Urban Life

The span of history of the New Diasporia actually ranges just over a century. Most of the great social trends originate from before that period. By the time of Fr. Borland Barnes and Joesph Gutierrez a Unified Catholic Church was already in existence. The Great Compromise was in place. In many ways the first wave of the New Diasporia was made up of people who had problems with both those facts of history. Only more slowly did the Church and society follow in successive waves.
The just of those facts means that throughout all extra solar space human civilization is barely a century old. For almost all of that time travel was limited to conventional road and air vehicles. Even in the farthest reaches of the Wilds civilization, or what passes for it, is just a generation or two old. In the oldest and most primitive places perhaps as many as six generations have passed since the invention of the B/G engine.
This tends to mean that on any particular world history is not too deep. On Earth it is not unusual to see structures several hundred years old. It is even possible to see man made structures thousands of years old. This is not the case on other worlds.
Because of the pace of technological development and the speed of transport cities tend to be smaller than the old Earth cities. Most terrestrial cities are old. They formed at transportation hubs, which is why so many cities were founded where rivers meet each other, or meet the sea. In the age of rail cities were founded at rail heads and junctions. Even in the pre-industrial age cities sometimes were built at places where gold, silver and iron could be found. Only in the age of the automobile did population centers swell over the land, tied together by concrete and asphalt ribbons.
In the Highland cities, towns and villages, founded before the mid-twenty third century, it is common to have roads and highways connecting buildings and other population centers. On many worlds these artifacts of an earlier age are abandoned and unused. At least by human traffic. Interior roads are still sometimes used to transport goods using autonomous robot vehicles. On others settled during the last seventy years often commercial transmat portals are still in use, connecting roads or monorails over vast distances. Some settled recently have no roads at all, with all transportation via transmat portal.
A matrix may be used to help determine the probable mixture of transportation technologies. Many of the other cultural and social characteristics of the world can be inferred from the combination of when the world was founded and what is it's present Tech Level.

Present Technology Level	A	B	C	D
Founding Year
2320
2310
2300					Nanotech
2290
2280
2270
2260					Transmat
2250
2240
2230					Hyperdrill
2220
2210					B/G Engine

Any Highland world founded after 2300 A.D. and founded at TLA will lack roads. Transmat portals will provide the primary transportation technology. Cities will be small and widely dispersed, perhaps even over several continents. A city, village or town is really more a designation of jurisdiction than of geographical area, since the shopping district can be in one place, the residential district in another place and facilities for space traffic somewhere else. Cities are differentiated from villages in that a village will have shopping, residential areas, churches and perhaps even a monastery all within walking distance, with transmat portals primarily used to travel to other places. Such population centers are not primarily vehicle friendly (since vehicles are seldom if ever used) and walkways and pathways are laid out with aesthetic and architectural considerations in mind rather than vehicular. If transportation is need to areas not served by transmat transport capsules will be used.These worlds are represented by the dark blue area of the graph.

Any world founded before 2300 A.D. but after 2260 A.D. and founded at TL A or B will have some form of road network. If they are still TL B they will have a mixture of commercial transmat portals and vehicle lines. Transmat assisted monorail and roadways allow trans continental and trans world travel using public trains or private road vehicles. Air travel will be relegated to orbital or extra-planetary transport. If they have advanced to TL A it is likely they will have abandoned roads. Streets will be relegated to older, economically depressed areas. New villages and towns will resemble those seen on worlds in the dark blue area of the graph. These worlds are in the medium blue area of the graph.

Any world founded before 2260 A.D. after 2210 A.D. will have as extensive a road network as would be required without transmat technology. Any population center which pre-dates the mid twenty-third century will have extensive road or rail or public transportation systems. If the world has advanced to TL B some of these systems, especially those between population centers will have been replaced with commercial transmat portals. If they have advanced to TL A whole population centers with their road systems may have been abandon in favor of more advanced, nanotech produced, villages and cities supported by transmat technology. Those areas not abandoned may be occupied by the economically disadvantaged or they may have been upgraded, with their street re-purposed as tracks or walkway or built upon as newly reclaimed land.

