User:Vivaporius/Sandbox/League of Civilized Worlds/III

Interplanetary travel
At the time the League of Civilized Worlds was established, only five of the TBD races which today make of its member civilizations, independently developed advanced sub-luminal interplanetary fusion engines. These were, based on their developed of interplanetary travel; the Mikaeans, Hilam, Skurians, Damar, and Ailopin respectively. Today, all League vessels are capable of 15 Gs of acceleration, though only the most hardy of species travel nearly than a fifth of that capacity. Most vessels travel at 1/3 G for basic interplanetary travel, while those seeking to move from one end of a system to the other – or between several systems at a time – generally travel a 1 G acceleration. Military vessels which have to get to a warzone as soon as possible typically push 2-3 Gs, while unmanned drones and scout ships are often sent out at more than 10 Gs of acceleration. Currently, the primary sub-luminal fusion engine utilized throughout the League is the TBD-TBD drive, jointly developed by Hilam and Mikaean scientists about two decades after the League's formation.

All races have differing tolerance levels to the amount of Gs they can be subjected to during long-term travel, with the Mikaeans and Elysians capable to withstanding a 1 G of thrust, while the Damar and Sikatrians can withstand up to 2.5-3 Gs of thrust. Other races such as the Hilam are primarily aquatic and lack reinforced bone structure, meaning that anymore more than 1/3 G during prolong space travel is physically oppressive, and for some individuals, even lethal. All races, however, are capable of resisting three times the normal thrust they are exposed to. This is only ever performed for combat maneuvers and swift interplanetary travel, but never for long-term, system-by-system travel. Because of this, most crews within the Unified League Space Forces are often sorted by species or grouped into species of similar endurance rating, and given specialized roles to prevent potential fatalities should a vessel need to move faster or perform high-G maneuvers in the midst of battle. Civilian space vessels have no qualms mixing crews, as they rarely need to travel at speeds more than 2 G at a time for commercial purposes.

Regardless, passenger travel between worlds and even solar systems is relatively inexpensive as a portion of the passenger's annual income. Much like flying between locations on a planet, interplanetary travel is subject to price hikes and class division in terms of seating arrangements and provisions provided by flight staff. Passenger voidships come in a wide variety of sizes to cater to the different needs of the corporations which own them, and the planets they are servicing. The companies responsible for providing interplanetary travel are known as "voidlines", and provide passenger and freight services to planets, moons, and stations all throughout the League. The average mid-sized civilian transit voidship carries between 4,000-6,000 passengers for a fare of about 500 to 2,000 credits per person depending on the distance and destination. Accommodations are packed and movement often limited, as space must also be provided for food, water, cargo space, and other crucial supplies as everything must be in stock prior to setting out to space, given the known fact that rescue or resupply will be days away should something fail in mid-transit.

Many voidlines operating within interplanetary space typically forego the use of a larger mothership, often times to cut back on maintenance fees and focus existing funds into building and sustaining existing interplanetary transport vessels. In some instances, larger voidlines will keep a few of these vessels on hand as search and rescue ships, often times to avoid bringing in government resources and therefore scrutiny, as well as the simple fact that the company will know when and where a dropship was last located and its heading, and is therefore better placed to dispatch a rescue team to its location. For some voidlines, it isn't uncommon for them to make use of the smaller dropship vessels to move between neighboring star systems individually, especially if the system voidgates are deeper within the star's gravity well. Regardless, the costs associated with the upkeep of these smaller vessels means that it travel between planets, moons, asteroid bases and stations is frequent and relatively affordable for most League citizens.

Interstellar travel
Interstellar travel throughout the League is frequent, though significantly more expensive than interplanetary travel within a singular star system. This is mostly due to the various regulations that are in place to ensure the safety of passengers, as well as the security of equipment and crewmen belonging to the voidlines themselves. Compared to the 500 to 2,500 credit fares one might expect when traveling between two celestial bodies within the same system, one can easily find themselves paying at minimum 1,500 credits to move across two or three star systems. Much of the cost of interstellar travel comes from the mandatory federal voidgate transit fee each passenger must pay to move between star systems. The tax is a flat 100 cr fee charged per person aboard any civilian vessel per gate transited during travel, though this only applies to gate pairings rather than each individual gate itself. For a passenger traveling from the League capital world of Tau Ceti f (Federal Center) to Sol III (Earth), they would need to cross a total of four gate pairings. This would amount to an overall fee of 400 cr charged directly by the federal government during the booking phase of the trip. It goes without saying that the League federal government derives a great deal of revenue from interstellar travel within its space, and while there is significant pressure at the passenger-level to lower gate fees, there is little in the way of political will to do anything about this so long as the government stands to gain from the tax.

Within statistical parlance, interstellar travel itself is generally regarded as any voyage involving passage across more than two voidgate pairings away from the voidship's point of departure. Anything less than this is considered "local transit", and is typically exempt from federal taxation on movement across the League to limit interference in the local economy. To minimize the risk of loss of life during interstellar travel, the federal government requires that smaller dropship vessels attach themselves to larger motherships that will provide life support and supplies for the crew and passengers of the smaller passenger vessels during long journeys. These larger vessels will have artificial gravity decks consisting of an internal rotating sections capable of accommodating hundreds of passengers at once, as well as strengthened hulls to protect against stellar radiation and micrometeorites. Consequently, maintenance for such vessels is substantial and fares involving the use of the facilities aboard the ship itself are steep. As such, prolonged voyages across the full extent of League space is generally regarded as the domain of the upper-middle class and wealthy elites of League society. However, as with all aspects of the economy, there exist much "cheaper" alternatives to such vessels, those which strip out many of the accommodations that would normally be found on a fully-equipped mothership. These vessels will usually have less capable oxygen recyclers (resulting in stale-tasting air and water), cramped bunk spaces, limited recreational facilities if any, and strict policies on what may and may not be brought aboard; all of this with the goal of costing costs as much as possible.

A voyage from the Mikaean homeworld of Family Pride to the Elysian homeworld of Fyllaren costs at minimum 900 cr in federal gate fees alone. On average, one can expect to spend at least 5,000 cr on a one-way trip to the Elysian homeworld, making travel in some instances prohibitively expensive for the average citizen. Because of these expenses, many private businesses and government agencies will subsidize travel across the League for some state employees and corporate executives, though this is typically limited to a certain number of systems depending upon the rank and status of the individual involved. For most citizens of the League, interstellar travel is not something one will perform as frequently as interplanetary travel, and those who do travel between star systems frequently are either traders, government officials, businessmen, and military personnel and industrial workers transferring between posts within League space. The one time someone will likely find themselves performing a major voyage across the League will usually be the result of a move from their homeworld to another star system, and from that point, it may be years before they travel the same distance again, usually if they are returning to their homeworld to visit their family.


 * Percentage of population performing:
 * Interstellar travel – 10%
 * Interplanetary travel – 30%

Wormhole gates
All League systems are connected to one another via a network of wormhole gates, or voidgates. All gates within the League were developed initially by the Mikaeans, and later improved upon by the Hilam and TBD during the early League era. Each gate is constructed by a self-sustaining pod of drones launched from a neighboring system occupied by the League of Civilized Worlds. These pods are launched at near-light speed, moving approximately 99% the speed of light for the bulk of the journey. So as to maximize the number of habitable worlds available to the League at any given time, and to cut back on the exorbitant cost of producing these gates, the federal government launches these pods in timed periods of expansion, usually lasting for a period of fifty years before the next period of expansion begins. The last such expansion phase was approximately thirty-seven years prior to the modern day. Travel through the gates is instantaneous, as the same technology used for the utilization of TPNs in the League is also used for the gate system, albeit on a far greater scale. Voidgates are connected to one another on a strictly 1-to-1 basis. While connections can be altered to a different location, the link can only be made to another deactivated gate, and never to powered one. As of the present day, League scientists are not yet aware if there is an upper-limit to the number of gates a system can host, or if such a limit even exists. However, existing federal law regulating the use of voidgates prohibits the connection of more than one gate to another.

According to federal law, all member systems of the League of Civilized Worlds are required to place their wormhole gates in regions of local space accessible to all major population centers within that system. Normally, in systems where most of the celestial bodies have been colonized, the wormhole gate will be located near the "center" of the system's primary population centers. For instance, in the TBD system, wormhole gates are located between TBD and TBD, each of which has more than five billion permanent inhabitants. Alternatively, all wormhole gates will be placed in a location deemed to be sufficiently distant enough from the system's stellar bodies to ensure no harm to the traffic entering and exiting the gate, as well as ensuring the physical integrity of the gate itself. This is not to mention avoiding any potential danger to upsetting the gravitational orbits of celestial bodies in the system while the gate itself is active. Depending on the star in question, the gate may be located at the edge of a system's habitable zone, or a particular number of astronomical units (AU) from the star itself. This setup is the most common one within the League, as it ensures all colonies have equal access to the gates, as well as placing them within a reasonable enough distance from the star that it doesn't take more than a week to travel from the inhabited world to the gate. Overall, transit times of more than a week to and from a gate to a populated world are rare, and usually avoided as a state policy.

The voidgates themselves are not "gates" in the traditional sense of a circular opening into the throat of the wormhole itself. Rather, these gates are man-made constructs surrounding a spherical wormhole at its center. The laws of physics surrounding the operation of wormholes also means that the system on the other side of the gate is visible to all close enough to view the interior of the wormhole, and while transiting the gate itself no time appears to pass to the viewers both within the voidship entering or the viewers at the gate stations on either side. Rather, the voidship passes seamlessly through the gate, with passengers watching as the throat of the wormhole passes around them as they cross over into the other system. The superstructure surrounding the wormhole itself is built to maintain a gravitational constant at the center where the throat of the wormhole is formed and forced to open to a radius of approximately 5 kilometers, allowing a high level of mass to enter and exit the wormhole without "blocking" it and forcing a violent closure. The energy supplies demanded to maintain the wormhole are high, and to ensure that the wormhole does not collapse due to a lack of sufficient power, the superstructure of the gate is divided into four parts, each of which has two power stations capable of picking up with one of the others has failed, ensuring a total of four redundancies in the gate system. The collapse of a wormhole gate would be disastrous, though to date, no such event has occurred in the history of interstellar travel within League space or that of its neighbors. Of the few interstellar treaties to exist between the great powers, the deliberate destruction of a voidgate is legally-regarded as an unpardonable war crime.

Black-water navy
The concept of a "black-water navy" hails from the ability of a nation or planet to maintain a space-faring naval force capable of fighting far from the homeworld it hails from. Comparable to the blue-water navy terminology on Earth, a black-water navy is a fleet of warships that can operate for prolonged periods of time far from their port of call, and engage enemy forces within space without external support. Due to the time it takes for any meaningful reinforcements to reach a target vessel away from a planetary body, black-water navies are naturally expected to remain self-sufficient in the space of time it takes for replenishment vessels to reach them, as well as go on the offensive independently while awaiting said replenishment. Only a handful of worlds have this capability, as warships and dropships are expensive to build and maintain, as well as keep an efficient logistical network running to ensure that their crews don't die of starvation or lack of protection while far from home. Because of these, most worlds only maintain so-called "white-water navies"; spacial forces that remain within the gravity well of their homeworld and thus "illuminated" by the light of the planet they hail from. White-water navies rarely consist of larger vessels, and generally serve to maintain a customs patrol over a planet, destroy incoming asteroids, space junk, and debris, as well as provide a measure of security from pirates, mercenaries, and foreign military forces until backup from a far more capable fleet can arrive.

Voidship classes
The League maintains a radically different set of classifications for its fleet of voidships, helping to distinguish them from their terrestrial cousins and their differing roles in the military. Typically, the classification of a military voidship is based more upon the role it plays within a battle-sphere rather than its characteristics as was the case with terrestrial warships. For example, among the smallest voidships of the League interstellar navy are lancers, tasked with tracking down and attacking larger vessels en masse and forming a defensive screen for the fleets own capital ships during a battle. Because of the vast size of the region patrolled by such vessels, it was imperative that the military be able to field a mass-produced fleet of voidships that were affordable, efficient, and lethal enough to operate over a large portion of space to ensure a measure of security within a star system. These classes will be defined and described in the section below.

Dominators
TBD

Lancers
Lancers are medium-sized voidships designed to operate in a set-piece battle during confrontations with an enemy fleet. They are heavily-armed with the goal of registering a first strike upon enemy vessels with long-range particle beams, and usually have two or more onboard, with a single medium or large fusion beam cannon within the hull itself. Compared to their interdictor cousins, lancers while capable of independent patrol tend to stick close to the fleet they are attached too, only splitting off to take part in long-range patrol missions with a flotilla of smaller escort vessels in tow. They have large vacuum infantry detachments for onboard security, as well as to take part in boarding actions during combat in the event that an enemy vessel strays too close during a pass-by of the two engaged fleets. Lancers further differ from interdictors in that they have a far larger array of weapons and countermeasures designed to deal with all manner of enemy combat capabilities, such as signal jammers, scramblers for torpedo attacks, and advanced electromagnetic screens far and above those equipped on an interdictor. Lancers can range anywhere from 200 meters in length to more than 500 meters in length, with more recent classes with full anti-gravity capabilities nearing 750 meters in length.

