As promised, I wanted to discuss orbital and ground combat in the greater context of empire expansion. Since FATES: Carpe Moerae is a 4X space strategy game, expansion will be one of the key components of this game.
There will be four primary means of acquiring planets; colonization using colony ships, invasion using transport ships and ground forces, revolt as a result of high planetary discord, and diplomatic exchange deals.
Presently, only the colonization means exists in the live game client at the moment, so I will address this first. Colonizing new planets requires a ship that possesses a colonization module to be installed on it, as well as a set number of resources and population per module. Any ship can be equipped with colonization modules, including combat vessels, however, the ship is consumed upon founding a new colony, which needs to be taken into account when designing vessels. But a combat colony ship, capable of defeating light resistance is very much possible in FATES: Carpe Moerae. Another consequence of the modularity of the colonization process is that you can create heavy colony ships that deposit larger numbers of citizens and resources to assist in getting the new colony up and running more quickly. Depending on how large of a ship hull that you are willing to use, it may be possible to completely populate a new planet especially smaller ones.
The second means of acquiring new planets is through invasion of existing planets using ground forces. Presently, the only types of ground units are the militia and the marines. The militia are planetary population units who volunteer to defend their home against extra-planetary invaders. The militia units are automatically recruited from defending planetary population in the event of a ground invasion on their planet. The marines are population units specially trained and equipped at a military training academy and able to be placed on board transport star ships. These transport ships can be used to transport marines to other planets in order to invade and forcibly take over that planet. Each planet in the galaxy is possessed of three orbitals, which must be under control of the attacking fleet before a ground invasion can be initiated or maintained. The ground combat will consist of several waves that take place over the span of a few hours with each wave requiring positive control of all three orbitals to initiate each successive wave of ground invasion. Upon the successful completion of all waves of ground invasion, control of the planet will be transferred to the attacking player.
This leads to the third means of acquiring planets, high planetary discord. Discord is a measure of the planetary population's unhappiness with or fear of the current ruling government. The discord calculation will be one of the more complex in the game, with a very large number of inputs including fleets present in orbit, number of marines garrisoned on the surface, food rations, employment, subversion agents' presence, counter-intelligence agents' presence, nearby empire sways, cultural influences, economic influences, and diplomatic policies, among other factors. The discord is measured as a percent from zero to one hundred and a planet with 80%-plus discord is considered to be "in revolt", however the planet does not actually change allegiance until 90%. However, the player to whom the planet switches allegiance to is not precisely controllable. The empire that a planet in revolt switches allegiance to is controlled by an equally dizzying array of factors similar to the discord calculation with a bit of randomization thrown into the mix. As such, causing planets to revolt will be a fairly straightforward process, however, getting them to revolt to a specific player will be much more difficult to control.
The final means of acquiring planets is through diplomatic exchanges. Since planets are part of an empire's assets, they will be available to be exchanged as part of diplomatic negotiations. The planets control will be exchanged once the deal is agreed upon by both parties.
Hopefully, this gives you a better idea of the presently planned means of expansion in FATES: Carpe Moerae.
á na márië,
gumshoe, out.
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