Worlds still at tech levels below B will still use their roads and public transportation systems. Gravity assisted ground vehicles and transport capsules will make up the majority of transport. Newer materials might be used for roads, and it is possible that planned communities could exist which separate vehicles from pedestrians. With lots of land and relatively few people the overcrowding existing in many areas of Earth is seen less, at least in the Highlands.

Outside the Highlands a much greater variety of technology mix and social and cultural geography is possible.

Life in a distributist nanotech society

The most difficult aspect of adventuring in any society whose tenants are radically different from the players own is trying to imagine what life is like for the player characters. This is important because social norms color what kinds of choices are reasonable for the characters to make and so limit the options of the players. These limitations are most often enforced by the referee or storyteller or gamemaster, but automatic compliance of the players often is effected by how reasonable those limits seem.
Very few players would disagree with a GM who called a SWAT team in if their characters shoot up a police station. Their response might be different if the GM calls in a ninja hit squad because they've ambushed a Confederate scouting party in a U.S. Civil War era game.
So social environment is very important. If the society is radically different, say a devout Christian norm as opposed to the radical progressive secularism of the present day that still might not be that great a leap. The PCs could likely look back several hundred years to the societal norm of the pre-Reformation Christian eras. However such societies were very different from civilization in the Highlands, most notably due to the existence of nantechnology.
Now the limitations of nanotechnology quite put to rest the common fantasy of a nanite swarm creating a banquet complete with table, chairs, prime rib, and champagne cooling in its ice bucket out of thin air. Even so it is easy to see that a small group outfitted with a number of nanotech factories and the designs needed to utilize them would be quite independent of need for the economic structures typically organized along traditional capitalistic grounds.
While the economic structure practiced within the Highlands might be categorized as distributism, it is no more pure pure distributism than what is practiced in the twenty-first century United States is pure capitalism or what is practiced in twenty-first century China is communism or capitalism.
The very existence of nanotechnology makes old supply side economics obsolete. But even when anyone with a nanotech factory and a pile of materials can make just about anything there is still an advantage to a certain amount of specialization. Someone still has to design the patterns that factories use to create items. Metals, petrochemicals and other elements must still be mined, purified and transported. And even with nanotech factories it is still more efficient to grow a crop or raise a herd than it is to produce nano-tech food.
Some amount of capitalization, that is the concentration of capital for the purposes of investment still occurs. The difference being the lack of isolation from consequences which was inherent in the progressive era corporate system.
Corporations, as originally instituted, limited the liability of investors for debt beyond the amount of assets they had in the corporation. This shifted risk to the debtors of the corporation. In the 19th century this was extended to protect shareholders by limiting the corporation's liability in both contract and tort claims. This further isolated members of the corporation from accountability for the corporation's actions. In the 20th century, changing law served to concentrate authority for guidance of corporate actions in the hands of corporate managers, who were theoretically accountable to shareholders, but often beyond their actual control. This further isolated those controlling the actions of the corporation from the consequences of their actions, both moral and legal. Of course it was possible for governments to hold corporate officers accountable for illegal activities, and even for a corporation to be dissolved for a pattern of such activities. Such sanctions typically require extensive and expensive action on the part of government, with corporate officers often shielded from direct accountability and hapless shareholders punished through loss of asset value. This pertains to legal responsibility, attempting to hold corporations up to moral accountability was even harder. This ignored the inevitable corruptive effect exercised by many large corporations as they solicited beneficial laws from compliant political leaders in return for both legal and illegal bribery.
Like many types of destructive social patterns the initial consequence of the decoupling of cause and effect resulted in a temporary economic boom. Often such patterns extend for what in human terms is a significant span of time, making the inevitable consequences less obvious. But the cause and effect relationship is as true as the law of gravity. The consequences of the divorce of behavior consequences in the economic sphere would eventually lead to economic collapse.
As communism and socialism fail because they do not take into account the nature of man so to does capitalism fail when it too fails to take into account the concupiscence caused by original sin.
Adam Smith's "invisible hand" does not work when the natural balance of economic cause and effect is corrupted by government intervention, legal redirection of consequences or criminal intent. Corporations and capitalism on their own are neither morally corrupt or sinful. However in their original incarnation, that is chartered by governments, for the common good, rather than to realize corporate revenues for the state in the form of taxes or profits for the shareholders, corporations can produce enormous good and still produce profit, which is of itself not sinful. This is accomplished by keeping corporations closely regulated, focusing on the protection of the public good and limiting corporations to comply with the purposes expressed in their charters. This generally results in small corporations, which are closely regulated by government in the interest of the commons. Naturally this produces a lower rate of return than unfettered capitalism, but it also prohibits the fiction of the immortal corporate "person", beyond common morals and ethical constraints. It also tends to ensure profits over the long run, if limiting their unfettered expansion. In the Highlands this is considered an equitable trade.

