User:CromWelp/The Mandate (Videogame)

The Mandate (Videogame) is a science fiction space RPG with realtime strategy elements, developed by Perihelion Interactive LLC, and funded through Kickstarter, running on the Unity Engine in DirectX11 and lower. It also has a planned release for Linux and Mac.

Development
The Mandate is the first game by Perihelion Interactive, and is being funded through Kickstarter. The developer has stated a keen interest in 'bringing old-school mechanics back', inspired by games such as X-Com, Jagged Alliance, and Star Trek: Klingon Academy.

It is currently in the pre-production stages, with a road-map of iterations and developmental plans outlined by the developer.

Kickstarter Campaign
Perihelion Interactive asked for $500,000 over 60 days through Kickstarter to fund the majority of the game, although much of the story and artwork is being completed during this period. Before any alpha or beta gameplay is revealed, Perihelion Interactive offered a ship designer and character creator for backers, along with a series of lore snippets in the form of graphic memorabilia, and a 'lore codex' to be distributed to all backers. It is worth noting that Perihelion Interactive also plan to send 3D models of ship designs to backers who pledge at least $1,500.

Current State of Development
The game is in the late stages of its conception, with "1500 years of history" written, including some of the major characters, with their designs completed. There is also a multi-lingual teaser trailer featuring voice over and an orchestral, original score for the game by Ľubica Čekovská.

Plot
The Mandate is set in space, in the future. Earth has slipped towards resource drought, ecological collapse, internal warfare, and famine. Within 50 years, humanity attempts to escape its fate, expanding into the solar system, mining asteroids and establishing colonies on Mars and the moons of Jupiter. Whilst not too-distant from Earth at this point, technologies created in their quest for survival in space bring about improved fusion power, and cryo-hibernation. As Earth's state deteriorates, improved technologies detect dozens of Earth-like worlds across the galaxy.

100 years: Exodus. As it becomes clear that Earth will soon be uninhabitable, different groups – the few surviving national governments, corporations, social clades and the like – start making preparations to leave the solar system. They bring asteroids into Earth orbit, hollow them out, fit them with ion drives and cryo-hibernation vaults, as well as factories and construction gear to ‘bootstrap’ an industrial base quickly. Only a tiny fraction of the human population can take this escape route – billions are left to die on the dying planet.

The various colony ships depart in different directions. The crews sleep in the cryo-vaults, watched over by robots. Contact with Earth is lost as the Fifth Water War goes nuclear. One particular colony ship, the Romanov, was built by Russian oligarchs.

500 years later still, the colony ships cross the void between stars. Some head in groups for nearby systems; others seek out their own new world. The Romanov is part of this second wave of ships; after hundreds of years of travel through deep space, it arrives at an Earth-like world.

There is little communication between the various colonies – even the closest ones are several light-years apart, so transmissions take years to arrive, and ships take decades. Humanity is now scattered across dozens of worlds, each growing apart in isolation.

The inhabited rock is now a flourishing planet. The descendants of the oligarchs who funded the expedition are the nobility of this new civilization.

A scientist working for one of the noble families makes an unlikely discovery – she finds a method of travelling faster than light using stationary jump gates. These gates link two points in space-time. The nobles fund the construction of several such gates, linking their home to these nearby worlds. The travel is one-way, but the expeditions carry with them the instructions for building more gates. (For more detail, see Gates in Technology Overview, below).

Humanities new home becomes the hub of a small network of gates, and so becomes the main trading world. It grows in wealth and power.

+1000 years: First Interstellar War. One of the worlds in the network builds a Gate leading to another human colony. However, in the years since that colony last transmitted a signal, it had fallen to a xenophobic tyrant. The tyrant’s forces counter-attack through the gate. They are defeated by the alliance of other worlds in the gate network, but not before they release a plague that devastates several other planets.

Determined to prevent future threats of this type, and to solidify their position, the human forces seize control of the gates in more than two-thirds of the systems in the network. In some systems, control of the gates goes undisputed; in others, there are skirmishes or even full-scale naval battles. The Empire declares that she has a Mandate to protect humanity, and therefore the gates must be under her direct control.

After another ten years of war, government forces successfully capture the remaining gates in the network. The first Empress is crowned.

+1200 Years: The First Fringe Wars. A new protocol is put in place to deal with new gates. Instead of sending through a small expedition and teaching the inhabitants of the newly-contacted system how to build their own Gates, the new approach is to send a fleet of ships through, carrying with them the parts to rapidly construct a second Gate. Once two-way travel is established, the Mandate forces ‘convince’ the local government to join the Mandate. Sometimes, this goes peacefully as the locals realise the benefit of joining an interstellar trade league comprising dozens of worlds. Other expansions are more like invasions.

