Game Info
Publisher: Matrix Games
Developer: Ntronium Games
Genre(s): Strategy
Players: Multi
ESRB Rating: E10+ (Everyone 10 and Older)
Release Date: November 24, 2009
Introduction
Armada 2526 continues the great tradition of space opera games. You guide your race from its first interstellar journeys. until it becomes a mighty galactic empire. Along the way, you'll explore the galaxy, conduct research, diplomacy and trade, found new colonies, maneuver mighty star fleets, and fight epic battles.
Although the game is complex, and the possible strategies endless, powerful help and advisor features, help you get up to speed quickly. Unlike many games in this genre, Armada 2526 focuses on providing a game that can be finished in a reasonable time, and emphasizes battle and strategy over economic micro-management.
It will be available for PC running Windows 7, Vista or XP
Key Features
Turn Based Strategy Map
The strategy map shows the portion of the galaxy where the game takes place. Here you'll maneuver your fleets, manage your colonies, and grow your empire. The emphasis in this part of the game is thinking and planning, so you can spend as much time as you want planning your strategies, and issuing orders. When you're done, hit the "end turn" button, and your orders will be carried out simultaneously with those of other players.
Epic Space Battles
Battles can be epic affairs with more than a hundred ships on each side. They are presented to the player in their full majesty via real-time 3D rendering with glowing energy beams, shimmering shields, and spectacular explosions. The action is real-time, both to enhance the visual spectacle, and to introduce elements of tension and pressure; however, the emphasis is firmly on tactics and maneuvering formations, rather than frantic clicking on individual ships, and you always have the option of pausing the game to issue orders.
Diplomacy
With so many players, you need a full featured diplomatic system. In Armada 2526 you can negotiate offensive and defensive alliance, non aggression pacts and trade agreements. Trade money, technology, colonies, ships and information. You can issue threats and ultimatums, or ask for favors. Friendships can be made and trust earned, or your reputation can be ruined by bullying and not honoring agreements.
Negotiations proceed by a series of offers and counter offers. Hard bargaining can drive the price down, but being generous builds friendships. During negotiations, you see an animated view of your counterpart, so you know who you are dealing with, and how they feel.
Technology
There are many different technology items to research. The game system encourages you to specialize in particular areas of tech, so as you expand and meet new players, you will find that they have radically different capabilities. Many of the technologies are disruptive, and force you to radically alter your strategy and tactics to utilize them, or to cope with the lack of.
You may for instance concentrate on building the biggest and best navy in the galaxy, and then watch in dismay as your ships flee from and opponent who has mastered the psychic arts, or be outmaneuvered by an adversary who has specialized in stealth or hyper space technology. You may have turned your planets into fortresses, but this won't help if they are infected by nanobots that eat defenses from the inside out, or if your opponent is impolite enough to drop an asteroid on your favorite colony.
Streamlined Economic System
Managing your empire is an important part of any strategy game, but can become a chore if too much micro-management is involved. Armada 2526's system is designed to let you make the major decisions about the development of each colony, without having to micro-manage every little detail. This way you can manage a large empire, play the game in a reasonable amount of time, and concentrate on strategy
Each colony develops by building various facilities. These add to its military construction abilities, economic potential, or research priorities. The number of facilities that each colony can operate is limited by the population, so players need to choose which areas each colony will specialize in. Choices can be changed, but at a cost..
Strategy and Intelligence
Peaceful coexistence is a good thing, but makes for a pretty dull game, so the game-play emphasis is on military strategy and intelligence. Fleets maneuver against each other, seeking to force or avoid a decisive confrontation, or to pick off a weakly defended planet.
Powerful AI
The artificial intelligence routines have been created by an expert in the field, to provide AI players that are both worthy adversaries, and opponents that are fun to play against. The A.I.has been built into the game from the beginning of development, and updated to take advantage of new game features as they are added, giving the developers the maximum time to polish its behavior. This is in contrast to many games, where the AI is tacked on at the end of development.
