighters and the like.
15. Terraforming equipment.
16. Are the various ship classes accomodated to humans only, or are they generic templates that can be made suitable for the various species?
17. If the shown ships are designed for humans, what do the others look like, what difference is there?
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Re: The Coalition Universe

Post by Graham Kennedy »

I never saw those posted, sorry about that, so I'll answer those that are questions now...

8. Recruting and information dispensing units, with so many threats and so many Coalition members, idiots potential personnel should be recruited by the thousands every day, at least.

Yes, recruitment and training would be on a huge scale. For instance I estimate that the Navy alone could have close to a billion people in it. With an average service length of about 16 years that means they have to graduate 62 million people a year. There would need to be at least one Navy training base on most major worlds.

9. Have we actually seen naval forces yet?

Huh? Anything I've posted with a "UCS" is a Coalition Navy ship.

10. Atmospheric fighter craft.

My thinking is that such things wouldn't have any real place in this setup. Too easily shot down from space.

11. Defences against bombardement from space.
12. Planetary-orbital defences, perhaps defences for dstances beyond the gravity field of the planet.

I mentioned in the orbital grid thread... most Coalition planets have fairly token defences. A planetary shield that would enclose the planet and orbital grid, perhaps some orbiting defence stations. Nothing that a fleet couldn't overwhelm. They prefer to spend the money on a fleet that can deploy beyond their borders, reasoning that it's better to take on whatever enemies they have before they ever get to Coalition turf.

13. Military police and the like?

Aboard ship there's a Master at Arms who is the ship's chief of police, with training comparable to that a detective might have now. He or she would have a small staff of their own on a big ship, but typically they borrow personnel from the Marine contingent to act as the day to day police force over the crew.

14. Civilian home guard initiatives, civilians deploying other tasks which may serve both military and civil needs, such as voluntary fire fighters and the like.

The Coalition military is technically rather like NATO, with units assigned to it by individual member states. For a long time it was something of a joke - a place members sent their old, worn out, obsolete military units crewed by their malcontents and trouble causers. The real power lay with the individual member Navies, which operated according to their own agendas. Over the course of the last half century a couple of wars changed all that and now it's more or less reversed... the Coalition Navy is where the real power is, and very few members have Naval forces of any real power. There are local forces, but they are generally akin to the coast guard. Lightly armed ships which do border patrol, search and rescue, anti piracy operations, that kind of thing.

15. Terraforming equipment.

The Coalition are certainly capable of terraforming planets, but they've no real need to. There are habitable worlds around, and with orbital grids a single world can provide living space for trillions. There might be occasional exceptions, but in general they don't bother.

16. Are the various ship classes accomodated to humans only, or are they generic templates that can be made suitable for the various species?

Like with NATO, one of the things the Coalition Navy always did from the start was establish commonality of design. First for little stuff, so everyone used the same fill port on their fuel tanks and such, then for bigger things like weapons, and eventually for whole ships. It's rather like Europe, where multiple nations collaborate to produce the Eurofighter. This leads to some oddities, like for example the ships have a standard deck height of 13feet, so even with some 'tween deck spacing the ceilings are over ten feet high, because Turgrans are seven feet tall and like headroom. There would be some difference between a Kororra class as used by Humans and Turgrans, but it would be mostly in the life support systems needed to maintain different conditions, and some detail changes in the kitchens, etc. It's not at all unusual for Human and Turgran Kororra classes to work together as part of the same fleet.

One of the stories I worked on for all this concerned the first Coalition ship where the crew was an integrated one, drawn from many different species.

17. If the shown ships are designed for humans, what do the others look like, what difference is there?

See above.

By the way, I worked up a little chart to show the progression in design over time. Clicking takes you to a great big (7.2 MB) version.

Image
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Re: The Coalition Universe

Post by Mikey »

All p[retty much logically derivative from the way you've described the Coalition. That design lineage is a great illustration.
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Re: The Coalition Universe

Post by Graham Kennedy »

Thank you kindly.
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Re: The Coalition Universe

Post by Mikey »

GrahamKennedy wrote:Thank you kindly.
Don't thank me, you did the work. ;)

I was glad to see a geometric, rather than linear, increase in ship size - the way it should be, not the easy way out of thinking too much. I sort of knew what to expect from following your individual ship designs, but obviously a chart like this makes it much clearer to see.
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Re: The Coalition Universe

Post by Graham Kennedy »

One thing is the dates don't go up in even increments, so the progression isn't what it seems to be. I might space them out to make it into something more akin to a sort of picture graph.
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Re: The Coalition Universe

Post by Mikey »

That would be interesting to see.
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Re: The Coalition Universe

Post by Graham Kennedy »

Too much overlap for that to work as it turned out, but I did do a real graph :

Image
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Re: The Coalition Universe

Post by Tinadrin Chelnor »

This is all some truly amazing stuff. I think I've read some of it three of four times now :) Keep it going, its brilliant.
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Re: The Coalition Universe

Post by Mikey »

Pretty much exactly the curve I expected.

Now, for the novel...
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Re: The Coalition Universe

Post by Teaos »

Massive bump.

Curious if we're going to see any more of this GK? I've just been reading pieces of it today while I should be working and I am getting into the multileveled universe you've made.
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Re: The Coalition Universe

Post by Tinadrin Chelnor »

I reread it every now and then, I have my own universe and I enjoy reading up on other's own creativity. Hopefully we'll see some more coming this way :)
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