Skimmers
Skimmers are military voidships designed to operate within a constellation of warships as the primary screen defense for the larger interdictors and fatherships, and comprise the smallest military vessels designed to take part directly in attacks on enemy fleet formations. While they are not designed to take on larger voidships on their own outside of battle, they are expected to operate in wolf-packs that surround and attack the hardpoints and weapon systems of a enemy vessel. Skimmers are somewhat larger than their hunter-killer counterparts, and have much more potent weaponry for their size due to their role in combat. Similarly, vacuum infantry serve a far more defensive role aboard skimmers compared to hunter-killers, defending the skimmer and its crew from boarding attempts during battle rather than proactively attempting to board the enemy vessel. Because of their role in forming the defensive screen for the large ships of the constellation, not all skimmers are expected to have vacuum infantry aboard, or if they do, these attachments are limited in size. A typical skimmer will be approximately 80-120 meters in length, and have a single light or medium fusion beam cannon as their primary anti-ship weapon, alongside the standard outfit of laser pulse/beam emitters.

Interdictors
TBD

Hunter-killers
Hunter-killers, or HuKs, are lightly-armed voidships employed by the League for internal patrol duties and customs enforcement. Whereas their skimmer counterparts are equipped with heavy weapons such as fusion and particle beam cannons, the hunter-killers are mostly limited to most modest yet potent weapons, such as laser emitters and ordinance launchers to fulfill the limited combat roles they might encounter. The hunter-killers are typically crewed by fresh recruits and newly-minted naval officers before they are reassigned to more prestigious postings on larger voidships. Hunter-killers operate almost entirely within the colonial and frontier systems of the League, where the presence of larger and more potent military vessels is deemed as either being too expensive or unnecessary for the needs of maintaining law and order in the system. As a rule, hunter-killers operate in groups of two or four, and only ever break off from their groups individually if deemed absolutely necessary, as the threat of an ambush by pirate flotillas or being marooned in space without immediate support are constant threats for the hunter-killers and its crew. Hunter-killers are the smallest military vessels in use with the League capable of independent patrol duties, with scales ranging between 50-80 meters in length, and usually run with a complement of 30 to 50 personnel and 10 to 20 marines depending upon the areas of patrol assigned to the vessel.

Dropships
Dropships are designed to facilitate the rapid ascent and descent of passengers, troops, equipment, and cargo to a planet and orbital facilities. There are various sizes and classes of dropship in use with the League of Civilized Worlds, with the primary division being between civilian and military dropship classes. Civilian dropships classes are made up of passenger dropships, cargo/tanker dropships, and industrial dropships, with the latter designed to transfer mining and manufacturing equipment to the surface of a celestial body that are utilized in non-urban/colonial projects. Tankers carrying liquefied chemicals, petroleum, or natural gas, are built with specially-designed condensers which are resistant to changes in pressure inside and outside of the dropship itself. Finally, passenger dropships which are among the most common dropships in general use, are designed to ferry hundreds or even thousands of passengers from one planet or moon to another, either independently if in-system, or to a mothership if moving between star systems.

Military dropships are similar to civilian dropships to some extent in terms of the general roles they fulfill in their function as ferries. However, these vessels are typically larger in size, and have the benefit of being equipped with high-powered lasers and missiles which allow them to deal with interceptors and potential threats to the vessel and its passengers and cargo. Other classes in use are those which transport aerospace vehicles such as fighters, helicopters, and drones, as well as specialized military cargo dropships which utilize as much of their internal space as possible to deliver armored vehicles, combat exosuits, and artillery pieces among others to the surface. As a standard, all major military dropships designed for the deployment of troops to a planet, will have troop dropships, aerospace dropships, and cargo dropships, with the troop dropships designed to carry a single battalion top the surface along with all of their light equipment.

Upon landing on a terrestrial body, the dropship will function as both a temporary barracks as well as a forward operating base and headquarters for the troops released from its hold. Likewise, with the extensive weapons system built into the dropship, the vessel is capable of also providing a protective field of fire for the troops in the area attached to it, much like the firebases of the United States during the Vietnam War. So effective are these interlocking fields of fire provided by the dropships, that most opposing forces generally avoid assaulting the landing zones of the League dropships for fear of attracting laser, railgun, and missile attacks from the dropship crews. All military dropships in service with the League have the capacity of functioning as sources of power for the military bases which are constructed nearby, as the troops they deliver will have no access to the local power grid until progress has been made to secure them during the coming battle.

Troop megaships
Vessel designed specifically for the movement of surface combat forces from planet to planet, along with the equipment and weaponry necessary to establish a fully-operation and self-sufficient garrison on the planet itself. Such vessels would be utilized for planetary combat operations, allowing the Unified League Terrestrial Forces (ULTF) to deploy vast numbers of troops planetside while concentrating resources into only a handful of spacefaring vessels. Primary issue with interstellar warfare is the ability of the attacker to bring enough combat personnel to the terrestrial location, and the vast amount of logistical effort necessary to allow those forces to land and combat the enemy on their home territory. A handful of troop megaships would allow the attacker to land millions of soldiers and their equipment on the planet from a safe location, and continuously support the troops by providing lodging for the wounded, a center of operations for commanders, and a point of contact for resupply vessels from other locations.

Ideally, the League of Civilized Worlds would have approximately 24-30 such megaships, enough to allow the interstellar power to wage war on two or three highly populous worlds simultaneously. Earth has approximately 110 million soldiers total (20 million active personnel, 80 million reservists, and 10 million paramilitary soldiers). Given the technological advantage of the League, it would need about one soldier per fifteen enemy combatants on Earth. For comparison, though it had numerical superiority, the United States Army lost 95 soldiers to the nearly 2,000 Iraqi insurgents killed during the Second Battle of Fallujah, or a kill-to-death ratio of 20-to-1 (if factoring in all allied forces lost, this ratio drops to 18-to-1). As the League would be facing more advanced and better organized and trained militaries on Earth, the advantage in numbers is shortened somewhat, though not entirely. So a better approximation would be one League soldier to every eight or ten NATO soldiers for comparison, with an upper limit of 13-15 depending upon the force ratios employed by both sides engaged in the battle.

The occupation of a planet would be aided with the presence of warships in orbit capable of destroying large concentrations of enemy combatants, allowing the numerical advantage of the enemy to be weakened significantly, and preventing over-extension of League combat personnel on the planet. Nations such as Russia, China, the United States, India, and Brazil could see themselves hosting the majority of League troops during an occupation, while smaller or less populous regions of the planet would be patrolled by rapid reaction forces akin to the extremely successful counterinsurgency "Fireforce" tactics of Rhodesia during the 1970s. Small bodies of well-trained and led troops were able to destroy vastly numerically superior enemy forces with few losses to themselves. Unlike Rhodesia, the League would not be as heavily impacted by the effects of political pressure or waning public support, primarily due to the remoteness of the conflict and relatively small-scale of the conflict compared to the interstellar nature of the League.

This vessel the estimated technical specifications of The Gnosis (from Elite Dangerous) as the baseline for League troop-carrying megaship.
 * Specifications (estimated)
 * Length: 5,050 meters
 * Height: 1,225.7 meters
 * Width: 740 meters
 * Mass: 35,000,000 tons (dry)
 * Cost: 119,105,000,000 CR
 * Complement: TBD
 * Crew: Approx. 10,000 crew and 2,133,450 troops


 * Specifications (ideal)
 * Length: 7,000 meters
 * Height: 1,500 meters
 * Width: 800 meters
 * Mass: 50,000,000 tons (dry)
 * Cost: ~150,000,000,000 CR
 * Complement: TBD
 * Crew: Approx. 15,000 crew and 2,500,000 troops

Troop complement taken from ship mass divided by mass of America-class amphibious assault ship, and multiplying it by the number of crew on the latter. America-class vessel designed specifically for transporting large numbers of combat-ready marines into hostile warzone along with all of the equipment that force would need for short-term deployment. The latter "ideal" version of the megaship balances out the size and mass of the vessel, and lowers the number of troops onboard to account for food, supplies, weaponry, vehicles, base-building materials, and the frame of the ship itself. A single megaship would be able to provide all of the equipment necessary for a large landing force, along with all of the supplies necessary for up to a year's worth of high-intensity combat. This assumes that there would be no rapid resupply of the forces planetside, and the need for the troops to hold out long enough for the League to send additional vessels to aid in the planetary operations.

Apartments
The overwhelming majority of the League's population reside in apartment units which constitute more than 75% of all housing units across the League's member worlds. As the majority of League citizens reside within urban centers, high-density housing is required to support the population on the bulk of the terrestrial worlds within the League. On some worlds, such as barren, martian, ice, and water planets, apartments are mandatory as the only truly functional method of housing, based on nothing else but the nature of the planet that is being developed. As a free market economy, the League focuses on providing the private sector with as much leeway as reasonably acceptable, ensuring that market forces are responsible for increasing and plateauing the number of housing units available at anyone time. There are no rent controls, meaning that a landlord or leasing company has free reign in determining what the price of an apartment is based on the features and number of residents that are to be supported.

By law, no housing unit designated as an apartment may have less than 50 square meters, in the event that the tenant decides to marry and have a child. This was the size determined to be viable for a nuclear family to live out of until more extensive accommodations could be acquired for them. Apartments differ from individual housing units in the sense that they are "up-scalable", allowing the tenant to changing their accommodations or increase the number of additional tenants within the unit. For a 50 square meter apartment unit, no more than two persons are allowed within, unless there is a single minor involved, or two with government permission. Upon reaching the age of majority, these minors are classified as adults, and the small apartment unit is no longer legally permissible for habitation under existing federal housing laws. Given the multiracial nature of the League's population, all housing units within the union must have reasonable accommodations or modifications available for all members of the League's Core Races.

Naturally, the majority of apartments within large urban centers are more expensive than those within the less-trafficked zones of a planet's urban agglomerations. The average rent for a 50 meter apartment within the "city center" of a major urban locale was 3,500 cr, while it was about 1,250 cr for those located outside of the city center. This price increased with the number of bedrooms added to the unit, with the standard studio/1-bedroom being 3,500 cr, and increase to 4,250 for a 2-bedroom unit, and more than 5,000 for a 3-bedroom unit. As required by law, a bedroom can be no fewer than 10 square meters, and for every additional person added to the apartment unit, the unit itself must have an additional 5 square meters of space added to it, with a mandatory 5 square meters added to the unit once growing to accommodate three bedrooms in total. Thus, a three bedroom apartment within the League can be no smaller than 100 square meters under existing federal law.

Single-family houses
Due to the rapidly-expanding population of the League, single-family housing is rarely rare outside of the predominately rural or underpopulated planets in some of the League's star systems. For instance, agricultural worlds which have devoted themselves to the production of foodstuffs for the League, are legally-permitted to restrict the number of residents allowed to reside on the planet, with special exceptions made for those who are native to the planet itself. As such, there tends to be large swathes of land free for the population to use for their housing needs, and with this the majority of housing on these worlds tend to be of the single-family type. On more urban planets, single-family housing still exists in large qualities, but they are using found as suburbs of major urban centers, or in regions where the population density is low enough so as not to require the construction of extensive apartment blocks in the area. In these regions, neighborhoods not unlike those found on Earth can still be found with all of the trademarks of single-family housing included.

Typically, the wealthy maintain large mansions outside of the urban centers of the League as second homes or even as their primary residence. These homes tend to be found in locations exclusive to those with the funds to pay for the plot of land, or in regions with scenic vistas on land that is either to rocky or too remote to allow for the average middle-class worker to build a home there. Slums are still known to exist in some parts of the League, but these are usually rare. Regardless, slum housing can be found predominately in the single-family form, generally as the family builds a home for themselves using whatever materials they have on hand to protect themselves from the elements. These so-called "dark zones" are rarely patrolled by law enforcement, and the zoning regulations tend to be non-existent, as no government official cares enough to enforce the zoning regulations of the state in these areas.

