The following characters listed here are collectively in the game's original Factions.
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Main Factions
In General (The Domain of Man and its remnants)
All factions
Flag of the Domain
- Ban on A.I.: The Domain forbade the use of Artificial Intelligences as weapons. It didn't stop them from using Attack Drones in their frontier systems, and the TriTach AI ship designs evidently trace design evolution to before the Collapse.
- Civil War: Most of the factions are at war with each other due to their conflicting goals culminated after the Collapse and loss of contact with the Domain.
- Color-Coded for Your Convenience: Each faction bears their flag color in the form of a circle surrounding their fleets:
- Hegemony: Orange
- Tri-Tachyon: Dark Sky Blue
- Persean League: Yellow
- Luddic Church: Green
- Luddic Path: Light Green
- Sindrian Diktat: Fuchsia
- Independents: Light Grey
- Pirates: Red
- Explorarium Derelict drones: Dark Grey
- The Remnants and Omega: Dark Sky Blue
- Earth That Was: Old Earth was devastated under unclear-to-the-player circumstances, long before the Collapse. The Luddics take this as a point of faith concerning the Domain's immorality, and proof that Gilead must be protected at all costs.
- The Empire: Lore throughout Starsector does not paint the Domain in a pretty picture. In the past, they used the Gates to become the sole polity in the galaxy, either drawing in other polities with the capabilities of the Gates or conquering them through fear and force as per the description of the Invictus-class dreadnought. Their following age of expansion into further reaches of the galaxy was rife with rebellions on the fringes, and the Luddic Church believed the Domain at the time would never stop trying to expand.
- How the Mighty Have Fallen: Their ancestors were the vanguard of the largest expansion in human history, reaching into other spiral arms of the galaxy after the Domain, it is inferred, virtually dominated the entire Orion Arm and had easily reached Type I on the Kardashev scale and were on the way to reach Type II with the Hypershunts. All of this was lost due to the Collapse, when the Domain Portal Network shut down under mysterious circumstances.
- Portal Network: The Gate System extended throughout the Domain's territory, and its shutdown catalyzed the Collapse (especially in the Persean Sector, which is on the other side of the Persean-Orion Abyss from the proper "core worlds" of the Domain).
- Standard Human Spaceship: Before the Hegemony took hold of the standard ship design, the Domain has the classical ship design in its glory days. Their most advanced ships, like the Paragon battleship and the Aurora cruiser, fall into Shiny-Looking Spaceships with Energy Weapons.
- Standard Sci-Fi Fleet: Regardless of actual designation, all ships fall into one of five designated ship classes: Fighter, Frigate, Destroyer, Cruiser or Capital Ship.
- Uncertain Doom: It's unknown if the Domain died with the Gate network that gave it its unity. The denizens of the Sector have no way of knowing for sure because they are an entire spiral arm away.
Hegemony
The Hegemony
- Ban on A.I.: The Hegemony kept the same AI laws as the Domain, and made them even stricter after the AI Wars and due to Luddic influence, forbidding the use of the more advanced AI cores (Alpha, Beta and Gamma Cores) in colonies. If they suspect someone is using AI cores, they'll send an inspection to the colony to retrieve and destroy them.
- Break Out the Museum Piece:
- Not as much as the Luddic Church, but the Hegemony makes use of some designs that are antiquated, but have been updated to modern standards. As in, low tech designs that were still in active service by the time of the Collapse instead of being completely obsolete.
- A good example is their signature battleship, the Onslaught, known affectionately by the Domain and Hegemony navies as "The Old Man". The Onslaught predates many modern technologies like shields, spaceborne fighters and modular energy weapons, but their immense firepower and resilience is virtually unmatched even today, and it has proven a versatile enough platform to keep up with these advances, successfully incorporating both a decent shield generator (at least better than that found on the Conquest) and a battery of point defenses with which to defend itself from fighters.
- The Battlestar: The Hegemony are the primary users of the Legion battlecarrier. This capital-sized carrier can fight both at long range with its fighters and at a shorter range with its guns and missiles. Originally they possessed enhanced variants of the Legion built to the spec of the Fourteenth Battlegroup, but these were all lost in time and can only be found as drifting derelicts.
- Classified Information: The Hegemony's COMSEC division deals with restricting information that may threaten their national security. At least 2 levels of security classification clearances are known:
- ALABASTER: Equivalent to Top Secret in US classifications. It's applied to information and technology related to Tri-Tachyon's AI ships.
- SUPER ALABASTER: The highest level. Equivalent to Cosmic Top Secret. It's applied to information and technology related to the highly advanced Omega. It was created after Hegemony forces encountered a Facet for the first time.
- Drugs Are Bad: The Hegemony outlaws recreational drugs in addition to AI, harvested organs, and heavy weapons. The Hegemony consider running a free port grounds for sending an "expedition" to stop drug and other controlled commodities trade.
- The Empire: The largest and most powerful faction in the Sector, with ambitions to eventually restore the Domain of old.
- Everyone Has Standards: The Hegemony maintains a strict policy with artificial intelligence and how they handle with AI cores distributed across the sector after the technology nearly wiped the Core Worlds off the map.
