Video Game / The Last Federation

You are the last Hydral. The Hydrals were the tyrants of the solar system by dint of achieving space flight before anyone else and shooting down everyone who tried to join them. Their empire doesn't last: the Evucks dropped a Depopulation Bomb, and the Acutians attached rockets to a moon and crashed it into the Hydral homeworld, completely destroying it. The player, having broken with his people, was away from the homeworld and crash landed on one of the other populated worlds. Biding his time, the last Hydral waits in captivity until the species reaches spaceflight, at which point he steals their unique flagship and escapes.

The Last Federation is a mixture of Turn-Based Strategy and Real-Time Strategy by Arcen Games, that has a distant sequel in Stars Beyond Reach.

The player's ultimate goal is to unite the (surviving) species under a federation. While you have no direct control over the eight candidates, you can influence their construction, research and and diplomatic agenda, and also directly involve yourself with their space battles. Combat is turn-based, with everyone's actions resolving at the same time. The player can move and attack, or spend a turn to use a special ability.

Two expansions, Betrayed Hope and Lost Technologies, in addition to the usual expansion content, add entirely new game modes that toy with the base game's "peace at any cost" theme.

Tropes that appear in the game:

• 2-D Space: Combat is held on 2D plane. The strategic map also functions like a 2D map.
• 4X: No, the game isn't one, it's set inside one. Your job is to ensure that whoever wins gets a diplomatic victory.
• Adam Smith Hates Your Guts: Invoked when trading for Hydral tech on the black market. The text says outright that the traders don't even know what it is, only that it's Hydral, they know you want it, and they're not going to make it cheap.
• After-Combat Recovery: The hydral flagship is fully repaired after battle.
• Alien Non-Interference Clause: Any species that has obtained spaceflight objects to you uplifting any new species (even if you raised them yourself), and their spy probes will nail you for smuggling spaceflight tech and give you a bad reputation.
• The Alliance: The Burlusts, Acutians, and Boarines can form the Union of Independent States as an alternative to the Federation if the latter is growing too powerful too quickly. The Federation itself also has some shades of this, as it is very decentralized in practice.
• All Planets Are Earth-Like: Averted. Each species has its own preferred planet type and they might not even start on such, leading one of their early request be for you to deliver them some terraforming tech.
• Always Chaotic Evil:
  • The Burlust. They declare a war at drop of a hat, even if they don't have realistic chances to win.
  • The Obscura are always hostile to all other races, and, in Invasion Mode, they will do everything in their power to kill everyone.
• Artificial Stupidity: Without player intervention, wars can become eternal stalemates as two sides produce more than they can kill, leading to ever increasing number of ships fighting over a single planet.
• Asteroid Miners: You can do this to earn money and resources.
• Black-and-Gray Morality: About half the races are land-grabbing bastards; the other half, while not particularly evil, can get aggressive, territorial and sneaky — and don't forget that the player character is likely to resort to quite a bit of skulduggery and double-dealing to get their Federation going with a minimum of fuss.
• Bullet Hell: There can be dozens of enemy ships throwing hundreds of bullets at you in combat. Your flagship is too big to be threading the needle, but it is sturdy enough to weather the storm if you're smart.
• Butt-Monkey:
  • In-universe, the Peltians. They are always likened to animals ("weak, like animals"), have the weakest armies and can easily be intimidated. When you sell their people to slavery, you can gain positive influence on them because they become so scared of you. They are usually very easily wiped out if the player does not help them. A serious case of Who's Laughing Now? when they research the unique upgrades that give them 125 times the orbital bombardment capability of any other race.
  • It can be very profitable to have a designated enemy, steal all their stuff, blow up their ships for cash, and in the process rack up thousands of negative influence points on a scale where -100 is enough to count as "hatred." The Acutians are in a good position for this on a default start, as they hate your guts already.
• The Chessmaster: You, if you want to get anything done. Letting public order decay, medical facilities recede to the stone age, and resource run scarce might be bad for a race, but just creates new opportunities for you. Even running a race's influence into the negatives may very well be part of The Plan.
