1KM1KT Free RPG Community

I'm thinking of my old Star Frontier days and imagining a group of planetary explorers running around identifying new food fads (shoot them fry them up and eat them), investigating mex city sites, investigating possible sites with humans abandoned habitation (learning cool things about some of the history of different movements that still exist or finding abandoned tech, or maybe locations of contemporary settlements and seeing which ones might not be on current starcharts)

What do you think these guys would need?

I'm thinking of building this skeleton as a group of enthusiasts rather than a real crack team of explorers. They would charter a ship to drop them off on a planet while they go out and explore. The team would normally scrounge around, maybe find a trinket or two and sell it to a museum.

Occasionally a colony would pay for a site survey. The PCs wouldn't usually do the survey, they'd deliver robots that would do all the soil science but it would be the PCs job to protect the robot and investigate any unusual findings. The real draw here is that the explorers can usually read the robot's sensor data (by hacking the robot) and can survey subsurface structures that the Droids may have missed.

That does bring up the question, when the Droids would attack, would they scavenge what humans made for resources? Would they attempt to eradicate all traces of a settlement, or just get rid of the humans? What priority would infrastructure destruction be on their list? I ask because my thought is these PCs would be most interested in reclaimed territories and would have to deal with the damage the Droids would do.

To be fair, you'll have to "qualify" each settlement/research site as to if it contains
anything of use to the Droids.

1) Are there any Minerals & Technology worth assimilating
- in which case removal of the humans would be paramount to doing structural damage.

2) Is the location of strategic value, and is the environment capable to causing more
harm to the humans, then the droids? (Ie ice planets, or desert planets)
- in this case destroying the infrastructure that allows the humans to survive would be easier
then eliminating each human.

3) Mixture of both. (Arctic Planet, with a colony entrenched in an derelict space craft.
- Salvaging portions of the craft would be needed but exposing the humans to fatal conditions would
be of tactical value and allowed the droids to complete more work, even if it meant sacrificing a portion
of the structure that could be of value.

I think this would be fun to play as a bunch of academics. Front load them with Academia skills and very few Task (doing stuff) skills. You can then break them up by area:

The Biological One
Key skills: Biology, Botany, Food Science
Also: Just enough Medical to be useful

The Physicsy One
Key skills: Physics, Astromechanics (etc)
Also: Low level mechasys

The Soft Skills One
Key skills: History, Antiquities
Also: Gaia Know, Research

The Mechanic
Key skills: Mechasys Know, Mechasys Systems
Also: Spacecraft Know, Spacecraft systems (if you want Spacecraft combat, otherwise if it's mostly on planet, start with Vehicle)

The Useful One
Key skills: Light Firing, Heavy Firing, Pilot Grav,
Also: Pilot Cruiser, Pilot Heavy Grav (for the Orbihaul between Orbit and Ground),

As for the Droids...
J.K.'s pretty much nailed it.

The Droids aim is raw: to kill all life (above plant life) in the most efficient manner possible. If there is no life to kill, they will wait until there is. They do not target infrastructure, it is only damaged when it gets in the way. If there are different forms of life, it will start with the biggest threat and work down. If there is too much life to cope with, they will repurpose human stuff to replicate themselves. A single Droid dropped onto a planet that is mostly empty will not replicate itself for the sake of it.

A Droid is very patient, it will wait until it runs low on power, when it will seek to obtain new generators. Generators in Icar last for thousands of years, this goes for the Droid too.

Thanks for the job/skills that makes it easier to navigate the rest.

So unless they needed to replicate a lot, there's potentially a lot of relics to be found from before their dominance. Even if they did replicate a lot, they're not being overly methodical about it. Obviously when systems were taken back from the Droids, the richest sites would be immediately investigated. Only low priority or unknown habitations would have been missed.

So if the Droids were occupying a planet, that means they'd destroy all animal life? What about plant life? Are formerly occupied planets desserts? There would be a desire to re-seed these planets if so. That would take a long time so it would be boring but potentially there could be sites where specific animal species need to be reintroduced. The team may be charged with introducing an animal back onto it's native world, that doesn't sound too interesting yet. I'll have to think about that.