A New Starship Construction System – part 5 – Engines Revisited

This post is a result of me thinking about the smaller ships: shuttles, fighters, even assault scouts. But especially the tiny hull size one and two ships. We’re going to look at an expansion of the engine size chart presented in part 2, adding in some new sizes and more data on the existing engines.

The first thing I was contemplating, and that I’ve know for a while, is that the Class A engines were way overpowered for the very small craft. If you took the stats for a fighter, it comes out to a total mass of about 263 tons. The thrust for a Class A Atomic or Chemical drive is 6250 and an Ion drive has a thrust of 3000. That mean the maximum potential ADF is 23.7 for the atomic and chemical drives and 11.4 for the ion drive. Well over the 6 ADF maximum and the 5 ADF specified for the ships. These smaller ships could easily get by with much smaller engines and still have the same performance. It had always been my intention to add in the smaller engine sizes.

The other issue that has been nagging at me lately is docking, specifically in bays inside a larger vessel. The system takes this into account and allocates bay sizes based on the size of the ship and includes the mass of the docked ships in the ADF calculation. Except the final sizes of the ships don’t include size or mass of the engines! I had originally hand-waved that away saying that the engines were rated to propel themselves plus provide X amount of thrust depending on the size and type of engine. For the larger ships, that’s fine. The engines are external to the ship and it’s really not going to dock inside anything else. But for the little ships, this is an issue and I need mass and volume values to make it all work out.

So that’s the task for today: Calculate the data for some smaller engines for the little ships, and come up with mass and volume values for all the engine types.

And then we can properly build and design assault carriers to hold our fighters (and maybe our assault scouts) and any ship that has one or more shuttles it houses internally. So let’s get started.

Smaller Engines

This is actually the easy part. I intended to make two additional sizes of engines, one about half the performance of the Class A engine, and a second one at half the performance of that.

The hardest bit for me was coming up with a nomenclature. Do I go with the engine size labels from model rocketry (1/2A, 1/4A) to match the A, B, and C sizes of model rockets? Or do I go the battery route and call them AA, and AAA engines. In the end, I decided to go the battery route. So the Class AA engine has about half the performance of the Class A engine, and the Class AAA engine about 1/4 the performance.

The only real constraint I had was that I wanted at Class AAA engine to still provide and ADF of 5 to the standard UPF fighter. Since that fighter has a mass of 274 tons (when configure, it has to provide a thrust of at least 1370.

The thrust ratios between the Class A, B, & C engines are on the order of 3-4. If I maintained that same ratio, then our AA engine at best would only have a thrust rating of 6250/9 = 694, about 700 which is too small. Of course 2 of them would give us the required thrust but all the depictions of the smaller ships are single-engined and I wanted to go with that.

So instead of going down by thirds, decided to go down by halves. Actually a little more in the case of the step from Class A to Class AA with the atomic and chemical drives. With that decision made, it was time to work out the values. That gives us the following table.

Engine Performance Table

	Class A		Class AA		Class AAA
Engine Type	Thrust	Cost (cr)	Thrust	Cost (cr)	Thrust	Cost (cr)
Chemical	6,250	50,000	3,000	28,000	1,500	15,000
Ion	3,000	100,000	1,500	55,000	750	30,000
Atomic	6,250	250,000	3,000	130,000	1,500	70,000

The values for the Class A engines are simply taken from the original post and provided for comparison. Additionally, we need the cost of fuel for each of these new engines types.

Fuel Cost Table

Engine Type	Class A	Class AA	Class AAA
Chemical	300	150	75
Ion	5	3	2
Atomic	10,000	6,000	3,000

As with the larger engines, the atomic engines require the atomic fuel pellet at the prices listed plus a load of Chemical fuel as well.

Unlike the larger atomic engines, which can hold more than a single fuel load, the AA and AAA atomic engines can only hold a single load. Additionally, the smaller ion engines can only hold 5,000 fuel units instead of 10,000 like their full-sized siblings.

Volumes and Masses

Now for the harder part. Generating volumes and masses for these various engines.

Engine Volume

There really isn’t much go to on here. I could look at the miniatures, but they were created more for style than with any eye for consistency between the ships. There are also a few drawing in the game books that might be used as a reference. In the end, I did the following.

I started with my 3D model of the assault scout which is based on the drawings of the ship all through the books. I then assumed that this plus the wing of the assault scout represented the volume of the engine plus the fuel tanks needed to hold the three units of fuel for the engine. This gave me a volume, based on my models of 657 cubic meters. We’ll round that down to 600 cubic meters and call it good. That’s the volume of a Class A atomic engine and its associated fuel tanks.

