BREACH Technology and Character Information

8/12/2019 BREACH Technology and Character Information

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UCLAN GAMES DESIGN 2014

BREACH Setting

InformationTechnology/Characters

Andy Pompeus

XB3001 Game Proposal


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Technology-Space Travel

In the game's universe there is no faster than light travel, at least not by humans. However,

vessels are capable of far greater speeds than modern technology.

The planets of the setting are all within one system, orbiting a star called Helios.

To travel from the outermost planets to the inner worlds would take weeks, with several stops to

refuel in the middle band. Faster ships, like Alliance cruisers and personal shuttles, could make the

trip in maybe two to three weeks, depending on the amount of fuel needed.

Such speed is achieved by the use of relatively small scale fusion reactors within larger ships,

with smaller ships using more traditional solid state fuels. These are the ones that would take longer

to traverse the system.

- Ship Architecture

Most ships are huge. They have to be to achieve any kind of speed, as the generator just

needs to be so large to power such engines. Engines on large ships, like cruisers, dreadnoughts,carriers and the like take up enormous amounts of space on a ship. In order to withstand the vast

amount of energy discharged by the fusion reactors that power large ships, the systems have to be

incredibly well insulated, as well as maintained to a higher standard than any other technology on

board. The sheer number of failsafes built into the systems means that a cataclysmic reactor failure

would all but literally never happen due to damage or system failure.

Even in an attempt to deliberately induce such an overload, in sabotage for instance, the

person attempting it would need incredibly detailed knowledge of the particular system and AI

assistance to even consider an attempt.

Bridge: The main bridge of the ship is, converse to most science fiction, not at the front of the ship,or on the outside of the hull. Technology is advanced enough that the bridge can be adequately

supplied with sensory input without needing actual physical windows to see the battlefield.

Instead, the bridge is located roughly halfway down the ships height and around a third of the way

along the hull.

The command bridge is equipped with a 360 degree set of screens, which display camera

feeds from all around the outside of the ship, giving the captain a full view of whats going on

outside the ship without exposing the bridge staff to weapons fire. From here, the captain can

control almost all ship functions, with only the minimum access to the engines as needed for

navigation.

Engineering: The engineering deck takes up most of the rear third of larger ships, due to the size of

the drive core and the thrusters that propel the ship. This is also where all systems on the ship are

powered from, which means that there are vast numbers of computers required to regulate so many

complex processes. While these are kept separate from the main fusion reactor, they are still part of

the engineering deck. The engineering and maintenance crews often make up the majority of a

ships crew, except onmilitarised ships, where troops will outnumber most crewmen.

Medical: Most large ships will have two medical bays, one on each side of the ship. Triage centres

are spread throughout to ensure that there will always be treatment available in case of emergency.

There is also a dedicated express lift to each medical bay from the bridge and from

engineering, so that commanding officers and senior staff can get immediate treatment. Each lift


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shaft also features a battery-operated gurney in the event of total power failure, including the

reserve power generators, and the separate network that powers medical stations.

Naval Combat:

While ships have incredibly powerful engines, no form of energy shielding exists for humans

in this universe. A ship's primary defence against incoming projectiles is to create a flak barrier. Since

ship to ship combat takes place at miles of distance, this makes fast-moving, accurate weaponry the

most sought after tool.

When ships get close to each other, it's known as a 'knife fight', and the crew begin to open

fire with everything, forgoing targeting computers in favour of faster rate of fire. Even flak cannons

are sometimes fired on enemy ships in particularly intense battles.

Most ships use a form of ablative armour over thick armour plating, which is interwoven

with heat-sinks for weapons and engine systems.

Ships are capable of 'running hot' for short periods of time, whereby the thermal energy that would

normally be expelled through the heat sinks is instead recaptured and pumped back into the

engines, fuelling a more intense reaction and producing more energy. However, running hotdrastically increases the temperature of the engines, and so can only be used for a short time before

parts begin to deteriorate.