Transport Capsule

Transport capsules are small utility craft used for short range transport in space or on planetary surfaces. Transport capsules are small enough to use commercial vehicle transmat portals. They have no facilities for sleeping or food preparation and so are unsuitable for use on the subspace transport networks. They are most often used to haul a few passengers or small amounts of cargo between spacecraft, transporting personnel between station modules or as transport on worlds to places not served by the transmat system. The capsule is not designed to be serviced in space, although the engine compartment is accessible by removing the floor decking. Access is through the single rear hatch. Transport capsules do not have an enclosed airlock relying on a membrane barrier to maintain cabin pressure when the hatch is open.

Transport Capsule in GURPS VE2 format:
TLA Transport Capsule-class

Crew: 2 total. 2 crew stations covering vehicle maneuvering system, communicator, 4 sensors.

Subassemblies: Vehicle +4, Body +4.

P&P: 52,000,000-kWs rechargeable power cell, 10,000 lbs. thrust Barnes-Gutierrez Hyperspace Engine (Barnes Manifold deflector; no access space).

Occ: two roomy crew stations (gravity web), five roomy passenger seats (gravity web), three roomy passenger standing room locations, 10-man full life support system.

Armor F RL B T U
Body 3/5 3/5 3/5 3/5 3/5

Equipment
Body: AESA (scan 17, 10-mile range; non-targeting); long range radio communicator (50,000-mile range); searchlight (0.45-mile range); PESA (scan 21, 50-mile range); gravscanner (scan 17, 10-mile range); multiscanner (scan 17, 10-mile range); small computer (complexity 8; compact, dedicated); routine vehicle operation program (piloting-12, C2); datalink program (C1); computer navigation program (C2); artificial gravity unit (27,000cf covering); full fire suppression system; sealed.

Statistics
Size: [LxWxH] 10'x8.5'x8' Payload: 2,000 lbs. Lwt.: 9,189 lbs.
Volume: 689 cf Maint.: 25 hours (3.85 mh/day) Price: P6420

HT: 14 HP: 750 [Body].

Space Performance: sAccel (unloaded) 1.09 G, ( 1.09 G), sDecel 1.09 G, sMR 1.09, sAccel 20 mph/s.

Aerial Performance: Stall Speed 0 mph, Drag 501, Top Speed 385 mph, aAccel 20 mph/s, aMR 5.5, aSR 4, aDecel 20 mph/s.

Design Notes:
TLA medium frame standard materials [Vehicle].
TLA DR 5 expensive metal [Vehicle].
Operating Duration: 14 H 11 M 46 S.
Vehicle Features: computerized controls, computerized diving controls, pressure proofed, no streamlining.
Volume: 689 cf [Body].
Area: 500 sf [Body].

The Pinnace

A Pinnace is an armed vessel typically carried aboard other vessels, or used from a base or station in system. Pinnace are typically built in the 250 to 400 thousand cubit foot range. They have shunting capability and are used as scouts or couriers.

Like most spacecraft which are larger than a brake or hypershuttle, but smaller than a Man-'O-War, pinnace are usually saucer shaped. Pinnace in service with the Legion usually are lightly armed, being intend primarily for planetary combat support and uncontested ship boardings. They can be used to land troops or to carry messages in areas where there is no hypercable system.
Because they are capable of independent operation most contain both eating and sleeping accommodations. Often small craft, such as ridged inflatable boats, air utility vehicles, or transport capsules are carried aboard to allow operations in frontier areas and regions off the grid. They are capable of water landings and can set down at unimproved landing areas and even remained tethered by a gravity anchor in mountainous areas too rugged for conventional landing.
All of these characteristics makes this type of vessel highly sought after by private users and traders guilds. Many second hand ones have found there way into this market, though most such vessels have had their weapons stripped and sensors degraded.