+1300 years: Decline of the Mandate. By now, almost all known human colonies settled in the initial exodus from Earth, as well as their daughter colonies established in the years between then and the present day, are part of the Mandate. With no new worlds to conquer – or at least to assimilate with gunboat diplomacy – the Mandate navy loses direction. Skirmishes and disputes between member worlds grow in intensity, and are put down more harshly by the Mandate government. Politics at home grow more entrenched and calcified; Mandate culture looks more and more to the past, to tradition and the fading years of glory for inspiration.

+1500 years: The Provincial Expansion. Improvements in Gate technology enable the Mandate to reach more distant worlds, spurring a new wave of colonization. Unlike the previous colony efforts, which used huge sleeper ships that took centuries to cross the gaps between star systems, these new colonies are connected by FTL gates to their mother worlds. While this rush of colonization revitalizes the flagging Mandate, it also creates a new halo of Fringe worlds that chafe under Mandate rule.

Worse, as the human homeworld is in the centre of the gate network, it sees little benefit from the influx of resources and wealth from these new colonies. Instead, it is the mother worlds of the new colonies that grow stronger from this expansion. Emboldened by their new strength, these worlds push back against the power of the Empires fortress.

The old Emperor – the grandfather of the present Empress – responds by launching a series of punitive wars to force the rebellious worlds back into line. In doing so, he underlines the weakness of the homeworld – the heart of the Mandate has become little more than a parasite, a bully that produces little, but takes from the vibrant worlds at the fringe.

+1600: Recent Times. The previous Emperor – father of the present Empress – tried to improve relations with the outer worlds, and undo some of the damage his father did, but he dies untimely. Taking advantage of the chaos, several outer worlds rebel, becoming the most powerful enemy of The Mandate. The Grand Fleet is dispatched to put down this rebellion, but sabotage scatters its constituent vessels across a sphere XX light years in diameter. As none of these ships have the capability to construct their own Gates, they are now stranded until rescued.

Inspirations
The human homeworld is based on Tsarist Russia, specifically Moscow. It features a heavily hierarchical bureaucracy, with many entitled nobles and princelings, a huge army, a poor and relatively uneducated population, and a great respect for tradition and for the past. There are officers and higher-class nobles/merchants speaking in slightly archaic, florid style and using each others titles/formal modes of address, while lower-class individuals/crewmen use shorter, simpler, cruder forms of speech, and demonstrate an almost religious reverence for the Empress and the Mandate.

The game is set to make references to its fictional past in ways that reference Tsarist Russian history, particularly the 18th century Articles of War.

Gameplay
The Mandate is a 6 player cooperative RPG with tactical space combat and RTS elements, primarily in the 'Boarding Operations' sections, but also isometrically, allowing players to free-roam within their ship.

In The Mandate, players will take the role of a disgraced captain, created through the in-game character creator. Although the first part of the game is single player, the game later opens up to be a maximum of 6 concurrent players. However, Perihelion Interactive have stated that PVP and larger scale battles may be possible as DLC or content added at a later date.

Although the game begins in single player, as players progress through the early stages of the world, they will be able to join each other with 6 players playing consecutively. Perihelion Interactive have stated a want to create tactical gameplay mechanics similar to the trinity system, each captain specializing in an attribute area, although these have not yet been created and finalized.

The Mandate is an isometric RPG, played from the top-down perspective. Featuring 3-key combat mechanics, players are able to board enemy ships for an RTS experience, attack vessels from space, or board and support Starbases and other structures.

Questing
An RPG, The Mandate features dialogue and quest options from both outside and within your ship. The amount of dialogue and quest options. Depending on the amount of final funding, Perihelion Interactive will increase content in line with their pledge rewards and milestones.

The proof of concept states that players are able to take dignitaries and other NPC's to their ships and take on diplomacy missions, with other types of missions being planned throughout development.

Upgrades
There are planned upgrades and research abilities for The Mandate. These range from Starbase development, ship, and crew development. According to the developer, research is inspired heavily by popular science fiction title X Com, an early PC release.

Ships can be designed by the player, using module-type elements allowing players to mix and match. Although the ship building tool on the games website shows only three sections to be changed, the developer has stated that anywhere between 8-12 parts of the ship will be able to be changed.

Player built and controlled Starbases also mirror this module design philosophy.

Weapons and research will be able to be developed, although this has not yet been detailed. It is also inspired by X Com.

Rogue-like elements
Key player assets such as officers can be trained and created by the player, but once they die, they are gone from the game entirely, offering a rogue-like element to the players crew.