Artificial habitats
Artificial habitats within the League are numerous and varied in terms of size, design, population, and function, along with several factors not listed. Regardless of this, all stations are designed in accordance with League federal construction standards, which group these stations into identifiable classes for administrative purposes. As such, a system was developed by the government to identify the numerous space stations by their shared qualities and levels of development within the solar system, and assign them a rank based on that grade.
 * Type-Aleph – TBD

Space stations

 * TBD-class station – TBD
 * TBD-class station – TBD
 * TBD-class station – TBD

Underground complexes
Underground complexes are the most common sorts of artificial habitation on worlds where the atmosphere is either thin, toxic, or non-existent, and helps to provide protection against the dangerous radiation levels of such planets as well. Much like the underwater cities of the League throughout inhabited space, these complexes are built around a central dome, where the majority of the government and businesses will be based. Generally, it will be at this domed location where the primary ports of entry are located, along with the security screens and landing bays. Furthermore, it is usually at this location where the only evidence of settlement will be visible from space, as the rest of the complex will be hidden below the surface and home to the majority of the world's population and industries. Due to the vast amount of matter that must be removed from below the surface to construct such complexes, underground cities are often extraordinarily expensive to build and maintain, and thus suffer from a slow population growth rate, largely due to the need to excavate the space to build additional habitation modules. In spite of this, the limitless space for urban planning below the surface allows for housing - once built - to be very cheap and easy to connect to the transportation networks of the city. Water stores and power generators are typically placed below the rest of the complex in their own dedicated facilities, with the goal being to ensure that they are secure and easy to access in the event of an emergency. By law, all underground complexes must have multiple exit points, local greenhouses, and entire food and water stores to feed the population for at least six months to a year; enough time for emergency supplies to be brought it from off-world.

Communication
Interstellar communication within the early days of the League was slow and unreliable, prone to data package loss, and blackouts during celestial events such as eclipses, solar flames, and misalignment due to planetary rotations. The ability to transfer information between two locations approaching the speed of light was not yet commonplace within the League, with even the most advanced worlds within its space lacking the resources and technology to do so. On the few that boasted these rare technologies, these alternatives were not widely practical at the time, and their standards fell well short of the modern communication methods in use today. It wasn't until the development of practical space-time manipulation by League scientists and corporations, that interstellar communication became a feasible reality that the entire union of worlds enjoy today. Indeed, the advent of such technologies are directly responsible for the League's existence as an interstellar power, and its ability to thrive on such a level as a unified entity.

Toran Pillar Nodes (TPNs)
All interstellar communication within the League has been made possible thanks to the existence of so-called toran pillar nodes (TPNs), which house all of the equipment, power supplies, and micro-wormholes necessary to facilitate near-instantaneous superluminal communication between planets. TPNs are massive communication hubs which contain dozens to several hundreds of micro-wormholes, each of which are artificially sustained by on-site fusion power plants built solely for the TPN's operation. Each micro-wormhole supported within a TPN is linked one-on-one to another on a distant planet where a laser beam is focused into the anomaly; data is packaged and prepared for transfer, routed through the wormhole to its mouth in the other location, and the information processed and de-compiled, and sent off to its intended recipient. Thanks to the advent of TPN technology, the interstellar union of planets, moons, outposts, and space stations are able to maintain direct and instantaneous contact with one another, thus permitting the League of Civilized Worlds to exist as a cohesive interstellar entity.

All planets within the League with a permanent local population are constitutionally entitled to request the construction of a TPN on their surface, so as to ensure direct communication with the other worlds of the League. To ensure reasonable access to the network, as well as to maintain its security and ease of management, TPNs are divided into three distinct categories: civilian TPNs, military TPNs, and government TPNs; with significant overlap with the latter two categories. Civilian or public TPNs constitute the majority of TPN network, and are found on almost all worlds within the League. They are the largest and most utilized category of TPN, given the tens of billions of citizens who use such facilities to communicate with one another across space. Government TPNs make up the second-largest portion of the network, due to the vast data and communication needs of a government spanning hundreds of inhabited worlds and celestial bodies. Only government employees with special access privileges are allowed access the network, and all communication within the government network can be easily tracked and isolated.

Military TPNs are the most secure and the most advanced type of TPN, though they are also the smallest section of the TPN network, specifically designed to be robust and self-contained for the needs of the Unified League Armed Services. Overlap in communication is prevented thanks to a division in facilities, and they are miniaturized enough to fit aboard large spacecraft, allowing immediate coordination between the thousands of warships, military bases, and distant outposts within the League and its millions of military personnel. Military TPNs are unique in that they are the only versions designed to be sustainable on a mobile level, for military vessels and ground units. Ground forces have purpose-built vehicles which contain fusion power generators and TPN units, allowing the local commanders to remain in touch with their superiors on other planets during conflicts. Naturally, due to the expensive nature of these vehicles and their power needs, they are few and far between, and only the most vital of campaigns are entitled to one.

Network beacons
Network beacons are the primary means by which all communication is able to cross League space. Given the realities of planetary orbits and rotations, it was understood that a stationary constellation of beacons that could receive and transmit data to one another, regardless of a planet's location or distance, would be a necessary for any interstellar civilization. Thus, network beacons were developed in TBD LC by a joint Hilam, Elysian, and Mikaean scientific body, as a method of allowing planets to transmit data to one another at the speed of light, while also minimizing the risk of data scattering and degradation. With the dual breakthroughs on quantum teleportation, data could be beamed to a beacon from a planetary relay station using the principle of quantum physics to prevent the loss of information over vast distances. Quantum teleportation is the principle that a photon carrying data through a laser beam to a beacon, is cloned by a completely new photon with the exact properties of the old one, effectively preserving the data at the location of reception. With this scientific development, network beacons could be spaced apart, and beam information from one another over vast distances at light-speed with near-perfect accuracy and preservation of data, effectively ensuring a rapid method of communication between planets. Though some time would be required to receive, process, and transmit the data to the next location, all of it is done within a manner of seconds to minutes.

Anti-gravity
The development of anti-gravity technologies within the League are recent, having been introduced within the last century by the Hilam to help make interstellar travel an easier process for them. This was a major revolution in the understanding the fundamental forces of nature, and paved the way for a way range of new technologies that open up greater control over the environment within League space. At the moment, anti-gravity technology has only been improved and incorporated into few areas of League life, notably for military troopships to make long tours of duty bearable for the troops, as well as for many void habitats of large size, with about a dozen new habitat designs within the need for a rotating section for the residents. Consequently, these habitats have grown in size as the mechanisms for a rotating habitat no longer form a soft cap on the size of a habitat. As of the present, only about 8% of all voidships within the League possess an anti-gravity generator, with the main limitations being the power supply of the ship itself, its physical size (and thus the network of connected anti-gravity units), and the age of the vessel's superstructure.

Because of the nature of the technology and the resources required to sustain anti-gravity fields, most new voidships specifically designed to accommodate the generators as a central part of their structure. The old vertical decks most League vessels possess are gradually being phased out of service in favor of the new horizontal designs permitted by the introduction of anti-gravity technology; however, given the vast fleet of ships the League's civilian and military institutions possess, this process will take decades if not a century or more to complete. The overall truth of the matter is that anti-gravity technology remains an incredibly expensive luxury, and the nature of the shipbuilding and artificial habitat design has meant that adjusting to incorporate this technology will not be a quick process. Vertical ship decks are built to fit the existing concepts that were held throughout most of League history, and would require a vast number of new ship designs to replace the old ones. Modernization of the older vessels to incorporate the new technology would be prohibitively expensive or entirely pointless, as this would necessitate pulling entire decks out of a ship and refitting them with horizontal decks. Some ships such as troopships may benefit from this, while others such as warships will not, due to the location of weapons, crew quarters, and supplies.

Void habitats as they are currently known will be entirely outmoded by the advent of anti-gravity technology. All utilize some form of rotation to support the permanent population onboard, and their entire structure is designed to facilitate this function. All levels of a habitat are built around the walls of the superstructure, and as with voidships, it would be entirely implausible to simply rebuilt the stations with the new technology incorporated with horizontal decks. In many ways, the existing vertical system is more beneficial, as it allows for more space within the interior of the station, and allows for a wider range of ships to dock within. It will take decades for corporations to design new habitats that provide many of the benefits stations with artificial gravity now possess, and given the nature of the corporations themselves, they will no doubt seek to avoid having to do so for as long as they can reasonably get away with. On a more terrestrial level, anti-gravity has opened a number of doors for civil engineers and architects, who are now no longer restrained by the effects of gravity upon buildings and facilities. However, at the moment, the technology remains far to expensive for them to use on a small scale, and will likely remain so for many decades.

Another development attributed to the new anti-gravity technologies is the development of inertia-less voidships, a technology that effectively overhauls and revolutionizes the way these vessels move through space. Anti-gravitational fields are generated around the vessel in question, and the settings configured in such a manner as to shift the Newtonian physics of the vessels to perform as if it were located in an atmospheric setting, allowing the ship to "fly" through space without conforming to the current mode of "flip-and-burn" maneuvers all voidships must conform to. As highlighted by the aforementioned redesign of ship hulls to accommodate the use of gravity within ships, more unique styles of voidship could be developed to operate in space as well in the atmosphere of a planet based on the now feasible "winged" designs coming out across the League.

Gravity manipulation

 * Gravity is the weakest of the four fundamental forces in nature;
 * Strong nuclear force binds quarks and nuclei together is a hundred times more powerful than;
 * Electromagnetic force which binds electrons to their atoms and atoms to other atoms, and is a million times more powerful than;
 * Weak nuclear force which is responsible for radioactive decay in nature, and is trillion trillion times more powerful than;
 * Gravity which only possesses an attractive component which brings to objects together
 * Anti-gravity is the concept that gravity has a repulsive component to it as an opposite to the attractive force it typically has
 * Anti-gravity is different from artificial gravity, which is generated by creating a rotation force to maintain a semblance of gravitation force within the environment
 * Gravity manipulation could be possible, though it would have far more applications in society beyond generation of gravitational forces within a weightless environment
 * Dark energy is believed to be a potential source of anti-gravity that will allow for the manipulation of gravity, though there is no known method for manipulating dark energy
 * Dark energy is the force found to be responsible for the rapid expansion of the universe beyond the speed of light; no understanding of where it comes from or how to generate it
 * The ability to produce gravitational fields when and where you want would open the following possibilities:
 * Generation of the fusion possess found inside the core of stars within a controlled reactor; the mass of a star is great enough to smash atoms together and generate the vast quantities of energy that power stars
 * Gravity or anti-gravity can be used to bend light away from an object, such as red-shifting high-frequency lasers to make them weaker when the hit
 * Can be used to build massive telescopes through the use of gravitational lensing, which is normally caused by black holes or large galaxies and diffuse stellar objects
 * Can be used to slow down time within a spot through the use of a powerful anti-gravity field, or if done as a uniform field can be used safely on people as well
 * Can generate slow-time stasis within a localized area such as a food box or a stasis chamber for crew during a period of long-term travel
 * Dangerously old and supermassive stars can have the fusion within their cores decreased and the matter from them (via starlifting) to prevent their expansion and the resulting supernova
 * Gravity manipulation would allow for the construction of super-tall buildings without them collapsing under their own weight
 * Terraforming of small moons and asteroids made possess to maintain atmosphere and comfortable gravity levels for the residents
 * If scaled up large enough, could be used to reverse the effect of the universe's expansion by dragging galaxies back into place that are being pushed away by dark energy
 * Megastructures such as ringworlds and birch planets would be feasible to construct, as their collapsing into gravitational singularities due to the vast amounts of matter used to construct them
 * The interior of a black hole could be viewed safely through the manipulation of the gravitation fields around it, while wormholes and warp drives could be developed as the negative matter required could be generated
 * As for the offensive capabilities of gravity manipulation:
 * Suns can be detonated by ramping up their gravity and causing the level of fusion within them to increase and cause a premature supernova within the system
 * Planets could have their gravity removed and causing it to explode under its stored heat energy, which would be released rapidly through the crust causing its disintegration
 * Spaceships and planets could be crushed under their own weight by ramping up the gravity within the space around them and causing them to collapse
 * Floating cities made possible without the need for some form of buoyancy, active support, or some other sort of flotation systems
 * Time could be sped up, such as in constant-rate nuclear decay reactors, as well as bend space and time; this alone allows for the following:
 * The reversal of entropy (the decay of all matter - organic or inorganic)
 * Makes faster-than-light travel and time travel become viable
 * Inter-dimensional travel becomes a possibility

Starlifting

 * The following uses for starlifting are listed as:
 * To collect hydrogen;
 * To collect other elements;
 * To create heavy elements via transmutation
 * To extend the life of a dying star;
 * To decrease the brightness of a star;
 * To create new stars;
 * To prevent a large star from exploding
 * Hydrogen from a star converted into helium to produce energy by nuclear fusion
 * Fusion power follows the same process of converting hydrogen into helium to be used as a source of energy
 * Gas giants useful as a source of hydrogen as the gravity is lower making extraction easier
 * The uses for hydrogen are as follows:
 * Hydrogen is the most abundant matter in the universe, and thus is useful as plentiful source of mass in the construction of megastructures such as shellworlds
 * One of the best radiation shields; can stop high-energy radiation, and thus can be used as a protective layer around artificial space habitats
 * Can be harvested and combined with oxygen (the third most abundant element in the universe) to produce vast quantities of water
 * Metallicity of a star measures every other than hydrogen and helium; stars grouped into units known as Population 1/2/3, which indicate the amount of metal within them
 * Type I (Metal Rich) - About 2% of the star's mass is comprised of metals
 * Type II (Metal Poor) - Typically hotter and bluer than metal rich stars
 * Type III (Metal Super poor) - Oldest stars in the universe, virtually no metals left within them
 * Metals of a star typically spread throughout a star due to the convective nature of the star
 * All the metals within the Sun alone would have a mass approximately six thousand times that of Earth
 * Transmutation of elements would allow the creation of other elements through the use of nuclear fusion, from which heavier elements are produced
 * Hydrogen could be turned into iron via the method above, while also generating power from the process; helium could also be turned into carbon as well
 * The entire process of transmutation allows for the production any element desired, as well as providing a source of power for the inhabitants
 * Removal of helium and other elements would allow for the extension of a star's lifetime almost indefinitely
 * Decreasing the mass of a star would also make it easier to pull matter from it for use in other items such as dyson swarms
 * The dimming of a star also decreases the amount of material needed construct something like a dyson swarm or power collectors
 * Starlifting can be accomplished via the following methods:
 * Thermal drive outflow (TDO) - Easiest and most feasible method within current technological limits, but the slowest of the three in collecting matter
 * Centrifugal acceleration - Fastest method but the most inefficient due to method of matter collection; likely used to rapidly remove mass from a star than collect it
 * "Huff-n-Puff" method - Most efficient method; similar to TDO method but with more matter drawn from the star
 * If using Sun's entire energy output at 100% lifting efficiency, a single Earth's worth of mass could be removed every century, dismantling the Sun within about 30 million years
 * 10% lifting efficiency would be extremely impressive due to the vast levels of energy required to remove mass from the Sun within optimal levels; entire process would be slow regardless of efficiency

Sports

 * Anti-gravity racing – With the advent of anti-gravity technology within the last century, there have been several successful attempts to miniaturize and commercialize the technology for civilian use within a terrestrial environment. Though still extraordinarily expensive for the average citizen, many wealthy financiers pooled their resources together to sponsor the development of anti-gravity racing teams that would compete for a number of prizes, chief among these being a substantial monetary prize of several million credits.

