New Player Guide

Welcome to Among the Stars! This guide will help you create your first character and get acclimated with the basic setting of Among the Stars. While you can read the other pages on this Wiki you will only need to read this Quickstart guide in order to jump into the Roleplay.

Community Guidelines
The Among the Stars Staff team requires all players to read and understand the Community Guidelines, which are as follows:


 * 1) Treat everyone with respect. Absolutely no harassment, witch hunting, sexism, racism, or hate speech will be tolerated.
 * 2) No spam or self-promotion (server invites, advertisements, etc) without permission from am Operations staff member. This includes Mass DMing fellow members.
 * 3) No age-restricted or obscene content. This includes text, images, or links featuring nudity, sex, hard violence, or other graphically disturbing content, and this includes within roleplay.
 * 4) Do not harass or excessively bother staff for any reason. This includes begging Operations staff for ranks, or pestering Curators to review your character application. If your Character App has been up for longer then 2 hours you may ping Curators for a review. If you have any problems or questions, please make a ticket in create-a-ticket.
 * 5) If you see something against the rules or something that makes you feel unsafe or uncomfortable, let the Moderators know by creating a ticket in create-a-ticket. These rules are not all-encompassing and Moderators may, at their discretion, request that a person Cease activities that are deemed disruptive in any way.
 * 6) Backseat Moderation is strictly prohibited. If there is any problem it is not the place of server members to ever attempt to handle it themselves, and doing so will result in timeout without warning. This is because Backseat moderation leads to mob mentality and witch-hunting.
 * 7) Powergaming of any sort is prohibited. In addition, in order to even kill or maim another character you must have their permission to do so.
 * 8) In-Character and Out of Character are always to be treated separately. This means no metagaming, and do not bring In-Character drama out of character.

These guidelines exist so everyone may have a safe and enjoyable time on Among the Stars. Failure to follow the guidelines may be subject to disciplinary actions by our Moderation Team. All Moderation Team Decisions are subject to the ability to appeal, as well as subject to peer review by Server Operations.

Setting Premise
Essentially, you are a New Recruit aboard the CSAS Ifrit, a Carrier-class ship in service of the Systems Authority, the Naval Military Arm of the Galaxy Confederation. Our Enemies are the Arkenian Empire, a totalitarian regime on the opposite side of the Galaxy. Our Galaxy is known as the Pinwheel, and while it is based off a real distant galaxy it doesn't actually exist within the Real World. While it isn't required, you can read an expanded basic Summary Here.

Creating your first character
The First thing you'll want to do is grab our Character Template and make a copy of it. We use Google Docs for character creation, therefore a Google Account will be required to do this. From here, section by section, we will explain how to create your character. If you have any questions during this process, create a Curator Team Ticket on the Discord and a Curator should be able to assist you ASAP.

Section I - Basic Information
For the first section of your character you will fill out basic information on your character.

Your Character's Race
For Race, Among the Stars allows custom races to be created, however a custom race may not have any advantages in Combat. If you used a Custom Race we ask that you fill out Section I-A, explaining what your race is.

Your Character's Homeworld
As with Race, you are allowed to use a custom Homeworld, or you can select a major known location within our lore. We don't require you to describe your homeworld, however you can do this here too in order to add more Flavor to your character.

Section II - Appearance
This section is simply for you to post pictures of your character itself. If you cannot or will not use pictures for your character we allow you to simply give us a few sentences to a paragraph describing their general appearance instead. Points to consider here include facial hair and features, body hair, fur, stature, and other unique appearance related features.

Character Archetypes
Before we continue, we must bring up the Character Starters. These are character templates with the Weapons and Abilities sections already filled out for you, designed to serve particular roles. You can simply copy these if you'd like and skip past the next two sections in this guide, or continue through the next two sections and make your own custom loadout. They are as follows:


 * The Rifleman
 * The Combat Medic
 * The Support Gunner
 * The Sniper
 * The Cyonic Assault
 * The Cyonic Support

Section III - Weapons and Gear
In this section you will namely select your weapon loadout. We have a variety of unique weapons to choose from, each is unique and do different things in Combat. Initially, you get to select either One Primary Weapon and One Secondary Weapon, or two Secondary Weapons; however, as your character advances through our progression system, you will be able to pick up more weapons.

