How would you feature satellites in a post-apocalyptic setting? I want to be able to do something interesting with the idea of very old still functioning machinery in space. eg.Pion(eer)from Humanity Has Declined, MPU from Cowboy Bebop,ARK from SOMA, or SCP-1281.
> inb4 Mysterious MacGuffin controls old attack satellite and everyone wants it.I just think they are super neat and want my players to think the same
>>46398487
Ever read the Dark Tower series?
>>46398487
Fractal had satellites that slowly went out of order and crashed into the planet.
Which was funny, because augmented reality was everywhere and depended on those satellites.
>>46398517
Nope, why do you ask
>>46398487
Rather deep in the complex Degenesis timeline there are traces of a powerful rich guy pulling a lot of strings to do stuff like freeze teams of specially trained individuals in vaults. There are rumors he may still be alive hundreds of years later, looking down from orbit. There definitely are satellites left, they often come down as steel rain. But to actually connect to a functional one would be a final objective for a high level campaign.
>>46398487
Hopefully not too far into post-apoc because satellites hace two problems working againt them. Firstly, they will run out of juice and once that happens they're just orbiting pieces of junk metal. Secondly, atmospheric drag will bring down low-orbit satellites (ISS is low enough to get some drag and occasionally does orbital corrections to regain altitude).
It is the celestial dragon. It's passage can be marked across the night skies. It watches. It waits. It plots. When the alignment is just right, some even claim to hear its voice speaking in strange crackling hisses and screams. To some it is a god, to others a demon. But all know it as the Watcher.
>>46398487
can you tell more about the setting? I am guessing no one is still able to launch into orbit to interact with it. maybe do something with how the way the orbit works there are long periods of time where the satellite can not be contacted from the ground base station that has the computers and dishes needed to contact it. Or to get control the players have to hack another satellite and then hack through that one as a proxy using some old plug and play tech that was so plug and play it was literally a virus. Or a cult who worship the stars for navigation but can not figure out what this one fast moving star is.
>>46398487
How about a Weather Satellite, knowing what the weather is going to be like in advance is a major game changer..
Maybe its an advanced Sat, very high orbit, with a simple and lonely AI.
Maybe for another twist, it can use intense microwaves / Cloud seeding drop pods to modify the regional weather to some degree.
>>46403843
How about a simple Spy Sat with a child like AI, it can send pictures, but it only wants to look at interesting things, so the players have to convince it to look at the things they want, or turn finding certain things into a game.
>>46403892
R.O.R.I
Regional Observation Reconnaissance Intelligence
>>46403843
S.T.O.R.M.
Systematic Troposphere Orbital Reconnaissance Management
System Alert:
Warning Orbit decaying
Unable to Contact N.O.R.A.D.
Unable to Contact N.O.R.A.D.
Unable to Contact N.O.R.A.D.
Activating Analytical Judgement System
Orbit Decaying
Activating course adjustment rockets.
Bumping Orbit trajectory.
Burn Successful.
>>46398487
Thanks for the response! This is my first thread.
Geo stationary communication satellites, housing what remains of the national security AIs who fragmented themselves in order to survive, actively manipulates survivors who manage to access uplinks and old com hardware to search for the survivors or descendants, if any, of the programmers and project managers that were assigned to maintaining it. It really wants to know if they're okay, but it needs meatbags to check on the bunker locations and restore comlink infra.
>>46398487
Also, great tastes OP. When you're down, at least remember that the satellites care, and are always watching out for you.
>>46405689
Welcome to 4chan, anon. Kill yourself quickly, that you may die while you are still human.
>>46403443
Dope idea.
>>46398487
Let me talk to you about the Homecoming Saga.
Humans exist in a weird mix of primitive and super-advanced technology: The fastest mode of transportation is by foot, leading beasts of burden, but communications are instant and computers are a thing.
This is because, a long-ass time ago, super-advanced humans left Earth after the usual human vices fucked it up beyond repair. To prevent themselves from fucking up their new home immediately, they set some boundaries.
