Appearance

Biological drones were made to look like humans: they were designed to their creators’ image. They have a limited understanding to prevent people from getting worried about what would happen if they should revolt, which explains their blank stares, picturing their stupidity. Moreover they are generally very athletic. In order to further distinguish them from humans, they also bear a specific marking on their face; this marking can’t be removed, even through surgery.

Behaviour

Each Drone is grown from a batch of genetically engineered cells; these cells are modified with a specific purpose in mind – heightened strength, improved reflexes… However, due to the belief that the Drones could complain and possibly turn against their masters if they were too intelligent, much of the drones’ higher brain functions were disabled, which results – amongst other things – in a high happiness under most conditions; it would be an impossible task to find a drone who is capable of complaining.

History

Biological Drones were first engineered in a lab, the result of years of scientific advancement in biology and artificial intelligence. The Biological Drone encompasses many different species combined together to obtain a creature which is suitable for working in factories and carrying out jobs that other people simply refuse to even consider. However, fear of the so-called “Frankenstein syndrome” caused much debate around the issue; these ethics debates and legal issues were the cause of the final, “dumbed down” version.

Individual names

Biological drones, as engineered creatures, are generally considered as inferior by humans and their creators didn’t feel it was necessary to give them names per se. However each drone is individually identified by a code consisting of:

• a factory identifier corresponding to the factory it was produced in,
• a vat number corresponding to the specific vat of the factory it got out of,
• a batch number identifying the batch extracted from this vat they were part of,
• a serial number which corresponds to the unique identifier of the drone compared to his batch “brothers”.

In-game effects

To be blunt, Biological Drones are incredibly stupid. They are always happy, even when they are being completely abused as a workforce. Their lack of needs (with the exception of food, of course) make them very hard to corrupt; they are very sensitive to propaganda. The downside is that they are utterly useless as researchers, and that anyone’s propaganda will work on them. Due to their non-aggressive nature, using them as soldiers is pointless. Their sole purpose is to serve as factory workers, which they do extremely well. The drones’ population growth is completely controlled through laws; they do not prey on anyone, but an unchecked Biological Drones growth can have a devastating effect on other species’ populations in the long run.

Communications technologies associated with banking technologies allow an empire to access the interstellar bank. This intergalactic facility allows empires to donate money to each other and to get loans, and provides them with two additional accounts onto which they can deposit their money for short- or long-term savings. All of these services depend both on the amount of interstellar bank buildings owned by the empire as well as their type.

Donations

Donations are the most basic type of service provided by the interstellar bank. This service allows empires to donate money to each other. The transfer is instantaneous, but is subjected to a relatively heavy tax; the more interstellar banks the donating empire possesses, the smaller the tax, although it never gets below 20%.

Short-term savings account

This type of account provided by the interstellar bank is the second most basic service available. It allows players to deposit up to 10 billions, and generates relatively low interests. Up to 10% of its contents or, failing that, up to 100 millions can be recovered every 24h, but a heavy tax is applied. In addition, to allow such a fast recovery of money, the local bank buildings store a part of this amount, which means that, like the main cash reserve, some of it can be lost in case of an attack.

Loans

The third level of services provided by the interstellar bank are loans. The interest rate for the loan depends of course on the amount itself, the delay before the empire has to start paying back, the daily amount of money the empire pays back, and the number and type of local bank buildings in the empire.

Loans are only payed back if the player has at least one bank building, and are put on hold if no bank buildings are available anymore. When a bank building is again available, the interest rate is higher than it was before.

Long-term savings account

This fourth level of services allows the player to posses a new account on which the amount is not limited, except by the game’s capabilities (i.e. 9.22 * 10^18 …). These accounts have even lower interest rates, and there is a delay of 7 days for withdrawals. However, no taxes are ever applied when withdrawing from this account. In addition, since the money is stored off-planet, it will never be wasted.

Resources are extracted from mines on a planet’s surface, or using mining stations, which are specific space station modules equipped with mining ships; however, to ease the process, the empire never manages these mining ships directly. They are considered a part of the station.

Different types of minerals can be found on both planets and asteroids. To find minerals on a planet, owning it is enough; special agents can also obtain this information from planets owned by other empires, and probes sent to investigate a planet may be able to discover it as well. Minerals in asteroid belts can be located using probes or a mining station’s scouting abilities. Note that, to spot minerals other than titanium and copper, some technologies may be required. Some resources can be extracted faster than others due to their nature.

All of the game’s planets and asteroid belts feature some of these resources. However, the less common an element is, the smaller the amount of it which can be found and the lower its regeneration rate.