Structural Integrity Fields

So what are these structural integrity fields and why should I care? Structural Integrity Fields are a product of force field technology. They allow spacecraft to be constructed at a reduced cost and weight, while also permitting warcraft to be more survivable. A SIF is a system of planar force fields which are formed inside bulkheads and structural members to strengthen them. An SIF increases the amount of stress that such a bulkhead or structural member can take before it fails. As a side benefit SIF will prevent gravscanners and other force based technology from penetrating a hull which is reinforced with a Structural Integrity Field.
So how do I handle this in the game? An SIF allows a ship to be built as if it was built with a heavier frame, without the weight penalty. So in the GURPS VE2 or modular spacecraft system normally Hit points for a hull are calculated using the following formula:

area * 1.5 * Frame Value

Frame	Frame Value	SIF
Super Light	0.1	0.5
Extra Light	0.25	1
Light	0.5	2
Medium	1	4
Heavy	2	8
Extra Heavy	4	16

When a vessels has a Structural Integrity Field its Hit Points are calculated using the SIF multiple. It's cost is calculated as for the next highest Frame Value.
So for a vessel with a Super Light Frame the cost multiplier is normally 0.1. Outfitting the vessel with a Structural Integrity Field will raise the Hit Point multiplier to .5 while leaving the Mass Multiplier at .1, but the cost will increase to .25, still less then the 1 multiplier used for an equivalent light frame vessel. The technology's benefits are most dramatic at the heavy and extra heavy frame level used by Men 'O War.
Structural Integrity Fields do add a layer of cost and complexity to a vessel but the benefits are great enough that even small craft, such as brakes and HUVs often have them.

Anti-Missile Game Mechanics

As for other space combat mechanics in the game this section assumes GURPS VE2 rules modified using New Diapsoria modifications 
Assuming a Sensor Net Anti-Missile Missiles (AM Missiles) may be deployed whenever missiles are detected within a range of 1 million miles (100 hexes). From a game mechanics point of view an AM Missile which passes withing the same hex as an attack missile is an automatic kill, unless penetration aids are being used. In the case of an active Jammer there is a one in six chance of a missile hitting an actual missile as opposed to a false or spoofed missile. The GM records a number. If the attacker rolls that number it is a hit. If not a miss.
When jamming is used with a large number of missiles it becomes purely a numbers game. Determine the number of attacking missiles and subtract the number of anti-missile missiles to determine the number of missile which survive. At space combat ranges it is beyond the ability of sensors to determine the actual number of attacking missiles so for the defender it is a game of probabilities. If the defender launches too few AM Missiles attack missiles will get through to their targets. If the defender launches too many AM Missiles the excess missiles will be wasted and might be needed for subsequent attacks.
If penetration aids are used six times as many anti-missile missiles must be launched to stop every missile.
So if an attacker launches 300 missiles and the defender launches 200 AM Missiles, 100 missiles will survive to face the defender's point defense. If the attacker has used penetration aids then only 200/6 missiles (33.3, round up to 34) missiles will be destroyed and 266 missiles will survive to face the defender's point defense.
In the space combat round any missile within 10 hexes (100,000 miles) will be destroyed within the launching turn of the anti-missile missiles. Missiles within 40 hexes (400,000 miles) will be destroyed the turn after AM Missiles are launched. Missiles at 100 hexes (1,000,000) will be destroyed two turns after the AM Missiles are launched. Of course anti-missile missile ranges may be extended by launching them from a heavy missile booster package.  In that case the 500mm missile may travel to it full range before deploying it's 10 Viper anti-missile missiles. The Vipers accumulate the heavy missile acceleration as well as their own. Some ship launch Vipers from gravity pulse launchers which will give an extra 1000 Gs of initial acceleration. This really has little effect on game play because of the 10,000 mile hexes used. Difference in range and velocity are lost in the noise.