Weaponry:

Ships primarily use missiles, as they are easy to target with and require fairly simple

technology to fire.

Solid state cannons are also employed on larger ships, which can withstand the tremendous

recoil such weapons produce. These are usually built into the architecture of the ship, due to their

enormous size and the logistics of loading such large ammunition.

Large scale railguns are the most powerful weapon of all. Because the projectiles travel sofast, they're virtually impossible to intercept and they can burn through armour plating with ease.

Due to their huge power consumption and the large size of the apparatus required, railguns

are only seen on the largest ships such as dreadnoughts and some cruisers, and can only be fired a

few times before bleeding the engine dry. However, this is usually enough to deal catastrophic

damage to all but the most heavily armoured ships.

Nuclear missiles are a controversial weapon in a naval engagement, as the missiles are

hugely powerful, but leave behind immense amounts of radiation, and the risk of a nuclear weapon

missing its target and drifting potentially into a planet is too great to take. For this reason they are

universally banned from use anywhere.

All ships are equipped with some form of flak defences, both for military and civilian use in

dealing with debris and asteroids. Obviously military flak cannons are more specialised than civilian

flak jackets, which use a network of magnetic relays to hold a thin layer of metal shards around the

ship to protect from floating debris.

The larger the ship, the more impractical such a method becomes, as coordinating such a

huge flak field would require a magnetic field strong enough that it would disrupt ship systems, and

require a larger amount of power to sustain than it was worth. Instead, large ships simply have flak

cannons placed at strategic intervals around the hull to fire targeted streams of flak at any incoming

projectiles. In a knife-fight situation, a flak cannon defence also serves to repel potential boarding

craft, though such a tactic hasnt been employed since the days of smaller, less advanced ships when

humanity was first venturing into space.


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Medical and surgical advances:

Humanity is far advanced in this field. First aid is generally administered via a foam bandage,

commonly referred to as bio-foam. This can be sprayed on by an untrained combatant, sealing the

wound to prevent blood loss and dries to form a flexible, sterile seal. It also contains a localised

anaesthetic to help the wounded individual continue to function.

When the injured person is then taken to a medical bay, many surgical machines and

instruments can assist with surgery, reducing the need for skilled nurses, allowing an effective staff

of only one doctor and usually one nurse.

Drugs can be administered without needles in most cases, instead using a small patch that

uses a thin layer of gel containing a guiding enzyme that is chemically bonded to the drug as it is

applied, allowing it to diffuse through the skin and seek out a blood vessel, giving an effective

transfer to the bloodstream. Each dose of a medication is simply applied to the patch via a feeder

capsule referred to as a hypo, which is then released at the twist of the cap.

Medical technology has reached the point where a dismembered or otherwise non-

functioning limb can be replaced with a synthetic one, which integrates with the nervous system for

full control. However, sensory input from the synthetic appendage is usually non-existent, or insome higher end civilian models, minimal at best. This is simply because the limbs require a power

source, usually a small superconductor unit, which would otherwise be picked up by the nervous

system and translated as a sensory overload. In tests this manifested as constant searing pain from

the synthetic limb. To combat this, the power source must be properly insulated to ensure nothing

reaches the nervous system, only messages from the host to control the limb.

Disease is generally curable, where a healthcare system exists. For this reason alone, many

outer worlds are still as rife with disease as a modern day first-world country, simply because they

have little access to the drugs and surgical procedures to combat some afflictions.

ComputingOne of the Alliances proudest achievements is The Datasphere, or more commonly

referred to as the network, or the sphere. Billions upon billions of petabytes of data are shared

around the entire system every second, with ships, hospitals, schools, homes, governments all

networked.

In naval combat, ships are protected with highly sophisticated and intricate firewalls, which

shield the ship from external tampering. Ships can also put out a null field, which is effectively a

protective barrier of interference that can drown out external signals. This stops snooping and

potential intrusions by enemy ships or computer systems.

