At the brink of a new era, several civilizations have discovered Intrastellar travel. Tensions rise however, and many dangers are a foot. Lead your people to the stars.
At start, and depending on the traits you choose, your empire is probably fairly small. It'll consist of a few planets, probably in the same system, a small fleet, and have basic technologies. A basic empire has 20 customization points, 1 capital planet, 2 Colonial outposts, 2 military and 1 civilian techs and 50 command points worth of fleet.
Extra civilian technology: 2 points
Extra military technology: 1 point
Extra colony: 1 point/level
Extra fleets: 20 command points per point
Industrious: + 0.25 Industry (Quite a lot. 25% in the beginning, without tech modifiers) [5]
Lucrative: + 0.25 commerce [5]
Prosperous: + 0.25 food [5]
Inquisitive: + 0.25 science [5]
FTL savvy : Starting colonies in multiple systems [2]
Other abilities : custom
At the beginning of the game, you get to choose a variety of starting technologies. Technologies are divided in 2 groups: Civilian and military technologies.
Civilian technologies give a bonus to your empire, and are often automatically deployed. They have widespread consequences, and researching and implementing civilian technologies might take a long time.
Military technologies unlock new weaponry, armor and other stuff to be placed on your military vessels. Generic variants exist, but are usually very weak and nonreliable.
Researching new technologies is done by allocating research points. Research on acute problems and technologies related to already discovered technologies gets a bonus. Research is not an exact science, there's an element of chance involved.
Each spaceship comes in classes, and has a certain amount of slots for you to put equipment in.
Fighters are bought in wings of 10 and cost only 1 point. However, they can mount only one weapon, have practically no armor, and cannot mount FTL. Note that a carrier designed to house fighters/bombers has a +5 cost, cannot be sized lower than Battlecruiser, and is lightly armed(if armed at all) due to most space being taken up by hangers. On the plus side, they can house 3 wings of fighter minimum(larger ships obviously holding more wings), and a good carrier group can be a good force multipier.
Frigates are your smallest fleet ships, as stated above. They aren't very armed(having only 4 slots), and are relatively lightly armored, but they are the fastest non-fighter ships in space, and act as the fleet's scouts and recon platforms. They cost 10 points.
Destroyers are a step up from frigates, being nearly as fast, but more heavily armed and armored. They hold 6 slots worth of systems, and are great scout leaders and commerce raiders. they cost 20 points
Cruisers are your standard combatants, being even bigger than destroyers, while still having very good speed. They hold 8 slots worth of systems, and cost 30 points
Battlecruisers are you smallest Capital Ship, and are a good bit slower than cruisers, but are pretty heavily armored. They hold 10 slots worth of systems, and cost 40 points.
Battleships are your standard Capital ship, and form the backbone of your fleet early game. They are armored like Fort Knox, and mount 12 weapons. They cost 50 points.
Additionally to these ships are ground troops which have to be researched separately. At start, you don't have anything but standard guards, which are not good at anything.
Furthermore, units can be aided by specially constructed task groups. These include, but are not limited to: Scout groups, Repair groups, Salvage groups, Constructor groups, Colonizing groups, and more.
Some vessels can also be modified, in order to specialize in one purpose. The carrier group is a good example. More to follow later.
- Carrier Modification: Minimum size class: 5*. Increases cost by 5. Carrying capacity = 3 + 2*(size class-5). Extra docking space costs 2 slots per squad.
- Station Modification: Minimum size class: 2 Same cost. 25% Extra weapon slots. Minimum : 2. Extra armour. Can't move.
- Drydock Modification: Minimum size class: 3 Can construct smaller ships at 10% discount. 4 Slots per slipway [Requires research]
- World ship modification: Minimum size class: 6. Count as colonies. Half normal slots. Lv1 colony= Class 6 Lv. 2 Class 8 Lvl3 class 12
*1=fighter, 2=Frigate, ...
((Sizeclasses borrowed from Tryrar. Without permission.))
Name:
Description and biography:
Traits:
Description of system and planets:
List of colonies (Just a name suffices, along with it's level)
Military technologies:
Civilian technologies:
List of the fleet:
An uncolonized planet has 3 interesting statistics. It's fertility rating, it's ore richness, and it's biosphere rating. These determine, respectively, food, Production, and science output.
Once you have colonized a planet an outpost is formed. Outposts have very low population, and serve mainly as a base for scientists to explore the planet. They often require both food and money to maintain themselves.
After proper colonization starts, a settlement is formed and population soars. The biosphere rating is likely to take a hit during this phase, so make sure you've surveyed everything you wanted to know.
Once population reaches sufficient levels, (5 million/ abstract pop units) the economy starts to make a contribution to the rest of your empire. Industry booms, and most science is done in laboratories rather than in the field.
Food is used to feed the people. Starvation is a bad thing.
Industry is used to build ships, colonies and infrastructure.
Research is used to research new technologies and explore planets
The economy is an abstract system that determines how well the nongovernement part of the state is doing. It produces money, used in maintenance, but which can also be used as any other resource. Overuse might have interesting results.