• Colony Drop: The way the Acutians finished off the Hydrals. The Last Hydral can also convince the CEOs to do it again on a race they hate enough, at the cost of the Acutians ending up hated by everyone else.
  Protip: Watch the sky for any moons you don't recognize.
• Colour-Coded for Your Convenience: Each species has its own color.
• Corrupt Corporate Executive: The Acutians, who “acquire” new planets.
• Crazy Survivalist: The Evucks are an entire species.
• Cruelty Is the Only Option: If an anti-federation superpower forms, the player has to break it up somehow, which usually involves completely eradicating one or more of the species that it consists of.
• Deadpan Snarker: Your computer never misses a chance to snark. The Last Hydral has moments when directly dealing with alien governments.
• Defeat Means Friendship: Interesting case with the Burlusts. Players can challenge one of their warlords to duel at a whim. Success kills the warlord, scores massive influence with his replacement and a bit with the remaining warlords, AND improves your general reputation with the Burlust.
• Defector from Decadence: The Last Hydral, which is how he managed to escape the destruction of the Hydral homeworld.
• Deflector Shields: Almost all ships have them.
• Depopulation Bomb: The Evucks dropped one on the Hydral, reducing the population from billions to a few thousand. It also caused their formerly oceanic world to dry up. They're also willing to do it again, if need be.
• Diplomatic Impunity: The Hydral apparently, as you are free to approach any government at any time, no matter how much they hate you. Whether you can actually take any (positive) actions while there is another matter entirely.
• Earth-Shattering Kaboom: The Acutians did this to the Hydral homeworld, by turning one of their moons into a relativistic kill vehicle. They can be persuaded to do it again. The Evucks also have the technology to turn a gas giant into a fission bomb if they feel cornered.
• The Empire: A race with overwhelming power may form the Fear Empire. Unfortunately the game's goal is to unite the solar system under a Federation, so letting these guys win is a game over. The Hydrals also ruled one before their planet blew up.
• False Flag Operation: You can "expose" a conspiracy by one race against the others. These conspiracies are always created by the player.
• The Federation: Ultimate goal of the game. How peaceful it is depends on what species you can convince to join it and how you guided their development.
• Genius Sweet Tooth: Inverted. The Evucks can't stand the construction of the Confectionery building.
• A God Is You: The game could probably be best summarized as a Vorlon Simulator.
• Heroic Mime: The Hydral doesn't speak for most of the game. The opening lines and the racial government proposals are spoken by him, but most of the writing is your ship's computer.
• Hive Queen: The Thoraxian queen. You can assassinate her, at which point the Thoraxian planet will be thrown into chaos until a new queen rises. Her successor will also hate your guts, making direct deals with them MUCH harder from then on.
• Hydra Problem: The Hydrals were giant four-headed snake-like aliens, and listing for the "Hydral Mech Suit" Steam card says the heads can grow back.
• Imported Alien Phlebotinum: One of the basic tools available to the player. Research (or steal technology from someone else), then gift it to someone else. You can also convince one species to give tech to someone else, which makes the races like each other better. In the early game the player can give spacefaring technology to a species, instantly propelling them to space age at the "cost" of allowing them a say in solar affairs.
• Insectoid Aliens: The Thoraxians. They're very open about the their intent to eat everyone.
• Klingon Promotion: The basis of Burlurst social structure. Possibly the Acutians as well, albeit in the corporate (and thus presumably non-lethal) sense.
• Last of His Kind: The player character is the last Hydral.
• Legion of Doom: If two or more races outside the Federation both have interplanetary empires and like each other, they can form the Solar Axis Pact, one of several potential rivals for the Federation. Also, the Trifecta of Superiority.
• Leit Motif: Each of the races has a theme tune that plays wherever you orbit one of their planets. The tune is usually inspired by the race's hat. The Acutians have synths, the Burlust have a military march with drums and fighting sounds in the background, and so on.
• Let's You and Him Fight: An extremely useful tactic. If you have two races standing in the way of your Federation, attack one in concert with the other and watch both sides bleed.
• Lightning Bruiser: Your enemies use Bullet Hell firing patterns, and you're flying one of the biggest, bulkiest ships in the game. Once you've gotten the knack of tactical combat, you'll still be dodging most of that firepower.