Primary Weapons

 * Assault Rifles: 10 Tiles. Three round burst fired every attack. Roll 1d30 to determine hits, and if you have one double your accuracy bonus. 10+ is 1 hit, 20+ is 2 hits, 30+ is three hits. 60 Max Ammo.
 * DMRs: 14 Tiles. Roll 1d20 to determine hits. If you roll 15+, it’s a headshot for triple damage. 30 Max Ammo.
 * Shotguns: 6 tiles. Automatically does double damage. Roll 1d10 to determine hit. If within 3 tiles, add a +2 roll bonus. 24 Max Ammo.
 * Sniper Rifles: Uses both actions for your turn to fire, range is 20 tiles. Roll 1d20+1 to determine hit. Deals triple damage. If you roll 17+, it’s a headshot for double the base damage. 20 Max Ammo.
 * Explosives Launchers: Does Double damage on the tile it hits, and does standard damage to the four tiles touching the hit location. Does triple damage to MECA. Negates cover bonuses. Range is 8 tiles. Roll 1d20 for every single potential hit. 18 Max Ammo.
 * PDWs: 7 Tiles. Fires four times. Roll 1d40 to determine hits. Accuracy bonuses are doubled. 10+ is one hit, 20+ is 2 hits, 30+ is 3 hits, 40+ is 4 hits. 72 Max Ammo.
 * Machine Guns: 8 Tiles. Machine Guns are the most complicated weapons in the game and therefore are recommended only for seasoned players. Fires Salvos of 8 rounds. Roll 1d80 to determine hits, every 10 points on the roll is a hit, triple roll bonus. 150 Max Ammo. Machine guns obey the following special rules:
 * Before you can fire the weapon consumes one action to set up/spool up. You will have to do this again any time you move, or perform any action that isn’t firing the weapon.
 * Every consecutive salvo fired docks a consecutive -3 off of your offensive rolls, due to overheat and high recoil/spread. To mitigate this you must use an action to exchange your barrel/otherwise cool your weapon.
 * -1 to movement at all times if this is your primary weapon.
 * Plasmacasters: 5 Tiles. Fires a Jet of unfocused superheated plasma. Fires in bursts of 4. Roll 1d40 and double your roll bonus to determine hits. Alternatively, you can also create environmental hazards of up to 4 Tiles. 72 Max Ammo.

Secondary Weapons

 * Melee: Always does double damage, Instakill if you take an enemy by surprise. Single Tile Range. Roll 1d20+4 to determine hit, including your roll bonus.
 * Handguns: 8 Tiles. Fires Twice. 1d25 to determine hits, 10+ is one hit, 20+ is 2. 40 Max ammo.
 * Machine Pistols: 6 Tiles. Fires four times. Roll 1d40 for hits, double roll bonus. 10+ is one hit, 20+ is 2, 30+ is 3, and 40 is 4. 48 Max Ammo.
 * Revolvers: 10 Tiles. Roll 1d20 to determine hits. Deals double damage. 18 Max ammo.
 * Disruptors: 7 Tiles. Does no damage but stuns enemies for the next turn. Roll 1d20 to determine hit. 20 Max Ammo.

Weapon Information
Once you have selected the class for each weapon, you get to decide the name and appearance of each of your weapons. For Appearance, you may use an image, or you may simply describe the weapons in question.

Armor or Uniform
This section is simply to describe the Armor or Uniform that your character likes to wear. This doesn't have any bearing on your character's combat ability whatsoever, and simply exists to add Flavor to your character.

Character Ability System
In order to insure combat on ATS is always fair and balanced while also allowing a good amount of personal creative freedom, we have a set ability system. This Ability System is divided into two "Pathways" which each have a different theme:


 * "Techs", which focus on technological stat augmentations and futuristic military equipment.
 * "Cyonics", which focus on active abilities that change the landscape of the battlefield. This is the closest thing ATS has to "Magic".

Each pathway has pros and cons as well as completely different theming. You can only pick one, once you have chosen, the abilities of the other pathway become unavailable to you. You can find full details on the ability system, and select your abilities Here.

Ultimate Ability
Each Character has an Ultimate Ability that is extremely powerful, but requires 8 "Ultimate Points" in order to execute. You gain an Ultimate Point every turn and every time you deal damage to an enemy.

Dark Energy Exposure
As the Ability to do Cyonics is caused by Dark Energy Exposure, we ask that you detail the events that caused you to be exposed to Dark Energy. This can be the result of accidents or constant work on Dark Energy Manipulation tech, like our FTL drives, or being hit by another individuals Cyonic Abilities. Optionally, you can choose to be exposed to Dark Energy within roleplay instead and simply post the Chat Logs of that encounter.

Section IV - Biography
We consider the Biography section of your character to be completely optional, as we do not believe it really affects Roleplay much, but also believe it can add Flavor to your character. There are no rules regulating this section, besides making sure it complies with server lore.

Final Review
Once you have finished your character, please head over to the Discord, turn link sharing on, and post the link to your character within the channel #character-submissions under Character Corner. It will be reviewed by a member of our Curator team, who will check for Lore Compliancy as well as any errors with your loadout, and tell you anything that you need to fix for approval. After approval you will be asked to complete a Training Gauntlet which will teach you how to use our unique Combat System.