Now, anyone who looks at real rockets will immediately realize that that isn’t a lot of volume for fuel. For example, the space shuttle’s external tank had a volume of just over 2000 cubic meters. And that’s enough to make one trip up, not one and back, let alone three trips. So we’re dealing with some amazing rocket propellant here (and really cheap too). But that’s okay, I’m willing to have handwavium as a fuel additive in our rockets.

The next thing we need is a scaling relation for the larger (and smaller) engines. It has to account for the larger fuel load in the larger engines, And remembering that for the atomic engines, we can hold additional loads over the three in the Class A engines. At the very least, it has to scale up as the thrust scales. But I want to add a little more on top of that.

At one point in the past, I had made 3D models of Class A, B, & C atomic engines. At some point when I created them, I had some rationale for why they were the size they were. I don’t remember that rationale now (and it may have been purely aesthetic), but I figured I could at least look at them and see what the relationships were.

In the end I decided that the scaling for the volumes would be 1.45 times the scaling in the thrust. That would provide a baseline and then I’d adjust the numbers slightly to get nice “round” numbers (i.e. 2800 instead of 2782.5). On the smaller engines, I adjusted things up bit making the engines slightly larger to account for “minimum” sizes for some of the components and fuel tanks. I also made some adjustments to the various types of engines to account for the type and amount of fuel they carry.

Engine Mass

This one was much easier as it was to be based off of the volume. In this case I just assumed an “average” density for each type of engine and its fuel. The question was what to pick.

Modern rocket fuels are actually very light, on the order of 0.7-1.0 tons per cubic meter, less dense than water. And liquid hydrogen, the primary fuel in ion engines, is amazing light at only 0.07 tons per cubic meter. On the other hand, the actual engine parts are going to be much more dense to withstand the forces and pressures being exerted.

So in the end I compromised. Chemical engines would have an average density of 2 tons/cubic meter, ion engines would be 1.5 to reflect their much lighter fuel, and atomic engines would be 2.5 to represent the additional components that give them their special properties.

Engine Data

With all of those items figured out we can now build the full data table on each of the engine types.

Chemical Engines

Size	Thrust	Cost (cr)	Fuel Cost (cr)	Volume (m³)	Mass (tons)
AAA	1,500	15,000	75	100	200
AA	3,000	28,000	150	200	400
A	6,250	50,000	300	400	800
B	20,000	175,000	1,000	2,000	4,000
C	80,000	770,000	4,200	12,000	24,000

Ion Engines

Size	Thrust	Cost (cr)	Fuel Cost (cr)	Volume (m³)	Mass (tons)
AAA	750	30,000	2	100	150
AA	1,500	55,000	3	200	300
A	3,000	100,000	5	500	750
B	10,000	400,000	17	2,500	3,750
C	40,000	200,000	70	15,000	22,500

Atomic Engines

Size	Thrust	Cost (cr)	Fuel Cost (cr)	Volume (m³)	Mass (tons)
AAA	1,500	70,000	3,000	100	250
AA	3,000	130,000	6,000	200	500
A	6,250	250,000	10,000	600	1500
B	20,000	400,000	32,000	2,800	7,000
C	80,000	6,000,000	125,000	16,000	40,000

Impacts

So how does this impact our smaller ships? Most importantly, I want to see what it does for fighters and digger shuttles, the two small ships that are explicitly included inside larger vessels.

Using this system before the changes to the engines, we had the following characteristics for the two ships:

Fighter – mass: 274 tons, volume: 136 m³, 1 Class A Atomic engine, Max loaded ADF: 22.8
Digger shuttle – mass: 1330 tons, volume: 641 m³, 1 Class A Chemical engine, Max loaded ADF: 4.7

If we were to just update these vessels with the data for the original engines, the volume of the fighter would jump to 736 m³ with a mass of 1774 tons, an increase of 441% and 547% respectively. The digger shuttle isn’t quite as bad as it was bigger to begin with but it would increase to 1041 m³ and 2130 tons, increases of 62% and 60%.

However, these ships don’t need this large of an engine. If its occupants could handle it, the Class A engines on the fighter give it a maximum possible ADF of 22.8. Since it is only supposed to have an ADF of 5, we can swap out the Class A engine for a Class AAA engine. It will still have a maximum ADF of 5.5. With that change, the the fighter now has a volume of 236 m³ (a 74% increase) and a mass of 524 tons (a 91% increase). Still larger, but much more reasonable and easier to pack into our assault carriers. It also reduces the cost of the fighter by 180,000 credits. Since the original cost was 528,151 cr., reducing that by 180,000 is a savings of 34%. And that makes the bean counters at Spacefleet happy.