500mm attack missiles accelerate by one hex every turn. 250mm attack missiles accelerate by one hex every other turn. Missile with laser communicators may be commanded to move at any acceleration up to their maximum acceleration each turn. They may also be made to hold station, creating an kind of space mine which can then attack as the result of a remote trigger from a ship or station.
Any missile which survives will face the defender's point defense. Point defense consists of X-Ray Lasers and railguns firing canister shot. X-Ray Lasers are one-shot/one-kill weapons. In the anti-missile roll they are operated at reduced power and a higher rate of fire. Each laser will kill one missile per turn. For example a quad turret can kill 4 missile per turn. As for anti-missile missiles take the number of attacking missiles and subtract the number of point defense lasers to determine if any missiles survive.  Canister shot is an area effect weapon capable of destroying multiple missiles. This is because the range is so short because kinetic kill missiles and contact nukes must converge on the target in order to damage it. Any missiles which do not employ a "pop-up" trajectory will be damaged by canister fire.
X-Ray laser warheads detonate outside the range of point defense lasers and railguns. Such point defense weapons are ineffective against these weapons.

Sensor Drone Design

Using GURPS sensor rules if missile are allowed to utilize stealth technology and emission cloaking they become effectively undetectable at anything resembling useful ranges. This is especially true of missile which use some kind of gravity drive system, such as the B/G Engine, which itself is not highly detectable, except using a gravscanner. Gravity emission masking, which is available at TL A makes even that method of detection ineffective.
The answer in the New Diasporia universe is the use of sensor drones. To detect stealthed missiles a sensor net, consisting of hundreds of sensor drones are deployed. Such nets are deployed as far forward, that is as close as possible, to the perceived threat.
The goal is to deploy a sensor array that missile will have to physically pass. Optimum deployment forces missiles to approach  the sensor drones at a range of no more than 10 to 20 thousand miles at least half a million miles out from the fleet. This will give almost 11 minutes response time for anti-missile launch. As for many of the game mechanics of New Diasporia I have pillaged freely from other GURPS science fiction space based games. The Sensor array Rules are based on the home brewed rules for GT Sensor Arrays by Kenneth Witt located at John G Wood's elv GURPS Traveller site.
As with all my designs I run against the GURPS 3rd Edition TL progression limits. For most technology GURPS assumes that items which are developed in a specific TL cost half as much in the next TL and weigh half as much. Two Tech Levels after their introduction they weigh a quarter as much and their costs is again halved. They may also become more effective. Beyond that no improvement is seen. As one can see in the case of many devices this is not reflective of reality. Computers are an excellent example. Moore's law seems to have no boundary. Room sized at TL6, PC size at TL7, cell phone size at TL8, perhaps pin size at higher TL's. The cost was reduced at an even greater scale.
Rather than limiting progression to two tech levels I allow progression to continue. Since New Diasporia TLA is equivalent to GURPS TL14 in many areas, for sensors designs I continue to reduce sensor cost, mass, and volume for every Tech Level until TL14.
On this basis numbers for TLA sensor systems are:

PESA	TL	Scan Rating	Range	Hex	Mass	Volume	Cost
	A	51	4.5M	450	46.875	1.25	75

AESA	TL	Scan Rating	Range	Hex	Mass	Volume	Cost
	A	51	4.5M	450	4.45	0.5625	1.22

Gravscanner	TL	Scan Rating	Range	Hex	Mass	Volume	Cost
	A	42	.45M	45	0.703125	0.225	8.0

Using the modified sensor rules there is a +3 scan if >100 sensor platforms are used. If 300 sensor drones are deployed to cover a band of space between the attacking ship and the defender then the mass, volume and cost will be spread over 300 drones. Additional cost of the drone will be the B/G engine, Nuclear Power Generator, three laser communicators and a robotic computer brain. Individual drones will have radical stealth and emission cloaking.
Each drone will have a PESA  2.08 cuft sensor package, costing P2500, a AESA 1.0 cu ft sensor package costing P40.75, and a Gravcanner .375 cuft sensor package costing P5.6. Scann ratings for the whole system will be PESA:54, AESA:54 and Gravscanner:45.
A roll less than 4 on 3x6d will result in detection of a single 500mm missile. Obviously if 100 missiles detection odds are rolled the chance that some of them will be detected is almost a sure thing. So much so that a roll isn't necessary. Because the net is dispersed ignore the scan rating limit of size+36. Its actual size will be greater than size+36, but since each drone must be detected separately (for targeting purposes at any rate) this limit is unimportant.
Such a sensor net requires a signal processing program in a complexity 7 computer in the control node. The node is usually a forward deployed fighter or battlerider, although it can also be a destroyer or destroyer escort, which have the further benefit of being able to deploy the sensor net themselves.

