I won’t spoil too much of the R2 story but hopefully this will provide some groundwork for the HLP Community to start with. The structure of the Jovian faction is in its name, the “Transjovian Despotate”. Trans- being that the faction involves Jupiter and beyond. Jupiter and Saturn lead the faction and hold a seat in the EA government. Uranus, Neptune, and beyond are resource-rich worlds controlled by local bandit kingdoms that pay lip service to their Jovian overlords (of the Despotate) and to the greater EA and are thus the most independent wildcard element of the faction. They feud with each other over control of resources, trade routes, and even for prestige.
After the severing of the Sol-DS node, local subspace gradually became erratic the farther one is from the Sun’s gravitational space-time distortion. As a consequence, the Jovians were forced to make more efficient subspace drives that allowed for microjumps in rapid succession without the extensive cooldown period required by many GTVA ships. This made an impact on their fleet management, allowing smaller ships such as specialized cruisers commanded by corvettes to be favored over those commanded by destroyers or carriers. This was devised by our legacy member Mobius, who wrote extensively about this subject and named it the Richochet Effect. After the Sol Gate opened, it did not have the stabilizing effect on local subspace that the EA had hoped and caused additional problems. This will be expounded upon and will play a large role in R2.
With the R1 patch, the Community will get the mission fixes and balances previously requested (this is mostly done), all the upgraded R1 ships (Eclipse, Aesacus, Tereus, etc.), and a short capship command mission (or two) where you play as the leader of a Jovian battlegroup sent by the EA to placate an unruly bandit faction in Neptune in the weeks before the opening of the Sol Gate. The player will experience the Richochet Effect and discover some unpleasant truths the intelligence spooks have been hiding from the general military (hinted at towards the end of R1).
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