Yellow Apple

YellowApple, Inc., also known as The Nomadic Peoples of YellowApple or simply YellowApple, is a fictional nation and company in Nation States, a roleplaying game about, well, fictional nations.

YellowApple exists as a nomadic nation and national corporation, roaming around the universe using wormhole-based Faster-Than-Light Travel to explore and trade with as much of the universe as they can. Notable for having ponies a la My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic. YellowApple is a member of the Coalition of Ponyist States.

Tropes:

 * Airborne Aircraft Carrier: YellowApple's Imperator-II Aerospace Carriers, like other vessels larger than frigates, are named after NationStates moderators, such as the YAAV Jenrak.
 * Alien Abduction: In this case, the YellowApplans are the aliens whenever they travel backwards in time, since they'll often find themselves saving the life of someone who was about to die and have to kidnap said individual to avoid timeline disruption. However, some disgruntled YellowApplans do not believe in this reasoning, because... (see All the Myriad Ways below)
 * Alien Geometries: Static superluminal transit systems create direct permanent connections between two gates located in arbitrary moving points and with arbitrary orientations in spacetime, enabling odd phenomena such as recursive / infinitely-looping rooms and corridors, as well as the ability to fall down a hole to find yourself sliding along the floor of a corridor perpendicular to the room you just left.
 * All the Myriad Ways: (continued from Alien Abduction above) ...said rogues know that there is an infinite quantity of universes and therefore can feel free to murder, rape, and pillage as they see fit knowing full well that it won't affect their own universe.
 * Alternate Calendar: The YellowApplan Chronological System, which denotes time and date by hexadecimal thousands (1,000 in base-16 is 4,096 in base-10) of seconds.
 * Arbitrary Maximum Range: Generally due to accuracy decreasing with distance.
 * Artificial Gravity: Implied, but never explicitly stated to be in effect. It's also quite possible with Yellow Applan spacetime-altering technology.
 * Asimovs Three Kinds of Science Fiction: Generally either Gadget or Social depending on the story arc. Adventure is used occasionally, but rarely.
 * Asteroid Miners: YellowApple, Inc. Resource Acquisition Fleets. They roam around the universe and harvest materials from the Magellanic clouds and asteroid belts of the systems they visit.
 * Bigger on the Inside: Thanks to how static superluminal transit systems work, what looks like a Port-o-John could very well open up directly to a static system node, its companion node leading into a vastly more spacious room. As a bonus, the node could be switched off to reveal an ordinary Port-o-John interior.
 * Brain-Computer Interface: Several examples.
 * Administrator Amarillo Manzano had neural implants allowing him to do anything from tracking government expenditures real-time to knowing the first name, last name, and birthdate of any YellowApplan he encounters.
 * The BitControl Non-Invasive Neural Interface Adapter reads signals in the brain in order to allow sapient equines to fire human weapons without a clumsy bit like its predecessor, the BitTrigger.
 * Brain Uploading: Administrator Amarillo Manzano had routine backups of his entire mind when he was living. He only intends for this to be for future generations of YellowApple to learn the secrets of his mind after death, but he isn't thrilled by the prospect of being resurrected on a machine (or network) capable of hosting his mind.
 * Bridge Bunnies: Practically universal on YellowApplan ships, where a team of young female cadets will invariably be the ones managing communications both within and beyond the fleet.
 * Clown Car Base: The large YellowApplan Administrator-class Aerospace Dominance Vessel serves as this, with the ability to receive construction materials - or sometimes even whole fighters - via its static superluminal transit system node.
 * Clown Car Grave: If you're YellowApplan, die, don't want to be cremated, and can't afford your own tomb (which is very expensive, given the lack of ground to bury people in), you'll basically be stuffed in a box with a bunch of other corpses.
 * Cool Plane / Space Fighter / Space Plane: The AppleDrive F03 "Blade-II" Aerospace Interceptor. Its predecessors, the F01 "Triikor" and the F02 "Blade", classify as well, but they are both outdated. All three, however, are capable of unassisted trans-atmospheric flight.
 * Cool Airship: Anything larger than a fighter or strike bomber uses atmospheric buoyancy to provide much of the vehicle's lift, primarily by having hollow structures with vacuums (or lighter-than-air gases in general, in older vehicles/cities/settlements) within.
 * Corralled Cosmos: Averted; the very nature of Yellow Applan Faster-Than-Light Travel provides access to the theoretically-infinite quantity of parallel universes that exist, and therefore there will never be a limit as to how far in spacetime a YellowApplan can travel.
 * Death World: The vast majority of YellowApplan planetary presences tend to be this, with mining facilities all over the surface extracting raw materials.
 * Designer Babies: Implied to be possible, but YellowApplans avoid it due to the financial and ethical concerns; having a natural baby is cheaper than examining and aborting dozens of babies to get the perfect one. Prenatal genetic engineering is commonplace, however.
 * Different World, Different Movies: My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic is a documentary in YellowApple. Homeworld, Starship Troopers, and Battlefield 2142 also don't exist.