Airlock Technology

An airlock is a device which allows movement from one kind of environment to another, while maintaining separation between the two. By the time of the New Diasporia airlocks have been in use for hundreds of years. Most spacecraft will have some form of airlock to allow people and objects in the shirtsleeve environment inside the craft to get outside the craft without completely depressurizing it.
The most elementary form of airlock consists of a room with two doors. Each door opens into a different environment. In the case of a spacecraft one will open into the hostile environment outside the ship and the other into the human standard environment inside the ship. Some primitive ships in the Wilds still use this technology.
More modern airlocks use much more sophisticated technology. Modern small craft, especially low tonnage commercial craft use an Airlock Containment Unit. An ACU is a device which is primarily mounted under the deck of a vehicle adjacent to the egress door. The ACU contains the air recovery system and a containment made of smart material. When the unit is in the stowed position it is out of the way and can be walked across like any other section of deck. When deployed the smart material expands to lock into the assembly mounted in the overhead and along the bulkhead. The overhead assembly usually contains a decontamination system. ACUs are available in a number of sizes, with the smallest just big enough for a single person. The ACU has no second door. Its user steps into the delineated square and activates the device which causes the walls to expand and isolate the area. The air is pumped out and the outer door to the vessel opened to allow egress. Most are controlled directly by the vessel's computer, although most also have an emergency power source and manual controls.
A more conventional airlock system for a larger craft consists of a multi-layered airlock system. The typical external airlock door consists of a blast door or safety shutter, which is normally closed during ship operation. Around the external door is typically a docking ring of compressed smart material which can be extruded to create a passage tube between vessels.
Behind the blast door is typically an airlock membrane. Membranes are v-branes which are selectively permeable. That means people and object can pass through them, but atmosphere can't.
A more advanced airlock consists of an opening with a brane which will allow vehicles or individuals to pass through while retaining atmosphere. An airlock planer force field acts as an emergency barrier should the brane fail.
A typical airlock on the most advanced vessels consists of a set of walls which form the airlock each with its portal protected by a brane, with an emergency planer force field and backup blast doors.
While the normal method of airlock control is through the ship's computer most airlocks have control stations located inside the airlock and at each portal. The inner control station typically has a touch panel which will  have controls for both sets of doors and for the planar force field. An interlock will prevent de-energizing both planar force fields at the same time. If a force field goes down the blast doors will close.
The station inside the airlock has controls for both the inner and outer portals. Emergency handles allow the brane to be manually deployed and emergency buttons can activate the force field and shut both sets of blast doors.
The outside control station typically has a communication terminal to allow a visitor to "knock" at the airlock door if the blast door is closed. It is possible to set the brane to keep out anyone not recognized as having authorized access, which is typically established using a wireless transponder or RFID tag.
An atmospheric testing station, which monitors the environment outside the outer door and in the airlock itself is also typically available, usually on the same touch panel as the controls. In normal operation the inside of a modern Tech A airlock is at ship's pressure, even during use. Should the brane fail if the planer force field deploys properly there should be little or no drop in pressure. If the force field should fail the airlock can be cycled in emergency mode from any of the three control stations.
A biofilter field in the brane can selectively keep out dangerous microbes and macropests. Still almost all serious airlock systems include a decontamination system and a dust recovery vacuum system to protect the vessel interior.
Airlocks can also be located between compartments of a ship, but it is much more common for a modern ship to have planer force field projectors installed to allow the ship to be segmented. Men 'O War typically supplement damage control force fields with pressure doors. Each pressure door consists of a pair of heavy sliding hatches with a small compartment between them. brane curtains, which will be activated by falling pressure, even without ships power, provides a final line of defense in preventing catastrophic depressurization. Segmenting barriers always include pressure displays to indicate the pressure on the door's far side.
Closed doors can be remotely overridden using the ship's computer, provided one has the proper access. They can be manually overridden only with the proper tools. If air is rushing past an open door it will automatically re-close unless disabled.