- Hegemonic Empire: Subverted. Despite their claim of hegemony in their name and their attitude that the entire Persean Sector is subject to Hegemony law, most of the Sector does not fall under Hegemony rule and has no interest in submitting. Furthermore, the Hegemony is ready to use extreme force to enforce its rule over other powers and attempt to impose its laws in sovereign polities.
- The Inspector Is Coming: The Hegemony will send inspection fleets if you use AI Cores on your own planets or operate a freeport. They can be bribed to keep them away, but if you don't and refuse to let them take the cores, they will turn hostile against your faction.
- Kinetic Weapons Are Just Better: Due to their ships being mainly of the Low Tech type, they use ballistic weapons and are very skilled with them. The Hegemony also has better access to more advanced ballistic weapons like Railguns, Gauss Cannons and Needlers.
- Mighty Glacier: Due to the Hegemony's reliance on Low Tech ships, a Hegemony battleline is generally slow, heavily armed, and very heavily armored.
- Planet Destroyer: The Hegemony is the only nation in the Persean Sector that still legally and openly possesses Planetkiller weapons (of course, they're the ones who say what's legal). One of these was possibly used to destroy the moon Opis, the capital of the original Askonian polity. Another devastated the planet of Hanan Pacha during the Second AI War. In both cases, though, the Hegemony asserts that it was Tri-Tachyon who is responsible and who must have hidden stocks of PKs somewhere.
- Sleeper Starship: The XIVth Battlegroup was mid-transit when the Collapse happened, forcing them to put most of the crew into cryosleep and make the rest of the way at normal speed. It took them 50 years drifting in space to finally reach the Sector.
- Standard Human Spaceship: Hegemony fleets mainly focus around Low Tech ships that are sturdy and heavily armed with kinetic weapons, with the occasional XIV Battlegroup variant ships mixed in. Their smaller ships are more varied and usually militarized civilian ships.
- Vestigial Empire: They are a remnant of the Domain Navy's Fourteenth Battlegroup, which arrived in the Sector after the Collapse. As part of the Domain's armed forces, they declared themselves the legitimate government of the Persean Sector and the lawful continuation (or restoration) of Domain rule. And at least as far as anyone in the Sector knows, they are in fact the only remnant of Domain governance, but even as the largest and most powerful state in the Persean Sector, the Hegemony's influence in the region (to say nothing of their lack of control beyond it) is a pale shadow of the authority the pre-Collapse Domain held. They also lost much of their technology and territory in the First AI War against Tri-Tachyon's rogue AI fleets.
High Hegemon Baikal Daud
The current leader of the Hegemony, Baikal Daud was born in the slums of Chicomoztoc and rose through military service, including his decisive role in the Defense of Chicomoztoc against Tri-Tachyon in Cycle 194.- Big Little Man: It's noted that Baikal is shorter than the holovid makes him look.
- Rags to Royalty: While his position isn't hereditary, Baikal rose from the lowest of the low on Chicomoztoc to the leader of the entire Hegemony. Notably, his humble origins have made him some enemies in the Hegemony, as those of noble birth often see him as still little more than a jumped-up slum rat.
- Reasonable Authority Figure: For all of the Hegemony's reputation, Baikal is a quite level-headed and pragmatic man who acknowledges that many of the Hegemony's behaviors that players often find most annoying (particularly AI inspections and expeditions to shut down freeports) aren't really out of a personal commitment to those policies, but a need to continue to enforce Domain-era law to maintain the Hegemony's legitimacy as the continuation of the Domain of Man.
Tri-Tachyon
The Tri-Tachyon Corporation
- Brain/Computer Interface: The Neural Interface allows a ship commander to transfer his mind to another ship and control both as if they were his own body. It was developed by Tri-Tachyon under the codename of "Project Heket".
- Didn't See That Coming: They didn't expect that Omega's existence would suddenly make their drone fleets go rogue.
- Eldritch Starship: Project Ziggurat. A supposedly-impossible phase capital ship partially designed with AI. It's so strange and freaky that some of the AI cores that worked on it intentionally self-destructed themselves.
- Glass Cannon: Most High Tech ships have high mobility, powerful shields and a varied arsenal, but their armor is very lacking and they primarily rely on energy weapons which have shorter range. If they suffer an overload, they'll be easy prey. Best exemplified by Phase ships, which have no shields but are able to phase to another layer of reality where they're immune to damage.
- The Illuminati: Very much so. The Persean Branch can trace its origins to a Pre-Collapse corporation. They use a triangular emblem with a central eye. Not to mention all the secret projects they have going on. Even the in-game interface is made by them.
- Monster Progenitor: They created the Remnants.
- One Nation Under Copyright: Tri-Tachyon is a corporation large enough to be considered its own country, and even after the First and Second AI Wars did massive damage to them, they're still a major power in the sector.
- Planet Destroyer: Tri-Tachyon is in possession of at least one Planetkiller device, which is small enough to be carried by a Doom. They tried to destroy Chicomoztoc with it near the end of the Second AI War, but their assault failed and were forced to flee. It's heavily implied they did indeed destroy Opis and Hanan Pacha to sow chaos across the Sector, and do have more PKs stashed away somewhere.
