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The Collapse: A videogame within a Video game.


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The Collapse.


Genre: Real time strategy game with space and ground elements.


Box Description:

In a galaxy of untold billions, commanders pick and choose the fall of worlds in a war for survival. You, commander, will be in the control of the fate of every single being alive under the flag of the United Galactic Nations Navy, UGNN. Beginning with control over aged and basic human legions and ships, expand your arsenal with a complex web of political alliances spanning across the galaxy with all sentient species in the galaxy in a all out war of survival against a merciless enemy of an enigmatic composition.


The Abhorrent takes advantage of every mistake. Anyone fighting alone and divided against the enemy will inevitably fall, and the enemy is nothing if not ruthless. With a united war machine under your guiding hand, hundreds of hours of playtime in a galactic campaign can be had against an enemy that adapts to your tactics and comes with its own surprises. Each Campaign is never the same, with both customizable troops, generals, and warships. Choose your species, and your origins, for it can be the deciding factor of who backs your military might.


Comes with the “Steel Rain”, “Desiccated Titans” and the “Golems Rising” Expansion pack. (Essentially a story expansion, Precursor relic hunting, and Glorsh Rising pack, respectively.)


Plot Summary: After the tutorial mission which is mostly determined by your selected species, you gain significant notoriety as a fleet admiral, you are placed as Vice Admiral in command of a joint expedition into the unknown to scout out the mysteries of the universe. By discovering an anomalous signal on a garden world, troops are sent down. The infantry sent down inadvertently wake up the Abhorrent, a strange and utterly enigmatic collection of physics defying energy and matter particulates. After an intense and brief struggle on the ground, warships rise from the planet and make battle with your superior officers fleet. After a heated battle from which the Abhorrent destroy the flagship of the fleet with a devastating alpha strike, you as acting admiral of the entire fleet, ultimately get defeated and forced to retreat. When you retreat and with how many numbers determines both your starting forces and your relations with other officers when you ascend to the highest ranking military commander.


The war quickly ends up with the Abhorrent pushing into the Human frontier, while simultaneously pushing closer and closer the Frontier Unions Homeworld, Anklan. The enemy uses worlds long ago perished, the enemies forges glow brighter than cities as war machines are created and sent to burn Human worlds. Larger and larger ships are produced in larger numbers, drastically pushing the frontier patrols farther and farther as the enemy cements its aged industry into a war footing set millennia ago. The enemies use of taken worlds ranges from orbital bombardment until the surface is rendered molten, or ground based conquering followed by corralling the population into what essentially amounts to large ghettos. If the enemy suspects that they may lose the planet, they sometimes risk tactical battles by glassing the planet mid-fight. It is later found out that the Abhorrent recently began using sentient beings as “processors” in their war machines, to horrifying effect.

(Such effects are not always guaranteed to happen, as the Abhorrent can choose which effect it can put into play, similar to it “researching” the option as time goes by.)


At this point, the player is declared the high admiral of the entire human military, despite the fact that they may, in fact, be a Human/Unathi/Skrell/etc, as the game takes place over seventy years in the future. At this point political intrigue, as well as alliances, become tenuis, and the player has to go through the confusing quagmire of the admiral's political landmine field. Alliances with Vaurca, Unathi, Skrellian, and even Tajara interest groups can make or break the entire campaign against the omnicidal enemy. At one point, it can even become feasible to purposely lose battles in certain areas to garner more support for the war in the long term. At any point, an alliance can be created with any foreign power if the player is skillful enough to bring their them close enough to Humanity and the other chosen allies against the Abhorrent, but that does not mean the other races will participate in a war against a foe without compromise. Hasty and lackluster alliances can always be made when the enemy sieges down a system in return for desperately needed assistance. The game only ends when every single species major system is either glassed, rendered a non-significant piece in the war when the Player Character themselves are killed, or the enemy falls, (among other conditions.) The game is so complex that many complain of its supposedly absurd political simulation that is not always accurate, with being simulated by opinion approximators that number from -100 to +100. A combat simulation mode simply lets the player choose scenarios of ships or soldiers in a chosen scenario fight to their heart's content.