The default Class A chemical engine on the digger shuttle gives it a maximum ADF of 4.7, well within the species limit of 5. However, it only really needs an ADF of at least 2 to get on and off planets, so here we can get away with a Class AA chemical engine. This still leaves the shuttle with a max ADF of 2.3, reduces the cost of the shuttle by 22,000 cr., and put the final volume and mass at 841 m³ and 1730 tons (increases of 32% and 30% over the original), making them easier to store in the mining ships. Since the digger shuttle was original 140,320 cr., the 22,000 cr. reduction saves nearly 16% off the cost of the shuttle.

And for the curious, the Assault Scout has a volume and mass of 3455 m³ and 2458 tons. Adding in its two Class A atomic engines brings its total volume up to 4655 m³ and total mass up to 5558 tons (increases of 35% and 126%). That makes it 20x larger and 11x more massive than a fighter. So it’s not unreasonable that special carriers might be designed to transport the larger ships.

Final Thoughts

I definitely like the direction of this change. The size of the fuel storage is probably unreasonably small, but that’s just going to be part of the fiction of our science fiction. The exact values might change as this sees a bit more play but I think it serves as a solid baseline to build on.

What are your thoughts and ideas on this update to the engines? Let me know in the comments below.

The Hum Calendar

With work on the next issue of the Frontier Explorer happening, it’s taking me a bit longer to get to these posts than I had hopped but progress is being made. And I haven’t yet fallen behind.

Today we build the calendar system for Hum, the humma homeworld in the Fochrik system, which we have been detailing in the previous posts (part 1, part 2) in this series.

The Data

In the first part of this series, we established the following facts about Hum:

From Zebulon’s Guide to Frontier Space
- Rotational period: 30 hours (we’re going to refine this a bit later on)
- Surface gravity: 0.9g (which we increased the precision on to 0.91g)
- 3 moons: Kran, Gluk, & Clud
From our calculations:
- Orbital Distance: 1.23 AU
- Orbital Period: 11323.3 hours
- Density: 5.43 gm/cm³
- Mass: 0.8139 Earth masses
- Radius: 5,991.93 km

Of those parameters, we won’t be using the surface gravity, radius, or orbital distance in this analysis but we will be using the rest.

The Moons

I ignored the moons in the early parts of this series but now they become important so we need to detail them out a little bit more. Just as the orbital period of the Earth’s moon defines the concept of a month for us, given that this is the humma homeworld, the orbital periods of Hum’s moons would probably play a roll in defining their calendar system as well. So lets figure out the data on Hum’s moons.

All we really have to start with is the fact that there are three moons and their order (assuming the first one listed is the closest). Beyond that, we can really do whatever we want. That said, we have a few considerations to keep in mind.

First, Hum is smaller than Earth (about the size of Venus) and so has a smaller gravitational pull. This just means that the larger the moon, the more it will cause the planet to “wobble” about their common center of gravity. So we may not want any moon to be too big. It also means that if the moons have to be too far away, they might have escaped the planet’s gravity well. This latter point shouldn’t be an issue but is something to keep in mind.

Second, the moons will all mutually interact gravitationally. Which means if we have strong orbital resonances (orbital periods in small integer ratios), or if they have very close passes (with “close” depending on their relative sizes) as they orbit, the moon system may be unstable and not have survived to the present day.

So while we can pick anything we want, we should keep those ideas in mind. Now ideally, after picking the parameters for the moons and their orbits, I would generate orbital data for them all and run them through several hundred thousand or several million years of orbits to confirm stability but I didn’t do that. So we’ll just hope what we come up with something that makes sense and works.

The other thing to consider is what role we want to attribute to the moons in regards to the calendar system. This will have an impact on the orbital periods we pick.

Kran

Kran is the innermost moon of the system. It will have the shortest orbital period of the three. As such, I decided that this moon would also be the smallest and associated with the “week” concept on Hum.

Since I want the “week” to be something on the order of 5 to 10 local days, and as I have no real reason to prefer one value of another, I’ll just roll 1d6+4 to get the value. I rolled a 5 so a Hum week is 9 local days long. Since the local day is 30 hours (from Zeb’s Guide), the week is 270 hours long. I want the orbital period of Kran to be something near this value so I just rolled four d10s to refine the number. The first one, I subtracted 5 from to get a number to add or subtract from 270, and the next 3 were just read as digits to represent the first 3 digits after the decimal place.

I rolled a 5 for the first die which meant no offset and then I got a 6, a 10(0), and a 4 so the orbital period of Kran is 270.604 hours. I realized later in the process that I should have probably given a bit more range the the +/- die but it’s fine as it is.

We’re also going to want to have a mass for the moon as that will have a small impact on its orbital distance. Since I wanted this moon to be small but still basically spherical, I just arbitrarily picked a size that was near to the size of the asteroid Ceres. I rolled some dice to pick exact values (although now I don’t remember exactly the rationale behind what I rolled) and came up with a value of 0.0125 times the mass of the Moon.

