Typhon:BvB
The World
Welcome to Typhon a.k.a. Aegis IV b
Setting
In the year 2387 (Earth time), colonization and exploitation of extrasolar planets was ongoing and the first human expedition reached the Aegis system.
Aegis is a yellow star 129 light years from Earth, smaller but brighter than Sol. Its fourth planet is a super jovian, about 3.5 times the size of Jupiter, orbiting Aegis on a low eccentricity orbit that places it within Aegis’ habitable zone. Automated surveys discovered that one of its satellites has a nitrogen-oxygen atmosphere and liquid water. This world was named Typhon and a fully equipped manned expedition was sent to assess its potential for colonization.
Initial orbital scans of Typhon were promising – a fully formed ecosystem with plant and animal life but devoid of sentient life. However, something kept interfering with the scans and only limited data could be gathered from orbit.
The first two attempts at landing on Typhon’s surface were unsuccessful and over 200 crew members were lost. Further automated attempts at exploration discovered severe temporal anomalies close to Typhon’s surface. Below 25 kilometers altitude, most modern technology became nonfunctional and any sort of communication between surface and orbit – from quantum gates to old fashioned radio waves – was impossible. Moreover, while Typhon’s native life forms seemed to have adapted to the anomalies, Earth based lifeforms died within seconds.
The first successful landing on Typhon’s surface was performed in 2390 using rocket engines powered by LOX and liquid methane and controlled by primitive, pre-millennial silicon based computers. Fully automated, these exploration missions have been severely hindered by the hardware used, incapable of running even basic AIs.
Exotic Matter
Samples of plant and animal life taken from the surface decayed very quickly, so research into what makes local life forms immune to the effects of the temporal anomalies stalled early on.
Mineral samples, however, could be gathered more or less intact. Several kinds of exotic matter have been discovered on the surface. This matter proved stable both inside and outside the temporal anomaly field surrounding the world and it is usually encountered in crystal-like formations. These crystals, when stimulated with appropriate radiation, alter the flow of time in an area around them. Applications for these stasis crystals (as they were dubbed by the press) appeared in every industry and demand exploded. Overnight, stasis crystals became the most sought after commodity in human space.
Without any means to reproduce stasis crystals in labs and faced with a soaring demand, in 2392 the United Terran Nations government bowed to pressure from industry lobbyists and granted mineral extraction rights to several private sector corporations. Corporations adapted the exploratory bot template formerly used by the government into mining machines.
Missions
Lack of any type of orbit-surface communication meant that bots could not be remotely controlled. Most technology built after the turn of the millennium did not work on the surface, which made implementing AI cores on the bots impossible. The current solution adopted by all corporations was to employ people with a passion for historical programming languages and have them create programs tailored for each mission, simple software that can run on the bots’ primitive hardware.
These employees are called Pilots, after an old, disused word meaning “the person who is qualified and licensed to conduct a ship”.
Each corporation has built a space station in orbit around Typhon, with living spaces for pilots and support personnel and all equipment required to manufacture and maintain bots.
Before each mission, the pilot goes through a briefing – a virtual reality simulation of the area in which the mission will take place. Mission objectives are identified and the pilot can plan how to best accomplish the stated objectives. The pilot then plans the loadout for their bot (chassis type, drive, weapons, auxiliary systems) and writes the code that will make the bot move and perform the required actions.
The programmed bot is sent to the surface and deployed on its mission. Along with the bot, an array of small drones are sent to the surface to record the mission.
In order to avoid the worst temporal anomalies, landing/launch windows are very tight, so most missions take mere minutes to complete. If the bot does not complete the mission in the time window, the lander will return to orbit without the bot and the mission is deemed a failure. The recording drones return to the lander automatically in time for lift off, so that even in the case of failed missions the results will be available.
Back on the station, data recorded by the drones is used to create a fully immersive VR simulation of the mission for the pilot and management to review the results.
Equipment
Bots (called “mechs” by most Pilots, even though the term is not accurate) are divided into three weight classes: light, medium and heavy. At the light end of the scale, bots move faster but are more fragile and the carry capacity is limited. At the heavy end, bots can carry more and can take more punishment but move slower.
Depending on the type of terrain the mission takes place in, wheels, legs, treads or a hover drive can be attached to the bot. True flight is not possible with existing technology – the closest is the hover drive, which allows bots to float a few meters above the ground and above water and small obstacles. Each drive type is suited for different types of terrain and pilots take that into consideration when planning their mech loadout.
Bots have two primary equipment slots, which can mount various mining equipment, but also weapons or shields. Weapons are ostensibly for protecting the mech from hostile native life forms, but competition between mining corporations is intense and it is very common for bots belonging to one corporation to “accidentally” attack their competitor’s bots.
In addition, bots have two auxiliary equipment slots which can be used for additional power sources, repair equipment or ECM gear.
The Time Factor
Stasis crystals alter the flow of time in an area around them. It doesn’t make time travel possible, but they can significantly slow down or speed up time in their area of effect. These areas usually have sharp boundaries and bots can detect them using simple infrared sensors as fast time areas tend to be significantly colder than slow time areas. Pilots learn early on to use these areas to their advantage.
From a pilot point of view, time may very well be the most important factor. Most pilots look at time as being discrete in nature, with each second conventionally divided into ten ticks. The computing core of a bot can only execute so many instructions per tick without overheating and pilots have to constantly balance the actions a bot can take each tick.
