KEY FEATURES

  • Massively multiplayer real-time strategy game
  • Join thousands in a persistent and epic galactic conflict
  • Earn influence by defeating your enemies
  • Use that influence to advance your military by upgrading your unit and structure designs
  • Coordinate with other members of your faction to defend and attack other factions
  • Control systems and wormholes to move the fight deeper into enemy territory
  • Huge playing arena, battle on planets and in space simultaneously in a large galaxy
  • Conquer planets to acquire resources to fuel your military
  • Easy methods to jump in and join the war effort immediately

ORIGINAL PRESS RELEASE


Dark Sky Entertainment, the company behind the new MMORTS named Beyond Protocol, has just unleashed yet another revolutionary experience to the masses. Its name is Star Alliances.

Star Alliances gives the player massive amounts of customization with the ability to jump into the midst of interstellar war instantly, for FREE (more on the FREE part later). There are similarities between Star Alliances (SA) and Beyond Protocol (BP), but they are very different games. Unlike BP, SA focuses more on the intensity of fighting for supremacy, and less on the complex strategy of building an empire. However, much like BP, SA takes place in a galaxy with hundreds of environments in which war can rage simultaneously. Environments range from any of the 8 planet types and 5 planet sizes, to the orbit above those planets, to the very center of any of the 100+ star systems, to the cold outer reaches of space.

Allow me, DSE’s Diplomat, to walk you through the basic actions that compose SA, a game that can most accurately be described as a Massive Multiplayer Online Real Time Tactical (MMORTT).

The game begins by choosing one of three factions, the Legion of Systems, the Unification Alliance, or the Galactic Confederacy. Each faction comes with its own premise of governance, basic hull designs, and region of space inside the SA galaxy.

After choosing a side, the player is taken to the home system for the chosen faction, and presented with a window summarizing research, production, and deployment options for their units.

Research in SA is based heavily on combat, mainly because research costs influence and influence is gained only by destroying enemy ships. The more and bigger the ships destroyed by the player, the easier it is for them to design a behemoth or sleek set of corvettes of their own.

The 10 different resources in the game are collected automatically, and directly relate to the different components in the game (engine, radar, weapons, etc.). The faction’s home system provides a steady and secure flow of resources, but by branching out into contestable systems, higher accumulation rates can be achieved. From these minerals, custom buildings, ships, and tanks can be made.

Deploying units to the action is made easy, by allowing the player to place them in any system linked to the faction’s main system. Wormholes are the main method of transit in SA. So long as the player’s faction (one of three in the game) controls the wormholes which connect, units can be placed in that system instantly. Intense battles can form very quickly where these control points intersect.

The number of ships a player can control at one time is determined both by technology level and prowess in battle. As technology level increases, so does the basic number of units and buildings that player can create, represented by Command Points (CP). Prowess is rewarded by experience points gained in battle on a per unit basis. With as much as a 10:1 reduction in CP requirements per unit, superior tactics are very much a necessity in domination.

Community is also a cornerstone of any MMO, and SA does not disappoint. A friend list keeps track of who is online and how high they rank. An alert system allows players to place markers with text, arrows, and other symbols in various colors to better communicate a winning strategy. Of course a full chat and mailing system are included as well. The mail can even be sent out of game to an email address or SMS capable mobile device.

Well this all might sound incredible, but I know that somewhere in your mind you are thinking, “He said I can play for FREE?” I certainly did, and here’s how. Trial accounts in SA never expire. They can be played 7 days a week and 52 weeks a year just like a paid account. However, of course there is a catch or two. Trial accounts, can play all the time if they wish! Additionally, access to higher technology, like corvettes, destroyers, and battleships, is restricted making fighters and escorts the mainstay for trial accounts. However, trial accounts have the same front row seat to the carnage that paid accounts do, perhaps only with smaller guns.

Well? What are you waiting for? Go to www.Star-Alliances.com and start downloading WHILE you register! Tell ‘em that Diplomat sent you, and they’ll treat you right!



