Star Wars: the Rats and the Mynocks (discussion)

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I'd like to get everyone together for some basic collaborative world-building before we kick off the game.

I'm provisionally designating our "neighborhood" as a roughly 30km by 30km square piece of Coruscant's surface, dotted with towers reaching a kilometer or more in height, with some reaching up to 2.5km. That will give us well over a thousand cubic kilometers to play in, with all the resources that it entails. The average tower is squat and boxy, its base a square about a kilometer per side.

The center is dominated by four towers in a box formation, pyramids a kilometer by a kilometer at their bases and tapering off as they hit their summits at about 2600m or so—Zoughnie Towers North, South, East, and West. The rest of the towers ring around them.*

(Incidentally, if anyone's taken any classes in urban planning, your help is sought. I'm aware that planning a vertical cityscape like Coruscant is probably a few orders of magnitude in difference from, say, New York or Shanghai, but your insights would be helpful all the same.)

For any wargamers out there, here is my version of the Vong TO&E up to battalion level.

edited 2nd Aug '12 1:49:35 AM by SabresEdge

I think that, for common sense's sake, we should be rather far from any notable landmarks. Knowing the YZV, those'll be the places first bombarded and heavily invaded. Also allows for more freeform stuff.

Is "Zoughnie" the name of those towers or whole neighborhood?

Um, didn't the YZV Vongform Coruscant? To quote Wookieepedia:

edited 29th Jul '12 3:56:56 PM by desdendelle

The four towers are known as Zoughnie, though I'm toying with the idea of having the entire neighbourhood named after them. (Of course, once the Vong enter the area and sustained combat begins, chances are that it'll start receiving nicknames.)

And, yes, the neighborhood is far away from any important landmarks. As a matter of fact, it's on the other side of the planet from the governing district. This is to minimize the damage you can do to the planet (never underestimate the ability of PCs to wreak havoc and destruction), and to make an insurgency possible.

Edit: the Vongforming will take place in 28ABY. It'll also take a long time to accomplish, being a process instead of a single event. And you'll get to witness it close-up.

edited 29th Jul '12 4:00:37 PM by SabresEdge

How "Rich" is this neighborhood? Is it swimming in credits, poor as dirt or a mixture? I realize that it generally goes down as you get lower in elevation, but still.

I'm thinking of a range. The more you tend towards the centre and the high, the more affluent you get; there might a few millionaire-equivalents in the penthouses, for instance. I do want the complex to be a cross-section of Coruscanti society, although according to Wookieepedia the upper-middle-class has moved out after the last few waves of invasions.

Okay, next few. *

How many of the public resources are available still? Did the invasion knock out power, water?

How many people are hanging around?

How are we gonna manage the passage of time? It's going to be hard to RP entire days when we want to get three years completed by the end.

Regarding the niehborhood layout, Zora's backstory requires a police district HQ to be close by, with a big chunk of dead capital ship (and the trail of wreckage that its crash would have caused) somewhere close as well. Would that work? they'd both make for interesting landmarks, at least.

Would the police HQ happen to have a secret underground prison facility where a certain clone was being held?

Could be some extra backstory, like, "She was so confused in the crash, she could have swore she saw a gray-armored Stormtrooper fly out."

edited 29th Jul '12 6:28:15 PM by nman

Public utilities are almost completely destroyed; think post-invasion Iraq. If you can successfully supply water, power, and security (to say nothing of luxuries like trash disposal and high-speed Hypernet), you'll win over the population.

There are probably a few thousand survivors in and around the complex, at start. If you can make it more habitable for them, expect an influx of refugees. Otherwise, less likely. I plan that in a few months to a year, you can expect lots of civvie Vong, Worker and Shamed castes, as well, as YZV high command settles them over the planet.

As for time, I seriously doubt it'll be an issue. We can always time-skip if necessary; it's a method that's worked out in the other RP I run.

re:Police facility and crazy farm: both work, yep. I'd already planned for some corner of the neighborhood to have been destroyed by a crash-landed skyhook or ship. Can't be a fully uncontrolled crash—that'd level the place. The buildings are strong, though, what with material science being a few millenia ahead of ours.

edited 29th Jul '12 6:33:03 PM by SabresEdge

@nman: It'd have a lockup, certainly, but it'd be a temporary thing. I'd think they'd house long-term prisoners in a dedicated prison, and the super-secret science experiments in another facility altogether. This is only a relatively-small district precinct, i'm not sure it'd be the best place to hide something like that.

edited 29th Jul '12 6:33:45 PM by Gaunt88

These civilian YZV, will they be hostile to the non-pointy species they may or may not find there, or is that a secret?

Fine, then, we can shove the facility somewhere else

Maybe it's really high up.

Maybe all the drunks at a particular bar saw a crazed gray stormtrooper fall to his presumed death.

edited 29th Jul '12 9:52:36 PM by nman

I think it'd be better for Ace to have wandered in in the past two weeks or so.

As for the civvie Vong, do remember that they've got a major religious schism scheduled. They'll probably be very suspicious and rather hostile; it's unlikely for you to completely win them over. On the other hand, the relatively non-hostile way some civilians reacted when Jedi showed up (I think this was in Star by Star) makes me think that you probably have a good chance of terrorizing them into neutrality or more.

Even if the Vong terraform the planet, considering that the capital is literally one giant city, it might be wise to consider that the city is likely kilometers deep.

I, for one, think that we'll all be dead by the time they get about to vongforming.

You're making this sound like Call of Cthulhu. Not saying that you're wrong, of course.

Quick question:
Are their likely to be any commercial utilities around? Things like auto-repair shops, electronics stores or what have you.

The stores will be there in quantity, but chances are high that they'll be abandoned, looted, or both. Regime change coupled with impending genocide is bad for business.

That said, even an abandoned mechanic's garage is going to be incredibly, incredibly useful.

All of this is pretty interesting, though I can't really help with the design of the chunk of city we're dealing with - my expertise lies in other areas, sorry.

Is there anything that Galvin should know as a smuggler? I mean, I don't expect him to know the entirety of Coruscant inside out since he doesn't usually remain planetside for long and all, but I don't want him not knowing about something that he logically should.

Also, we should throw a little celebration for each year/half year/month/week/day/hour (delete as appropriate) we survive.

edited 30th Jul '12 8:17:12 AM by Flanker66

Every ten minutes or so would probably be appropriate.

And we do it in character.

Coruscant never met any force greater than the Never-Ending PaaaarrRrrtyyyyy!

edited 30th Jul '12 8:29:02 AM by wikkit

How will we be able to travel across the landscape, beyond hiking it? Vehicles are a thing to be acquired, and since the power is out I doubt that elevators will be able to bring us up very far.

Galvin should probably know the local "hidden access" backalleys and hidden routes, as well as basic countersurveillance. You know, all the wonderful methods of getting from A to B without being seen. He probably has access to his vehicle, too.

As for getting around, not counting Galvin's airspeeder, you're probably out of luck. If you can find and hotwire an abandoned speeder that hasn't already been stripped bare of parts, it's yours, of course. Otherwise, you walk. This isn't as big a disadvantage as it might seem: Vong CAPs are probably trigger-happy and out for the blood of any airspeeders they see, not to mention that their version of radar will probably pick you up. On foot, you're much harder to detect. (Flanker, this involves aerial combat and low-level aviation; I expect you've got advice to disburse here.)