To get the size of the moon given its mass, we need its density. Referring back to the possible densities of the planets from the original article, I wanted to pick something in the 2-6 gm/cm³ range. So I rolled a d4+1 for the integer part and some d10s to get two decimal places and came up with
a density of 2.71 gm/cm³ for the moon.

Okay, now we’re all set to calculate the final values. Determining the radius is straightforward, we’re just back to this equation:

Only we’re solving for that r in there instead of M. That gives us a radius of 432.51 km. Next we want the orbital distance which takes us back to this equation:

where we are solving for a. M₁ is the mass of the planet, and M₂ is the mass of the moon. Again I used this handy website but since you can’t actually solve for a, I had to try various distances until I got the period to match. So it might have actually been faster to do the math on my calculator but oh well. We end up with a result of 198,336.5 km as the orbital distance for Kran.

For reference the diameter of Earth’s moon is 3474.2 km, almost exactly 8 times bigger, and it’s orbital distance is on average 384,400 km, so Kran is nearly twice as close.

Gluk & Clud

I’m not going to go over every detail of the other two moons but suffice it to say I followed the same procedure for each of those. The only constraints I had was that I wanted Gluk to be the largest of the three moons and have it’s orbital period correspond to between 1/8 to 1/14 of a year to represent the month concept. Clud was going to be way out there and orbit only about 4 times a year to correspond to the seasons.

After working through all the math we get the following results for each of the moons:

Name	Orbital Period (hrs)	Orbital Distance (km)	Mass (moon)	Density (gm/cm³)	Radius (km)
Kran	270.604	198,336.5	0.0125	2.71	432.5
Gluk	1,026.836	483,757.2	0.5237	3.14	1,430.2
Clud	2,826.842	948,883.7	0.2413	3.46	1,069.5

This image shows the sizes of the moons relative to each other and to Earth’s Moon. The image on the left shows their actual physical sizes if they were all side by side. The image on the right shows their apparent sizes as seen from the surface of Hum (assuming the Moon was dropped in at the proper distance).

The moons are all physically smaller than the Earth’s moon by quite a bit and appear smaller in the sky. Also, notice that because Kran is so much closer than the other moons, although it is physically the smallest, it appears almost as big as Gluk and larger than Clud.

Hum’s Rotation Period

One more thing we need to establish is the actual rotation period of Hum. The information in Zeb’s Guide said it was 30 hours. However, I want to add a few more decimal places but still have it round to 30. So employing my usual method, I rolled d10-6 (to get a value between -5 and +4) and then two d10s for decimal places. I then added that to 30 to get the actual rotation period in hours. I ended up with 30.09 hours.

The Calendar

Now that we have all the physical data we need, we can get on to the actual purpose of this post, determining the calendar of the planet Hum.

Length of Year

The first thing to determine is the length of the year in local days. We have the orbital period of the planet (11,323.3 hours – about 30% longer than an earth year and 41.5% longer than the Frontiers’ Galactic Standard Year) and the rotation period of the planet (30.09 hours) so we just divide and find that the Hum year is 376.3144 local days long.

In local day terms, the year is only a bit longer than an Earth year, just 11 days more. It also tells us we’re going to need leap years, about every third year. We’ll come back to that.

In the previous sections, with the exception of the moon Kran, I sort of glossed over the relationship between the orbital periods of the moons as they relate to the length of the Hum year. Now let’s look at that in detail.

A Week on Hum

The inner moon Kran has an orbital period of 270.604 hours. Dividing this by the length of a day (30.09) hours, we get that Kran orbits every 8.993 days. That’s almost exactly 9 days. In fact, amazingly close to to exactly 9 days. Which is why I said above, I should have allowed for a bit more variation.

You might be suspicious of how well these orbital periods line up. The exact values selected were not completely arbitrary. I picked approximate values based on what I wanted to see and then let the dice tweak them slightly. And then I also manually tuned them a bit more. For example, I actually rolled 30.06 hours as the rotational period of the planet but when working out the leap years, liked the values I got for 30.09 hours better and went with that. So it’s no coincidence that the numbers come out so close. Maybe too close.

But that’s fine, sometimes you get lucky. So we’ll define a week on Hum to be 9 days long. At some point the start of first day of the week corresponds to the full Kran on the meridian but since the cycles slowly drift, that only occurs every once in a while and the phases slowly move through the week.

Comparing Kran’s orbital period to the year, we see that it makes 41.84 orbits each year so a typical year is almost 42 weeks long.