Star Alliances Player Guide

Download Here

Utilizing Fighters

Star Alliances

Star Alliances provides the player the ability to create many different units for the situations they will encounter. One situation that we will focus on in this newsletter is the utilization of fighters during combat.
Fighters in Star Alliances are valuable in combat to the side that balances their use with the abilities of larger more firepower intensive units. It is important to recognize that as a player, you will go through many multiples of fighters in relationship to the few larger ships of your opponent.
Your GOAL is to utilize the ciritcal hit features of the fighter to create a positive advantage to your faction.
We will begin by discussing the design of fighters.
Critical Hits do not require many actual damage points in order to be accomplished. Critical hits do not consider armor, structure, or shields. It is the precision of the fighter pilot that creates that one-in-a-million shot of destroying the enemy's best flagships.
With this in mind, we need to consider the following:
SPEED - A fighter that is moving across the enemy's sight picture will be much harder to hit.
MANEUVERABILITY- A fighter that can get behind their enemy is more likely to impose their damage on engines much easier.
PROTECTION- A fighter is light meaning not much armor or shield protection is available.
To begin, lets consider a simple light fighter. They have a hull size of 90. The number of hitpoints for that fighter is easily moved to 90 and no warnings appear. To eek out alittle more defensive prowess, you can raise the number of hitpoints for the fighter. This is for the player who wants to PLAN for their future use of fighters.
HitPoints greater than size
It takes almost 4 days of research to get 30 more hitpoints for a total of 120 in the light fighter. However, once researched, those 30 points could be a significant difference when aggressing against AoE weapons bearing down on your flight group.
Having the hull size equal to the hitpoints provides the optimal balance. Exceeding the hull size increases research time exponentially.
Now, lets look at the fighter's engine design. We can allocate 12 points on three attributes of the engine. We are most interested in making sure we have our front arc on the enemy at all times. For this, we will increase our Maneuverability and put the rest of our points on power generation.

Lets move forward to the Radar Builder. We want our Weapons to be accurate. In addition, we need to make sure that we have the necessary range on the radar. We can allocate up to 21 points to the radar attributes. However, we will only need 14.

Now, for a discussion about shields. Shields are effective. However, the concept of them is often misunderstood. We will design a shield with all 12 of our attribute points allocated to increase the maximum hitpoints. Notice that we will give 9 hull for this shield. Armor produces 10 hitpoints per arc. In this case, we will be spending 90 hitpoints fixed to specific arcs for 20 hitpoints that is usable from all arcs. If we distribute the shields across three arcs, we will spend 30 for 20 recharging. The recharge rate is slow. It takes 130 seconds to get a full recharge from zero. This will mean that you need to monitor your fighters and as they get damaged, pull them out of the battle to recharge their shields for one last hoo-rah.

Finally, the fighter's weapons. We want high speed weapons that will make sure that when the fighter sees a target, it can fire at it. With this in mind, we choose a pulse weapon and set the rate of fire to .5.

Now, with this configuration, we can manage to put two weapons on the ship. Lets look over the final design characteristics and review the reasons for our design decisions.

A. We choose a shield over the armor in order to spread out the ability to absorb damage from all angles of the fighter. We place the shield across three arcs balancing out the amount of armor loss.
B. We set our weapon accuracy high and our range to 75 to follow the characteristics of our weapons.
C. We are concerned about being able to position ourselves for the fight, so we increase our maneuverability somewhat and then put all the remaining points to our power generation.
D. We match closely our Radar range to our Optimum range. We also increase our rate of fire to 1 time per half-second.
E. With these weapon stats, we will be doing 8 points of damage per second per weapon with Beam and Impact being the affecting damage types. For critical hits, it is no concern what armor the enemy has mounted.
F. We will spend the extra days preparing our fighter hull. This delay will grant us 30 more hitpoints in our structure and make the fighter harder to kill.
G. We have allocated space on the hull to keep the armor in balance. Because we will plan to strike directly over our targets passing by at point-blank range, we will keep our front and rear arcs heavy and utilize the space on the side arcs for our mounts.
H. The Cicada hull continues to improve our design by providing us an additional +10 maneuver and +2% Critical Hit Chance.

You will also notice that our power requirements call for us to use no more than 1050 power.
Power Generated: 1050
Shield: -360
Radar: -48
Weapon 1: -270
Weapon 2: -270
102 power remaining.
A perfect design strategy is to not have any power wasted. We could go and improve the design by reducing the power generation to 950 and then raise our Maneuver or Speed by the two points.

Now with the design done, lets think about combat.

Here are some things to keep in mind as you use your tactical fighters in combat:

Make sure to keep your orders for your fighters set to target a component system.
When a flying unit is on a planet, target their engines. A critical hit to the engines will destroy the unit in the planet environment.
In space, you can disable a unit by taking out their engines and then working on each of their remaining components until they are destroyed.
In order to be most effective, keep attempting to hit the side where you believe the component is located. For engines, that is easy. An engine is ALWAYS on the rear arc.
If you target a component and your critical hit is on the wrong side of the ship, it will not take out that component.
ALWAYS keep control of your fighters.
Work with other players with larger ships and let them know when you disable a ship.
Do not spend time trying to destroy the whole ship, let larger guns handle that task.
If you have not started playing Star Alliances, perhaps you should begin today.