Satellite relays orbiting each planet connect the datasphere to a world, while beaming to

immensely powerful relay stations, usually on moons or space stations, which in turn send the signal

out to other worlds. In this way the entire planetary system is connected with a delay of only six or

so hours from planet to planet. The datasphere also extends to much of open space, allowing ships

to be networked between worlds.

Ships are also outfitted with their own communication systems, which are powerful enough

to transmit and receive data between worlds. These systems use the hull to amplify the signal being

broadcast, like an enormous aerial, as well as numerous signal boosters set up in series to further

enhance the strength of the signal. A receiver is mounted usually towards the rear of the ship, where

it can be directly fed from the drive core.

Due to the power needed to run a more powerful communication system, generally the larger the

ship, the greater its range of communication. That being said, even a small shuttle would only be out

of comm range from the nearest planet for a day or so at max whilst travelling between worlds.


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AI

The Alliance employs a modest compliment of AI constructs both aboard ships and in ground

installations, to assist with complex tasks and computing.

The constructs are true AI; they are fully self-aware and develop personalities over the time they are

active. Due to the enormous processing power required for an AI to develop, they are only able to

be transferred from system to system physically by means of specially developed hard drives that

can hold the enormous load of data. AI can transfer themselves, or be transferred, digitally over the

Datasphere, or through simple hardware connections.

Most AI choose a name for themselves after they have been in service for a time, usually

between a matter of hours to a few days. Their personalities can develop almost freely, save for

safety constraints programmed into their behavioural routines that ensure an AI construct cannot

cause untold damage at will. AI have a set of rights under Alliance control which, while not as robust

as the basic human rights afforded to citizens, still give the AI the control of themselves that any self-

aware being should have. (Data in Star Trek is a fantastic precedent for this idea, being an android

who is granted rights, the first ever to be advanced enough to warrant them)

While constructs have no universal life-expectancy, they can be terminated throughpurging, or fall victim to particularly destructive computer viruses. Similarly, if an installation

completely loses power, the AI can still be preserved, as it can be reassembled from the data stored

within the system and fully restored. However, an AI requires more memory the more it learns,

which means that an AI can reach a point where it simply cannot learn anymore due to the

constraints of their host machine. Because the construct is aware of this, it is possible that an AI can

begin to have the equivalent of a nervous breakdown, as it faces never experiencing anything new

again, as it simply cannot process any new information. In such an instance, AI have been known to

delete their own programming to make space for new data, sometimes causing instabilities that

render the AI unpredictable, or even simply inoperable. Such constructs are then terminated.

An AI can choose how it presents itself to the world, from its voice to its looks. Most AI will

create an external persona that will remain unchanged for the rest of its operational time, as the

core programming of the construct wont change. However, all true AI have the capacity to learn and

constantly change as they gather more information, and so will change their appearance to reflect

what they perceive to be their new identity, much like any growing child will do. Despite this, almost

all AI choose to present themselves as a human of some kind, to better interact with people.

Most installations with an AI in place will be fitted with projectors that allow a holographic

representation of the construct to appear, in whatever form it has chosen. This is usually simply to

give personnel something to address when they speak with the AI, to better integrate a construct

with a crew or staff. This means that the AI is less a holographic crewmen, but rather has a pedestal

upon which they can appear and speak from (much like Cortana in Halo).

Shipboard AI constructs generally assist with keeping background systems functioning,

constantly and tirelessly monitoring all ship systems and making repairs and improvements

wherever needed.

AI also provide the first line of defence against electronic warfare, as they can react to

countless stimuli simultaneously, and ready defences and counterattacks before a human could even

react. This makes them a crucial tool in any scenario that requires a fast reaction, such as naval

combat, or precision manoeuvring. AI also coordinate most electronic assistance aboard ships, such

as docking procedures.

In severe electronic warfare attacks, an AI can put itself into a dormant state, erecting highly

advanced firewalls around its core programs to keep it safe until the threat is over.