Agriculture
Virtually all agricultural work within the League is fully-automated, with great planetary farmlands managed by a core of highly-paid engineers and technicians responsible for maintaining an unending flow of cheap foodstuffs for the vast population of the nation. Specific breeds of crops are genetically tailored to be resistant to most forms of disease and fungus, and are built to be robust enough to survive in most biomes on the various planets that make of the League. Many breeds are uniquely tailored for life on voidships, to feed the crew of the ship during long voyages away from civilized ports of call. Hydroponic farms are dominate in many highly-urbanized centers where imports of food are vital to the survive of the population; such farms exists to help supplement the imported food crops and serve as a source of available rations during times of crisis. Most hydroponic farms exist as underground facilities with all of the space and equipment necessary to help provide the best conditions for an artificial agricultural environment. Overall, the League procures approximately 68% of its non-meat food products from natural farmlands, and the other 32% of its crops from artificial hydroponic farms.

Almost all of the individuals employed in the agricultural sector on the League's most-developed planets are highly-educated scientists, engineers, and technicians, who have been contracted by the vast agricultural conglomerates who provide the majority of the League's food products. On the less-developed planets of the League, there are significantly more farmers working on non-automated fields, who have typically adopted the trade from their parents. These laborers are more common on planets where newly-established colonies exist, and they lack the financial capability to purchase the equipment necessary to automate their agricultural sector. Even then, there are many colonies which have been established with a consensus on living a more simplistic lifestyle, devoid of the conveniences which would allow for automated farming even in a relatively well-off and financially stable colony. Approximately 3.9% of the League's workforce is employed in agriculture, which itself makes up nearly ~1% of the League's economy.

Industry
The industrial sector of the League's economy is largely automated, with a large core of technicians and engineers responsible for maintaining the robots and equipment necessary for the factories to operate. The industrial sector comprises approximately 28% of the interstellar economy, and employs more than a fifth of the workforce. While the overwhelming majority of low-end goods and simple manufactured items are mass produced by robot, extremely intricate wares are still produced by hand, though with assistance from robotic systems tailor made for those goods. Goods such as wooden or metal artisan wares, luxury products and residences, yachts and racing voidskiffs, and industrial goods from low-tier worlds of the League, are all produced with a largely non-automated workforce. In contrast to this, common industrial goods such as heavy industrial equipment, prefabricated housing, motor vehicles and aircraft, agricultural machinery, cybernetics, and electronic goods, are all produced predominately by automatic industrial centers. Voidships and their spare parts are by their very nature produced by robotic assembly lines, as doing so with industrial laborers would increase the build time and greatly inflate the price of the end product. Likewise, the need to ensure that the growing interstellar union of worlds can facilitate transportation between all of the colonies at an affordable price has necessitated the introduction of industrial automation into the interstellar shipbuilding sector.

Ironically, in spite of the widespread automation of the industrial sector, many of the goods produced are not that much cheaper than their Earth counterparts. Smartphones, personal computers, and other communication items remain an expensive possession, as the capabilities of the goods and their function have inflated their value considerably. A personal computer produced in the League, however, is still cheaper than a human version, costing only 60-80% of the value of an equivalent on Earth. Housing in the major cities of the League's high-tier worlds is expansive, mainly due to the fact that overpopulation and the value of homes near centers of industry, finance, and culture have inflated values as well. The average apartment unit in the League capital of Blackstone costs about 150% of the average rent found in some of the more expensive cities of Earth, such as New York City, Tokyo, London, and Moscow. The price of cars varies depending on the location of the buyer. For instance, a car on a major high-tier world with an average population of 10-15 billion will likely have an inflated value due to the artificial premium on driving space due to the high population. The reserve is true on worlds where the population is less than 3-4 billion inhabitants, with cars being cheaper to own and easier to use in the less populous cities of the planet.

Services
Competition within the League job market for service sector positions is stiff and aggressive, as it is often the only position most citizens are qualified for in the high-technology and extensively-automated economy of the League. Average League citizens typically compete against androids for service roles, with the latter being far more proficient in a specific role, while the former often have to rely upon their versatility to gain employment. While this doesn't mean unemployment has spiraled out of control, it does mean that a fair portion of the national population is unemployed or underemployed, as some companies have taken to employing a citizen and an android for the same position with part-time hours for both. Scholars and economists still struggle to determine if the system is untenable in the long-term, though the influence of the tech giants within the League have prevented much introspective analysis of the issue. With the rise of cloning throughout the League within the last five decades, the citizenry have come to find themselves pitted against another group for employment, leading to new laws being introduced to prohibit which service roles a clone may obtain, though given the somewhat nebulous nature of clones within the League, discriminatory laws introduced by the federal government are being placed before the courts so as ascertain the state of their legality.

Food
The majority of foodstuffs are cheap and easily-accessible for all social classes within the League, even by the standards of humanity's most developed and advanced economies. With the long-standing automation of farmlands throughout the bulk of the League's member worlds, and except during times of war on a planet, during a siege, or on overpopulated worlds with a lack of hydroponic farming, food scarcity is not a concern for even the most impoverished League citizen. The only food products which are exceptionally expensive or out of the reach of ordinary buyers would be luxury items, seasonal products that cannot be produced artificially, or foods that require a period of time or level of effort to produce, such as wine or other alcoholic beverages. Meats are generally more expensive than fruits and vegetables, mainly due to the ban on cloning extant fauna and the cost of raising and feeding livestock. Factory farming is a fully-legal enterprise within the League, with the lack of public opposition to animal cruelty, and agreement on the necessity of certain practices to allow for the provision of a large quantity of meat products to meet general demand. The overall cost of food on the most developed worlds of the League is about 15-50% the cost of food products produced on Earth.

The production of food within artificial habitats such as space stations, asteroid colonies, underground facilities, and submerged ocean cities, differ greatly in terms of resource intensity and the overall cost of the end product. Space habitats tend to have much more expensive food items due to a wide range of issues such as limited space for greenhouses, reliance on water imports to support the population, infrastructure, waste management, and existing green-space facilities, and the need to import large supplies of food to the habitats when local production falls short of self-sustaining levels. Consequently, one can expect to pay anywhere from three times to five times as much for food aboard one of the hundreds of space stations and asteroid colonies of the League, as is the case with all other items that much be imported to such facilities. The ridiculously expensive cost for food within these space habitats and asteroid colonies has resulted in legislation being passed requiring that the legal owners of the habitats either refund or subsidize the cost of food for their corporate employees and permanent residents. Underwater cities usually have an easier time with the issue of food supply, as they can always delicate a large section of their sprawling dome habitats to the needs of growing food throughout the year for the population. Given that it is much easier to import food from the surface rather than from another planet while located in space, food prices for underwater settlements are only 40-50% higher than existing League prices.

League colonies located on celestial bodies large enough to host major cities and fusion power generation sites, tend to be self-sufficient in most areas of food security. However, in the instance of those colonies located on barren worlds with little to no atmosphere to speak of, the greenhouses needed for food production are often placed underground to protect the crops from radiation that would kill them. This necessitates the extremely expensive process of digging out large caverns for the food production facilities and their supporting infrastructure, on top of importing the water necessary for the maintenance of the new underground farmlands. While maintaining and expanding these facilities after they have been constructed becomes less troublesome than if it were a space habitat, the cost of doing so is often astronomical. Furthermore, many of these colonies on barren worlds have a steady supply of water located underground or at the poles, for those without these conveniences, it soon becomes an expensive commodity that requires constant resupply from space borne mining facilities within the system capable of bringing water to the colony. As a direct result, food prices on barren colonies tend to be two to three times more expensive than in the rest of the League.

Clothing
As is the case on Earth, clothing produced from synthetic materials is vastly less expensive than those produced using natural materials such as cotton, silk, or linen. The vast industrial complexes of the League afford the citizenry with a vast swath of cheap clothes which come in a wide variety of colors, textures, and sizes, all while adding to the variety with the new materials developed within the League to allow for a larger array of fashion styles. Natural fibers are more expensive due to the lack of space and water on most planets which have dedicated the majority of their land and water resources to urban development, greenhouses, and food crops. Only a handful of greenhouses in the League have been developed specifically for the cultivation of inedible crops grown for clothing material, while planets with less-dense populations have only devoted a small portion of their arable land to the production of natural clothing fibers. Consequently, clothes with no synthetic material are expensive and often not worth the cost of purchasing in the eyes of the average citizen, who often turns to the plethora of synthetic alternatives for their clothing needs.

Of course, this means that only the upper classes of the population seeking to flaunt their social status are drawn to the procurement of such materials for their own wear. The wealthy and affluent tend to lean toward clothing styles which set them apart from their middle-class counterparts, with clothing possessing all-natural fibers and vibrant colors universally popular among the League's elite circles. Leather is also an expensive product, as the majority of League worlds tend to be heavily-urbanized, meaning that land that would be used for pasturing livestock is instead converted into housing, industrial centers, commercial spaces, or greenhouse complexes, limiting the number of livestock available on a given planet. As with cash crops used for the production of luxury goods and clothing, livestock not being used for food production will often been sourced from less developed worlds in the League, meaning that the cost of shipping items procured from livestock such as leather, are extraordinarily expensive to purchase within the League.

Income distribution
The income levels within the League vary wildly depending upon where and which planet a citizen resides upon, and their income dictated by the industry they work in and where within their region of space that industry supports or is supported. For example, a government worker on the planet of Family Pride will be very well by League standards, as they are employed by the League itself and reside upon the safest and most developed planet in League space. However, a miner from Brass will generally exist on the lower-end of the economic ladder as they hail from a frontier world best known for supplying cheap mineral goods to worlds which cannot or will not mine for those minerals themselves. And in yet another instance, a station worker above Brass loading and unloading said mineral products aboard a cargo vessel will be very well compensated by their employer as they will generally work for one of the larger transport corporations in the League tasked with ensuring those goods are moved to their respective destinations in a timely manner. On the flip-end, a factory worker on Family Pride will find themselves scrapping by as their market is generally oversaturated by unskilled laborers who failed to make it into one of the better-paying and highly-competitive government jobs of the League's capital planet.

Indeed, in spite of the Leagues great advancements in industry and technology, income inequality plagues the nation from one end to the other. This is due to the simple fact that sapient greed remains strong regardless of the high-minded idealism of philosophers and activists that flood the League's halls of academia. To ensure economic stability and unification of all worlds and systems under a singular federal government, the League instituted a series of trade restrictions at the interstellar level, controlling who may produce what goods and services for sell to other systems, and ensuring that specific worlds are locked out of specific industries, such as so-called "trouble planets" like Galvan and Skuria, which remain incredibly poor and polluted to the influence of lobbyists and government planners over these planets are permitted to produce and sell at the interstellar level. Planets such as Kordan and Marza have historically dominated the shipbuilding industry as their lobbyists have lined the pockets of federal politicians to keep it that way for centuries, all the while preventing mineral-rich worlds such as Brass from developing such industries they would naturally have an advantage in.

