User:Kaltapar/sandbox

Firestorm Armada
Firestorm Armada is a science fiction space naval combat tabletop war game produced by Spartan Games. Players use models of starships, and tokens representing starfighters and mines, to represent a space battle. It is recommended that the surface upon which the game is played should be covered with a black tablecloth with stars on it, as this improves the appearance of the game.

Gameplay is turn-based and designed for two players. If there are more than two players then they must form teams as the rules only allow for two factions to be involved in any game.

The game is intended to be played using a dedicated range of models and tokens made and sold by Spartan Games. The models are made of resin and pewter castings and supplied in kit form. The models are typically 4 to 20 centimetres long when assembled, depending on ship class, and are fitted with transparent flight stands which are a perquisite for proper gameplay as the are used for range finding, targeting and other purposes.

Game universe
Spartan Games have created a comprehensive science fiction universe in which the game is set. It is useful to read the extensive back story as this will help the player understand the game better.

Fathom's Reach
Firestorm Armada is set in a region of space known to humans as Fathom's Reach, also called the Storm Zone due to the abundance of violent stellar activity in the area. It has always been strategically important as the territories of most factions in the game border onto it, making it the inevitable theatre for a war involving all the major powers in the known galaxy.

Races of Firestorm Armada
There are six major races in the game. These might be better referred to as factions, since not all are single species and humans comprise three of the races.

Aquan Sebrutan
The Aquan Sebrutan is a collection of several different species of sea-dwelling aliens who come from the same star system, and have worked together as one for centuries. Including humanlike amphibians and giant octopids of formidable intelligence, they are usually referred to as the Aquans. The Aquans travel through space in bioships armed with powerful laser weaponry. These ships have been upgraded and refined considerably over a millennia of use, and have the best life-support systems of any race. It is said the Aquans had travelled in space for centuries before humans reached their own moon.

As well as the old Aquans, the Sebrutan also incorporates the Torquai, a human society who chose to join the Aquans, attracted by the races ethos of peace, stability and environmental protection. The Aquans are not a warlike society, and have joined the war as they are no longer able to tolerate the continual abrasion of their territory and attacks on their peoples by the Directorate and the Dindrenzi.

Dindrenzi Federation
The Dindrenzi Federation is a human society that was once part of the Terran Charter but broke away in order to escape overbearing governance from Terra, which led to a war of independence that lasted over a century.

Distrustful of democracy and government in general, the Dindrenzi are ruled by a ruthlessly meritocratic autocracy. Through a combination of paranoia and xenophobia, the Dindrenzi do not interact much with their neighbours, with the exception of the Directorate, whom they have to thank for a good deal of their technology.

It was the Dindrenzi who started the war that forms the main Firestorm Armada story arc, by invading Fathom's Reach with the intention of pushing through to the Terran Hub systems and capturing Terra itself, which remains a very real possibility as they continue to ceaselessly advance across the Storm Zone.

The Directorate
The Directorate is a small human territory that is the sole preserve of a trio of mighty hypercorporations. Everything in Directorate space is an asset belonging to the Directorate, including the people, who are born into the employ of the corporations. Obsessed with profit and shareholder returns, the Directorate exists to support its owners. Entirely amoral, the Directorate will do absolutely anything to fulfill its business objectives.

The Directorate, via their contacts in other races, are expert agitators who frequently start wars on purpose in order to be able to sell more of the warships and weaponry which are among their best-selling product lines and available to anyone, no questions asked. It is suspected that the Directorate may have provoked the Dindrenzi War by exerting influence within the Federation, particularly in the Church of the Dramos Angels.

The Directorate have the most advanced technology in the galaxy thanks to their ruthless R&D program, including the much dreamed-of cloaking field device, which makes their warships hard to hit.

The Rethloza
The Rethloza are a hive-dwelling race of giant arachnomorphic insects. Focused entirely on survival and expansion, they are strangers to the idea of past-times, arts and other non-essential activities. The Rethloza are brilliant fighters, due in part to their use of duels to the death as a means of solving most any dispute or conflict of interests.

The Rethloza were not interested in the affairs of other races until their continual need for expansion brought them to borderlines with other species. Needing to take territory from other races in order to extend their own, the Rethloza were enthusiastic when approached by the Dindrenzi and the Directorate with the promise of a share in the conquered Terran Alliance in return for full military cooperation in the coming war. The Dindrenzi, the Directorate and the Rethloza, together with a few minor races such as the Kedorians, formed the Zenian League to launch a co-ordinated attack on their elder neighbors.

Sorylian Collective
The Sorylians are a race of reptiles originating from the deep galactic south. Long-lived, ponderous and slow, the Sorylians live in a very stable and peaceful mutual Collective ruled by philosophers. The Sorylians simply wish to be left alone by other races, partially as dealings with neighbours are often stained by their different pace of life. Sorylians normally take decades to reach major decisions and are very poor at quick actions, thus they suffered very heavy losses when the Zenian League powers first attacked, but then acted with what was, for them, astounding speed, in deploying their entire combined navy to repel the invaders.

Terran Alliance
The Terran Alliance is the oldest human society in the galaxy and it government has roots leading right back to the United Nations of the 20th, 21st and 22nd centuries. The Alliance was originally called the Terran Satellite Charter, and grew out of the original colonies founded by the first interstellar human travelers. It owed its name to the Charter Satellite Network, the largest ever communications system which assures superluminal communications across all of Terran space. It is this network that is responsible for the mature, corrupt, old-fashioned democratic government of the Alliance being heavily centralized on Terra, with most policy decisions made by the Central Council in Moscow. It was this ineffective and heavy-handed style of government which caused the growth of much dissent across the Charter, eventually culminating in the breakaway of the Dindrenzi and the Torquai.

Since the Dindrenzi War of Independence, the Alliance has been desperate for resources and new worlds to keep itself sustained, which has led to a massive colonization push towards the galactic core, into apparently unoccupied space. The expenditure on this crippled much new development, leading to Alliance technology becoming distinctly old-fashioned and undeveloped. However, this does bring the advantage of reliability, most Terran ships can continue functioning long after newer designs have suffered multiple critical failures. Because of its size, the Alliance also has strength in numbers, holding up the Dindrenzi advance by the simple tactic of outnumbering the enemy.