A Hum Month

If we compare the orbital period of the moon Gluk to the length of day we see that it’s orbital period corresponds to 34.125 days. And comparing it to the planet’s orbital period, it makes 11.02737 orbits in a single year.

Since I’m going to tie the concept of a month to the orbit of Gluck, a nominal month is 34 days long and there are 11 months in the year. There might be some variation like on Earth but this works as a base line.

With eleven 34-day months, that accounts for 374 of the 376.31 days of the year, leaving 2 extra days in the calendar. I’m going to assign one of those days to one of the months making it 35 days long (in the spring) and the other will be a holiday celebrating the passing/new year and will occur at the end of summer which will be when the Hum calendar year ends.

A Seasonal Moon

That leaves us with Clud. It’s orbit is 93.95 days long and it orbits 4.006 times each year, completing one orbit every season. Since the timing of its orbit doesn’t quite line up with the planet’s orbital period, the timing of the full phase of this moon slowly shifts (by just over half a day a year) over the centuries but the humma have tracked this for millennia and know the pattern.

Leap Years

All that’s left is to deal with that pesky 0.3144 days left over after each year. Multiplying by 3 gives us 0.943 days, which is just enough to be considered another day. Thus every third year, the end of year holiday is a two day event instead of a single day adding an extra day on that particular year but not part of any month.

It’s not quite a full day though and so every 51 years, the deviations add up enough that the extra day is not added to the calendar, just like on Earth when we don’t add in the leap day on years divisible by 100.

Finally, there is one more minor correction and that occurs every 1530 years. On that year, which would normally be a year the extra day is skipped, the extra day is included (just like including the leap day here on Earth in years that are divisible by 400 as occurred in the year 2000). This has only occurred once since this calendar was established and the next one won’t occur for another 172 years.

The Final Calendar

So the final Hum calendar looks like this:

One week is 9 days long – in modern times it is a 6 day work week with a 3 day weekend
Each year has 11 months plus one holiday at the end of the year to celebrate the harvest and ring in the new year. This feast day/beginning of the new year corresponds to the end of the Hum summer (what we would call fall)
One month consists of 34 days, or nearly 4 weeks. The exception to this is the 5th month which is 35 days long. This occurs during the planting season giving one more day in that month.
Every three years there is a leap day, extending the harvest holiday into a 2 day event instead of a single day.
Except that every 51 years, the leap day is skipped and every 1530 years the day that would be skipped is included.

One more thing we need is to anchor this calendar with the Frontier standard calendar. To do that I’m going to say that the start of Hum year 2898 will coincide with FY60.124 and that year is a leap year so the end of year celebration (that starts on FY61.290) will last two days.

Last Thoughts

I realized as I was typing this up, that I didn’t account for the difference between sidereal and synodic periods for the moons. The orbital periods listed are really the synodic periods (as seen from the surface of Hum) but I treated them like the sidereal periods for computing orbital distances. Which means the distances are a bit off. The differences would be relatively small but that’s something I should revisit in the future. The rotation period for Hum is definitely the solar period (noon to noon) and not the sidereal period.

Otherwise, this is a pretty good description of Hum and its moons and a reasonable calendar for the system. I didn’t touch on Forge or Larg, the two other inhabited worlds in the Fochrik system. I’m assuming this calendar predates the humma’s space age and so is the foundation of any other calendar system on the other worlds. How it was adapted might be another article in the future but for now is left as an exercise for the reader.

What do you think of the calendar system presented? What would you have done differently? What do you like? Let me know in the comments below.

Sathar Cave System

I believe this is the last major piece of the of the Death at Rosegard adventure that I haven’t yet published so let’s get to it.

An old, abandoned mine

Located some 30-40 km northeast of Rosegard is an abandoned Streele Mining corporation mine. It has been abandoned since before the Great Sathar War. Sometime after the war, an enclave of sathar survivors found the mine and have set up shop. They mainly are lying very low but send out scouts into the surrounding area and are the ones that were controlling the operative at the Streel mine near Rosegard. In addition, they were in contact with Trey Mulden to do the cybernuk breeding.

Let’s start with a map

This map was drawn by hand on my old Samsung Galaxy Note Pro 12.2 tablet. I added the shading and the letters (but not the numbers) in Gimp for this post.

In addition to the labeled locations which are described below, there is a mostly destroyed and overgrown mining complex just outside the entrance. Bits and pieces of walls and foundations still exist but there really isn’t much there.