Such prohibitions have long been a sore-point within interplanetary relations, as most citizens of the League are fully-aware of the hypocrisies spouted by the self-sufficient and diversified economies of the core worlds. Resource-poor worlds such as Ix have languished under these prohibitions, and must really heavily upon federal aid and intersystem travel taxation to support their residents. Worlds at the edge of League space are barred from importing certain goods that could allow them to develop industries that would compete with the core worlds, and have protested these restrictions for decades. Many are the worlds that have taken up arms against federal authorities for the endemic poverty they encourage because of trade restrictions, though none have succeeded in their quest for economic prosperity. Only those worlds which have proven capable of buying the right politicians in the right positions of power have been able to escape this cycle of institutionally-enforced poverty, and even then with great difficulty as their efforts were undermined by the wealthier worlds at the League's center.

Because of these inequalities across League space, a movement known as equalism has existed for as long as the trade policies enforced by the League have been around. The equalist movement is not directly equivalent to the socialist movements of Earth, though many sympathies in that direction have been expressed by its many leaders and members, such as the Elysians who have long dealt with endemic poverty and corruption on their home planet. The movement itself promotes the equalization of economic trade and opportunities between worlds and systems by removing the restrictive trade acts enforced by the League. Naturally, Ix, Brass, Elysia, Skuria, and others are havens for equalism, and have long presented long-term political challenges to the state. Several of the political parties within the League have taken on the cause of equalism both as a means of reducing poverty and gaining political influence at the federal level, leading to an overabundance of competing interests as worlds and populations which may agree on trade policy ultimately compete on a myriad of issues unrelated to the cause of equalism.

On a security level, equalists have present a direct challenge to the state by attempting to push for economic equality under the law via armed insurgence. Hundreds of armed equalist organizations with and without access to interstellar transportation have taken to the mission of combatting the League for the opportunity to see life on their homeworlds improved by any means. The largest such organization, the Radical Equalist Alliance, was established with this intent in mind by presenting such a threat to the federal government it would be forced to change tact and answer their demands. Likewise, it seeks to appeal to the wider public by exposing the deep levels of corruption within the League and the billions of credits spent by the wealthiest planets in the union to maintain their economic stranglehold over the rest of the League. However, in spite of their noble intentions, many of these insurgent groups have turned to terrorism to pursue their aims, and have attacked innocents of all income levels, races, and homeworlds, and have only given the federal government the excuse it needs to crack down on them across its holdings. In the last poll conducted on the subject, approximately 23% of the population across the League said they supported the equalist cause, while another 54% said the supported the government's efforts to crack down on equalist movements.

Cybernetics
Cybernetic technologies are commonplace throughout the League, primarily among the less-developed worlds of the nation where gene therapy and cloned body parts are too expensive for the majority of the population to access. Cybernetic limbs remain extremely popular within the League due to their relative simplicity compared to cloned limbs, and the ease of access with which to get cybernetic parts. While some have heralded cloning as the death knell for the cybernetics industry, citing that cloning has made the latter redundant in the ever-advancing markets of the interstellar economy, others still believe that the relative simplicity of cybernetic components and ease of production without the need for a lengthy recovery period, make cybernetics the primary favorite in the medical community. Cybernetic body parts remain in extensive use in the military and industrial sector, as well as in poorer communities where individuals are largely incapable of footing the bill for the medical care needed to support the complete acceptance of a cloned limb. Criminal organizations likewise use cybernetic limbs, as cloned limbs are more expensive and require trained medical professionals to complete, something which would draw too much attention to the individuals undergoing the procedure. Indeed, cybernetic limbs still have a niche market within the League.

In spite of their perceived decline in value due to the advent of more advanced cloning technologies, the cybernetics industry still maintains a tight grasp on the prosthetics market, accounting for more than 85% of the market share. This is largely a consequence of the lead it has over cloning, having been around as its own industry for more than two centuries, and the fact that cybernetic limbs remain far more affordable, and have more industries and professionals linked to the long-term care of patients with cybernetic body parts. The majority of mechanics in the League are proficient in providing support to individuals with malfunctioning limbs or in need of replacement parts, and no specialized education is required to maintain or replace the parts themselves. Cloned limbs on the other hand, require a skilled professional in a medical environment to deal with any issues that arise from the use of cloned limbs or organs, making items from the cloning field both scarce in terms of professionals and treatment centers, as well as expensive due to the fact that multiple trips must be made to ensure the body has accepted the limb, as well as full functioning capacity within the nervous system.

Cost of cybernetic vs cloned arm replacement:
 * Cloned arm: 3,750 cr
 * Cybernetic arm: 500 cr

Cloning
Cloning is major industry within the League's economy, primarily within the healthcare and service sectors. Within the medical field, cloning is becoming an increasingly popular option for the replacement of lost limbs or failing organs. This is due largely in part to the superiority of having cloned limbs that allow for more refined articulation and feeling for the host, or organs which are cloned from cells in the host's body which allow for immediate recognition of the replacements as "native" to the host's body, counteracting the effect of rejection as foreign organisms. At least a tenth of the League's population has a cloned limb or organ, either as a result of an accident, illness, correction for a deformity, or planned aesthetic alteration. Cloning within the healthcare sector has not yet replaced traditional cybernetic prosthetics, as the latter is still vastly more affordable than cloning, as there are no major medical interventions needed aside from the initial limb replacement and aftercare.

A major roadblock to the widespread adoption of cloning as a viable alternative to cybernetics is its associated cost and the extensive medical care needed after receiving a cloned body part. Cloned organs and limbs are expensive, typically costing five or six times as much as their cybernetic counterpart. Much of the cost for a cloned replacement part is linked to the initial medical procedure needed to graft the limb onto the body or replace a failing organ, as well as the long-term aftercare and medication needed to help the limb or organ heal and integrate into the body as a fully-functional and self-sustaining replacement. Likewise, there is far more involved in terms of ensuring that the cloned parts are properly grown to ensure that the senses are of the proper levels, and that the response times to the newly-introduced nervous system are as close to those of the other body parts of the patient. This involves weeks of extensive and invasive medical procedures that place the superior cloned replacement parts well above the salaries of the average League citizen, even on some of the most developed and prosperous worlds of the union.

Clones as a distinct group of individuals are common within the League, though latecomers in terms of their relative age from the date of the League's formation two and half centuries ago. While they have not yet replaced androids within the interstellar market, clones are commonly used throughout the service sector as clerks, secretaries, and skilled labor in areas where there is a lack of manpower for a particular field within the population, though one that cannot be filled with just any individual, usually a high-ranking position or position of authority. However, due to the fact that they are raised and trained to become contributing members of society, and have all the qualifications for personhood under federal law, there has been some contention within League society and government as to the ethical implications of creating sapient clones just as capable of functioning in wider society as the naturally-born citizens of the League. Consequently, clones are required by law to lack any means of reproduction, either by sexual or asexual means, and must have readily-identifiable markers to advertise their status as cloned individuals.

Discussion as to whether or not clones are considered citizens of the League rather than wards of the state, has been a major issue within League politics for the last half century. Much like the discussion as to whether or not androids are considered to have personhood and the right associated with such status, and whether this makes them "state slaves" and thus illegal to own, the topic of clone rights is controversial and a major point of contention which often divides communities. So far, there have been many tens of thousands of clones granted freedom from their assigned responsibilities, and allowed to the freedom to choose their own life course. Many "replicant enclaves" exist throughout the League of Civilized Worlds, with some established in artificial habitats underwater or in space, with their own laws and local governments. There have been protests against the federal government within some of these locales, demanding reproductive rights for clones regardless of their legal status. Again, this has given rise to concerns within the federal government and many natural-born populations that clones may pose a direct threat to the stability of the League if allowed to propagate for too long, with the natural consequence of this being the rise of several extremist organizations on both sides of the issue.

Robotics
Robotics are a major part of the League economy, with most industrial centers employing robots in some form or another as a part of their production lines. The majority of factories throughout the League are extensively automated, with the only organic workers being engineers and technicians, maintenance personnel, and factory overseers responsible for the day-to-day management of the facilities. In spite of the vast automation of the League industrial sector, new jobs were created by the system which saw the need for a large staff of trained technical personnel to maintain the systems and hardware of the robots in use throughout the nation. Approximately 80% of all factories throughout the League use robotics of some form or another, though on most frontier worlds near the edges of the League's voidgate network lack the capital to automatic their industry, making up a considerable portion of the other fifth of factories not using robotics in an extensive manner.

Androids
Android technology within the League has advanced to such a point that the constructs themselves are virtually indistinguishable from their organic creators. Androids have historically played an important role in League history, beginning with the introduction of the first viable autonomous android models approximately 150 years ago. Following massed protests and riots throughout Mikaean communities against the use of their population as supposedly "disposable" individuals due to their rapid method of reproduction, the League government sought to develop an alternative source of soldiers that didn't require the introduction of conscription or some other form of mandatory service in the military. While android technology had always been experimented with by private corporations, the government moved to sponsor the rapid development and production of mainstream models that could be used in military service in the event that the Mikaeans, always the largest source of manpower within the League, experienced another bout of civil unrest at what they deemed an unjust use of their population to fulfill roles in hostile conditions simply because they could be replaced quickly and easily.

The first successful model of androids developed by the League were produced by TBD, a research firm which specialized in the development advanced robotics and AGI technologies. TBD

By design, League androids are developed with a high-level of autonomous behavior, allowing them to function independently of their owners to complete whatever roles or objections they have been assigned or created for. Following major concerns of aberrancy within the android population – an instance where an android develops a hostile or otherwise unstable personality due to major logic errors within their AGI interface – all androids must have identifiable markers to help distinguish them from the general organic population. Nearly all corporations specializing in the production synthetic organisms use the del (∇) symbol for identification purposes on their androids. The del mark is placed prominently on the foreheads of all androids within the League; covering or otherwise destroying this mark is grounds for federal prosecution and imprisonment. Most androids also wear the del symbol on their clothing, with many sporting glowing marks on their outfits to ensure that their status is well-advertised to all organic citizens in the surrounding area. Androids within the League have no legal rights, though their testimony as witnesses has been accepted within League courts since TBD LC following the TBD vs TBD case that same year.

As of TBD LC, there were an estimated 0.0 billion androids within the League, constituting nearly 0.0% of the total population. The baseline cost for a default android unit of the TBD model was 5,000 credits, with more advanced models increasing in price based on the complexity of the android's programming and AGI capabilities.

All androids are divided into model groups, each of which is further subdivided into classes.


 * Models
 * A – Academic; models programmed with high degree of expertise in all fields of academia designed to provide sapient individuals with everything from a kindergarten to post-secondary education
 * C – Commercial; models designed of utilization in commercial institutions such as banks, malls, restaurants, and service roles among others as low-level clerks, janitors, and menial work laborers
 * E – Entertainment; models designed to fulfill roles as musicians, dancers, and entertainers, providing a wide range of services to patrons at clubs and festivals
 * F – Fornication; models designed with fully-functional sex organs and programmed with a vast repository of sexual activities to fulfill prostitution roles within the League
 * H – Healthcare; models programmed with extensive medical knowledge to fulfill roles as healthcare personnel, alleviating any shortage of doctors within League space
 * I – Industrial; heavy-duty models designed for industrial roles where extreme climates and hostile work spaces are expected in factories and mining
 * M – Military; models designed for application in combat operations as both front-line and support personnel to supplement organic personnel in the League military forces
 * P – Private; versatile models markets to the general public for use in a wide variety of roles around the house, small businesses, and private functions
 * S – Security; militarized models programmed with advanced conflict resolution capabilities and deployed to urban centers to supplement law enforcement personnel
 * Classes
 * Variants

Virtual reality
Virtual reality sessions are very popular throughout the League, and tens of billions of League citizens utilize the technology recreationally as a part of the nation's arts and media culture. While personal VR headsets and accessories are readily-available throughout stores across the League, more specialized systems that can provide a completely immersive experience are generally out of reach for most people, and they must visit a VR center to utilize the technology. To that end, many worlds are home to established franchises that specialize in catering to specific VR hobbies and settings that customers may wish to experience. Like most goods and services, the cost of a VR session varies greatly based on the equipment, services, and experiences offered. Though generally, most companies will utilize VR stations produced by TBD and TBD, the two largest virtual reality equipment producers in the League. Most of the mainstream VR stations sell for anywhere between 12,000 cr and 25,000 cr, while high-end full-fidelity stations can cost as much as 300,000 cr, and are generally found in the most expensive and exclusive entertainment centers in League space.

A single VR session on the low-end stations can cost as little as 5 cr/hour for children and 20 cr/hour for adults, while the higher end stations can cost as little as 100 cr/hour to as much as 1,000 cr/hour. The higher end systems generally provide a complete experience that can be difficult to distinguish from reality, and provide full touch, taste, and smell experiences for their users. Naturally, these permits more intimate experiences for those who can afford to use them, though more and more of the lower-end models are providing system experiences with more limited capabilities. VR booths designed for more "adult" recreation generally have a going rate of about 50 cr/hour, and provide exclusive access for groups or escorts with white-glove service and security. Overall, most planets will have a range of VR systems available for the population of all ages to enjoy, while the most popular and high-end of systems will generally be located in the major cities where such facilities can be afforded and made available for the equipment necessary to support them.