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Weaponry and combat

Conventional firearms still use bullets in Breach. However, the weapons used are still at the

forefront of technology. The Alliance military, being funded by the dominant power in the system,

are equipped with top of the line gear. This includes rifles that incorporate smart aiming, whereby

the sights on the rifle are linked electronically to the soldiers helmet visor, giving them a projected

target wherever the rifle is aimed. This allows them to fire with much greater accuracy when

traditional aiming would be challenging, such as on the move or with the weapon slung low.

Modern firearms generally use smaller, faster travelling rounds that explode on impact,

allowing for much larger capacity magazines without sacrificing space or punch. In this way a

standard infantry rifle can carry around fifty rounds in a regular box magazine.

Recoil dampers are fitted into most stocks, reducing kick to a far more manageable degree, enabling

soldiers far greater accuracy mobility.

Due to the possibility of electronics failure from damage, interference or electronic warfare,

firearms still use traditional optic sights as well as smart aiming, so that they can still be aimed

effectively if the system were to be knocked out for any reason.

Standard combat armour for an Alliance soldier uses ceramic plates much like modern day

ones, with a carbon fibre weave layered throughout that can stop a round from as close as ten feet.

The body armour covers the chest and back, lower arms, lower legs, and the neck. A bodysuit is

worn underneath made of a synthetic polymer woven with a lightweight, but dense fibre that is

resistant to cutting and tearing.

Much like modern ballistic vests, once one of the ceramic plates is hit, the impact renders

the armour far more vulnerable to further damage as the plate works by shattering to all but

neutralise the kinetic energy of the round, robbing it of momentum.

Alliance officers traditionally carry a sidearm as well as a rifle, whereas general infantrymencarry only a rifle. All Alliance soldiers are issued a combat knife, which can be taken apart to provide

various survival tools, as well as fitted to most standard-pattern bayonet lugs.

High ranking officers also carry a sword, more as a symbolic weapon than an effective one,

though it is not uncommon to hear of firefights that have ended up as close quarters fights where an

officers sword has been drawn and used in defence, despite officers receiving no training in

swordplay.

Many different heavy and support weapons are also employed by the Alliance military,

including machine guns, various missile launchers, and in some cases a man-portable railgun

designed purely to neutralise any mechanised threat in one shot. Due to their size and extreme

weight, railguns are operated by two man teams, and employed as a fast single strike on an

armoured target.

They can be reloaded and fired again, but the process takes time. Because the railgun uses

such an infinitesimally small particle as ammunition, the weapon isnt reliant on swapping in fresh

ammo each time its fired. Instead, the power source for the incredibly powerful magnetic

accelerator must be replaced between shots, as each firing will deplete the reserves. This takes the

form of a very bulky energy cell, which can be recharged by any ship-size reactor. The railgun must

first be partly disassembled before the cell can be removed and replaced, making the reload a slow

and laborious process.

The Alliance military is divided up into three main areas, each with further subdivisions; the

Infantry, the Navy, and the Wing.


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Infantry: This covers foot soldiers, as well as numerous mechanised divisions that provide armoured

support for troops on the ground. Infantry also covers a small air division, which are used primarily

for transport, as well as reconnaissance. The Alliance Infantry is the workhorse of the Alliance

military.

Navy: The sea is no longer a battlefield, with the advent of interplanetary travel. The Navy instead

deals with space, composed of numerous fleets of warships, cruisers and cargo ships. Infantry

divisions also make up a part of the Alliance Navy, dropped in specialised fast-descent shuttles that

give the Navy some ground presence during low orbit or in-atmosphere engagements. They are also

occasionally used in boarding missions. The navy also feature many of the best pilots, who fly both

the battleships that engage in space combat, as well as pilots who fly smaller assault craft used in

space to ground engagements or battles with smaller, more manoeuvrable vessels. The navy also

features many shuttles and skilled pilots who make transporting their men safely their primary

concern.

Wing: The Alliance Wing covers in-atmosphere engagements, as well as their own large compliment

of shuttles and pilots for coordination with naval warfare, as well as providing backup for troops on

the ground.