Gases can only be found in nebulae; in order to first discover a source of some gas, a player has to first send ships or probes to that location, or use a mining station’s scouting abilities. None of the gases are visible by default, they require at least one of the nebulae extraction technologies.

All types of gases are present in a nebula, but the less common a gas is, the smaller the amount. The rate of regeneration depends on the nebula’s class – class 8 nebulae will regenerate more than class 1 nebulae. This is balanced in the end as, the higher the class, the less common the nebula type is.

The final type of resource is dark matter. Dark matter can be obtained from the Oort cloud of systems neighbouring a black hole, provided the player has the appropriate technologies. Dark matter can be detected either by probes or by the mining stations’ scouting ability.

The amounts of dark matter available are relatively high around natural black holes, and much smaller around black holes created through the space-time drilling technology. In both cases, the regeneration rate is low.

Do you think there are enough resources? Too many of them? What do you think of the few details included about extracting resources?

Appearance

It is very hard to describe an Arc’kha’to as most of its appearance is determined by the host it currently uses. However, a host infested with an Arc’kha’to can be identified by the various protuberances and nodes that have pierced the host’s body.

Behaviour

The Arc’kha’to lay eggs in the corpses of other living beings, and the larvae which hatch then attach themselves to living hosts, hijacking their nervous system and taking complete control over their bodies. This very behaviour lead to the term “controllers”, which is commonly used by other species when referring to the Arc’kha’to.

Controllers are not picky about who they use as hosts and will be quite content to use any possible host, with a preference for relatively bulky hosts which provide them with higher chances of killing others, and therefore of laying the eggs of the next generation of controllers.

History

The oldest known ancestors of the Arc’kha’to were brainless parasites which survived merely by attaching themselves to their hosts. Over ages they started linking to the central nervous system of their hosts to better control their actions and thus obtain hosts which behaviour suited their needs. However the range of species controllers manage to parasite is vast; their high adaptability to newly discovered potential hosts make them even more deadly, as it will not take them too long to start controlling members of a species they didn’t know of.

While it is sufficient for rudimentary communication and very efficient when it comes to motor control, the neural link between an Arc’kha’to and its host is not deep enough to allow for advanced reasoning. In addition, their predatory habits tend to have them keep to themselves far from other members of their own species, as they constantly compete for preys. As such no real Arc’kha’to culture really emerged and no known internal history of the species has been passed along except through records in other species’ logs, such as spectacular breeding cycles resulting in heavy casualties. The Arc’kha’to themselves have long forgotten the name and location of their home world.

Individual names

Just like the name of their own species, Arc’kha’to individual names consist in short, guttural sequences of syllables. This is a consequence of their relatively weak connection to the host’s nervous system.

In-game effects

Due to their predatory and competitive habits, the Arc’kha’to tend to use up quite a bit of space – they don’t tolerate living too close to each other. Their natural growth rate is low and is very dependent on the availability of preys to eat and lay eggs in. Obviously, members of other species are not too fond of them, both because of their distasteful appearance and because of their tendency to kill you on the spot without warning.

Since they are not too bright because of the weak neural link to their host’s nervous system, they make poor researchers. This relative stupidity has an advantage, tho, as it makes them almost impossible to corrupt; propaganda is something way too clever to affect them.

Arc’kha’to are very efficient factory workers and absolutely brutal soldiers. Being quite undisciplined, they do not tolerate being overworked; furthermore, they don’t tolerate slavery at all – you don’t enslave Controllers, Controllers enslave you. High security doesn’t please them, as they feel threatened when feeding and/or breeding.

There are two main types of hulls. Standard, mechanical hulls are the most basic option, while it is possible later in the game to create biological ships if the proper technologies have been researched. Biological ships, while leaving slightly less internal space available, are more robust and possess natural regenerative properties; they also include a basic power generation unit.

In addition, it is possible to categorise ship hulls according to their size. Indeed ship hulls come in all sizes and shapes. The size of a ship hull determines how the ship will be used.

Ships using tiny hulls are appropriate as scouts, or later in the game, when miniaturisation has been perfected, as small fighters. Tiny hulls imply a high maneuverability but a low firepower and protection.

Small hulls make very good fighters. While still being highly maneuverable, they can support many more components than tiny hulls and are usually somewhat more robust. The default fighter design is based on a small hull.

Medium hulls are useful to make ground troops carriers, or high-power fighters. They are much less maneuverable by default than their smaller counterparts, but are clearly more robust.

