Pangalactic Alliance

Pangalactic Alliance is a sci-fi project, trying to marry physically-accurate hard science fiction with more liberal space opera stylistic. This is a worldbuilding project, that originated as a concept for a videogame a long time ago, and later evolved into a Leaving the Cradle webcomic.

Disclaimer: While this project tries to use real physics as much as possible, it is by no means an attempt at Hard Sci-Fi genre. It has aliens, FTL, and ships without football-field-sized radiators, after all. It is a space opera that tries to use real-life physics as much as possible but does not avoid the use of Artistic License in some cases. Have you seen The Expanse? Pretty much that, minus the cyberpunk-like social grit (for now, at least).

Description

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The setting is stationed in the MilkyWay galaxy, with most of the species achieving relatively mundane interstellar flight capabilities. Interstellar communication is developed to the level of regular commercial flights. Most of the galaxy has not been explored, and the Alliance occupies a relatively small volume. Nevertheless, in this relatively small volume, there are billions of stars, of which only a small percentage has been studied in detail and even fewer have any settlements or bases in their systems. Due to the lack of superluminal communication, there is no unification in the galaxy. The Alliance is the dominant global governmental organization de jure, but all the member planets that are separated by more than a couple of weeks of FTL flight are, in fact, almost independent states (having at least one independent state on the surface) that solve problems on their own as much as possible. Ktak were more fortunate, as their dogmatic religion allows communities to maintain integrity over larger distances and their colonies retain a strong sense of connection and unity with their metropolises. This unavoidable disunity, coupled with the inevitable social drift, is the reason for the need for a military fleet despite the absence of historical global interstellar wars. The fleet acts like a peacekeeper, ensuring the safety of travel and adherence to the Alliance space laws and stepping up whenever a star system or a planet begins to radicalize against peaceful coexistence.

Note: most units of measurement and concepts are defined by human values and names (meters, AU, seconds, Dyson Sphere, etc.) unless noted otherwise. This is done to ease the reading of materials and to preserve the author’s sanity.

Notable things

• There is no FTL communications. As a result, Alliance is not a monolithic organization, but more segmented and its members have a certain freedom of action.
• Spaceships, in general, try to avoid the standard "space is an ocean" designs with decks arranged orthogonality to the thrust vector, with clearly defined "top" and "bottom".
• FTL technology provides only means of shortening the distance between solar systems, it does not increase the velocity of the vehicle itself.
• Propulsion technology allows engines that can achieve high thrust values with very little propellant demands (think ion engines on steroids)

Civilizations of the setting

Alliance members

• Raharrs
• Sashli
• ktak
• Ziort
• Laymaran
• Insectoids
• Iss

Others

• Smi'Tar
• Azinarsi
• Ancients
• Wanderers
• Humans
• Ghosts
• Lesser species

Alliance as organization

Map with areas of influences of the most notable structures*

The alliance covers about 1/20th of the Galaxy volume. The alliance is made from one single territory, divided between several civilizations, of which Raharrs are the most numerous ones. Yet "territory" is a fairly abstract term, because not all stars are surveyed and even fewer systems actually have any sort of protective forces to enforce the border. The territory of the Alliance is more of an area that can be reached by the Alliance's ships without assembling an expedition fleet. It is estimated that Alliance territory covers roughly one billion stars, of which no more than several thousand are surveyed, and no more than a million were visited at all.

The alliance is the largest government body in the Galaxy besides the Smi'Tar Empire. The alliance is a conglomerate of different civilizations, though they still remain highly autonomic in everything regarding internal matters. But any significant interaction with another civilization, that cannot be settled in peace is going through Alliance Assembly, which gathers ambassadors from every Alliance species, and runs discussion sessions about the matter at hand. Most often Sessions are gathered on the "Shining" Station, which is political and informational heart of the Alliance, and besides that is the safest neutral territory in the Galaxy - the station is independent and harbors its own defense fleet, which constantly patrols local space to ensure safety of any vessel within its borders.

Notes

• Displayed borders of the Alliance and the Empire are quite a lot arbitrary. Real zones of influences of the forces would mean to basically just dot the map with colored pixels, and even that would be a gross overestimation due to involved scales. Instead it, in case of the Alliance, marks every zone in which Alliance ship has been at least once, or can theoretically reach within an FTL jump from the nearest colony or starbase. There is also no real borders between species within the Alliance, due to the insignificant amount of settled systems compared to the whole volume. Generally, species homeworlds get 300 light-years of a buffer zone, in which only they can establish colonies and mining outposts. For sure, it isn't unlikely that there are still uncontacted spacefaring civilizations within the Alliance space.

Exploratory Fleets

In the Alliance, there are seven autonomous fleets, whose task is to study the systems adjacent to the territories of the Alliance, and their cataloging. Led by the ships of the Dawn class, these fleets are capable of wandering for years in uncharted space. Currently, the record holder is the third fleet, which has not returned to any port for more than three decades, and the fifth fleet is the distance record holder, having departed almost two thousand light-years from the nearest colony of the Alliance. Usually, the fleet transmits its findings when passing by the populated system, relaying information to the Shining space station via the G-net, but in cases of important discoveries or the need to resolve matters of high importance, an courier ship specially modified for long flights is sent, because even with a courier-class hyper generator, the way back to the Alliance can take months (The fifth fleet's courier ship needs a third of the year to simply reach the borders of the Alliance, for example).

Commanders of research fleets act as official representatives of the Alliance in the First Contact events and have the authority to make decisions autonomously, even sign treaties on behalf of the Alliance, if the situation requires that. Research missions do not follow a predefined course or schedule, usually moving towards objects of scientific or other interest, and then choose a new target for movement after it is decided that the current target was explored enough. The decision to turn back and return to the port is also not determined in advance and is made by the fleet commander according to the situation.

Spaceships

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Interstellar Communications

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Since radio and laser beams are unable to travel through wormholes generated by Hypergenerator, there is no way for planets to talk to each other in real-time. Instead, a web-like system of automatic shuttle-drones was established, each one making regular routes between two or more hub stations in each settled system, carrying mail and download queries from the local Internet with them. It is still not real-time, but better than waiting thousands of years just to receive a reply. Important and urgent messages get carried by special courier ships, that have very high acceleration and can beeline right to the destination, bypassing complicated, slow and not always very direct G-net, where a message can travel months, in some cases.