Area Descriptions

Aircar landing pad – while mainly filled with debris and rusted out vehicles from over 50 years ago when this mine was shut down, there is space for an aircar to land. The sathar have an old model aircar that may or may not currently be at the base. It was used by the sathar that was contacting the agent at Rosegard. If the PC’s captured or defeated that sathar, the aircar is not present.
Pool – This is a clear water pool that the sathar sometimes use for swimming but is primarily a source of drinking water.
Work area
1. Food Production (a) – This building contains a series of terrarium-like containers that have a variety of small bugs and other creatures growing in them. Additionally there are some hydroponic vats growing plants. None of these seem to be native to Pale. There is a single sathar working here. The sathar does not have a weapon but does have a communicator.
2. Tech lab (b) – This building contains what appears to be a technician or robotics lab although alien in nature. What appears to be a half assembled robot sits on one worktable and other tables contain various gadgets in various states of construction. One of the items looks like a nearly complete Cybernuk headset. There are 3 sathar technicians here. Two of them are armed (laser pistol with 2 power clips) while the other has a communicator.
3. Food Storage (c) – This is a climate controlled building with a freezer section. It contains a large numbers the creatures and plants from the food production building but preserved for storage. There is several months’ worth of food here.
4. Supply storage (d)- This area contains a wide variety of physical and technical materials ranging from various electronic parts to tubing, to wires, to chemicals. Most of the materials look to be frontier in origin but some are definitely alien in appearance.
5. Nuk pen (e)- This pen contains three cybernuks with no cybernetic attachments. It is locked with a level 1 lock simply to keep the nuks inside. When opened, the nuks will charge out an attack the PCs. An INT check will alert the PCs that something alive is inside. Wall and door have 100 structure points.
6. Nuk Pen (f) – This pen contains a single nuk with the cyber attachment. It is locked with a level 1 lock to keep the nuk inside. When opened, the nuk will charge out and attack the PCs. An INT check will alert the PCs that something alive is inside. If this cybernuk is released first, the other three will start bashing against the wall and door trying to get out to come to its aid (controlled by cyber implant).
Power plant and water processing – This is a geothermal power generator (type II). Cabling runs from here back to area 3 that has been partially hidden by debris and rubble on the floor. Additionally there is a large water processing facility here with fillers and processing system. Pipes run from here to areas 5, 6, 7, & 9 from here along the ceiling. There are two Sathar technician here. One of the sathar is armed (laser pistol with 2 power clips) while the other has a communicator.
Small Slime Pool – This pool houses four sathar. There are small bins by the pool that hold the personal effects of the sathar that call this pool home. Each has a backpack with a food jar, a small communicator, and two of them have laser pistols with two power packs each. There are currently two sathar in the pool.
1. backpack, communicator, food jar
2. empty
3. empty
4. backpack, food jar, laser pistol with 2 power clips
Large Slime Pool – Similar to area five, this larger pool houses eight sathar. There are currently four in the pool. The contents of the bins are:
1. Empty
2. Backpack, food jar, laser pistol with 2 power clips
3. Empty
4. Empty
5. Backpack, food jar, communicator
6. Backpack, food jar, laser pistol with 2 power clips
7. Empty
8. Backpack, food jar, laser pistol with 2 power clips
Large Slime Pool – Similar to area five, this larger pool houses eight sathar. There are currently four in the pool. The contents of the bins are:
1. Empty
2. Empty
3. Backpack, food jar, laser pistol with 2 power clips
4. Empty
5. Backpack, food jar, communicator
6. Empty
7. Backpack, food jar, communicator
8. Backpack, food jar, laser pistol with 2 power clips
Robot storage – This storage area holds a dozen completed combat robots. While the parts are Frontier sourced, the design is definitely alien. Characters have a –10% modifier to attempt any skills on these robots
Leader Slime Pool – This is the personal slime pool of the compound’s leader. This is a middle caste sathar. There is a bin here with the leader’s personal belongings which contains a backpack, a laser pistol with 4 power clips, an inertia screen with a power beltpack, two food jars, a communicator, and a small computer.

Initial status of the mine

The mine is not on alert for intrusion. It was fairly recently set up and does not have a lot of security features installed yet as the sathar began immediate production of the combat robots and food.

One of the residents is the controller for the agent at Rosegard and possibly was captured or killed by the PC’s. If it wasn’t, add in another sathar to area 5 (small slime pool). Another is out returning from the Trey Mulden’s compound. The second sathar will arrive back 5d10x10 minutes after the PCs enter the compound.

When the PCs first arrive, there are two sathar returning to area 7 from area 3 after being on duty that the PC will encounter in the passageway between those two areas when they first enter it. The next duty rotation is not scheduled to occur for another 1d5 hours at which point two of the sathar in area 6 will be headed to area 4.

None of the doors, except to the nuk pens, are locked.