Of course the same powerful routines developed for the opponents, are also available to assist the player in managing their empire, and to offer game play advice.
Game-Play Driven Development
Although Armada 2526 has glorious sound and graphics that inspire and immerse the player, the main focus is providing a great game play experiences. Whereas the majority of games created today develop their graphics engine first, leaving game play and AI to the end of development, Armada 2526 has been developed "game-play" first allowing it to be tested refined and polished while graphics and sound are being added
Summary
Armada 2526 continues the great tradition of space opera games. You guide your race from its first interstellar journeys, until it becomes a mighty galactic empire. Along the way, you'll explore the galaxy, conduct research, diplomacy and trade, found new colonies, maneuver mighty star fleets, and fight epic battles. Although the game is complex, and the possible strategies endless, powerful help and advisor features help you get up to speed quickly. [Matrix Games]
My Vision For Ntronium
By Founder Bob Smith
I started off my career in the 1980s as an independent developer writing strategy and wargames for people who really appreciated them. I then did various programming jobs, before getting involved with the Total War series, culminating in Medieval 2:Total War*. I'm proud of the work I did on these, especially bringing some hardcore wargaming concepts to the mass market. However; my new venture Ntronium Games is a return to my roots.
Its mission is to develop deep involving strategy/wargames for that discerning group of gamers who love them as much as I do. While everyone likes their work to be popular, Ntronium is definitely founded on the principle that it is better that some people love something, than that everyone merely likes it We'll be targeting the discerning minority of hardcore strategy fans , rather than the mass market.
Internet Distribution
The primary means of distribution, will be direct sales via the internet. This model ensures that more revenue comes to the developer, allowing us to produce quality products without requiring the huge sales needed for a viable retail product. With no need to appeal to the mass market, all development resources can be focused on the things that our discerning customers really care about.
Player Involvement
One of the key focuses at Ntronium is to nurture a dedicated fan base; to encourage people to participate in our forums; tell us what they and want, and suggest their ideas. While of course, we can’t implement everyone’s suggestions, we do believe that good ideas can come from anywhere.
Once the game is released, we want to get feedback from players so that we can continue to refine it.
Continuous Development
The real joy of strategy gaming, is you choose your own way of doing things, control your own destiny, and that every game is different. Which means that, however thoroughly we test, we can never test every possibility. Once thousands of people get their hands on the game, it’s inevitable that some imbalances will be found, the AI may sometimes act dumb, devious players will find exploits, and there may even be some bugs.
Even triple A titles with 100 man test teams suffer these problems, it’s pretty much inevitable with highly complex titles. So rather than pretend it ain’t so, we'll plan to carry on developing the title after launch, issuing patches to fix issues, polish the gameplay, ,add new features and generally try to make it as near perfect as it can reasonably be.
Not that we plan to launch buggy games though. One advantage of internet distribution is that, unlike retail products, we don’t have to decide a launch date months in advance. If a game’s not ready for release, we simply won’t release it.
Design Philosophy
Everyone has their own ideas about what are the design elements in a great game. Here are some of my key concepts that I hope will become hallmarks of Ntronium games.
* True strategy games. Players set their own strategy; creating their own story, rather than following along with one the designer wrote.
* Mechanisms will be elegant and simple, but (to quote Einstein) no simpler than they need to be. The games will be detailed in key areas, but not require too much micro-management.
* Historically themed games will feature lots of accurate history, and mechanisms that try to model reality. Sci-Fi and fantasy games will try to be plausible.
* Strong emphasis on multiplayer and on-line play. Mechanisms designed to work well for multi-player.
* Strong AI
* Epic games, but still playable in a reasonable amount of time. Good replay value.
* Strong help and advisor features to help players get to grips with game. No point having features if no-one knows about them, most people would rather play than read a manual.
* Attractive presentation, but graphics will never take precedence of gameplay.