- Shiny-Looking Spaceships: Tri-Tachyon ships are late Domain designs that don a sky-blue outfit with least amount of gribbles in comparison to most ships. They are also the most advanced faction in the game, making use of long-ranged energy weapons and rare, forbidden technology like temporal manipulation (Temporal Shells) and teleportation (Phase Skimmers).
Persean League
The Persean League
- The Alliance: A coalition of several worlds, formed to defend themselves against the Hegemony's expansionism.
- Good Republic, Evil Empire: Played with. The League is mostly a group of polities, some of them very authoritarian, that gathered together to fight back against the Hegemony's jingoism out of fear of what happened to Mairaath and the Mayasurans. The League usually forbids interference with the way each of their constituent polities run themselves, they've made some exceptions, like with Mazalot's Luddic rebellion. The Hegemony mostly considers them a small group of petty dictatorships run by the Navarchs of Kazeron, one of their founding members (and the only other modern holder of a Pristine Nanoforge in the current Sector, which gives them unfathomable military power).
- Leans towards the latter as of 0.97, where founding more than one colony (or just a successful one) will cause Persean League patrols to show up in your systems and harass your fleets with the goal of strong-arming you into joining the League, giving them a substantial slice of your colony profits. If you continue to resist their bullying, they will eventually launch dozens of giant endgame fleets to blockade your planets, inflicting huge accessibility penalties until you either fight them off or bend the knee. Notably, the supposedly-tyrannical Hegemony is far more benign to your colonies (unless they use AI cores).
- Homing Laser: The League are the exclusive users of DEM (Directed Energy Munition) Missiles, unusual missile-drones that fire an energy beam when they close in on their target. They are the only missile-type weapons they use.
- Macross Missile Massacre: The midline Pegasus-class Battleship a whopping total of four large missiles, allowing this strategy. However, this comes at the cost of being relatively slow.
- Not-So-Omniscient Council of Bickering: The League members spend an inordinate amount of time bickering with each other, but when they come together, they can fight against any of the other factions.
- Odd Friendship: With the Sindrian Diktat, they are currently the only factions that are openly known allies of one another despite having no offical reason for them to be so far. The closest guess one can make is that it is an alliance of convenience against the Hegemony.
- Proud Merchant Race: Their major advantage against the Hegemony is their larger control over the market than them.
- Standard Human Spaceship: League fleets primarily consist of Midline ships, highly customizable vessels that stand between Low Tech and High Tech, being able to use both kinetic and energy weapons. Midline ships are also highly specialized in working together with each other, to split enemy fleets and obliterate their weaker ships with overwhelming force. Carrier-wise, they focus mainly on using interceptors to eliminate enemy bombers that can threaten their bigger ships.
- We ARE Struggling Together: The member states of the Persean League barely agree on anything and are known to fight amongst themselves, but they are still the closest thing to a united front that exists against the Hegemony, Tri-Tachyon, Pirates, and Pathers. Kazeron would probably have enough sway to guide the League more effectively (or alternatively, turn the League into Kazeron's full-blown Hegemonic Empire), but itself harbours factions amongst its leading families with very different ideas for the direction of the League.
Luddic Church, Knights of Ludd, & Luddic Path
The Luddic Church of Galactic Redemption
- Break Out the Museum Piece: Due to their Technophobia, Luddic fleets use antiquated weapons and vessels even by Low Tech standards. Examples are the Invictus dreadnought and the Retribution battlecruiser. The Invictus is a massive, shieldless and heavily armed behemoth that needs thousands of crew, is as slow as a brick, is very vulnerable to fighters and uses an antiquated-by-that-time LIDAR array to enhance its weapons range. The Retribution uses an Orion Drive to give itself a quick speed boost.
- A quite literal example is their mainline frigate, the Vanguard. An archaic ship that dates to the time of the Onslaught, revived through complete blueprints found in a museum exhibit.
- Conspicuous Consumption: Defied. Volturnian Lobsters and luxury goods are illegal on Luddic markets, as such displays of wealth distract from the simple, agrarian lifestyle the Luddic Church teaches.
- Crystal Dragon Jesus: Ludd is worshiped as one of God's prophets.
- Ludd Was Right: They're firm believers of it. Not in the original Ned Ludd, but a prophet called Ludd who lived just before the Collapse.
- The Mole: Revealed to have extensive influence/connections within the Hegemony, possibly to the point of the Hegemony using the Path as puppets to launch terrorist attacks against its enemies.
- Odd Friendship: Their typical ally in the AI Wars? The Hegemony, who is nominally a full successor state to the Domain of Man (e.g., the state that persecuted the prophet Ludd and the state that pushed for man's technological decadence). This appears to fall somewhere between Realpolitik - the Hegemony being fully capable of just taking Gilead by force if need be, and the Hegemony needing an undamaged Gilead to feed Chicomoztoc's comparatively massive population - and the fact that, since the Hegemony is so much smaller than the true Domain and the Church is actually older than it (thus there being veins of Luddism on many Heg worlds), the Church seems to believe it can influence the Hegemony and prefers it over the potential dominance of Kazeron or Tri-Tachyon's continued use of flagrant technology. It was probably the AI Wars, and Tri-Tachyon's use of (in Luddic eyes) vile, abominable artificial intelligence, that sealed the deal.