Sathar Reaction to PCs Arrival

Before the sathar are alerted

When the PCs enter one of the buildings with sathar in it, immediately start combat. Those sathar that are armed will draw their weapon the first round but cannot fire until the second round. They will begin to attack the PCs as soon as they are able. Sathar with communicators will attempt to alert the rest of the compound. It takes them one turn to open their backpack, one turn to grab the communicator, and the third turn to send the message. The alert message will go out on the sathar’s action during the third turn. If the PCs eliminate that sathar before then, no alert goes out. Otherwise, consider the compound to be alerted going forward.

When the PCs enter one of the pool areas containing the lower caste sathar, there is only a 5% chance that one of the sathar is not in the water. Regardless, the sathar will notice the PCs immediately and react. The will start exiting the pool at the rate of 1d2 sathar per round (to represent different distances from the edge of the water) starting on round 2. Once they have left the pool, it will take them one round to reach the bins and grab their backpacks unless the PCs block their way. On the round after reaching the bins, those sathar that are armed may begin firing; those with communicators will simply grab their communication device and begin to activate it. They can send an alert out as their action on their next turn (3^rd after exiting the water).

Sathar with communicators will engage in melee combat (two attacks per round) with their bare tentacles once the alert has been sent or immediately if the alert has already gone out.

After the sathar are alerted

Once the alert has gone out, any sathar encountered will be ready and attack immediately upon seeing the PCs.

Any sathar in the slime pools will immediate move toward area 8 where they will begin activating the combat robots at the rate of one every other turn. They will remain there until all the robots are activated. At that point they will proceed up through the cavern complex looking for the invaders. The leader will hang back sending the robots and other sathar to engage the PCs. If the PCs arrive at area 8 before all the robots are activated, the robots that are active and those sathar that are armed will engage them while the others continue to activate the remaining robots. As the robots are activated, they will be sent to engage immediately.

The sathar in area 4 will take cover and immediately attack the PCs if they enter the generator and processing facility. They will get one free round of attacks on the PCs before the PCs can react.

The sathar in the food processing facility will head across the cavern to the tech lab when the alert is sounded (if they are not the one sounding the alarm) and will either engage the PCs from behind if they are in the tech lab or wait with the sathar in the tech lab until the PCs or the main body of sathar arrives.

The sathar in the tech lab will be waiting for the PCs if they arrive before the main body of sathar and robots. There is a 10% chance that they will have been able to reassemble the laser pistol being modified on the workbench. The sathar using it will have a 10% penalty to hit as is hasn’t been fully converted. If the PCs take a long time to get to the tech lab after the alert is sounded, raise the probability to 20%.

Sathar tactics

As the sathar are under-armed, they will try to attack from cover or ambush if at all possible. If they have robots with them, they will send the robots in the fore to take damage from the PCs’ weapons. If a sathar is in danger of being captured or thinks they will die, they will attempt to close with one or more of the PCs and trigger the self-destruct in their laser pistol (if they have one). When the self-destruct goes off, treat it as a fragmentation grenade doing a number of d10 worth of damage equal to the SEU remaining in the clip. If the clip is empty it will still do 1d10 points of damage. PCs get a RS check to take half damage and intertia screens and skiensuits halve the damage as well.

Stats

Sathar Leader

STR/STA: 50/50
DEX/RS: 60/50
INT/LOG: 55/55
PER/LDR: 55/70
PS: 3
IM: 5
RW: 30
MW: 30

Skills: Beam 4, Tech 3, Enviro 2, Unarmed 3, Robotics 2, Melee 1

Equipment: backpack, a laser pistol with 4 power clips, an inertia screen with a power beltpack, two food jars, a communicator, and a small computer

Regular Sathar

STR/STA: 40/40
DEX/RS: 45/45
INT/LOG: 45/45
PER/LDR: 45/55
PS: 2
IM: 5
RW: 23
MW: 23

Skills: Beam 2, Robotics or Technician or Environmental 2, Melee 1, Unarmed 1

Equipment: backpack, food jar, laser pistol with 2 power clips or communicator

Combat Robots

Type: Combat
Level: 2
STA: 100
Move: 120 m/turn
Attack: 50
Damage: 2d10 hands or 5d10 laser
Programs: Attack/Defense, Security Lock
Equipment: Laser pistol, power beltpack

Detailed Frontier Timeline – FY60.026 to FY60.053

Here is the next installment in the detailed Frontier timeline. This month’s entries include the posts that prompted the “How to build a star system” posts earlier in the month. The sathar are beginning to ramp up their forces while the Frontier is still debating what to do about the “Sathar Situation” on Volturnus.

