ship hunters: A new faction for Robotech (all periods)

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mech798
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ship hunters: A new faction for Robotech (all periods)

Unread post by mech798 »

I'll be getting into this a bit moe, but I used this to justify some groups for my invid invasion and beyond period.

Intro:

Tens of thousands, perhaps more, zentraedi ships crashed into the earth after the fall of the Grand Fleet. Thankfully, most of them fell in a more or less controlled manner (however much it didn't look like that from the outside), else the damage might have been close to that of the rain of death itself.

For most individuals, the gigantic ships, sticking out of the earth like spears were the biggest sign of that-- many of those ships were quickly stripped, or used for shelter. The UEEF started an ambitious plan to deny any possible malcontents or breakaway governments access to their resources--and the resources were great indeed-- what was starvation protoculture rations for a fleet of over four million vessels was wealth beyond measure for a single world.

For a time, there was a drive to organize the looting--and then, for a time, there was a gold rush. Many died, either from angry zentraedi, bandits, or dangerous and malfunctioning weapons. But slowly, as the easy finds vanished, teh casual hunters went back home to find other ways to make their living.

But the biggest factor was the simplest-- the finding of the robotech factory satellite. While still valuable, the leadership of the UEEF had to confront the fact that there was simply not enough people ot keep hunting for new ships, not when every individual was needed to crew the newly constructed ships, to puzzle out the functionings of a factory system nearly 1/4 the volume of hte moon. Valuable the ships were, dangers they were, but not valuable or dangerous enough to warrant the diversions of the forces that had once been planned.
Besides, many pointed out, the limiting factor on the Zentraedi malcontents wasn't material--like the UEEF, it was men and women, and those could not be found in a wrecked starship.

So salvage efforts, if not stopped, were put on the backburner, letting private groups take the lead-- the UEEF would still pay handsomely for salvage (but not as handsomely as some).

But there was a second fact, one that many in the UEEF didn't consider. While they assumed that soon enough the ships would be exhausted, they did not realize that far more ships were hidden then were revealed. Many zentreadi ships, whether by the dint of heroic effort or emergency autopilots didn't slam streaight into the ground, instead plowing deep furrows into the earth. A great many found themselves sinking into lose earth or rubble, while others were deep under the former surface, coming to lay in the bottoms of the innumerable craters dozla had created. A few landed on now dry parts of the lake and sea beds, where the cubic miles of vaporized water had led to a drop in the water level.

But that water (some of it) did return to earth, in the form of vast deluges. In other places, the tremendous storms that ripped across the earth due ot the thermal input from teh bombardment covered them with sand. Some buried, some partly covered in mud as the rain led to the collapse of the surrounding earth, these ships, even before the UEEF had been able to start looking for them, were buried, whether fifty or a hundred feet under teh earth. Certainly, one could find them with ground penetrating radar... but the earth was vast, and in many cases their crews had died or been unable to locate their ships when they left, seeking other zentraedi (rather more had abandoned ship on the way down). Finding the ships was difficult, and it only grew more difficult as the explosion in growth that would see Scott Bernard and his group riding through what appeared to be old-growth forests added roots and trees to their earthen cover. (There is some evidence that the release of protoculture and other nutrients from the wrecked hulls might have assisted in this process, a ironic twist).

And so the ship prospector became a new figure, sometimes of mockery, and sometimes of respect and jealousy. Using their helicopters and trucks, they would travel the new world, looking for signs of buried zentreadi loot, hoping for the find of a lifetime that could set them up in luxury (and let them send others out to do the looking) but more often returning with some battered missles, or a few protoculture engines that the UEEF would buy to keep off the market. Other's risked imprisonment (or death at the hands of their clients) and sold to less scrupulous individuals. But away from the lawful regions of earth, every Ship Prospector knew that he or she might run into rogue zentreadi, criminals, covert government groups from the EBSIS or other splinter organizations, or merely fall afoul of a natural hazard. It was a job that required a certain mind set.

The process of finding buried treasure.

The destruction of Dozla's fleet had burned out nearly every system designed to track falling objects and what few data bases remained were generally unavailable to the public. For that reason, ship prospecters had to do things the hard way:

1. Obtain pre-Rain topographic maps.
2. Obtain post-rain orbital topographic maps.
3. Through a painstaking process often known as "making an educated guess" examine the two maps to see if one could determine where a ship might have landed, as opposed to simple natural pheonomena.
4. Travel to the most likely point with drilling and excavation gear, usually as part of a small group.
5. HOpe to be surprsied, expect to be disapointed.
6. Repeat.

If a ship was found, evaluating what was in it was th emost important goal. Most ships had little or nothing remaining in a functional sense, and were merely marked. A few had salvagable gear, undetonated ordenance and some remaining protoculture. Working mecha was considered a dangerous lucky strick, with many groups purchasing them-- even mecha that could not be used by micronians would be valuable for those groups that did not have a robotech factory.