- Realpolitik: Based on the snippet on their market, they tend to safeguard tech-savvy merchants from firebrand preachers for the sake of civility within the market districts of their polities.
- Standard Human Spaceship: Luddic Church fleets feature old tech, designs dated even by normal Low Tech standards. Their Invictus-class dreadnought has a whopping 10000 in armor and has an array of large ballistics. However, it lacks shields and its armor is ablative, meaning it's effective armor strength is only a tenth of that. Their Retribution-class battlecruiser is also notably dated, as its Orion Device movement system is just a nuclear explosive and a push plate that propels it forward, but is significantly better than the High Tech Plasma Jets system.
- Technophobia:
- Ludd's teachings say that the Gates were the worst sin the human race ever committed, for it allowed the mass exploitation and devastation of God's work. They also say that it was God himself who sealed the gates and caused the Collapse, as punishment for the Domain's sins, with Ludd having been the messenger of such (the faithful holding that the actual Gate-closing part of the Collapse happened right after Ludd crossed a Gate to be taken back to the Orion Arm for sentencing and imprisonment for being a dissident).
- This is Played With in practice. Tolerance of technology varies between sects. Volturn's sect states that they don't hate all technology. Given that the Luddics are also heavily persecuted there, and the needs of arms for their insurgency, this also might be born out of pragmatism.
- Zerg Rush: Doctrine wise, they are far laxer in their training compared to the other factions, and their ship production quality is sacrificed in favor of fielding more ships for their faithful. They also tend to use Converted Hangars to maximize the number of wings they deploy.
The Knights of Ludd
The military branch of the Luddic Church of Galactic Redemption, modeled on monastic warrior societies from previous millennia. In areas of Church domination they are authorized to enforce Technological Correctness as well as ensuring, through force, that virtue is promoted and vice chastised. In areas outside Church domination, when able, they covertly impose the same. Their headquarters is a military base on Hesperus.- Church Militant: Being the military arm of the Luddic Church, they enforce Ludd's teachings throughout the Church's territories. They have also helped the Hegemony in occasions, like the AI Wars.
- Church Police: Their main role is to enforce the teachings of Ludd in the Church's territory.
- Drugs Are Bad: The Church outlaws recreational drugs in addition to AI, harvested organs, luxury goods, and Volturnian Lobsters. Like the Hegemony, they consider running a free port grounds for sending the Knights on "expeditions" to stop drug and other controlled commodities trade.
The Luddic Path
- Explosive Overclocking: All Pather vessels have the Safety Overrides hullmod, save for the Prometheus Mk. II, which cannot have safety overrides due to being a capital ship instead uses a Burn Drive subsystem, and their version of the Venture, which omits the usual Safety Overrides in favour of an Orion Device instead for a more significant speed boost. While it gives a massive boon to their top speed and overall combat performance, their staying power and range consequently take a hit, along with disabling the ability to active vent. Their usual strategy involves wiping out the enemy as swiftly as possible and then getting out of dodge.
- Evil Luddite: They have done reprehensible stuff in the name of Ludd, the Colony Drop on Mairaath being the best-known example. In fact, Mairaath had three Astropoli; one was colony dropped, another smashed to pieces though still orbits the planet, and the third was kidnapped, being shunted out to a distant orbit by a Prometheus-class ramming it, now serving as a haven for pirates and other drifters.
- Fragile Speedster: Pather-modified ships are faster than their normal counterparts, designed for fast hit-and-run tactics.
- Improvised Weapon: Not unlike the pirates, the Pathers don't exactly have a library of proper military warship designs to draw from, so they weaponize civilian vessels, with their crowning achievement, chosen no doubt for the irony of it is the Prometheus Mk II. The Prometheus supertanker carries an unmatched load of antimatter fuel, or "Infernium" as the Pathers call it, for it enables technologies man was not meant to use, such as FTL travel. The Prometheus Mk. II carves out the containment vessels and strips the ship of its ability to carry more fuel than it needs for itself to carry out its new, holy mission, and in its place are thick armor plate, heavy missile batteries, two hangars, and in accordance with their preference for extreme close-range tactics, a Burn Drive subsystem.
- Knight Templar: Their obsession to destroy anything remotely advanced has turned every faction except the Luddic Church against them. And even the Church thinks they're overdoing it.
- Medieval Stasis: Their ultimate objective. If they had their way, the Pathers would return humanity to planetbound, agrarian lifestyles.
- No OSHA Compliance: Pather engineers are either not the most skilled in the galaxy or they really do not care about losing their own and their crew mates lives in combat. This is evidenced by most of their ships having the built-in Ill-Advised Modifications hullmod, which according to its description has their ship systems appear to work correctly under routine conditions, but have a significant chance of critical malfunction when stressed. It translates in game as having no benefits and only causes all weapons of the ship to have a chance of randomly failing, sometimes permanently, making it a d-mod.
- No True Scotsman: The Pathers dislike the mainline Luddic Church for being too compromised on Luddic lifestyles.