Date (FY)	Event
60.026	Envoy delegation from the Council of Worlds is dispatched from Gran Quivera (Prenglar) to go to Volturnus (Zebulon) to meet with the races of that world.
60.027	The KSS Trader’s Gambit arrives at Kawdl-Kit (K’tsa-Kar).
60.028	Maximillian Malligigg has a piece of fused metal he found on Starmist analyzed and learns it is the result of nuclear fusion. He begins securing funds to purchase a ship and return to Starmist in advance of an official expedition. (SF3)
60.029	Members of the Second Volturnus Expedition raid a small outpost discovered in the logs of Slave City One that was a hideout for the Star Devil. While the Star Devil was not there, valuable information about the Star Devil’s dealings in the Frontier are uncovered.
60.030	Worried about the events in the Zebulon system, the Rim Coalition increases spending for the Flight by 50%. Delegation dispatched to the Council of Worlds from Faire (Capella) to encourage that the Frontier take the Sathar threat seriously.
60.031	– The remnants of the sathar’s Zebulon fleet reaches sathar space arriving at the system containing sathar starship construction center #5 – Another destroyer is completed at the sathar starship construction center in the Liberty system.
60.032	Contestants, spectators, and reporters gather on Hum (Fochrik) for the annual Humma Jump Competition. Speculation is high that the current record in the standing long jump event of 38.272 meters will be surpassed this year.
60.033	Universal Households unveils its new fashion line at its annual show on Hakosoar (Scree Fron) which is transmitted via subspace radio to all systems in the Frontier. Products immediately go on sale across the Frontier as competitors race to match the new style.
60.034	After two days of competition, Zonuul Usu of Larg (Fochrik) wins the Humma Jump Competition with a jump of 38.275m, beating the previous species record by 3 millimeters. Two others beat the previous record in the final round of competition but lost to Zonuul.
60.035	SF Nova arrives in Fromeltar system; it will be in system for 4 days
60.036	Initial examinations reveal that the Eorna egg cache does in fact contain viable eggs. While overjoyed that they no longer face extinction as a species, concerns about the societal impact of introducing the new Eorna are raised. (SF2)
60.037	Synthetics Corporation announces a new brand of sports drink that provides the necessary electrolytes for all Frontier and Rim races. Included in the line is a “Hyper Humma” variation with 10x the flavor enhancers to appeal to their deadened sense of taste. It quickly becomes a point of bravado for members of the other race to attempt to consume the “Hyper Humma” variations.
60.038	Interplanetary Industries CEO Harlon Thow spotted wearing a never before seen style of toxy-rad gauge that is slimmer and more compact than previous styles. Rumors circulate that it is a new device soon to be released by the company.
60.039	In its first 60 days of operation, the Yazira Dome has had over 1 million visitors, mostly inhabitants of Hentz (Araks). Many across the Frontier denounce the Family of One for not allowing non-yazirian visitors to the planet and the Dome.
60.040	Sathar vessels are dispatched from the Liberty system toward a staging area somewhere near the Frontier.
60.041	Sathar Clan Z vessels, previously in route to sathar starship construction center #3 are diverted by clan leaders toward Kizk-Kar.
60.042	Sathar forces, operating in Saurian(DM103) space, launch simultaneous assaults against saurian forces in the Tischen (FE004) and Dayzer (FE004) systems.
60.043	Several Streel compounds on Laco (Dixon’s Star) are captured by Galactic Task Force teams and Streel employees are forced to evacuate and return to the Streel headquarter compound in Tyrell’s Landing.
60.044	SF Nova departs Fromeltar for Kizk-Kar
60.045	The Rim delegation arrives on Pale (Truane’s Star) for a short stopover to meet with the Pale government about the sathar situation.
60.046	Another destroyer is completed in the SCC in the Liberty system.
60.047	Pale militia delegation testifies before the Council of Worlds on Gran Quivera (Prenglar) as to the events of the Battles of Zebulon and Volturnus. Debate and deliberation on the need for increased military buildup continues.
60.048	Rim Coalition delegation departs Pale (Truane’s Star) to continue on to Gran Quivera (Prenglar) to meet with The Council of Worlds
60.049	Based on information obtained from the Star Devil lair on Volturnus (Zebulon), the Pale government raids and seizes assets from several business connected with the Star Devil pirate organization.
60.050	SF Nova arrives in Kizk-Kar. Will be in-system for 8 days
60.051	Several PGC vessels, just arriving in the Dixon’s Star system en route to Laco are destroyed by unknown vessels.
60.052	PGC representatives appear before the Council of Worlds requesting Spacefleet aid to protect their vessels in the Dixon’s Star system from suspected Streel aggression.
60.053	Proving the rumors correct, Interplanetary Industries announces a new line of wearable monitoring devices including a new toxy-rad gauge matching the one spotted on CEO Harlon Thow several days earlier. The new line boasts extended battery life and greater accuracy in a smaller package.

Here’s the full timeline download file:

DetailedFrontierTimeline Download