Hi, it's Jorden again. Here's the description for our first pregenerated empire: Sherwood Industries.   

         Founded in 2061 Sherwood Industries quickly made a name for themselves in the field that many would come to know as "aggressive safety". Many a mercenary soldier on the frontlines of the corporate disputes owe their lives and careers to a Sherwood Industries certified ship. With a focus on pin-point accurate missile countermeasures and truly monolithic shielding systems most Sherwood Industry ships return from missions in the same condition they left, minus the fuel spent on power and the ammo spent on victory. Trust Sherwood Industries to keep your units safe, your territories secure, and your enemies cowering.

Suggested Traits:

·         Bonus to shield health

·         Bonus to point defense accuracy (or tracking)

·         Penalty to shield efficiency (Use more energy)

This is the first of our pregenerated corporations which will be added in to the game once the corporation funciton is fully implemented. As a first note, the bonuses and penalties presented at the end all relate to ships only, largely because those are the easiest qualities to adjust in the current system. There are no numbers included because none of this is implemented just yet so it hasn't undergone any balance testing. As a result I really should make it clear that nothing in this post or any of the other posts for pregenerated corporations should be considered final and it's all subject to change.

The blurb above is intended to be the description that players will read when choosing a corporation to play as and we'll be sure to include a space for players to write blurbs for their own corporations, though there's no current plan for any of these descriptions to be read-able in actual play. I wrote the description as an advertisement for Sherwood Industries; the idea behind these pregenerated corporations and their descriptions as that they all basically rose to military prominence during the Asteroid Engagements. The advertisement above is meant to convince other corporations or governments (or the player) to choose Sherwood Industries to help them secure access to resource rich territory out in the asteroid belt.

Now, a personal note. Sherwood Industries is a direct homage to Steve Sherwood, a close friend to most of the team whom we lost in mid-August of 2020. Most of us met each other through video and tabletop gaming which is to say that our whole indie development team arose, mostly, from a rather large gaming group that formed over decades. Steve was always known for his particular approach to combat in games. Steve believed that a purely defensive resource was a wasted resource and so if he was ever given the opportunity to make use of armor or shields which would attack the enemy while Steve himself was also attacking that enemy then it wasn't even a question of "if" he would do it, only how long it would take him to make it happen. When Steve passed Arthur asked me, as the game's content writer, to write him into the game where I could and so this is the first way that Steve has made it into our game. Rank: Warmaster doesn't currently have ship-based defensive structures that shoot back but I felt that the idea of a company which would dedicate excessive power into shields and point defense systems that would render the ships that used them untouchable was a good place to start.

I hope you've enjoyed this first look into our pregenerated empires as well as a bit of an impromptu "story of the team". Tune in next time as we discuss Loharani Luxury Crafts.