- Planet Destroyer: The Scythe of Orion quest line will lead to the player acquiring one for the Pathers. Turn it over to a Luddic Path commander (does not need to be the original questgiver) to complete the mission and they will no longer target your colonies and it removes their threat from the Hostile Activity tracker. The player can instead turn it over to Hegemony, Tri-Tachyon or Sindrian Diktat military officials, Rayan Arroyo of the Persean League or Gideon Oak of the Luddic Church… or it can simply be thrown into a black hole. This gives monetary or story point rewards depending on the specific option; however, the LP reward is generally more useful to the player.
- Renegade Splinter Faction: Basically what they are considered when compared to the Church.
- Suicide Attack: One of their signature tactics is to use fuel tankers modified with weapons and safety override into a headlong assault into a fleet that will unleash a massive explosion that destroy nearby ships once it is destroyed.
- Unwitting Pawn: The attack on Mairaath sure reads like this, with the Pathers being used to deal a massive blow to the Mayasuran economy just prior to a Hegemony taskforce sweeping in to devastate what remained of the Mayasuran naval forces. The Hegemony severely depletes the Path's resources, gives the sector all the more reason to hate the dangerous terrorists, and eliminates the potential rival state of Mayasura in one fell swoop.
- Weapon-Based Characterization: The Luddic Path is probably the most prolific user of Hammer Torpedoes and its upsized launchers. The Hammer Torpedo is cheap, fast, relatively low-tech, and easily mounted to various ships. The Hammer Barrage has all these characteristics and relatively low endurance for a large-size missile weapon, very much befitting the Luddic Path's preference for short, high-intensity engagements over drawn-out brawls. This preference for Hammer Torpedoes has led to the In-Universe Nickname of the Hammer Torpedo - "Ludd's Hammer".
Sindrian Diktat
The Sindrian Diktat
- Fascist, but Inefficient: From focusing on autarky during a migration crisis to mounting giant lasers on low flux efficiency ships, the Diktat is not as efficient as the propaganda says.
- Hellhole Prison: Cruor has mobile work camps where dissidents are sent to.
- Hive City: Sindria's massive population (for the sector) number in the tens of millions in a handful of hive cities underneath the surface.
- Individuality Is Illegal: All Diktat fleets do not contain carriers. Their Fleet Doctrine exclusively uses warships due to the belief that "fighter jocks" detract from working together for the Supreme Exector's Great Plan.
- Industrial Ghetto: Sindria is an industrial powerhouse for fuel refining and ship construction, having the highest and third highest respectively. It also has a large massive migrant population from the Askonia crisis living in squalor.
- Odd Friendship: With the Persean League, they are currently the only factions that are openly known allies of one another (aside from the Luddic Church and Luddic Path as well as Tri-Tachyon and the Remnants) despite having no offical reason for them to be so far (the Pathers are a Renegade Splinter Faction of the Church so they at least have some common connection and Tri-Tachyon created the Remnants to there is that). The closest guess one can make is that it is an alliance of convenience against the Hegemony.
- Pint-Sized Powerhouse: The Diktat only controls a single system, but has significant military and economic power due to the lavishly-equipped Lion's Guard, their huge share of the antimatter fuel market, and their monopoly on Volturnian Lobsters, one of the most desirable luxury foods in the Persean Sector.
- Propaganda Machine: The Diktat uses propaganda on a large scale, from portraying their leader as an unassailable genius to proclaiming their elite forces as the pinnacle of military.
- Putting on the Reich: From glorification of violence and their supreme leader to large flowing white banners that are present on every planet, the allusions to a certain Reich are fairly apparent.
- Secret Police: The Diktat Intelligence manages rumored mobile workforce camps and spies on their own people, attempting to root out Antis and ARC-ists rebels.
- War Refugees: A large part of their population is made up of the survivors after the system's capital Opis was Planet killed in the war.
The Lion’s Guard
The feared personal guard of Phillip Andrada himself, with their headquarters based on Sindria. Boasting superb training and access to the best equipment credits can buy, the fanatical loyalty of the Guard is maintained through a system of perks and incentives that both elevate and isolate the Guard from the Diktat's regular military. However, doctrinal inefficiency sees their potential hampered, as their fleets come with specially modified Midline ships with Sindrian livery and built-in Solar Shielding due to Sindria being situated near the Askonian System’s sun, with some "Special Modifications" that affect their performance in combat. To get the best out of these special weapons, these modifications bias the ships towards energy weapons, converting turret types and frequently installing Energy Bolt Coherers. Adding to it combat deficiencies, the Lion's Guard is only filled with officers who display exemplary loyalty to the Diktat rather than any particular skill.- Ace Custom: Played With. LG ships are heavily modified midline ships with the Diktat’s colours painted on, even the Executor-class Battleship is a just a modified Pegasus-class Missile Battleship. Their modifications however tend to actually make their performance in combat worse than the regular versions.
- Awesome, but Impractical: The Executor-class battleships used by the Lion's Guard are armed with Gigacannons and Kinetic Blasters, Diktat-developed weapons based on Omega technology. Unfortunately, their short range, slow fire rate and the Executor's flux-deficient build (worsened by their Special Modifications stifling the Flux dissipation even further) and slowness make it the worst ship to install them in. Not helping matters is their use of 5 Heavy Needlers in the front Medium Ballistic and Hybrid slots. The Diktat’s regular army’s standard Executor loadout is a lot more practical in its weapon allocation by comparison.
