Imperium Galactica

Imperium Galactica
Developer(s) Digital Reality
Publisher(s) GT Interactive
Producer(s)
  • Jason Schreiber
  • Nick Bridger
Designer(s)
  • Gábor Fehér
  • István Kiss
Programmer(s)
  • István Kiss
  • Ferenc Szabó
Composer(s) Tamás Kreiner
Platform(s) MS-DOS
Release date(s) March, 1997
Genre(s) 4X, Real-time strategy, Real-time tactics
Mode(s) Single player

Imperium Galactica is a computer game made by a Hungarian company Digital Reality that combines many of the features of 4X games with some of the features of real-time tactical games. The same company would later make its sequel, Imperium Galactica II, in 1999. Imperium Galactica was published and distributed by GT Interactive in 1997. The soundtrack is the work of Tamás Kreiner which was the basis of his reputation.[1] Nexus: The Jupiter Incident, developed by the Hungarian-based Mithis Entertainment, was originally planned and designed as "Imperium Galactica 3" but in development renamed and refocussed to a real-time tactics game.[2]

Description

Imperium Galactica is a single-player game developed by Digital Reality and released in 1997. It has both the combat and resource management elements of a real-time strategy game and the vast research tree and colony-building aspects of traditional turn-based 'space-empire-building' 4X (eXpand, eXploit, eXplore, and eXterminate) games such as the Master of Orion series.

The player, in the role of Dante Johnson, begins the game with command of a small capital ship - a Guardian-class Destroyer - and three Raptor-class Fighters (later in the game the player would command up to 28 capital ships and 180 fighters in one fleet), and three colonies, named Achilles, Naxos and San Sterling, unable to move beyond the boundaries of the small sector assigned for him to defend and expand. The story, concerning the Galactic Empire's current status in the 4th millennium, during the 3200's, serves as an entry point, gradually introducing the player to new concepts (planet management, space battles, ground battles, research, component & ship production, diplomatic functions) as he rises through the ranks from Lieutenant to Captain, Commander, Admiral and eventually Grand Admiral (where all functions are unlocked and the player has full control), all the while revealing the character's shrouded past, revealing that Johnson is the Galactic Empire's secret weapon that was created in desperation, an android, through flashbacks.

Interestingly, regardless of the player's actions, the galaxy outside his or her view continues to take shape even as they are completing the "training" ranks prior to being promoted to Admiral. In this way, a player who quickly defeats his initial enemies at early ranks might enter the larger galaxy before the other races have been too badly hurt by the antagonist species, the Dargslan Kingdom. A player might also take an excessive amount of time in these "training" missions and get promoted to find that the entire galaxy has been conquered, making the situation almost hopeless except by exploiting game bugs.

Alien Races

Alliance of Free Traders (AFT): "Once part of the Old Empire, the traders left to create a new empire for themselves. They are a peaceful race of traders and enjoy good relations with Ychoms."

Dargslans: "Very little is known about the Dargslans. Intelligence reports show that they have extremely powerful ground attack forces, as well as a competent space fleet."

Dribs: "The Dribs are a proud race, with advanced knowledge of mechanics and architecture. They have known of the Dargslan race for a long time, since the Dargslans occupied some Drib territory."

Ecaleps: "With the rapid expansion of their empire, tax revenue has increased to a very high level. This partially explains their obsession with money..."

Free Nations Society (FNS): "Once part of the Old Empire, they declared themselves independent a long time ago. The Free Nations Society has developed rapidly, occupying territories with ease. The Society is well known for their arrogant attitude and contempt for the Empire."

Garthogs: "The Garthogs are a contemptible and un-trustworthy race, who implant their young with bio-mechanical devices. They have a special interest in mechanics and are renowned for stealing the technology of other races. It is rumored that they destroyed an entire race, known as the Nubs, to obtain their secrets. The Garthog Empire is close to the Human Empire and there has been conflict for 10 years."

Morgarths: "The Morgarths are an insular and hostile race...."

Sulleps: "The Sulleps are a warlike race with a very strict social structure. From a very young age, Sulleps are subjected to military training. Such is their code of combat, it is more honourable for them to die in battle than surrender. "

Ychoms: "A peaceful trader race that enjoys good relations with Alliance of Free Traders..."

Colony management

Colonies, as in all 4x-games, play a central role in Imperium Galactica. They are the centres for production and research, as well your main source of income by way of taxes. Neutral computer-controlled traders found on the starmap generate additional income if a planet they land on has appropriate buildings, these being Trader's Space Ports and Banks.

A colony typically consists of the following buildings. Buildings require power and workers to function.

Combat

Generically speaking there are two types of battles in the game: Space Battles and Planetary assault.

Space Battles

Space battles are exclusively fought by fleets of spaceships. A fleet in Imperium Galactica can consist of up to 28 capital ships and 180 starfighters.

A space battle would last as long as either one side was completely annihilated or one side retreated from battle. However, the cap was not in effect when merging fleets.