 * Divided States of America: Technically speaking, YellowApple is one such state, having seceded from the US after being completely fed up with the tendency for secularism and capitalism to be mutually exclusive in America. YellowApplans tend to have a condescending view of the rest of America (and its remnants) for this reason, viewing them as inferior because of either being "backwards theocracies" or "backwards socialists"
 * Doing in the Wizard: YellowApple, Inc., thanks to projects like the Equine Genome Project and the Superluminal Transit System, has managed to at least simplistically explain pony magic on a scientific level, even if the theories have yet to be observed in Real Life on a biological level.
 * Drop Ship: The Hammer-II Aerospace Transport Corvette serves as one. Technically, almost any YellowApplan vessel can serve as one, but bigger craft have a harder time with landing and taking off again, using considerably more fuel than smaller craft like corvettes and fighters.
 * Eternal Prohibition: Inverted. A number of softer drugs (from caffeine to LSD remain perfectly legal, but smoking tobacco is classified as attempted-mass murder (Lord help you if you smoke in front of a child, in which case YellowApplans will not hesitate to beat the snot out of you). Alchohol's still legal, though, and hard drugs like cocaine and heroin remain illegal, thus subverting the inversion.
 * Everything Is Online: Thanks to the YellowApple National Citizen Database, this is true. Not to mention that every single computer, phone, television, appliance, door, window, light, ceiling fan, motorized vehicle, music player, and any other object that uses electricity has its own IP address.
 * Faster-Than-Light Travel: Reverse-engineered from pony magic, no less (specifically, the ability for unicorns to teleport).
 * Flying Car: Subverted, in that they're not called cars. However, many YellowApplans do own personal aerospace craft that, for all intents and purposes, function identically.
 * Future Food Is Artificial: Subverted, since not all YellowApplan food is artificial. However, meat is grown in vitro exclusively since it's cheaper in YellowApple to grow meat in a vat than to raise it as a live animal first once the costs of space, livestock feed, and sanitation are accounted for.
 * Future Music: Dubstep is popular in YellowApple, even though the timeline is currently about 200 years or so after Real Life. However, most YellowApplans acknowledge the songs to be in the public domain due to the authors having died more than a century before.
 * Generation Ships: How most YellowApplan civilian fleets work, with the crews and their families residing on the ship long-term as their home.
 * Godzilla Threshold: YellowApple and its arch-nemesis, Angrivantis, were enemies, but the YellowApplans opted to be defensive rather than offensive, emphasizing diplomacy. Then Administrator Amarillo Manzano is assassinated. Cue YellowApple becoming a belligerent, destructive menace of the skies and stars for several years.
 * Human Aliens: From a non-YellowApplan perspective, anyway; YellowApplans are typically pretty weird even to other humans.
 * Human Subspecies: There are four main ones, actually: Homo sapiens sapiens (humans), Homo sapiens felis (catpersons), Homo sapiens albus (elves / Vulcans), and Homo sapiens aquaticus (merpersons).
 * Human Mom, Nonhuman Dad: Can be played straight, inverted, subverted (child is adopted), or subverted and inverted; all four are theoretically possible thanks to absolutely no laws against Interspecies Romance.
 * Humans Are White: Other than the Token Minorities that occasionally show up. YellowApplan human ethnicity is never specified beyond "YellowApplan", but most of the population has pale skin, having a mix of European, North American, Middle Eastern, and Asian ethnicities.
 * Hyperspace Arsenal: Some big ships have one or more static superluminal transit system nodes, intended specifically to play this trope straight and bring in additional resources from arbitrary off-site locations.
 * Hyperspeed Escape: Performing a superluminal jump is the standard method of a YellowApplan ship or fleet terminating an engagement, other than winning.
 * Infinite Supplies: Theoretically possible on ships with their own static superluminal transit system nodes, since they can receive supplies remotely and instantaneously at will.
 * Invisibility: The Arrow-II Aerospace Reconnaissance Fighter uses metamaterials to bend light - including radio waves - around itself, thus becoming invisible both on radar and to the naked eye.
 * Lions and Tigers and Humans, Oh My!: Ponies and humans interact as if there's nothing weird about it.
 * Magnet Hands: More like Magnet Hooves; equine Aerospace Marines have electromagnets on their front hooves for holding firearms.
 * Magnetic Weapons: coilguns are commonplace in anti-aerospace point defense weaponry, and railguns are the primary weapons of the AppleDrive T01 Medium Battle Tank and T02 Heavy Battle Tank.
 * Mercurial Base: YellowApple, Inc. maintains some facilities on and around the closest planet of the Concordia system in the Milky Way. Most of these facilities migrate, though some subvert the trope and just harvest as much of the energy they can and deflect the rest.
 * Mobile Factory: YellowApplan cities and settlements are this, as are aerospace carriers and aerospace dominance vessels. Cities, settlements, and ADVs are additionally able to receive resources via their own static superluminal transit systems; when coupled with mobile refineries consolidating resources from mining fleets, a single such vessel or settlement could produce theoretically-infinite quantities of units for as long as there are resources in every single universe to harvest.