One of the long-standing cultural and societal issues ready-access to high-fidelity simulations raises is addiction to VR gaming and the escapism it provides, with many League citizens overutilizing the services offered by these VR stations and requiring medical or even psychological intervention by local authorities. At least 22% of all League citizens who have used a VR station at least once a week have reported dealing with personal addiction issues that nearly resulted in an intervention by authorities, while 7% admit to visiting the VR booths more than eight hours a day on their days off. To that end, most locations which cater to VR recreation have an upper-limit on the amount of time any of their customers may use a VR booth. However, there exist many locations that have no such limitations or moral compunction toward those willing to pay for their services. Many high-income worlds are notorious for their overuse of VR systems, typically due to their abundance of free time and disposable income, as well as the high-density of ultra high-end VR stations. This has resulted in some segments of League society to view these systems as a moral sin and cultural crisis, though their calls to ban or regulate the industry have largely fallen on deaf ears. Most League citizens have paid for at least one VR session in their lives, either as children or adults, and upwards of half of the population visit the VR booths once or twice a month with friends or family.

Trade and logistics
The League of Civilized Worlds is a vast collection of some one thousand celestial bodies with colonies, outposts, and military installations, and a population of nearly half a trillion sentient beings spread across a total of sixty star systems. Logistically speaking, the survival of the League is tethered to its ability to maintain the vast trade routes which make the sustainability of some worlds viable. Arid and barren worlds with little to no accessible water on the surface or in the system, major starports home to hundreds of thousands of residents reliant on imports, ecumenopolises lacking any remaining arable land to provide food for the population, vast mineral resources needing to be move to refineries in other systems for processing, and vast military campaigns requiring a steady supply of advanced weapons and equipment not available in the system due to a lack of factory vessels,

In contrast to the commonly-held opinions of scientists unfamiliar with the actual functions of trade and economics, not all planets or even star systems have the same resources or access to resources within reach of their inhabitants. Trade between colonies of the League is vital to the nation's survival, as most of the colonies lack the means to access all of the vital resources necessary to the maintained of the modern society the League's population currently enjoys. For example, some star systems have more metal-rich celestial bodies which allow them to develop strong industrial centers necessary to build a self-sufficient core system within the League. However, there are other much older systems which have a lack of metal ores or fewer celestial bodies, limiting the economic avenues available to the residents of the star system, and forcing them to pursue other sources of income to sustain themselves. Yet still other star systems are located in areas where there are low supplies of water but large populations, due in part to the influx of residents as a consequence of a strong economy based on a number of factors unique to that system. Because of this, vast quantities of water and food must be imported from outside of the star system to sustain the population and prevent a bout of starvation. Missing a single shipment of food and water and cause a domestic political and social crisis, driving food prices up, and harming industries reliant on a steady supply of water.

Shipping companies
The largest interstellar shipping companies within the League of Civilized Worlds were:
 * 1) United Shipping — 138 IBCs
 * 2) Interworlds Express — 107 IBCs
 * 3) TBD — 93 IBCs
 * 4) TBD — 75 IBCs
 * 5) TBD — 62 IBCs

Freighters
The Leagues member worlds exchange their exports with one another using vast freighter vessels to move a millions of TEUs from one location to another. Each of these vessels has a crew of several hundred individuals, and are serviced above the surface of a destination port by dozens or even hundreds of container conveyor vessels. The loading and unloading of freighters is a major industry in and of itself, with tens of millions throughout a star system benefiting from the elaborate and complicated network of ships and administrative systems necessary for the timely and adequate management of the import/export business. These interstellar freighters vary in size, with the largest being the TBD-class megafreighter voidships. All container units used within the League were reorganized under the Unified Container and Parcel Act in TBD LC, establishing a single container unit known as the Universal Container Block (UCB), and the larger voidship Interstellar Container Unit (ICU), as the main units for cargo movement throughout the League. The dimensions for these container units is as follows: A standard container dropship has a capacity of up to 1,152 UCBs, allowing it to take a significant number of container units planetside before returning to orbit to the waiting freighter. The average interstellar cargo voidship is equipped with berths for up to 384 ICUs, each of which has a capacity for up to 8,000 UCB/2s, for a total of 3,072,000 UCB/2s per freighter. According to existing import regulations and records across the majority of League member worlds, the average ICU freighter requires approximately 100 dropships making 26-27 trips each to unload its entire store of UCB units planetside. This is generally held as the average standard for the bulk of core worlds within the League, though some worlds benefit from a higher number of workers that allow these vessels to be unloaded at a faster pace than other worlds, allowing for a high turnover rate throughout the unloading period. On average, the turnaround rate for the unloading of freighter voidships is about a month, with the majority of conveyor dropship crews making two trips to and from the freighter a day to allowing for the proper amount of time needed for the loading, transit and re-entry into a planet's atmosphere, unloading, maintenance periods for the first half of the day, and then the systems check, take-off and transit to the freighter, and then loading of the additional UCB units onto the dropship.
 * Universal Container Block (UCB/1)
 * Length: 5 meters
 * Width: 2.5 meters
 * Height: 2.5 meters
 * Universal Container Block (UCB/2)
 * Length: 10 meters
 * Width: 2.5 meters
 * Height: 2.5 meters
 * Interstellar Container Unit (ICU)
 * Length: 205 meters
 * Width: 50.5 meters
 * Height: 50.5 meters
 * Capacity (UCB/2): 8,000

Within this month-long period, all of the dropship crews will have successfully completed their allotted movement quotas for the period, with a separate crew being cycled in to begin the process of loading the freighter above the planet with any goods that will be shipped off to another world in the system or in the next system over. It should be noted that due to the nature of interstellar commerce, a swift turnaround rate is desirable to prevent too many clients from waiting months to have their goods shipped off to the next site for unloading. As a result, some companies have a system in place that sees one group of ICU containers left empty to allow for space to be used for export goods to be stocked while space is freed up in import blocks for the new containers to be loaded. This allows the company to save time and prevent too many crews from remaining ideal while the freighter is in space. While this would result in significant deadheading (process of moving between locations with empty cargo space), this allows for a degree of flexibility and saving of time in the loading and unloading phases of the exchange of goods.

Interplanetary trade
Planets and other celestial bodies typically do not make use of the vast ICU container voidships commonly found transporting goods between star systems, unless the two worlds in question boast populations in the scale of billions, and have highly-developed local economies which trade with one another. Instead, these worlds will make use of Interplanetary Container Vessels, or ICVs, which have a small number of ICU blocks each to accommodate the smaller scale of trade involved. The smaller and more compact size of the freighters makes it easier for a local shipping company to maintain the cost of running the ship, as well as increasing the number of said vessels under its employ as the amount of trade between the various worlds grows, allowing for a measure of flexibility impossible with the massive interstellar freighter ships. The average ICV has a capacity of 252,000 UCB units, and can swap out the existing ICU berths with other storage types for other items, such as dry goods, water and liquids, chemicals, and passengers. Crews for such vessels typically number about 100-300 based on the number of goods being transported, the distances involved between worlds, and the maintenance levels required for both the ship and the goods between transported between worlds.

Interstellar trade
Due to the specialization of some planetary and even system-wide economies, the movement of large volumes of crops, minerals, chemicals, liquids, and consumer goods has become a major part of the League's ability to function as a unified entity. Indeed, the management of these trade routes can be viewed as one of the primary factors for the League's existence, as many worlds are reliant on the goods they receive from out of system to survive. As such, because of the nature of the League's existence as an interstellar union of planets, specialized voidships were designed and constructed to fulfill the role of supplier within the League. These massive freighters are classified as "Interstellar Bulk Conveyors", or IBCs or bulk conveyors, and play a major role in the survival of the League. IBCs can move all of the goods necessary for a planet to function on a socioeconomic level, with millions of UCBs and cubic meters of liquid or liquefied products being transferred from one system to the next.

Of note are the regulations maintained within the League to ensure that all systems are tied into the trade network as a means of facilitating control over them by the federal government. Since the majority of systems have access to the resources that would make trade relatively redundant, the League maintains a strict policy of regulation as to what goods and resources can be produced or exported from a system. For example, highly-developed systems within the Inner Ring of the League such as Tau Ceti, Epsilon Eridani, Alpha Centauri, and Gliese 832, are permitted to produce whatever goods they want freely due to their extensive political clout. Less populous systems with weak political influence such as Beta Aquilae, Alpha Mensae, and Gamma Leporis, face a number of economic regulations that prevent them from refining hydrogen for fusion power reactors, refining iron ores or producing certain premium agricultural goods, or building certain classes of voidships to maintain a strict supply chain in different sections of League space.

Representation
Every planet, moon, settled asteroid, and space station with a population in excess of one million permanent inhabitants, are allowed representation in the federal assembly of the League.
 * Classification of stellar objects
 * Planet – Any large astronomical body with: an orbit independent of any other celestial body; a gravitational well consisting of lesser satellites bound to primary astronomical body; a mass in excess of TBD; or, a diameter in excess of 4,000-5,000 kilometers.
 * Moon – Any astronomical body or natural satellite regardless of mass or diameter bound to the gravitational pull of another astronomical object that is not a star. Does not include binary plantary systems in which two similar mass objects are bound to one another around a gravitational center outside of the body of either astronomical object.
 * Space station – Any artificial astronomical body constructed by a sentient being for the purposes of permanent habitation.

Elections
According to federal law, elections within the League of Civilized Worlds take place every five years according to the official League Calendar. However, due to the sheer size of the League and the number of eligible voters under federal law, all of the elections are spaced out to cover a single federal year, that is, the length of time recorded on the federal calendar rather than the local calendars of the various worlds and stations of the League. The elections themselves are grouped into three schedules and four tiers. The three schedules are planetary, lunar, and transitory, whereas the four tiers are metropolitan, planetary, and stellar, and federal.

According to the Federal Election Schedule (FLS), voting is organized vertically with planets voting first in the elections, followed by natural satellites, and then ending with artificial satellites, stations, and asteroid bases and outposts. The FLS regulates voting patterns within the League primarily to help reduce the risk of miscounting, election rigging, and uncoordinated voting which could lead to inconsistent results by the end of the election. Planetary elections are grouped into electoral districts, continental districts, and then planetary zones, whereas moons, asteroid colonies, and space stations are counted as individual districts. Depending upon the population of the various moons within the League, they too may be divided into electoral districts as necessary to ensure proper representation within the government.

The four tiers of voting within federal elections consist of metropolitan election, followed by planetary elections, then stellar elections within the solar system, and finally federal elections on the interstellar level. Metropolitan elections are scheduled to take place during the first month of the federal voting calendar year, ensuring that all local candidates are elected and ready to take their seats later in the election cycle. During the next three months, the planetary elections take place, with offices such as planetary governor, representatives for the planet's legislative assembly, and judicial and law enforcement vacancies are filled. Once the voting has been concluded, the next two months of the mid-year election cycle are dedicated to the needs of the offices of the star system's government.

Stellar elections are shorter than planetary elections due to the fact that most political parties on the planetary level are typically aligned with similar parties on different planets and satellites within the system to some degree. Likewise, the parties are formed with precedence given to the needs of their homeworlds, and have a narrow political scope when it comes to the needs of the system as a whole. They are thus too small or too obscure to compete throughout the entire star system, and consequently form coalitions with other parties to obtain seats within the system's legislature. As such, there are only ever a handful of political parties to vote for, and by this point, they will have already nominated their candidates for the election. At this level, roles such as system governor and the supreme court for all of the planets are filled.

At the end of the election cycle is the six month long federal election period. The federal elections are are longest and most hard fought throughout the League, due primarily to the innate difficulty that comes with months-long traveling necessary to properly conduct a campaign tour throughout the expanse of the League's territory. Candidates for the posts of federal representative for the Supreme League Congress, heads of the directorates of the League executive council, judicial and law enforcement posts, and the top of them all, the office of President of the League of Civilized Worlds, all take place during this six month period. Presidential candidates will spend nearly all of this time campaigning, traveling from planet to planet and moon to moon, debating opponents and garnering support for their presidential bids.

At this level, when voting finally begins, the federal election start at the capital world of TBD, and then begin moving out uniformly to all other worlds in the nation. The voting is organized into phases, with each phase comprising a ten light-year sphere of space, within which all worlds and outposts of the League cast their ballots. When approximately 45% of all votes have been tallied within the sphere of space, voting then takes place in the next sphere of space. The system itself was organized as such to help the League tally all of the votes in an organized manner without worrying about being overloaded with billions of votes. It also helps to ensure that votes are not lost, and that the electronic voting system can properly function without collapsing under the vast amount of bandwidth it needs to process.

