User:Thomas Auge/Warring Factions

Warring Factions is a massively multiplayer online strategy game played in a web browser. It has been created for hardcore gamers and geeks, rather than the casual gamer.

Noteworthy Features

 * Open technology and research system
 * Custom designed ships
 * Intelligent combat logic, matching single vessels against each other
 * Colonies being simulated as independent economical systems
 * 3D Universe optionally viewable in VRML (approx. 100,000 systems with several planets each)
 * Player driven content and storyline
 * Faction government model with players being elected into presidency and other positions
 * Strategical command layer allowing allies, factions, or empires to act together

Development
The initial version of Warring Factions was created by Thomas Auge. Since then the game has been developed by volunteers recruited from the playerbase and has expanded greatly since the initial version. However, the spirit of development remains the same with complexity being the top priority. Current maintainer is Michael D. Scarborough.

Current Games
The universe is persistent, as games last forever. When one game becomes too advanced for new players to catch up, a new game, called an instance, is opened.


 * Shattered Hope - The First Instance of Warring Factions
 * The Idle Diverge - The Second Instance of Warring Factions, slightly slower than the first one.
 * Era of Unitos - The latest instance of Warring Factions, based on a new economy and universe model.

Storyline
In the first version of Warring Factions all players started on one world. While this led to much intended conflict, it favored one ruling player or empire:

... ''The true menace is among us, smiling and telling us we must be protected at all costs, even if that cost is our Freedom. I do not know about you, but for me that price is too high. '' ...

So factions were introduced, allowing for frontlines and better control of personal territory:

... ''As soon as all of the NSI ships were secured on the Warp Sphere, it and it's thousands of fighters suddenly vanished from the old galaxy. Our ancestors suddenly found themselves amongst new constellations, a new beginning. Captain Aurhane felt the same way; with the marines on his ship he captured a handful of the colony ships and flew off to rule his own empire. He ruled with an iron fist, he was eventually assassinated and his empire was split amongst his lieutenants, forming the empires of the Alliance. The great scientist Loraine Hilderman lead half of the remaining NSI fleet to the planet Sanctuary to start the faction we all know as the Association. The remaining ships were under the command of Jim Sayavong, an extremely intelligent merchant; he laid down the foundations for the faction we know as the Commonwealth today. '' ...

Every once in a while special admin characters intervene if the game balance is threatened, which also finds it's way into the lore:

... ''A lone soul transcended the need for a physical reality, and watched as the rippling fire flashed past his home, his life, and his existence. He followed the flame as it sped through space; it was as if had become part of it. He could sense it, the desire for destruction. He felt the pain the explosion caused to every sentient being it obliterated. As he rode his steed he thought back to an earlier time when he had opened a gateway to another place to save a group of humans. How easy it seemed back then to channel energy from the stars to create that magnificent phenomenon. As bodies and minds melted into the heat, he began to channel the energy it had created back towards the place it had originated.'' ...

When the decision was made to introduce new instances, the universe split:

... ''It was the littlest thing. Just another probe. Thousands go through wormholes every day. We still don’t know why this one was any different. Maybe it had a fission device in it. Maybe the probe had a black-hole generator. Maybe it wasn’t the probe at all, the wormhole was just at the end of its life. The reason doesn’t matter, they rarely do, what does matter is what it did to us, to this universe. The most coherent sentence I ever got out of a physicists is that, “space and time tore. It’s not supposed to do that.” The sensors watching the wormhole all suddenly filled with a white light. Now these aren’t ho-dunka sensors that can only record our visual spectrum, these were made to record everything: Radio, Microwave, Infrared, UV, Gamma, a few more words I cant pronounce. And all at once they just started recording at the highest possible levels. It was something never seen before and hopefully never again. The levels went down to normal, the only thing wrong was that the wormhole was gone. '' ...

Stories are created by admins and players alike. The RP background is not relevant to the game play, but it provides an ongoing documentation of ingame events and provides good prosa for those interested.

Guides and Tutorials

 * Tubesock's Comprehensive Beginners Guide dead link
 * Crabrock's Beginner Tutorial dead link
 * Oxford Library Arcana - Advanced Research and Combat Tutorials

Third Party Tools

 * Ogini's Warfacts Helpers
 * Lord Asriel's Research o'Matic