Ultimate moral choices include promises of allowing certain species expand their territory, independence of certain worlds, and closer or alienated alliances in exchange for other advantages along with more “spoiler” intensive options. Detractors point out the game's strange and often obtuse handling of certain units overall usefulness, and the bizarrely overdone nerfs and buffs to the game as time went by, turning valid or “overpowered” strategies into useless options and vice versa. The three expansion packs add a relatively massive amount of content, however, the “Golems Rising” expansion pack has faced extreme controversy due to its tie-in of genocidal AI “Glorsh Omega” into the game. Depending on what rumor mill you subscribe too, you may hear news of Skrellian government officials discussing bans or censors on the game based on this Expansion pack.


Army composition is based on a point and lock out system that both grows and encompasses more or less as the story progresses, while navy is the same with the addition of a maximum of individual small craft support to prevent the abuse of fighters from a bygone “meta”. Players request ships from the shipyards that they have available for them or take from other fleets. Shipyards take a cycle of time to build their ships taking both resources and navy personnel as possible bottlenecks to flying ships into war.


Modifications to the game are infamously hard to complete due to the complex affair that is the code, and the developers rather hands off approach to it, but several are in the works created by small teams, usually of AI.


The endings of the game is most unique, as it can end in several fashions with the galaxy ending up in a severely different condition depending on the player's skill and moral choices, along with claims of “secret” endings among other such easter eggs, which have been proven true in the past. AI’s are expressly demanded to keep the validity of such endings secret if they find about it using their superior intelligence with several lawsuits being placed on “leakers” on some of said endings.


One particularly notable ending is the military arm of the Sol Alliance reigning a coup over the Human government and conquering the galactic region as a military Imperium after defeating the Abhorrent, and emplacing strict breeding controls on the remaining population of all “xenos” to prevent the disruption of human interests, with the option of including Skrell in this new found Empire. Below is an example of a completed campaign by Game hobbyist Neq’Qurel De’Yurek playing as a human Admiral specializing in “political manipulation”

 



After several years of intense strategic campaigns, consisting of six separate player controlled land and space battles, Humanity is losing ground every day. It has become clear that the war is far more dangerous than it is, and the Human military is fully mobilized to combat the threat as a significant world is subjugated. The Skrellian council joins the war by offering some small amount of resources. As battles become continuously more desperate, The Frontier Unions homeworld is assaulted, and briefly repelled before a suicide charge into the planet results in massive devastation on the entire planet as it is rendered sterile.


At this point, The Skrellian Federation shifts from interested observers to actual war partners, but do not send their full bulwark due to political manipulations of both the SOl Alliance and the federation. Famed Tup Commandos are placed into the fray in unexpectedly massive numbers, as closer examination by independent operations in the Alliance reveal that they are little more than drones that could do little more then fight and take orders, a far cry from the famed Tups of old. The players can choose to “secretly” leak this information to the public, weakening the Federation as a whole, for the players political agenda if they so choose, which was done in this particular campaign.


With the Union fallen, the Abhorrent spread like wildfire until hit by the Unathi homeworld.


Depending on player reserves in the area and intervention policies, the planet can be glassed. In this particular case, it was not, the invasion was repelled successfully and with surprising ease.


As the counteroffensives begin against the enemy, it becomes increasingly clear that the enemy is holding back resources, for a purpose unknown. By the time the player's fleet approaches their closer (<100 Light years) space, a deep strike is commenced against the heart of human space, barreling straight for heavy industrial sectors, but your fleet is too far away, the defense forces the player had stationed in the area are all that's left to save those systems. With the optional help of a Varca mothership, the fleet pushes all the way into their home space, and cripples their industrial might for the rest of the game, at however grievous cost to your fleet.


The enemy immediately switches from a heavy traditional campaign of massive fleets to a game of harassment, while it shores up its defenses and prepares. Several human worlds are attacked, but never glassed due to insufficient volume of fire.


Counter attacks on Abhorrent controlled worlds are repelled again and again as the enemies forces consolidate.