Process and planning
The first phase of a planetary invasion involves intelligence gathering on the status and structure of the defending military forces. League recon agents are inserted into the general population of the defenders to scout out military facilities, command and communication bases in urban centers, power generation plants, industrial parks, and agricultural lands on a planet. They relay this information back to their handlers who in turn pass the information back to the ULAS. The military plans out its offensive for the planet based on the intelligence provided, and if possible, will utilize the information on a planet's satellite constellation to help prepare a method of blacking out all communication on the planet itself. Once all of the planning has been completed, the plan is passed before the General Staff of the Unified League Armed Services to be appraised and debated, and once a consensus is reached, the plan placed before the President of the League by the armed forces commander for authorization. If the plan is approved, the ULAS will begin organizing the manpower, logistics, voidships, and weaponry necessary for a planetary invasion.

Phases of invasion

 * Phase I: TBD
 * Phase II: TBD
 * Phase III: TBD
 * Phase IV: TBD
 * Phase V: TBD

Issues
The occupation of a planet is generally regarded as a difficult endeavor, and not without reason. Commonly stated issues with the idea are as follows: These arguments have several flaws that can be easily toppled with simple logic.
 * 1) Planetary warfare would be infeasible, as the native population would rapidly mobilize against the invading forces, utilizing local industries and their terrain advantage.
 * 2) The number of troops needed to invade the planet would likely involve tens of millions of troops that would have to be moved, feed, supplied, and housed for the duration of the conflict.
 * 3) Invading the planet wouldn't make sense, as the attacker could easily just bombard the planet from relative safety in high orbit.
 * 1) Let us pretend for a moment that the entire population of a defending world is totally unified behind the idea that the invading forces must be fended off at all cost. How many of these individuals would willingly fighting in such a battle? How many could be called upon in an occupation scenario to fight? What tactics would they realistically use to defeat an interstellar opponent? The Taliban in Afghanistan consists of about 60,000 fighters. Obviously not all of them are engaged in battle against the United States and its allies. During most typical battles, the opposing forces usually consist of about 25-50 U.S. soldiers against approximately 200-300 Taliban fighters. The United States always wins do to superior training and firepower. Let us consider a different example. When the German armies invaded the Soviet Union, most of the Soviet factories were located in vulnerable locations in the west near the front. If the Germans destroyed these factories, the Soviets would have no method of combating the invading forces. As such, the largest migration of industrial equipment in human history took place, with the Soviets moving all major factories into the east. The Soviets then proceeded to outproduce the Germans and defeat them. If an superior interstellar civilization brings enough firepower to destroy the industrial centers of a planet, the defenders cannot equip their population to fight. Even if they had the numbers advantage, poor training and equipping of conscripts into an army of resistance would fail each time is encountered the superior interstellar forces.
 * 2) If an interstellar civilization is capable of producing vast quantities of warships to carry crew, weapons, equipment, and supplies to worlds in entirely separate star systems, then logic would no doubt have it that such a civilization would also be capable of producing the sorts of vessels necessary to carry large numbers of troops to other worlds for the purpose of warfare. In the same manner building chemical rockets for exploration meant that humanity was likewise able to produce intercontinental ballistic missiles (thereby resolving the issue of needing supersonic nuclear bombers for the same purpose), any civilization capable of building warships in the vacuum of space could just as easily build the troop transports necessary to conquer other worlds. As the issue of manpower, assuming that a species has been unified into a single political entity, they would billions of citizens to draw upon for the purpose of landing troops on other worlds. Humanity as a whole has 80 million soldiers in active service, reserve, and paramilitary formations as of the present day. If we were to expand this to entire planets across an interstellar setting, we could feasibly see billions of troops in service to a civilization consisting of tens if not hundreds of billions of civilians. Manpower is not the issue. Getting it to other planets is, and that we have already resolved with the simple use of plain logic.
 * 3) Why in the world (all of them) would the attacker want to destroy an entire planet just to avoid dealing with the defenders? We already know the destructive potential of nuclear weapons, and given the location of the projectiles launched by the attacking fleet, the momentum of the projectiles would be the near-equivalent of using a nuclear weapon. The downsides to this is the expulsion of vast amounts of soil and particulate into the atmosphere, creating an artificial winter that would hamper if not outright destroy the agricultural potential of the planet. The second downside would be that if used in industrialized regions, typically near to the main population centers, you would witness the destruction of both industrial potential and manpower needed to man the remaining factories. The other downside would be the destruction of the environment, with craters and flooding caused by unnatural earthquakes from the weaponry investigating the countryside and polluting water sources across the planet with industrial chemicals and debris from cities, factories, and deceased organisms. Planetary bombardment would cause far more harm than good in any such situation, and would no doubt be outlawed as a war crime by the interstellar powers involved.

Strategic planning
Though the nature of warfare has changed significantly by necessity, the method of waging war between two interstellar civilizations has remained somewhat similar to that found on terrestrial warscapes. Interstellar warfare is more akin to the manner of war fought between the United States and the Empire of Japan during the Pacific War. Rather than hopping between islands, forces must jump from one planet to the next; rather than crossing vast and empty oceans, fleets cross equally vast and empty voids of space; and find and targeting the enemy forces before they can determine your location, relies heavily upon enormous skill and blind luck. Much like the heavily-fortified islands packed with tens of thousands of troops, planets are typically well-developed and equipped with self-sustaining industrial facilities necessary for supporting any defending troops already on the planet itself.

Individual Protection System (IPS)
The Individual Protection System (IPS) is the carapace armor system worn by all combat personnel during field operations and active warzones. It consists of the following pieces:
 * Bodysuit — All military personnel are issued a three-layer bodysuit designed to be weather-resistant, waterproof, and sealed against toxic environments and the vacuum of space. The suit itself is capable of resisting penetrating small arms fire and cuts from most bladed weapons, and is capable of resisting long-term exposure to highly acidic solvents that could harm the wearer. A thin gel layer is located between each of the bodysuit layers to serve as an insulator for the body and provide superb thermal regulation, allowing the wearer to survive in extreme temperatures on most worlds they will visit during their military service. The bodysuit is highly form-fitting and hugs the form of the wearer to such a degree that it functions as a second-skin and allows for extreme mobility and minimal hindrance to the wearer in virtually all forms of articulation of the body and joints. So as to hold and interface with the armor and additional equipment of the soldier, the bodysuit has several circular ports which connect to the central processing unit of the IPS on the back along the spine of the armor. This in turn provides the soldier with the ability to control and manage the various utilities provided by the IPS. Furthermore, the bodysuit is designed with a special hydro-gel layer which absorbs any perspiration from the soldier's body to store in liquid form, keeping the inside of the suit dry. The gel can store more than fifty times its weight as in powder form, ensuring that the soldier will remain dry and comfortable for extended periods of time while wearing the bodysuit. The bodysuit comes with with gloves and boots which can be securely fastened to the rest of the outfit to ensure a complete seal from the surrounding environment. When on base and away from their responsibilities, soldiers only wear the bodysuit, which has their rank, name, and unit information attached as regulation demands.
 * Carapace armor — The IPS unit is kitted out a lightweight, carbon-nanotube layer of semi-rigged carapace armor fitted to the soldier and printed by the quartermaster for wear. With the advent of high-powered directed energy weapons on the battlefield, reflective body armor has come to dominate the personal protection systems of all combat personal within the military. As a rule, all body armor designed to deal with laser-based weaponry has a three-layered system to help protect the soldier. The first layer consists of a thick foam-like material designed to absorb the explosive impacts of the laser rounds as they hit the armor. This helps to minimize the kinetic damage inflicted upon the wearer, as the average assault laser has the explosive force of a large firecracker upon impact. The second layer in the middle is comprised of a carbon nanotube base to serve as protection against kinetic rounds used by less-advanced civilizations the soldiers may encounter. While the lower layer serves as a cushion for all kinetic forces inflicted upon the soldier, the second layer serves as the actual body armor in the IPS unit. The final third layer at the top is the protective coat of reflective gel used to deflective or partial absorb any laser rounds that hit the soldier. Unlike the foam and carbon fiber layer below which are colored based on the role and responsibilities of the soldier, the reflective top layer is clear and polarized to help counter the light-based energy weapon rounds. Overall, it has been standard practice to paint the armor all black to help it absorb the laser rounds likely to hit it, and help dissipate the heat from the laser more evenly across the armor section.
 * Environmental cloak — All soldiers are issued with a large cloak which serves as a secondary form of protection against the surrounding environment, as well as a blanket that can be used in all weather types. The cloak has designed with an immensely durable textile which is lightweight, and strong enough to catch bullets before they are hit the armor system worn by the soldier. The cloak is divided into layers similar to the bodysuit of the soldier, but has a more simplified thermal wiring network to provide warmth to the soldier. The wiring within the cloak itself consists of narowires designed to generate heat up to a temperature of 150°C (302°F), allowing the soldier to operate in even the most frigid of conditions from the vacuum of space to the frozen landscapes of entire planets. The metal used for the wiring consists of a unique liquid compound which allows the metal to "heal", repairing any damage caused to the cloak's internal components, ensuring that the soldiers do not need to concern themselves with the maintenance of the cloak. The heat generated by the cloak's nanowire layer is powered by the soldier's standard-issue fusion power cells, which allow for a near limitless supply of warmth while on campaign. As an addition, the clock itself also functions as an extension of the soldier's body armor system, absorbing the heat from laser weaponry and dissipating the energy across the full length of the cloak. The same wiring used to power the functions of the cloak likewise work in reverse, with the energy absorbed from the lasers transferred back into the battery the soldier wears, allowing them to recharge their system from the direct hits of their enemies. The cloak can likewise aid as a stealth device, as it can mask the body heat of the soldier and break up their electronic signatures for brief periods of time when authorized by the commanders of the force as an additional temporary stealth tactic.
 * Internal exoskeleton — All carapace armor units are built with an internal exoskeleton system, allowing the soldiers to fight and maneuver at levels surpassing the natural capabilities of the majority of their opponents in battle. While some member races do not have need of the exoskeleton systems, for others such as the Hilam and Skurians, the suit is a powerful boon to their physical limitations. For the average humanoid of "baseline" physical build, they can expect to see their physical strength enhanced by a factor of two or three based on their existing fitness levels. Naturally, different units have different exoskeletons designed to match the needs of their unit. For example, combat engineers have more robust exoskeleton systems which allow them to move large debris and wreckage from the field, while medics are given more lightweight systems that grant them the ability to rescue injure troops and open jammed doors to vehicles and buildings to get to the wound and carry them off to safety.
 * Short-range jump pack — TBD
 * Combat helmet — TBD

Personal weapons
Types
 * Projectile weapons
 * Beam weapons

Antimatter guns
Antimatter guns, commonly known as starburst weapons, are extremely destructive weapons which utilize antimatter-catalyzed fusion to produce large detonations from small shell projectiles. While designed for handheld usage on the battle, due to the explosive potential and radiation hazard they pose to the user, the use of antimatter weapons in close quarters combat are prohibited by the military, and civilians are banned from purchasing or using them by the government. Larger antimatter weapons designed for use in space, operate in a similar manner as the small starburst weapons, but utilize annihilation reactions directly to achieve more powerful explosions in combat. The man-portable weapons are expressly designed for use with exosuit units and combat engineers, the former for assault operations and the latter for clearing operations and urban combat scenarios. Antimatter weapons

Voidship types
There are two categories of voidships within the League's sphere of influence; civilian voidships and military voidships.
 * Lancer: Lancers are the smallest voidships employed by the military, having tiny crew complements, and few if any marines aboard for customs duties and boarding actions. They almost always operate in pairs or groups of four during picket duty, and generally only operate independently during patrols in the immediate proximity of the nearest established colony or station in the system. All lancers are, by size and design, capable of landing on any planet with a gravity well. It is thus common practice for a larger warship to have a pair of lancers docked within their structures, both to act as support craft as well as backup shuttles for crew heading to a planetary surface. Within the League's systems, lancers often perform a role similar to that of the larger interdictors, though they serve in areas where the size and cost of an interdictor would either be unnecessary or unjustifiable, as well as in an intelligence gathering role where the presence of an interdictor would be counterproductive. The smaller heat signature of the lancer would allow it to creep pass the observation of the opposing party, and remain within orbit of a target without raising suspicion. During larger military operations, lancers serve as a screen to the larger warships of a constellation, laying down a wall of fire from point-defense cannons or lasers for those with large enough power supplies, as well as harassing enemy vessels and using their superior speed to keep up with and destroy enemy lancers.
 * Skimmer:
 * Interdictor: Interdictors are mid-sized military voidships which are specifically designed to patrol the space between planets and space stations, and render support to civilian vessels in distress. They follow a simple policy of tracking a target, interdicting that target, scanning or destroying the object in question, and repeating the process along their designated quadrant of space. Interdictors are functionally similar to cruisers, albeit with a more localized role in mind. Whereas cruisers are designed to operate far from friendly ports for months at a time and across multiple star systems, interdictors only operate within the system they are assigned to, and only possess enough firepower to deal with the medium and low-level threats they might encounter during patrols. Much as is the case on Earth, interdictors function more as an interplanetary "coast guard", while cruisers serve in a capacity akin to a more "proper" terrestrial navy vessel. It is standard practice for a system to have a full constellation of interdictors on hand to patrol the routes between celestial bodies, provide aid to civilians in the system, track down and eliminate unauthorized operations, and serve as the first line of defense in an emergency.
 * Cruiser:
 * Dominator: Dominator are massive warships designed to conduct combat operations alone or as the head of a constellation of voidships. Named so after their ability to "dominate" the space around them wherever they go, a single dominator is capable of operating in a wide range of environments it may be called upon to fight in. A single dominator may have four to six internal "parasite ship" bays, areas for lancers or skimmers to dock as additional combat craft the dominator can deploy during combat. However, though designed to oversee military operations on its own, this is a rare occurrence within the combat doctrines of the League, something likely to occur when the attached voidships to the dominator are off on their own patrols on the region. Dominators carry several dropships, ground vehicles, and auxiliary equipment, which allows attached combat personnel to conduct their operations in a terrestrial environment if called upon to do so. As a rule, every major core world within the League will have three or four dominators in orbit at any given time, while fringe systems may rely upon the protection of one or two dominators per system.

