Alternate Reality Races

More Guts

Although Alternate Reality is really a primary trait, it is responsible for races so unusual it deserves its own topic.

Population and Growth

The Alternate Reality race is a highly developed energy-based life form. Their "bodies" are fragile, flattening like paper under any but the lightest gravitational conditions. As a result they have adapted to living in starbases instead, controlling their planets from orbit. Their growth rate is still determined by the planet's value as these numbers indicate their tolerance to such factors as solar radiation and planetary gravity wells. Their maximum population per planet is determined by the starbase size. This ranges from 250,000 for starter colonies to 3,000,000 for their Death Star. Living on the starbase has a downside: if the starbase is destroyed, the population goes with it.

Scanners

Alternate Reality colonists perform scanning duty from the starbase. They distance they scan is determined by the following formula:

Scanning Distance = SQRT(Population / 10)

The Ultra Station and Death Star come with equipment that allows the colonists to also perform penetrating scans at half that distance as long as you don't select the No Advanced Scanners trait when defining the race.

Factories

Since Alternative lifestylers aren't suited to planetary operations, they can't build factories either. However, due to their energy-based nature, the number of resources available at each planet is determined as follows:

Resources = Habitability_Value x SQRT(Population x Energy_Tech_Level / Efficiency_Coefficient).

The Efficiency Coefficient is specified in the Custom Race wizard. As the Energy tech level increases, so the efficiency.

Mining

These folks can't build mines. Using energy powers alone, they can do a limited amount of mining equal to this formula:

Mining = SQRT(population)/10

However, since they don't actually inhabit the planet, there is nothing to stop them from remote mining worlds they own as well as uncolonized worlds.

Defenses

Likewise, they can't build defenses. Since they live and die with their starbase, defenses don't have any meaning to them. People can't bomb Alternate Reality planets, and mineral packets flung from other planets don't kill Alternate Reality colonists.

The best defenses are advanced armor and weapons for the starbases, and minefields.

Starbases

Starbases costs Alternators 20% less than other races (though this is not cumulative with the Improved Starbases trait). They are also able to build the Death Star, the biggest, baddest thing in the sky.

Colonization

Alternators can't build normal colonization modules. They must build the more expensive Orbital Colonization modules capable of deploying as an Orbital Fort at the target world. This module can be mounted only on the colonizer hull. The hull is also capable of limited bombing to get rid of any pesky enemy startup colonies. An Orbital Colonization module can kill 2000 enemy colonists each year that it bombs.

There is a cost for traveling to other worlds. Interstellar travel kills 3% of any colonists in the fleet per year.

Alternators cannot drop colonists on worlds in order to take them over (no ground combat).