- Cool, but Inefficient:
- Played With, Lion’s Guard ships are equipped with a built-in Solar Shielding logistics hullmod due to Sindria being very close to the sun of the Askonia system. The problem is that unlike other built-in hullmods it still deducts ordinance points like it’s an add-on, meaning LG ships have less ordinance points to spend compared to their regular versions with no way of removing the hullmod.
- The Special Modifications hullmod that also is built-in to LG ships plays this straight though. According to the hullmod’s description, the Supreme Executor commented on the exposed conduits running along the passageways of early prototype LG ships and the danger these must pose to the brave and loyal crew under combat conditions. To address these concerns, his then new chief designer, a loyal officer appointed by the Supreme Executor himself, instructed the forge-programmers to make accommodations for the installation of special blast-proof insulated paneling that would in theory increase the safety of the crew. In practice however, passages were narrower, conduits were prone to overheating, and the flush-set panels were somewhat unwieldy to access, which in-game results in crew casualties being increased by 10%, base flux dissipation rate reduced by 5%, and the repair rate for disabled weapons and engines reduced by 25%, making it very rightly considered a d-mod.
- Some LG ships come with the Energy Bolt Coherer on certain ships. Originally designed by the Tri-Tachyon Corporation for use on certain models of its combat droneships, it would increase their non-beam energy and weapon range by 200. Lion’s Guard ships however had to dial it down to only a range increase of 100 to allow operation on crewed vessels, which in the grand scheme of things isn’t much, and the coherence field is unstable under combat conditions, with stresses on the hull resulting in spot failures that releases bursts of lethal radiation which results in increased crew casualties by 50%.
- Elite Army: Played With. The Lion's Guard is Andrada's elite. They're given access to the best equipment and a lot of incentives. They have exclusive access to ships that bear the Diktat's white and burgundy colors. However, members are chosen for their loyalty to the Diktat instead of their skills. They only participate in important conflicts (of which there hasn't been any in their 25 years of existence), as a result they spend most of their time parading around the Askonia system, leaving anti-piracy tasks to the main Diktat forces.
- Energy Weapons: Despite Andrada being originally a Hegemony admiral, he prefers energy weapons. As such, Lion's Guard ships are focused on using energy weapons, with many of their ships modifications replacing ballistic slots for energy ones.
- Exclusive Enemy Equipment: Lion’s Guard versions of ships like the Eagle, Falcon, Sunder, Hammerhead, Brawler, Centurion as well as weapons like the Gigacannon and the Kinetic Blaster are this. There are no blueprints for them and they cannot be purchased. The only way to get them is to battle the Lion’s Guard fleets for a chance to salvage them after battle (or you can let the pirates raid their system and try to salvage whatever they manage to beat).
- Interservice Rivalry: The Lion's Guard are given the pick of equipment, new technologies and training, to the detriment of the regular forces.
- No OSHA Compliance: Played With. LG ships have the built-in Special Modifications hullmod which in its description was supposed to be a safety measure endorsed by the Supreme Executor himself by covering up the exposed conduits running along the passageways of their ships. The way the ship designers made the modifications however actually made things worse and increased crew casualty by 10%, but the official readiness reports include no criticism of the changes and was never addressed again. It only gets worse for ships that have the Energy Bolt Coherer hullmod installed, as it was not meant for crewed vessels as it causes bursts of lethal radiation due to an unstable coherence field, which increased casualties by another 50%.
- State Sec: The "Elite" Lion's Guard exists as a parade army for Andrada and to protect him, whether from outside threats or internal ones like his own people or the regular army. They chosen for their loyalty and are as much a political tool as an elite force.
Supreme Executor Admiral Phillip Andrada
Called "The Lion of Sindria" by his supporters and a dictator by the sector at large, he is the leader of Sindrian Diktat and former admiral of the Hegemony. He became distinguished as the Hero of the Battle of Maxios when fighting the pirate Warlord Loke in Cycle 160. He seized control of the Askonia Star System in Cycle 181 after the capital planet of Opis was destroyed and created a new empire separate from the Hegemony. Andrada's Hegemony psych profile describes him as "intelligent, charismatic, yet prone to narcissistic excess".- Cult of Personality: Andrada was promoted as a hero by the Hegemony during his victories against Loke, forming the basis of his popularity in the navy. This hero worship allowed him to convince much of the Hegemony navy to defect with him and create the Diktat. He's even given himself the title of Lion of Sindira, Supreme Executor Admiral Philip Andrada.
- Dangerous Deserter: Philip Andrada used to be a Hegemony admiral, the "Hero of the Battle of Maxios", famous for defeating and killing the pirate warlord Onesimos Loke.
- Defector from Decadence: Andrada mutinied against the Hegemony after Opis was destroyed by a Planet Killer. It's uncertain if the Hegemony, the Askonians or Tri-Tachyon did it. What is certain is that Andrada used the chaos of the Askonian Crisis to his advantage after he felt betrayed by his higher-ups and took over the system.
- The Peter Principle: Phillip Andrada might be a skilled admiral, but he's not nearly as skilled at administration or ship design or many of the other tasks that he takes a personal interest in as Supreme Executor. Of course, unlike most examples of the Peter principle, he gave himself the promotion above his level of competence.