Big hulls are appropriate for high-powered local defenses, or basic hyperspace-capable carrier crafts. They are about as maneuverable as a fridge, tho. However, they can take a beating before blowing up.

Huge hulls make excellent capital ships. Their size allows them to be outfitted with lots of weapons as well as hangar bays for smaller ships. While having a very low maneuverability, they are very robust.

Enormous hulls are, well, enormous. Whatever one might want to put inside a ship, it’s likely that this type of hull can handle it. However, their maneuverability is low, and while this is amply compensated by their great robustness, they will require a crew to fly.

Gigantic hulls are almost as big as possible. They are capable of carrying loads of equipment and are highly robust. They require a crew and are not quite maneuverable.

Colossal hulls are the biggest hulls available. Even gigantic hulls are small compared to these mastodons. Their maneuverability is as low as it gets, and they require a crew. But on the other hand, these can really be made into flying fortresses that can take as much of a pounding as an entire fleet of smaller ships.

The list of hulls players can use has been divided between mechanical and biological hulls. Both lists are ordered by size.

The first one deals with mechanical hulls.

The second list regroups biological hulls. None of these ships have direct equivalents in Beta 5, and none are available by default.

The first set of hangar bays is designed for mechanical ships. The various categories of hangar bays have different sizes, allowing to carry more or less smaller ships.

The second set is designed for biological ships. Their biological nature makes them all extensible, allowing them to store more ships than their mechanical counterparts.

Biological generators are generators based on biological reactions. They are of course only compatible with biological hulls.

Zero-point generators rely on advanced knowledge of the universe’s underlying structure. They are based on advanced concepts and considered to be compatible with both mechanical and biological ships.

In this first post we introduce the mechanical generators – which are of course specific to mechanical ships. A second, later post will present the other generator types.

Passive generators are generators that collect energy from external sources and convert it.

Nuclear generators are generators based on nuclear reactions. They are the most basis power source and the first level of nuclear generators is the one available to all players at the beginning of the game.

Anti-matter generators are based on matter / anti-matter reactions.

Missile countermeasures come in three different types.

• Anti-missile weapon systems (AMWS) are weapons that try to shoot incoming missiles to destroy them; this type of countermeasure uses a lot of space on board.
• Electronic missile countermeasures (EMC) try to fool an incoming missile’s guidance system to prevent it from reaching its target. They are much smaller than anti-missile weapon systems, however they are very demanding on the ship’s generators.
• Physical missile countermeasures (PMC – for lack of a better name) use advanced knowledge of the universe’s structure to get rid of incoming missiles. While these systems use quite a lot of space and energy, they are more efficient than EMCs or AMWSs.

Do you have other ideas of possible missile counter measures?

Do you have ideas of other categories of missile counter measures?

While this very powerful technology has quite a few inconvenients (it costs a lot and presents a variety of risks), it gives an alliance the ability to attack an alliance located on another layer without having to go through potentially dozens of supergates, which can be quite a lengthy process and could alert the target before it’s too late if the fleets are detected on their way.

To use the space-time drilling ability, the first requirement is the construction of ships equipped with space-time-drills. These very cumbersome, power-hungry and expensive pieces of equipment can only be transported by the largest ships. The space-time drills carried by the ships are necessary, but not sufficient to the use of the ability. A drilling control center has to be constructed in the system that will be used as the point of origin; this building can only be constructed on a planet owned by an alliance.

Once driller ships have been brought to the origin system and the drilling center has been built, the alliance must decide which layer the drill is to reach, as well as the approximative location of the fleets when they arrive. The distance between the layers determines the amount of energy drilling will require: the higher the energy, the more ships are needed. Planets in the system being drilled contribute to the amount of energy produced.

After the decision has been taken, the drilling operation is initiated. It lasts quite some time, depending on the amount of energy required. During the drilling process, space-time in the origin system is being heavily modified; any interruption of the process, for example if enough driller ships are destroyed, or the planet on which the control centre is gets captured, the whole system will be destroyed immediately and turn into a black hole.

Once the drilling is complete, all fleets in the system at the time (including enemy ships) are sent to the approximative location selected by the alliance’s commanders. However, some ships will be lost, some fleets will end up in the wrong layer … In any case, the origin system is completely destroyed and turns into a black hole.

What do you think of the possibility to go from one layer to another without using supergates?

Do you think the cost (in time, resources, potential losses), the complexity of the process and the required technological level are high enough to avoid having black hole flourishing all around the universe? What would have been the limits you would have defined?