These boundaries came in the form of an Oversoul, a supercomputer using a global satellite network to subtly influence all humans on the planet, steering their thoughts away from certain societal/technological advancements that had historically started shit. This actually worked fantastically for 40 million years, more or less. Unfortunately, the original humans only expected it would take 20 million or so before humans had the asshole bred out of them.
Now, the Oversoul's satellite network is getting spotty, its hardware is getting rough around the edges, and its influence is slipping.
Shenanigans are thus afoot as it does its best with what it's got, and attempts to fix shit in what is perhaps the most circuitous way possible.
I enjoyed the series when I read it. Some of the characters are goddamn idiots, but I'm a sucker for books with AI characters.
>>46406314
There would be no humans as we could recognize them in 50 million years.
Bad Scifi is bad.
>>46406375
There is when you have a system specifically set in place to keep things in stasis.
Backed by Clarke-tier magic-ass technology, no less.
>>46406427
Whats the point to locking a species down like that, not allowing them to evolve?!?!
How about a robotic propellant depot.
Back in the space age of your world, this giant station was responsible for holding vast quantity of liquid water (feed by drone spacecrafts that land on moon/nearby NEO that then drill for water ice, also controlled by the station). When there's a planned mission the ground would signal to the propellent depot to start splitting some of the water into hydrogen and oxygen so that when the mission's spacecraft reaches orbit, it will dock with the depot to refuel and then go out to the rest of the solar system.
The depot has no idea about The Fall, and still maintains its dwindling ice mining drone fleet to refill its water tanks. It maintains it's LEO orbit by every now and then splitting some of it's water to run its manoeuvring engines to boost its orbit.
>>46406638
Robotic ice mining operation on the moon.
>>46406638
NEO water mining drone
Angels flying high,
Protect us in the sky,
Protect us as you fly.....'
>>46400690
Why bring realism into it unless it makes the setting more fun?
>>46398487
>How would you feature satellites in a post-apocalyptic setting?
>>46398517
Don't ask me silly questions, I won't play silly games...
>>46398487
One...last...bump
>>46407308
Choo choo
>>46398487
Rhand morninstar Mission has it.
How the setting is:
Evil humans rules the planet they are dictators. They impose a caste system.
Good humans decided to run to some solar system to avoid the evil humans.
When good humans arrive there, they find technolocially advanced, good alien races.
Evil Humans discover they found this place and go there to capture this solar system.
Battle start to happen and evil humans start to win.
Some good humans soldiers decide to put themselfs into criogenic state, to fight at a later date.
Evil aliens invade this solar system with their mothership, their ship send a virus to the solar system that turns humans into psychopats.
At some moment, evil aliens mothership crash and now the evil aliens are stranded on this solar system.
Some of the cryogenic state good human warriors wake up in the middle of this mess
Anyway if we stop now its the setting of Living Steel rpg, and you play as those soldiers, but there is more that will lead to the rhand morningstar mission setting:
Battle continue to happen.
After some amount of time they go to an post apocalipse area.
Some of the cryogenic soldiers wake up.
You play as those soldiers.
Anyway some of the satellites were not destroyed yet, and are used for teletransportation
Look into The Mortal Engines series. It's great post-apocalyptic YA adult fiction with lots of weird forgotten stuff from before the apocalypse, including orbital death rays.
>>46400690
Vanguard 1 was launched in 1958 and it's still up there. It's orbit is expected to last some 200 years more. On a geostationary orbit a satellite could last for eons. As for power, solar panels and nuclear batteries can last for a long time. GOES 3 has been operational for over 35 years.
>>46411151
Everyone should look into mortal engines even if they don't care about death rays desu.
>>46411671
>>46411151
I went to go buy a set of those books for a younger relative and was appalled to find they've been out of print in the US for years. Apparently they are getting a new print run soonish though
>>46398517
I read the first five, "Wolves of the Calla" was too shitty for me to keep going. Don't remember anything about satellites.
>>46412036
The recent reissue in my part of the world has some of the most hideous covers I've ever seen.
The amazing cover art was half the reason I first read to begin with.
>>46412175
...does that city have headlights?
>>46412175
My god that's atrocious.
>>46412711
But anyways, we're here to talk about satellites and orbital weapons. And here's a more relevant picture.