 * Meanwhile in the Future: due to some issues with coordinating an assassination roleplay with another player, the YellowApplan timeline is in significant limbo due to some roleplays having Administrator Amarillo Manzano still alive, some having him just recently deceased and his successor recently elected, and some having his daughter already in office as the new Administrator. This results in a lot of timeline jumping if one attempts to read posts in the order they were posted.
 * Mohs Scale of Science Fiction Hardness: YellowApple is toward the hard end.
 * Oh Look More Rooms: What a building full of static superluminal transit system nodes would look like. Ties in with Alien Geometries when the nodes point to different nodes in the same room.
 * Old School Dogfighting: Averted in that YellowApplan pilots are trained to strafe, perform sweeping runs, fly backwards, etc.
 * Our Graphics Will Suck in the Future: Can be either played straight or averted entirely, depending on the context. Consumer products have flashy user interfaces with three-dimensional menus and such. Military, government, and industrial computers save the resources and instead opt for rather basic graphical interfaces - that is, if the interfaces are graphical at all - with monospaced text (though graphics can be embedded) and lots of command-line operations.
 * Our Wormholes Are Different: YellowApplan Faster-Than-Light Travel involves using negative energy densities to hold open wormholes created between two (or more) arbitrary points. This comes in the form of either static superluminal transit systems (permanent gates in cities, settlements, and a few large ships that one can walk through to go somewhere else instantaneously, with a permanently-set destination) or dynamic superluminal transit systems (temporary gates held open just long enough for a ship or other object to pass through).
 * Please Keep Your Hat On: Administrator Amarillo Manzano always wears a black fedora and sunglasses. When removed, they reveal glowing electronic eyes and a head of patchy synthetic skin.
 * Portal Cut: Quite possible should a superluminal transit system of either the static or dynamic variety shut off while something is passing through it. In static systems, a redundant power supply capacitor matrix keeps the portal working for about a minute after the power is cut and blocking additional traffic from entering (or at the very least flashing a warning light and siren) until normal power is restored, subverting this trope. In dynamic systems, the ship has to be able to hold open the wormhole long enough for the ship to pass through entirely, lest it be either spaghettified or sliced cleanly with no warning.
 * Portal Door: what each node of a static superluminal transit system looks like. To the eye, it appears as a simple doorway between two rooms. In reality, it's a doorway into a wormhole which leads to an identical door in a room arbitrarily far (or close) from the first door.
 * Portal Network: how static superluminal transit systems generally work, with wormholes connecting paired gates for people to walk/drive/fall/fly through at will. Most are designed only for people and small vehicles to pass through, but some are large enough for massive ships to fly through.
 * Portal Pool: some high-end artificial beaches in YellowApplan cities do this, usually with two identical but mirrored pools in two completely different locations: swim down far enough in a pool in Del Tangerino and you're suddenly swimming toward the surface of a matching pool in Torvaldsville. Others may link to natural bodies of water.
 * Running Gag: the "hand-shake/hoof-shake problem", which arises when discussing what to call a greeting where a human shakes a pony's hoof and/or a pony shakes a human's hand. Nearly every greeting between a pony and a human invokes a lengthy internal argument about what to call the interaction.
 * Space Station: How some YellowApplan orbital outposts are, except said outposts are this trope Up to Eleven.
 * Space Western: Depends on what part of YellowApple you're looking at; in big cities and fleets you'll find more progressive cultures, but smaller nomadic fleets and settlements have significantly more traditional and rough-edged cultures, with vigilante "sheriffs" defending the law from criminals hiding in the frontier that is space.
 * Sticks to the Back: Aerospace Marines and Domestic Security Corps Enforcers have magnets on the backs of their uniforms/armor that hold their rifles in place.
 * Subspace Ansible: Just about every YellowApplan ship corvette-sized or larger will have some kind of faster-than-light radio that basically works by running a glorified ethernet cable through a wormhole - ahem, static superluminal transit system node pair - to an ethernet switch located on a larger ship, which in turn has its own such connections to even larger ships until you have connections to Manzanopolis Prime.
 * The Musketeer: Combat-oriented characters tend to be quite proficient in both a ranged firearm (usually a rifle, occasionally a revolver) and a blade (generally a knife or sword) in order to be effective at both distant and close-quarters combat.
 * Unwanted Revival: Administrator Amarillo Manzano foreshadows the possibility of one of his backups being used to bring him back from the grave, and shudders at the thought.
 * Vibroweapon: The AppleBlade S01 Vibrokatana and its descendants/relatives.
 * Virtual Ghost: Administrator Amarillo Manzano after death, should a backup of his mind actually be executed on a powerful-enough computer (or a large-enough network).
 * Word Salad Title: The words "yellow" and "apple" have absolutely no connection to any concrete or abstract characteristic of YellowApple.