While a form of national service is not compulsory as a general rule in Alliance worlds, some

countries on some planets have made it the law that anyone aged 18 must participate in at least a

year of military service.

Characters

Kyle Shaw (24)

The games main protagonist, and player character.

Kyle was a doctor from Artemis, where he was born and raised, and a member of the

wealthy Shaw family. His academic aptitude saw him graduating secondary school a year early,

though only because Kyle deliberately held himself back in order to fit in a little better. Enrolling in

an accelerated program, Kyle graduated from medical school at the age of 21, and became a

practicing doctor not long after his 22nd

birthday.

His fiance Grace was killed by Alliance troops after being detained during a peaceful protest

against the loss of civil liberties, which became a massacre after an insurgent group used the scene

as a cover to open fire on Alliance personnel. This act of aggression by the Alliance peacekeepers

was the tipping point of the separatist movement, and ultimately started the war.

When Grace is taken by the Alliance, word gets out that the protesters are being tortured to

find any link between them and the terrorist cell. Kyle funds and joins a team who break the

protesters out, however Grace is killed in the attempt, shot in the back while Kyle helped her out of

the installation. Kyle shoots and kills the senior officer who fired the shot in his grief and rage,

making himself a fugitive.

Kyle begins the game unwilling to kill again; he has taken the Hippocratic Oath like all

doctors. However, he realises it may be necessary early in the game.

Kyle is generally a moral character, driven by conscience and the will try to do the best by

everyone. However, he is still only human and is just as prone to lashing out as anyone, as evidencedby his killing of an Alliance officer.


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She develops a close relationship with Kyle, who has never met such a young AI and finds

her fascinating. While she often teases other crew members, Kyle is the only one she ever truly

listens to in small matters, and she often uses her idle process simply to watch and talk to him.

Despite being so mercurial, Evelyn is still designed for the purpose of running the ship, and is

thus highly intelligent. She will perform whatever task is necessary and will do whatever she can to

keep the ship and its crew safe.Evelyn is terrified of what will happen to her when she reaches the point where she needs to

expand past the data capacity of the Mercurys computers. She, in the simplest terms, doesnt want

to die.

Evelyn will act as the players guide and weapon for most of the game, utilising ship systems

on their command to keep them one step ahead of the enemy. She is also the players first friend,

and the game is intended to build affection for her as it progresses, so that the narrative climax has

the required emotional weight.

Virgil (8) [Blue colouration]

Virgil is an AI that works solely in the medical bays of the Mercury. Unlike Evelyn, Virgil is acapped AI; his knowledge base is limited to medical concerns, and he does not have the infinite

capacity for learning that an unfettered AI would. Instead he is an AI with a singular purpose, to aid

in surgical procedures or take over as emergency medical staff in the event of the ships doctor being

killed or injured. (Much like the Emergency Medical Hologram from Star Trek, but his original

purpose before he becomes the only doctor aboard)

In this way, Virgil is not considered a true AI. Unlike Evelyn, he cannot be offended or appeased. He

has no emotions, instead he projects a constant air of calm regardless of the situation.

This prevents him from ever feeling a need to expand, and thus he will never go rampant like

some AI do when they can no longer expand their program.

More out of habit than anything else, Kyle still treats Virgil as a true AI, and is one of the only

crew members who thanks him and says please when asking for things. This is another thing thatEvelyn finds so interesting about him.

Admiral Lucas Green (56)

A decorated Navy hero, Green is the military head of the separatist forces and the

commanding officer of the Mercury. His sharp, blunt demeanour is a product of a lifetime in the

Alliance Navy. Born on Caduceus, Green joined the navy on his eighteenth birthday, much to the

pride of his military parents. Fast-tracked on the road to command thanks to a combination of his

tactical brilliance and his family name, he quickly proved that he was just as capable, if not more so,

than either of his parents.