Planetary assault

The objective of planetary assaults were to take (or to defend) a planet from another civilization. Usually, especially in later games, a player would have to break through the planetary defenses first before being able to land tanks for the actual ground combat to take place. A planetary defense could consist of up to five planetary guns, a shield generator (essentially increasing the durability of planetary guns) and three starbases. If a fleet of the planet owner was nearby when the battle started, it would be present as well, greatly increasing the difficulty. Once a player (or the AI) had broken through this first line of defense, combat would move on to the surface. The attacker would place the tanks he brought along in the outskirts of the colony, while the defender placed them on the inside, usually nearby defense buildings as fortresses. The fighting would not stop until either side was obliterated.

Late game AI colonies tended to have a lot of defensive buildings, though, and even with a fleet with maxed out capacity of high-tech tanks would probably need multiple attempts to take a colony.

Research

Research is a little different from the common "produce as many research points to get technology as fast as possible" theme like in most other strategy games; instead, there are five research centers for five categories (Computer, Construction, A.I., Military, Machinery); but on each planet you control you are only allowed one of these five categories, marked by a colored symbol on the system card. Each technology requires a certain amount of research centers in each of these five categories before it can be researched for trade goods or command counters(which required time and money). The player is forced to either demolish and rebuild research centers repeatedly, or gain new planets by either conquest or colonization (the latter becomes available relatively late into the game). A.I. players aren't bound to this limitation, because every A.I. has a fixed technology pool, which does not develop any further during the game. As a special exception, players may find in the beginning a single planet in Garthog space which has two research centers.

Production

One builds production facilities for equipment (shipboard weapons & equipment), tanks and starships (fighters, destroyers, cruisers); and Flagships require their own production facility, an orbital station. Each factory contributes to a total factory capacity, which designates how fast the player can produce items (given the player has enough money to produce units).

Starships above fighter size come with basic equipment (e.g. a hyper drive and some of the weakest weapons); The player has to produce the desired equipment and manually reequip every ship in a fleet. While this works out fairly good in the beginning, it gets tedious in later stages of a game, when it's not uncommon to handle five or six fleets at once. It is unknown why Digital Reality went for this system instead of a generic blueprint design, which you can change in one place (much like in Master of Orion 2 or in Digital Reality's sequel game Imperium Galactica II - Alliances).

Unit Types

Ships

Ground vehicles

Reception

The game was generally given moderate to good scores. Critics enjoyed the game's unusual depth, replayability, colony management, and research system but found fault with the monotonous nature of the endgame and several major bugs, such as the ability to force an attacking fleet to retreat even if it is attacked by a single fighter, since the enemy fleet will return to restock missiles before making another attack. Other notable flaws were the 5,000-building limit which would prevent colony expansion late in the game (this was corrected in a patch), and that the game's most powerful ship could not be researched (this was explained as a design decision, as it would make the game too easy).

Despite the game's many flaws and limited distribution, it spawned a sequel, Imperium Galactica II: Alliances. A similar game also from Digital Reality, Haegemonia: Legions of Iron, is regarded by some as being a spiritual successor. A third sequel, known as Imperium Galactica 3: Genesis was in the works, but was later renamed Galaxy Andromeda and again to what is now known as Nexus: The Jupiter Incident. It has little to do with the Imperium Galactica franchise, and is actually a completely different type of game as well - what Mithis calls it a "Tactical Fleet Simulator". After GT Interactive's bankruptcy, the name Imperium Galactica was lost by Digital Reality and another Hungarian development studio called Philos Laboratories, responsible for Theocracy borrowed the title. This was Imperium Galactica 3. Later Philos Laboratories lost the title when the lease expired and renamed the development to Galaxy Andromeda. When the studio went bankrupt its successor, Mithis Entertainment, responsible for Battlestations: Midway continued the development and renamed the project to Nexus: The Jupiter Incident. Although it's considered not to do anything with original franchise, the game tells the story that happened before the original Imperium Galactica title as was planned from the beginning.

Imperium Galactica still has a very small but dedicated following, with efforts being made to remake the game in various forms. Most recently, this has been in the form of the Galactic Empire Mod project for the open-source Spring RTS engine. This effort, like several prior attempts, remains mired in "development hell", due to few skilled developers having both the time and interest to work on the project. Another group of fans works on open-ig and was able to achieve the permission of Digital Reality to reuse the original artwork to create an authentic remake.[3]

References

  1. ↑ "Interview with composer Tamás Kreiner and Ervin Nagy". GSoundtracks. Retrieved 2010-01-26.
  2. ↑ James Yee (2012-10-10). "Nexus 2 Interview". kickstarter-conversations.com. Retrieved 2013-07-26. Nexus had a long history already before it was published. The game was developed by Mithis, a Hungarian games development studio in Budapest. They had signed the game at the time with German publisher CDV. CDV decided that they wanted a license for the game and they acquired the license for Imperium Galactica. So, the game we know as Nexus would have been Imperium Galactica 3 as far as CDV was concerned.
  3. ↑ open-ig - Open source reimplementation of Imperium Galactica on GitHub

External links

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