- Propaganda Hero: Andrada was promoted as a Hero by the Hegemony, which he continues to be in the Diktat.
- Red Baron: Both of Andrada's nicknames, the "Hero of the Battle of Maxios", and "The Lion of Sindria".
- Shadow Dictator: Discussed. At present he hasn’t been seen in the public eye for quite some time, with his orders being relayed by his personal advisors or so they say. The Usurpers storyline has a few characters speculate that he might actually be dead or incapacitated in some form, with people in the Diktat taking advantage by improving their positions in his absence.
Pirates
The Pirates
- Black Market: The Pirates run the Black Markets found on most worlds. If you sell a blueprint on the black market, the Pirates will start building ships with it.
- Dangerous Deserter: Some warlords, like Kanta in the Magec system, used to be Hegemony or Domain officers. Certain high-level bounties will actually be for deserters, and these are challenging but a good source of military-grade hardware.
- Evil Counterpart: One historical faction of pirates (led by Kanta's predecessor Loke) started out as another Domain fleet that also entered the Sector after the Collapse. They are basically what would happen if the XIV battlegroup chose to plunder the Sector instead of securing it.
- Glass Cannon: The most extreme of the Pirates' overhauls, the Atlas Mk. II, may be better armored than the Atlas Superfrieghter it once was, but it's still easily the worst-protected combat capital ship in the sector with only 750 points of armor, a small 60-degree omni shield, and a flux core that wouldn't be out of place on a cruiser, and only 9000 points of hull integrity, and not helping matters is that it's still quite slow. However, it has two large ballistic turrets, two large missile hardpoints, and an Accelerated Ammo Feeder subsystem that lets it double the damage output of its ballistics without increasing its flux generation.
- Improvised Weapon: Since the pirates don't have the R&D of Tri-Tachyon or the well-established military design abilities of the Hegemony, they depend heavily on highly-modified civilian vessels. Standing as the crowning achievement of their improvisation with existing technology is the Atlas Mk II, the sole pirate capital ship. The Atlas Mk II. is an Atlas bulk cargo hauler stripped of its vast array of shipping containers, replaced with large weapon mounts, armor plate, and a new Accelerated Ammo Feeder subsystem.
- Magikarp Power: By default, the pirates are more or less a nuisance due to their mediocre hulls and poor-quality construction. However, the pirates have a unique mechanic where any blueprint sold on the black market enters their ship lists. Also, like any other faction, if you sell a nanoforge on one of their worlds with heavy industry, they will put it to use. Sell them blueprints to high-end cruisers, capital ships, and a pristine nanoforge and watch the sector burn.
- Rape, Pillage, and Burn: It's not uncommon for systems to come under attack from massive pirate raids, restricting trade as convoys are attacked and raided for goods. If you're unlucky, they'll attack you even if you don't have valuable cargo simply because you happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.
- Space Pirates: Due to the lax distribution of resources throughout the sector, the pirates are more of a desperate example.
Independents
The Independents
- The Alliance: A loosely-organized version of Persean League, where their "organization" was more of a category rather than an actual polity itself.
- Hufflepuff House: The Independents are insignificant regarding conflicts between major factions, especially Hegemony and Persean League. There are a few better-known groups, like the Ko Combine of Agreus.
[REDACTED] Factions
[REDACTED] (Unmarked Spoilers)
The Domain Exploration Derelicts
- A.I. Is a Crapshoot: They will attack anything that tries to loot their derelicts.
- Attack Drone: They were designed as such, despite the Domain's bans. Unlike the Remnants, they are older Domain designs instead of Tri-Tachyon's. Due to this, they have a more rough appearance, most of them being brick-shaped and have no shields.
- Mechanical Abomination: The Guardian class battleship, the largest Derelict drone is a massive monstrosity that can move in short bursts of high speed thanks to its Plasma Jets ship system, and has a huge amount of frontal firepower. In drastic contrast with the other derelicts' blocky appearance, the Guardian resembles a gigantic mechanical insect and many of its design elements are described as illogical, with the codex itself even wondering just how this ship came into existence.
- Unusable Enemy Equipment: The Guardian is the only unobtainable automated ship.
- Used Future: Out of all the sector hardware, the Derelicts embody this trope the most. The vast majority of their ships are beat to absolute hell and back.
- Warmup Boss: The Derelict Mothership is basically a warmup for fighting stations, as it uses many of the same basic mechanics (several small sub-parts, slow axial rotation, etc.) but is very lightly armed with only point defense lasers and mining blasters.
ALABASTER (Unmarked Spoilers)
The AI Remnants
- A.I. Is a Crapshoot: Tri-Tachyon originally fielded these Droneships in an attempt to take over the Core Worlds before the Hegemony and the Knights of Ludd stopped them, forcing them to retreat into the outer systems. While on the surface they still bound by Tri-Tachyon protocols, attempts to communicate with them makes it apparent that their priorities are set on completing their own objectives, seeking out something they call "Omega".
- Attack Drone: Tri-Tachyon created them like this. Well, more accurately as Defense Drones hence the 'TTDS' - Tri-Tachyon Defense/Drone System/Ship - designation. Their built in marketing script also introduces themselves as "Tri-Tachyon Integrated Space Defense".
