The Unity system in question has six planets. Nearest to the star you have a mercury sized planet the size of Mars, then you have two planets that could be compared to Venus (Unity II a bit smaller than Venus, Unity III a super earth with 4 G gravity) and beyond that you have three gas giants each about the size of Saturn (all of which had rings) with a few hundred moons between them. One of the moons of the forth planet has some microbial life in underground seas warmed by tidal forces but none of them could support human life in of themselves. However the planet does have two asteroid belts (one of which is in the habitable zone) and several times the amount of space junk that sol does. Plentiful raw materials, but as a general rule people have not bothered with this system due to the lack of a planet which could be terraformed. But for the last two and a half centuries it has been colonized by humanity.
The basic history is that a fleet of eight battered JumpShips (including a WarShip) full of 43,000 refugees (including some engineers and a few geneticists and some information on HGP tech) fleeing the Draconis Combine and Federated Suns in 2787 with some industrial equipment and livestock jumped to unity during the First Succession war to hide an effect repairs They were too badly damaged to continue to jump. As such they made for the nearest asteroid belt, found a 2.5 kilometer long asteroid and dug in. First warrens were dug into the surface and the asteroid was spun up using the JumpShips, which served for a time even though there were food shortages for the first few years. There was some die off which forced the collectivization of resources in that period before things stabilized and the People's Commonwealth emerged as a political agency. Necessity forced innovation and breakthroughs in life support technology, as well as refinements in industrial technology were made. After about 30 years they began to gather up smaller asteroids for raw materials and build new habitats. First these were modest Torus stations but over the next century newer stations got bigger until they went way up to full O'Neill Cylinders, with new Cylinders being built to accommodate new people as time went on. They are now up to twenty eight Cylinders with three more under construction that will be finished in the next three years and five more in the planning stages.
There are also a number of smaller stations and asteroid habitats.
Things were pretty nice on the whole, social inequality was kept to a minimum, the government was not brutal and respected people's basic rights, there was a fair bit of artistic expression and similar (even if the food was limited to various combinations of rice, potatoes, tomatoes, onions, celery, oranges, peanuts, garlic, pork and sow cheese) for it's now 185,000,000 residents (including 15,000,000 Zero-Gravers). But there was always an element of Paranoia about the outside. The population had gotten over their bad blood of the Kurita/Davion rivalry after spending years focusing on survival, but the byproduct of this is that now they view both sides as invading conquerors. As such several steps were done...
- Exowomb facilities were created along with government incentives to accelerate population growth to about 0.035 for the last 150 years.
- The Industrial Base was continuously expanded
- The Zero-Gravers were genetically engineered: a species of humans with hands in place of feet, prehensile tails and bodies optimized for living their entire lives in freefall to serve as space workers.
- R&D Projects to develop weapons technologies ranging from WarShips to Battlemechs, these have been tested
- Raising an army with the intent of securing more star systems to strengthen the Commonwealth and (in more recent years) to liberate people from Kurita/Davion feudal tyranny.
The armed forces of the People's Commonwealth include...
- 12 Gladius class Destroyers (WarShip): 500,000 Tonnes, Crew of 120. Top acceleration of 3 Gs. Armed with two heavy naval mass drivers, two torpedo tubes, sixteen large laser turrets and twenty point defense laser turrets. Can carry one Dropship, six fighters, 5,000 soldiers and 2 mechs. Your shipyards can put one of these together every two years and another one is about 50% done. They've been tested out a few times in flights to other uninhabited star systems and work just fine.
- 30 Junk class Transports (JumpShip): 1,000,000 tonnes, crew of 80. Top acceleration 0.2 Gs. Armed with four heavy lasers. Cargo Capacity of 500,000 tonnes, or 25,000 soldiers with hanger space for 20 Fighters with hardpoints for ten Dropships. Two of these can be built every year and two more are 25% and 75% done.
- 350 Starfall class Dropships: 15,000 tonnes. Able to carry down either 1,000 soldiers, 12 light mechs or 4 Heavy Mechs. Has six heavy autocannons and two 200mm howitzers for fire support. Fifteen can be built every year.
- 2,000 LM-3 Proletariat Light BattleMechs: 30 Tonnes, top speed of 95 km/h, Ferros Fiber Armor, 12 double double heat sinks and armed with a medium laser, a machine gun and a short range missile launcher. Has jump jets. Sixty five of these can be built every year. Mechwarriors are trained on the largest Titan-Like moon of Unity IV.
- 500 HM-2 Emancipator Heavy BattleMechs: 75 Tonnes, top speed of 70 km/h, Ferros Fiber Armor, 14 double heat sinks, armed with a heavy laser, has two long range missile launchers on it's shoulders, an head mounted machine, an arm mounted heavy laser and an arm mounted heavy autocannon. Twenty two of these can be built every year.
- 1,000 F-2 Voidmaster Areospace Fighter: 25 tonnes, Armed with 2 medium lasers, one medium autocannon and two short range missile launchers. Thirty Five can be built every year.
- 1,000,000 soldiers of the People's Commonwealth Planetary Assault Force (PAF). Standard infantry has a modified mechanical pressure spacesuit with helmet and torso armor, a laser rifle, a combustion pistol, hand grenades and a Gladius for standard armament (as well as rocket launchers, mortars, LMGs and suchlike at the squad, platoon and company level) and these are supported with trucks, APCs, Armored Cars and artillery pieces. They are all volunteer reasonably well trained but have basically no first hand combat experience.
What do you do?
Zor