Arming a planet

Star Alliances

In this issue, we will discuss the strategy of "arming a planet". Arming a planet can take one of three forms. Two of the forms are immediately available to a player. The third more advanced form requires some research in the technology tree.
Armed Facilities
While some have argued the power of arming facilities is too strong, the overall design of the game is the control of planets in order to continue the growth and expansion of the faction. Arming facilities is the first method that we will discuss that will allow for arming the planet. The arming mechanism in Star Alliances is elaborate but once conceived, a player can very readily implement it and be successful in holding their desired planets and resources.
An armed facility requires power. The power generator hull is the ONLY facility that will generate such power. This facility will create 120,000 power for the colony on the planet. It is important to note this power output as it will be necessary to spread the power among the buildings you wish to arm.
One method of arming with facilities is to simply design and build a power generator on the surface of the planet. The effect of this is that the power generator will maintain control of the planet for the faction or upset the control of a planet by another faction. This power generator however does not provide the resource mining abilities that come from having a command center on the surface. To build the ultimate protection on a planet, you will need to research a new hull design for the command center.
Recognize again: the command center does not generate power. In addition, to leverage the command center's production ability you will need to implement cargo storage, hangar bays, and bay doors. Finally, the weapons on the command center will be the consumer of power. Remember too, you will need a radar for the command center. Lets go through the series of buildouts you would want for your power generator and command center arming process.

radar can be reused on multiple units. Notice we are using the radar of a small vehicleThe first item of business is to recognize the 120,000 power required. Lets start with the most important elements of the weapon systems: radar. We will design one radar and use it for both our facilities. We want to leverage the idea of radar's maximum range. However, its important to note that distance of a weapon will be limited based on the available weapons. As your technology advances, you will want to upgrade your armed facilities to leverage these improved ranges.
Once the radar is designed, you want to note the power requirement. Remember, you will need two of them. So count them for both your power generator and your command center.
Now, when you place your buildings, you will want to ensure that they protect each other. The most effective strategy for taking out armed facilities is to have fighter fly-bys to knock out the radar. This is where things get interesting. You want to design your two buildings such that when placed side-by-side, the radar is on the inside arc of both buildings.
armed command centers

armed power generator
This will create maximum protection for radar. The reason for this is that the outer building arcs will be fired upon first and unless the fighters move slowly, they will not get a second shot at the "inside" arcs. With these two designs, we would want to make the two rear arcs face each other. Finally, if the enemy does hold off firing until they get to the target, the outside facility could very well kill the fighter before the shot is even taken.
projectiles is one type of weapon that should be on the facility with ALL damage types
Back to the design. Now, the SECRET to a good armament for a facility is two-fold. One set of weapons will need the distance to handle any sniper-style enemies. The second set of weapons will need to utilize AoE weapons in order to take out the pesky fighters. Among the AoE weapons, you will want to create one weapon of each variety. This will make armor selection very troubling for your enemy. Lets design some weapons that meet these specifications. Our goal will be 12 weapons on EACH building for a total of 24 weapons. This means that each weapon can average about 4500 power.
So now, lets put it together. When these hulls are fully implemented, the results are profound. Lets discuss the weaknesses.
WEAKNESS ONE: BOMBS. These two buildings being in close proximity will be more susceptible to bombing strikes from above. Bombs can do a variety of damage types, so the best defense from the bombers will be tactical fleets protecting the orbit of the planet.
WEAKNESS TWO: NAVAL. If the two buildings are on a planet where there is a significant amount of water covering, naval forces will become a main-stay for maintaining defense as well as providing offensive abilities to the enemy. While the offensive is much more difficult to accomplish, it is not out of the realm of possibility.
WEAKNESS THREE: FIGHTERS. Fighters once again, while they can be killed very easily, that one-in-a-million shot down the exhaust port of a structure could ultimately be the end of the radar of the structure. Without the radar, the weapons will not fire.
WEAKNESS FOUR: TANKS. Tanks are similiar to naval in their power. In strength of numbers, they can wreak a facility very easily. Make sure to place your facilities according to the terrain. This will force the tanks into moving down valleys, etc. to engage your facilities.

Arming with ground units:
As we have just presented, ground units (tanks, quads, etc) only require one command point to place into battle. With the smelting technology given to command centers, ground units become an easy to build method for protecting structures from attack. In order to best utilize tanks, you want to design them with intense amounts of firepower and make sure to create a variety of prototypes with different armor set-ups. This will allow for the rapid deployment of tanks when attacked once you recognize what the enemy is using for weapons.
Now, there is always a trick to this. The smelting must be done with material. Therefore, you must already have the material. If you are aggressing on a planet, you need another planet to build the smelts. Once the material is available, you can then build the components and finally the units.
Tanks are capable of producing great results including hard hitting weapons and AoE weapons against fighters.
Arming with naval:
As players progress through the game, they receive special technologies. One specific technology allows for the creating of naval units. These naval units are amazing because like tanks, they only require one cp each. They pack tremendous firepower and will kill anything it sees. They of course have a major weakness. They are restricted to water and therefore are depend entirely on range of the naval ship to hit the land based targets. We will spend more time in another issue to go over naval usage.

The keys to naval are as follows:

1 CP cost per unit
Large enough to withstand tremendous amounts of damage
Mobile to adjust to the changing conditions of the battle
Harder to hit from bombs because they move

If you have not started playing Star Alliances, perhaps you should begin today.