An empty, more or less functional (in the sense of internal systems) ship could be sold quickly, as many homesteaders found the vast hulls usable, practically as a pre-fabbed city.

Finally, the holy grail, something that every prospector hoped for, was a ship that wsa flyable. The UEEF would pay a king's ransom for such a ship, unlike other gear, simply to ensure that no other group obtained it. It was this hope that kept prospectors trudging along, day after day.

After this, I'll talk about the three eras.
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taalismn
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Re: ship hunters: A new faction for Robotech (all periods)

Unread post by taalismn »

I like. :ok:

"We're teaching ourselves starship repair. We're pulling parts from a dozen wrecks and putting together one hopefully flyable ship....don't wince like that; we've got some qualified aerospace engineers checking our figures and finetuning the works. Yeah, I'm up in the air whether to call it the Millennium Albatross, the Free Enterprise, Megadamage Overcast, or Salvage-One Hundred. "
-------------
"Trouble rather the Tiger in his Lair,
Than the Sage among his Books,
For all the Empires and Kingdoms,
The Armies and Works that you hold Dear,
Are to him but the Playthings of the Moment,
To be turned over with the Flick of a Finger,
And the Turning of a Page"

--------Rudyard Kipling
------------
mech798
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Re: ship hunters: A new faction for Robotech (all periods)

Unread post by mech798 »

The Post Rain era:

The period between the Rain of Death and the Rise of the Southern Cross was considered the “Wild West” era for prospectors. Many ships were exposed, few governments had any real authority beyond their cities and many settlements desperately needed resources. While money was short, a shipment of zentraedi protoculture power units could easily make a prospector the “big man” in a small town. Finding a ship with usable internal space and functioning reactors led to the founding of more than one new settlement, the lucky settlers using the armored hull as a refuge and the reactors as a power supply.
But equally, there was nobody to protect prospectors from rogue zentraedi, other prospectors, terrorist groups and pirates. Individual prospectors were very careful to avoid being obvious, while larger units often were little less than small armies, complete with modified and stolen mecha.
This was a glorious, if dangerous period, and many fortunes were made—while many more unmarked graves were dug.

The Southern Cross Era

As the malcontent zentreadi were suppressed and the various governments got thier feet back under them, the wild-west era came to an end. First of all, now communities could afford to be more picky, and many preferred human made equipment or were no longer desperate for anything that worked. Larger governments were still willing to buy, but now it was a buyers market, not a sellers.
The second factor was that most easily accessible shipwrecks had been looted, and those that remained were either in the wilderness, where finding them was difficult, or were buried—deeply buried. The retrieval of over a thousand battlepods from a wrecked destroyer in 2028 brought millions of credits to its backers—but required a small army of earth digging equipment to dig down to the hulk, where it had come to be buried under hundreds of feet of rockhard material. Finally, with established cities, many wrecks, even those with operational systems running on auxilliary power, were abandoned for the simple fact that nobody wanted to live there, left for the use of bandits, or simply empty, the slowly dimming lights showing only empty corridors and dark tunnels that had been driven down to the ground. It was assumed that by the mid 2040s, the profession wouldmore or less end.

The New Generation

That changed with the fall of the Southern Cross. Now, buried ships away from any cities were a positive good thing, and thousands of people, carrying everything they had, fled the cities for these distant points, a fact that helped make the Invid invasion, when it occurred, less devastating than it might have been, and explained why so many people survived. The big companies were mostly destroyed, save for teams that had been “in the field” and who had called their families with them. Now, maps were oured over, not for the payment of salvage operations, but for the possibility of mecha, missiles and the holy grail of a ship that still had functioning auto-manufacturing systems. Even stripped wrecks provided refuge, their heavy armor and hundreds of feet of earth and rock helping to screen out any signs of life from patrolling invid. Many of these ships became home to entire subterranean communities, only coming out to farm or explore, while others served as bases for the resistance.

But this was a dangerous time— Invid, bandits and old booby traps combined with a wild and dangerous world to make the job of finding a new salvage site the last job for many.

TBC with salvage groups.
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taalismn
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Re: ship hunters: A new faction for Robotech (all periods)

Unread post by taalismn »

Yah, pretty much what I figured. :bandit:
-------------
"Trouble rather the Tiger in his Lair,
Than the Sage among his Books,
For all the Empires and Kingdoms,
The Armies and Works that you hold Dear,
Are to him but the Playthings of the Moment,
To be turned over with the Flick of a Finger,
And the Turning of a Page"

--------Rudyard Kipling
------------
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slade the sniper
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Re: ship hunters: A new faction for Robotech (all periods)

Unread post by slade the sniper »

Very interesting idea! I like it a lot. Thank you for all the good work.

-STS
My skin is not a sin - Carlos Wallace
A man's rights rest in three boxes. The ballot box, jury box and the cartridge box - Frederick Douglass
I am a firm believer that men with guns can solve any problem - Inscriptus
Any system in which the most populated areas have the most political power, creates an incentive for areas that want power to increase their population - Killer Cyborg
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