Skrellian fleets assault the enemy position, alone and without assistance, the player chose not to speak to them about the invasion despite their excellent intel in Skrellian space, letting a large portion of their forces get sent to the meat grinder, while the Player's forces simultaneously assault lost worlds, and successfully manage to take back several burnt husks from the enemies grasps, while the Federation Fleet had lost a large portion of its composition due to enemy reinforcements. The player then capitalizes on the Federations sudden weakness and the threat of enemy invasion in their own territory with a series of high temperature backroom dealings and adjustment of patrols onto the border of Skrellian space to coerce the Federation to falling under the Alliance, the first species to do so


Despite this newfound advantage the inevitable massed strike by the ABhorrent seeps over and results in fighting in human space, thousands of ships burning out like stars as both sides take grievous losses, in multiple fronts in the inner colonies. The player sent a contingent of warships along with a trusted commander to scout out rumors of a Precursor super weapon in deep space outside of the galactic arms. Wars on the ground and in boarding missions get increasingly easier and easier due great advancements in personnel weaponry, as Disruptor munitions which are built around destroying the Abhorrent with ease is built. Such munitions for ship grade kinetic weapons are still a long way from finishing, due to the required refit on the weapons that fire the munition.


Despite repeated attempts to land troops on enemy forge worlds to steal technological samples and sabotage suspected industry, most result in failures in the navy aspect. At this point, the entirety of Human navy and Skrellian reserves is deployed, with mothball ships being taken out while exploratory ships are being refitted.


At this point in time, the Precursor super weapon rumors come back to you, and it appears that it was honestly under-estimated as your trusted commander comes back with a fleet of autonomous, automated war ships, under his beck and call.


Thankfully, you chose that commander more for his devotion to saving humanity at all costs then greed, and he gladly turns the “ship keys” over to you.


Had the Abhorrent known about the Precursor fleet, it would've immediately beelined with the entirety of its war machines to destroy it at all costs, but a mistake on the player's part in both not ordering for more information to be collected and sending a small and unsuited fleet had thrown the Abhorrents AI entirely off guard.


With the ships in two, fights become one sided as space is slowly retaken. Every planet is reinforced like a meat grinder, and methods are emplaced to prevent deep strikes that had been done in the past.


After years of the brutal campaign, eventually, the Abhorrent threat is finished off, at the expense of billions of lives, ships, and soldiers.. This was perhaps the best outcome for all parties involved, as the player uses the newly found fleet of autonomous warships along with a nanomachine based immortality project she had finished in the shadows to work her will onto the human species, leading it with an iron fist. She eventually went and placed all other species under her will in a galactic order after the game had officially “completed”, preparing a military state that would hopefully never be taken back by a superior enemy ever again.

 



 

Playstyles permit completely different games to form, it is not uncommon for completely unorthodox strategies to form that would result in a flawless victory. Notable endings include Templars, Xenocidal Imperiums, Slave empires, Post Scarcity, and the Secret Banana ending.


Several “memes” caused by the game include:


Depending on what some traits the PC may get as well as the current condition of the galaxy, the Player can choose to engage in actual hand-to-hand fighting, either against the enemy which they will almost always lose in, or against other admirals and generals. In interaction screens, there is a button that is grayed out that is called “Begin Combat” against NPC’s. An achievement called “Brawling Bawling Politicians” that a player may achieve by successfully winning hand-to-hand combat against the leaders of the civilian government of the Tajara, Humanity, Unathi, and Skrell in one game. Such combat usually entails heading right up to said NPC and landing a crushing blow in their face and walking away. Supposedly, one player has managed to successfully beat up the entire admirals board, every single Skrellian official of note, and several high ranking Tajara and Unathi officials before events inexplicably caused the Tajara and Unathi species to go extinct or disappearing before he could presumably punch out the rest of them. The player then went on to defeat the Abhorrent and win the game, managing to complete a Hand-to-Hand fight against two separate Abhorrent individuals and living to the ending which results in said Admiral “peacefully retiring” on a frontier planet away from politics.


Inexplicably, the Abhorrent AI will send out interception forces to catch up to large fleet if you send one out to unknown space near the supposed precursor ships are supposed to be located, usually thinking that you found the Precursor Fleet. This has resulted in the AI sending their fleets to well entrenched positions that the player had built beforehand in completely subtlety and decimating the Abhorrent fleet.


In a reference to an apparently extremely old game, one can witness a commander punch a reporter if they have the “agitated trait” and the player lets the situation occur.


((I will update this if anyone sends me a hilarious “meme” about this fictional game.))

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