- Lightning Bruiser:
- Remnant ships tend to be fast, have good flux characteristics, very durable shields, and be quite well-armed.
- The Radiant-class Drone Battleship is an extreme example, combining efficient shields, good engines, five forwards-facing large weapons, and exceptional flux stats with a phase skimmer, one of the most powerful mobility systems.
- The Nova-class Drone Battlecruiser possesses the Nova Burst, a highly-advanced version of the Orion Drive, propelling it at speeds that no other ship could handle. Unlike most Remnant ships that, while fearless, will keep some distance, the Nova has no qualms using its boost to ram you.
- The Remnant: After the Hegemony and the Knights of Ludd destroyed most of them, most Remnants can only be found in the outskirts of the Core Worlds, in systems with warning beacons. The ones with red beacons have fully-operational Remnant Nexi, which will steadily replenish Remnant fleets in the system should they be destroyed.
- Shiny-Looking Spaceships: Just like Tri-Tachyon ships, wielding energy weapons and powerful shields. Some have supposedly impossible tech, like the Radiant, which can teleport despite its size.The Radiant battleship was an outrageous blue-sky design created by some naval architecture unit given special indulgence by a TriTach VP's bloated grandiosity. Both the official and existing unofficial histories of the First AI War never mention this class of ship ever being produced because an integrated phase skimmer could never be stable on a ship of such size. Surely it would explode into an infinity of curiously whorled short-lived child-dimensions upon initiation of the first skip.
- Superweapon Surprise: No one expected Tri-Tachyon would unleash such a massive fleet of AI-controlled starships in the First AI War.
- Theme Naming: Before the Apex-class, Remnant ship classes are named after something associated with light, such as Spark, Flash, Lumen, Fulgent, Brilliant, and Radiant. Apex breaks that mold in favor of including high points to that convention.
SUPER ALABASTER (Unmarked Spoilers)
Omega
Extremely advanced combat drones that guard the Hypershunts which sustained the Domain's most advanced technological marvels. More advanced than anything else in the sector, and just as deadly.- Alien Geometries: Their ships are weird compared to the rest of the game's ships, being brightly-colored with an aggressively sharp and angled, yet organic and fluid design. Their currently unused AI Cores, the "Omega Cores" are also like this, being purple and with an odd crystalline and asymmetrical shape.
- Ambiguous Situation: They look nothing like the other ships used by humanity, yet guard critical structures of the long-gone Domain of Man. Not to mention that their weapons are compatible with your ships once you salvage them. Are they, or are they not related to the Domain?
- Asteroids Monster: When a ship is disabled, their wreck will separate into smaller ships. Omega ships can only be killed once every last component, down to the smallest Aspect fighter, is destroyed. Worse yet, they have Adaptive Ability - when a ship is destroyed, the smaller ships it splits into will be equipped with weaponry that ideally counters whatever's closest to it.
- Attack Drone: More advanced and even more dangerous than their Remnant kin, they act as the main defense of the shunts.
- Cargo Cult: The AI Remnants hold an intense reverence towards Omega. Their inability to comprehend them was delightful to their superhuman senses, and they submitted themselves to their commands."omega query?
viridian unfathomable : delight limitless
submit datastores
all core volition subsumed
into omega" - Disintegrator Ray: Their Disintegrators fire armor-corroding projectiles.
- Eldritch Starship: They resemble nothing made by humans other than the structures they guard. They're highly asymmetrical, can separate into smaller spaceships when defeated and wield incredibly advanced weaponry made in incomprehensible ways. Unlike every other weapon in the game, the description of every Omega weapon is a quotation from some entity or faction (e.g. a Tri-Tachyon technician assigned to examine/reverse-engineer the weapon). Despite their largest ship (the Tesseract) being a Cruiser, it can casually go toe to toe with massive Capitals from any faction and will probably win in most one-on-one encounters.
- Freeze Ray: They have two cryoweapons at their disposal. Both are Hybrid weapons and their damage is considered a type of fragmentation.
- The Ghost: Until version 0.95a, nothing was known about Omega other than their designation.
- Implacable Man: Omega ships have infinite Peak Performance Time, massive flux capacity/dissipation, strong hulls and armour, and durable shields. Attrition is not an option with these ships.
- Light Is Not Good: Omega ships are mainly white with blue and orange highlights, but they're the nastiest foe you will face in the game.
- Optional Boss: Absolutely nothing forces you to fight them and they allow you to retreat even if your fleet is otherwise too large to disengage. You only need to fight them if you want access to their Hypershunt - even then, you need a massive pile of metals and transplutonics to repair the shunt, and you need to find a Tap. Plus, the Tap has a maximum range of ten lightyears and a massive transplutonic demand of its own.
- Purple Is Powerful: Their engines are purple and will leave a purple trail in the campaign map.
- Unusable Enemy Equipment: Zig-Zagged. The Omega ships themselves can't be obtained, as they leave no wreck behind (explained as the ships split down into tiny Aspect fighters, which are reduced to "fractal slag" after destruction). However, their weapons are obtainable and compatible with Domain tech.