Voidship weapons

 * Torpedoes: Torpedoes serve as the long-range weapons of voidships during a battle.
 * Railguns:
 * Multi-Cannons:

List of systems and planets
The League consists of 65 habitable systems out of 127 within 50 light-years of its capital system of Chara.

Notable planets

 * Xyon (Chara Primus) – Xyon is the capital of the League of Civilized Worlds, and one of the more populous planets in the Local Bubble. The planet is considered one of the most fascinating anomalies in known space, given its impossible mass and density based on its small radius. As a planet, Xyon has the same gravity as Earth, yet the radius of Saturn's largest moon, Titan. With these parameters alone, Xyon should not exist as it currently does as its average density is higher than that of lead, leading the majority of astronomers and geologists to believe the planet's creation was not of natural celestial origins.
 * Muliiya (Xi Boötis A/B IV) – Muliiya is the most populous planet within the League with more than twenty billion inhabitants, and the homeworld of the aquatic Hilam species. The oceanic world is classified as a "super-terran", with a mass five times that of Earth's. Though Muliiya is home to a massive number of inhabitants, most of these are Hilam; and of the twenty billion on the planet, more than 90% of them reside permanently underwater. Only a handful of landmasses exist on the surface, but it was on these great islands that the Hilam ventured to the surface, discovered fire, and developed a truly centralized civilization that allowed them to make contact with the Mikaeans and Sikatrians in TBD YM, and join the League.

List of star systems

 * 1) 10 Tauri
 * 2) 107 Piscium
 * 3) 12 Ophiuchi
 * 4) 18 Scorpii
 * 5) 44 Boötis
 * 6) 47 Ursae Majoris
 * 7) 58 Eridani
 * 8) 61 Cygni
 * 9) 61 Ursae Majoris
 * 10) 61 Virginis
 * 11) 70 Ophiuchi
 * 12) 82 Eridani
 * 13) 85 Pegasi
 * 14) Achird
 * 15) Al Agemim
 * 16) Alpha Centauri
 * 17) Alpha Mensae
 * 18) Alsafi
 * 19) Alula Australis
 * 20) Asellus Primus
 * 21) Beta Comae Berenices
 * 22) Beta Hydri
 * 23) Chara
 * 24) Delta Trianguli
 * 25) Delta Pavonis
 * 26) Deneb Algedi
 * 27) Epsilon Eridani
 * 28) Epsilon Indi
 * 29) Errai
 * 30) Gamma Leporis
 * 31) Gamma Pavonis
 * 32) Gamma Serpentis
 * 33) Gliese 674
 * 34) HR 1614
 * 35) HR 222
 * 36) HR 3259
 * 37) HR 4458
 * 38) HR 4523
 * 39) HR 483
 * 40) HR 511
 * 41) HR 6094
 * 42) HR 6806
 * 43) HR 6998
 * 44) HR 7162
 * 45) HR 753
 * 46) HR 7722
 * 47) HR 8501
 * 48) HR 8832
 * 49) Iota Pegasi
 * 50) Iota Persei
 * 51) Iota Piscium
 * 52) Keid
 * 53) Lambda Serpentis
 * 54) Muphrid
 * 55) Nu-2 Lupi
 * 56) Pollux
 * 57) Rho Eridani
 * Sol
 * 1) Tau Ceti
 * 2) Theta Persei
 * 3) Xi Boötis
 * 4) Zavijava
 * 5) Zeta Doradus
 * 6) Zeta Reticuli
 * 7) Zeta Tucane

Branches

 * Unified League Armed Services (ULAS)
 * Unified League Terrestrial Forces (ULTF)
 * Unified League Ground Forces (ULGF)
 * Unified League Aviation Forces (ULAF)
 * Unified League Oceanic Forces (ULOF)
 * Unified League Space Forces (ULSF)
 * Unified League Interstellar Navy (ULIN)
 * Unified League Vacuum Infantry (ULVI)

Personnel sizes

 * Voidships
 * Dreadnoughts: 0
 * Cruisers: 0
 * Corvettes: 0
 * Transport vessels: 0
 * Logistical vessels: 0

Military forces
The Skurians were largely outmatched in space by the League forces throughout the conflict primarily due to the former's lack of numbers and more primary technology base. The Skurians constructed large, bulky, and unwieldy voidships that were easy targets and had poorly designed defense grids that left plenty of open blind spots for League voidships. Skurian cruisers easily dwarfed their League counterparts, and possessed a size and firepower index more akin to that of battleships, but they were few in number due to the focus on firepower over numbers, in line with the terrestrial combat doctrines of the species. The Skurians never matched the League's numbers in any of the battles they fought, and were always plagued by poor target acquisition, weaker engines, shorter weapon ranges, and poor leadership in space. The League itself focused on putting as many ships into space as possible to make up for its lack of firepower on a ship to ship basis, and throwing as many targets at the Skurians as possible to overwhelm their defense grids. While the Skurians were able to bring more firepower to the battle, they were unable to utilize effectively. The League only expected its voidships to last long enough to land a critical blow rather than slug it out with the larger and more heavily-armed and armored Skurian vessels.

On the ground, the Skurians situation was much better. As a low-gravity civilization, the Skurians were not capable of carrying heavy weapons into combat under their own physical strength, and thus developed exosuits that helped to alleviate much of the physical burden their soldiers encountered on the battlefield. These exosuits had integrated jetpacks that capitalized upon the lighter weight of the Skurian soldier to generate lift, and made the Skurians vastly more mobile than their League counterparts. Furthermore, the heavier weapons systems the Skurians needed such as anti-tank missiles, heavy machine guns, anti-material rifles, were also integrated into the exosuits built by the Skurians, allowing the individual soldier to carry a degree of firepower into battle that that the League could not match at the same level. Conversely, the Skurians did not develop armored vehicles or combat aircraft in the same manner as the League. Because of their height and the limitations it created, armored vehicles were rarely used in battle, and those that were were massive constructs that were too slow to be used in a practical offensive, and easy targets for the League's armies. Skurian aircraft suffered from the same issues as well, with fighters being many times larger than their equivalent League counterparts, and being much slower and less maneuverable as a direct result.

To counter these drawbacks, the Skurians developed upon their already advanced exosuit designs to replace the role of tanks in the field, and increased the mobility of their individual infantry jetpack systems, allowing the army to completely drop the use of infantry combat vehicles altogether. In the air, the Skurians integrated automated defense systems that would allow for their much larger combat aircraft to fend off the smaller and more agile League fighters tasked with shooting them down. The overall tactic in mind for the Skurians was to increase the lethality of the individual soldier while improving upon existing designs that played more into the strengths of the species and the weaknesses of the League's diverse population, such as targeting slower Hilam-crewed vessels and drawing the massive predominately Mikaean armies of the League into battlefield kill-zones. Ultimately, the Skurians were overwhelmed by the sheer numerical and industrial superiority the League possessed, and the former was simply unable to replace their losses as quickly as the enemy. By the war's end, the Skurians had lost nearly all of their colonies, and were under siege on their homeworld by troopships developed by the League specifically to end the war.

Notable battles

 * First Battle of Epsilon Indi IX: The Battle of Epsilon Indi IX was notable as being the most costly and crushing defeat of the League of Civilized Worlds by the Skurian Union during the world. Seeking to completely overwhelm the Skurian forces on the planet of Epsilon Indi IX, a major colony of the Skurians and home to more than 450 million inhabitants, the League landed more than two million troops on the planet and sent them into battle unprepared for the fight. Believing the war nearly over due to the string of victories in space and on other planets, the League's military leaders had ignored the numerous developments made by the Skurians in the exosuit systems they relied upon for terrestrial warfare, and the warnings of a buildup of forces they were focusing on for a counterattack to drive the League out of the system. In a sixteen-hour long fight, the two million League soldiers faced off against 320,000 Skurian infantry, who killed more than a 700,000 League soldiers within the first nine hours of the battle. The League issued a general retreat, and withdrew from the system after a Skurian fleet arrived to provide support to the ground forces. The battle remains the more devastating defeat in the League's history to this very day.

Trilobite Quarantine
The Trilobite Quarantine is an ongoing military operation by the League of Civilized Worlds over the homeworld of the Trilobites, a single-sex species native to the planet of LCS-037 IV in the TBD system. The quarantine was put in place by executive order from President TBD in TBD LC following the final reports from a scouting force sent the planet to investigate the fate of League colonists who disappeared there. It was found that the native Trilobite people had kidnapped colonists and forcing them to bear their offspring through rape, with the resulting impregnation and birth resulting in the gory death of the host. The possibility of rampant runaway population growth and the death of hundreds of millions should the Trilobite escape to other worlds was deemed unacceptable, and the League established a permanent quarantine over the Trilobite homeworld which exists to this day. Any developments in rocketry made by the few Trilobite scientists are to be destroyed by League forces, who are then tasked with locating and killing the individuals responsible for the advancements.

Currently, the majority of Trilobites are unaware of the presence of the League forces over their homeworld, due to the pre-atomic nature of their civilization. All assassinations by the League are conducted in secret, and the evidence of their operations covered-up in such a way that all witnesses, civilian or not, are killed on the spot. Likewise, any League citizens attempting to break the quarantine are subject to trial in a military court, with punishment going up to and including execution. The League colonists who landed on the planet unknowingly prior to the quarantine were discovered and murdered by Trilobites residing in the undeveloped regions of the planet, which had been deemed a viable location for a settlement by the League colonists prior to their deaths. Consequently, the secretive operations of the League were not compromised by the death of the colonists prior to the formation of the quarantine. To date, the quarantine has been in place for approximately seventy years.

League–Ayulen War
The League–Ayulen War was the largest military conflict in League history, with the forces of the League facing off against the military forces of the mighty Ayulen Empire. The Ayulen had independently developed spaceflight, being one of just four species encountered by the League with that technology before first contact, and were rapidly expanding throughout known space seeking to secure their own needs at the expense of countless other races which had been enslaved or exterminated by the Ayulen. The war began when the forces of the Hatepmok, the military of Ayulen, established a voidgate connection to the League system of TBD, and began sending warships into the system to prepare the way for their invasion forces. Expecting much of the same fight with the native population as with other campaigns, the Ayulen descended upon the League colony and proceeded to kill and enslave anyone and anything they encountered, using weapons of mass destruction in the process.

The federal government of the League immediately obtained knowledge of the invasion, and assembled a combat group to retake the colony and repel the invaders. It was only after the League had began preparations for a counterattack that the Ayulen discovered that the colony they had destroyed was in fact a member of a much larger and much more powerful entity that was now mobilizing against them. This resulted in the Ayulen mobilizing their own military forces and industrial infrastructure to prepare for what they knew would be a long and bloody conflict that would take years to resolve. The conflict itself would last for twelve years, with the League emerging from the war victorious, and the Ayulen losing two-thirds of their empire as well as their homeworld, which remains under military occupation by the League of Civilized Worlds. It solidified the League as the dominant interstellar power, and would see more than twelve star systems added to the League along with their more than forty billion inhabitants.

The war is notable in that it was the first time that the League fought a near-peer rival of equivalent technology level and military power. It is likewise notable for the mass riots and protests throughout the League by the Mikaeans who protested the League's use of their people as military personnel, with the common belief throughout the nation being that due to the fact Mikaeans reproduce rapidly and without the same social structures that would make their dying in battle a tragedy for a family or social unit, that the Mikaeans were disposable and easily-replaced. This shock to the culture and military of the League nearly robbed them of their primary pool of recruits, leading to the wide use of androids in the military for combat operations, which ultimately turned the tide of the war in favor of the much larger economy of the League. Today, most Ayulen are still outraged by their defeat, and the remnant of the Ayulen Empire still provides clandestine support to Ayulen nationalist groups within the League would regularly attack League forces on their own homeworlds, forcing the League to maintain a permanent military presence in the region.