Of Saints and sinners.

In discussing character attributes it was mentioned that one of the goals of Characters in New Diasporia should be the quest to sainthood. It is not a goal every Player Character will attain to, but it is one to which some PC's should, if New Diasporia is to be different from every other space based science fiction RPG.
As was discussed every Character starts out with a level of holiness. The default starting level for any baptized character should be initially high, based upon their lifestyle. In what way do I mean? If the character is a Christian, and by design most characters will be Catholic Christians of one of the rites, East or West, then they must be what is commonly called a practical Catholic.
What is a practical Catholic? A practical Catholic is someone who follows the precepts of the particular rite of the Church to which they belong. So if they are a Roman Catholic they will abstain from meat on Fridays, attend Mass on Sundays and Holy Days of Obligation, and at least make their Easter duty of going to Reconciliation and receiving Communion. If they are members of one of the Eastern rites during Lent they will follow the strict fasting of Pure Monday and Great and Holy Friday. On Wednesday and Fridays in Lent they will keep the simple fast.
And they will adhere to the teachings of the Church on matters of faith and morals.
It is likely that in the course of their adventures that most Player Characters will fall. It is a component of the human condition and a Player will really want to have his character become a Saint to take the hard road. Becoming a martyr, when you've spent a good time building a character is not any more pleasant than the thought of real life martyrdom, though of course no where near as painful. So most characters will now and then take the easy way out.
Does that mean their quest is over? Not at all. As in real life a character can seek out a priest to receive confession.
So how is the game master ne referee ne storyteller to know where the lines are for characters? It's quite simple really. If the PC is following the authentic teaching of the Church then they are good. If they are going against it, even for good reason then they are not.
The difference between disciplines and dogma are discussing in broad terms here. Beyond that, look to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, in this matter it is your rulebook. (Don't be afraid to apply it outside the game too.)

Pentaids, sensor probes and ECM drones.

Pentaids (Penetration Aids) are basically 500mm missile modified by having their warhead replaced with jammers. They have the ability to spoof targeting systems so as to make a single missile appear to be multiple missiles or a single flight of missiles appear as multiple flights. The purpose of Pentaids is to cause anti-missile missiles to expend themselves uselessly against targets which do not exists.
Pentaids are fired from standard missile launchers and expend themselves quickly, that is they are meant to travel at standard missile accelerations (1000Gs) and have a duration no longer than the missiles they are based upon.
They are very effective against the terminal guidance systems of anti-missile missiles, but somewhat less effective against ship based sensor platforms.

Sensor Probes are modified 250 mm missiles. The warheads are removed and smaller engines are installed. Some retain their normal energy cells, others are outfitted with Nuclear Power Units (NPUs) which give them longer endurance. For some purposes their laser communicators can be replaced with standard encrypted EM communicators, An advanced compact robot computer is installed. The sensor packages used are very much weaker than those available to a spacecraft, but the purpose is to get the probe in close without detection. To this purpose they have the ability to operate independently, following very complex program guidelines to reduce the likelihood they would be compromised.
Most probes use sensor packages optimized for a specific purpose. All have some level of PESA capability, but beyond that they may be either primarily passive platforms or primarily active platforms.
Large numbers of probes can be deploy to create a passive sensor net. Active probes can be combined with passive probes and passive shipboard sensors systems to create pseudo-passive sensor nets. These nets operate very much the way the human eye does, or the way sonar buoys do. The active probes send out an EM wave pulse which reflects off of targets. The reflected waves are picked up by passive sensors disclosing information about the targets, just as the human eye sees objects illuminated by the sun or another light source. The enemy can attempt to take out the broadcasting active sources, but cannot detect the passive receivers.

Drones are also based on 500mm missiles, but not only have their warheads been removed, but they have smaller engines and NPU (Nuclear Power Units) rather than Energy Cells. This allows them greater endurance. Drones are used to spoof enemy sensors by jamming, distortion, or projection. A drone can make a Battlerider appear to be a Dreadnought, or making a destroyer seem to be a whole squadron of destroyers.