Green received command of his first ship at the age of 31, a very young age for a captain. His

commission, the Cussler, was a cruiser assigned to the Second Caduceus Fleet.

Green is the captain of the Mercury, met early in the game on the bridge and the source of most of

the orders that the player carries out throughout the game.

Greying but still a powerful specimen, Green is just as adept with a pistol as any of the

marines that fight to defend the senior crew in the firefight despite having not been in frontline

combat for more than twenty years.

Julian Landry (29)

Born on Deus to colonist parents, Julian quickly found that working on a homestead was not

the life he wanted. From an early age, he discovered an affinity with computer systems, managing

the network that ran his parents farm. Though his parents were against him leaving to head to a

more developed world, they allowed him to leave with a modest amount of money to make a living

somewhere more his speed.


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At 22, Julian arrived on Gaia after weeks of travel aboard a cramped transport ship. His

knowledge of the computer systems that ran a farm made him highly employable on the garden

world, and so he began working on a farm nearly a hundred times the size of the one his parents

owned back on Deus. He coordinated with other tech specialists and an AI called Carter to run most

of the farms in an entire country, ready to supply the inner worlds.

Julian found the work tedious, but was absolutely fascinated by the installation AI. Thoughhed read about them growing up, hed never met one before. After only two years on the job, Julian

decided to move on again, ready to distance himself from agriculture completely and work

somewhere that used his technical skills without farming. He also wanted to meet more AI, drawn to

how unbelievably complex their programming is and curious to study them more.

He headed for Caduceus, and began working as a junior tech specialist for the Navy. His job

was essentially to keep the AI constructs sane and content, as well as perform minor maintenance

and repairs wherever needed on base. Here Julian loved his work, and made full use of his face-time

with the constructs. It took two to run the systems in the installation, an old AI called Kira, and a

relatively young AI called Job.

Over the next few years, Julian absorbed knowledge of AI systems through running

maintenance of the constructs as well as talking to them and learning from them. When he was 27,Kira began to reach the point where the computers could no longer store any further expansion.

With Julian and Jobs help, she managed to rewrite some of her core programming to be m ore

efficient and less demanding of the bases network, prolonging her usefulness another few years.

His work with Kira got Julian some recognition within the computing community, which

added to work being carried out by computer scientists on Phoebe usher in a new wave of AI with

slightly improved stability.

Julian is the AI handler for Evelyn, and so will play a large part in the story when Evelyn

begins to malfunction due to alien interference.

Captain Lee Ross; Commander, Air Group (33)

Lee serves as the CAG aboard the Mercury, and is thus a prominent figure in the chain ofcommand. Though very likeable, his sense of duty and obligation to his crew and pilots can

sometimes make him seem rather intense. Despite this, Lee can often be found playing poker with

the crew of the Mercury, firmly believing that happy pilots are better pilots. He also serves as a

frequent drinking buddy to Kyle, sharing his appreciation of good whiskey and often playing poker

with him in the Crew Lounge during their free time.

Born to a pilot father and a lawyer mother, Lee was the youngest of three siblings; his

brother Hugh, two years his senior, and his sister Laura, three years his senior.

Raised on Artemis, Lee was used to not seeing his father for months at a time, as he was a

pilot with the Alliance Navy. While Hugh enlisted in the navy at 18, Lee instead opted to attend

university, with a navy scholarship that would ensure him officer training. He studied English

Literature for four years, before joining the navy at 22.

A skilled pilot, Lee quickly gained his wings and was assigned to the Caduceus fleet during

the insurrection on Zhao, becoming a decorated pilot and a permanent fixture aboard the flagship of

the fleet, the Mercury. He was made CAG at the age of 33.

Lee is Kyles best friend aboard the Mercury, other than Evelyn, and the two will often have

conversations throughout the game as the player travels, as well as frantic humorous exchanges

during some combat situations. Their amicable and easy friendship is intended to be highlighted, to

make the games climax truly a tough decision.

Documents

BREACH Technology and Character Information