• A Long Time Ago, in a Galaxy Far, Far Away...: It's set in a fictional solar system inhabited by various aliens.
• Lost Technology: Hydral technology. Entire missions are about discovering weapons and abilities for your ship. The expansion of the same name adds Hydral techs to the tech tree, and gives the races unique abilities that unlock based on TIME rather than research.
• Mechanical Lifeforms: The Andors and Acutians.
• Moral Event Horizon: In-universe convincing the Acutians to launch another planet-cracker, don't expect anyone to forgive you. The computer is shocked that you'd even consider it.
• My Species Doth Protest Too Much: The player character was this to the (now extinct) Hydral race. Understandably, none of the other peoples of the galaxy particularly trust them at the beginning. Betrayed Hope averts this by putting the player in a scenario where they have to conquer each of the other races and recreate the Hydral Empire.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Very easy to do, helping one struggling species can cause them to suddenly snowball into massive threat to the others.
• No Item Use for You: Your special abilities are disabled during uplift missions and Burlust Warlord duels.
• Non-Entity General: Inverted. The player entity pulls a lot of strings, but you're never on one faction's side any longer than a single battle. Thus, it's possible to get a race to do something even if they hate it, if you get another race they like to do the asking. The game calls this "backdooring".
• No Place for Me There: Once the system is united, the player character sets his ship to leave the system.
• No Plans, No Prototype, No Backup: Your flagship was the prototype model, and the Last Hydral completely wrecked the R&D facility while getting it. By the time you've installed some Hydral technology that only you can use, nobody else can reverse-engineer it either.
• One Nation Under Copyright: The Acutians. Their leadership is entirely made of CEOs and they change based on the economy.
• Our Hydras Are Different: The Hydrals were a species resembling four-headed snakes.
• Out-of-Character Moment: When the Skylaxians take over a planet, the computer expresses surprise and wonder out loud if that's against their honor code.
• Permadeath: Normally, death requires a number of months to recover. However, a startup option disables this, causing the ship to be destroyed. This option doesn't prevent saving and loading by itself, there's a second ironman option as well.
• Planet of Hats: Acutians are ultra-capitalist, Andors are peaceful and good, Boarines are isolationist and solitary, Burlust will only consider war, Evucks are paranoid and amoral, Peltians are peaceful communists and crap at ground combat, Thoraxians are a Hive Mind and will kill everyone if given a chance and Skylaxians are highly advanced diplomats with a Code of Honour.
• Proud Warrior Race Guy: The Burlusts. They only respond to threats or bribes. The Acutians are also all warriors, to a lesser extent.
• Raising Sim: Has shades of this. You guide the species and try to unite them... which is easier said than done.
• Rapid FTL Proliferation: The various planets will independently discover interplanetary space flight after some time. The player may accelerate this by visiting each planet, but the number of spy probes increases as more planets learn how to navigate space (although the impact is reduced reputation for whichever spy detects the ship).
• A Rare Sentence: The computer's reaction when the Peltians take over a planet.
  Computer: What did... You have to come to see this. Peltians just took over a planet. Looooooool.
• Real-Time with Pause: The galaxy map works like this. It also automatically pauses when you move to a new location.
• Regenerating Shield, Static Health: While health is restored after the battle, during the battle health does not regenerate while shields do. Player can, however, use abilities to heal himself.
• Reptiles Are Abhorrent: The Hydrals were four-headed snake-like aliens... and jerks to the other races.
• Smart Bomb: Using any of your flagship's special abilities will erase any bullets near your ship and stun small fighters caught in the area. As the tutorial tooltip explain this effect points out, this can be much more useful than what the ability's "primary" purpose was.
• Space Pirates: They start to pop up as soon as species achieve spaceflight, when the species doesn't trust the hydral. They also periodically appear when the population becomes worried about population growth.
• Starfish Aliens: The Obscura are particle-based lifeforms.
• Suicide Attack: What the Peltians are very good at. Their ground forces are the worst in the game and they can easily be beaten. The Peltians know this... and specialize in suicide attacks and orbital bombing to great effect.
• Super Prototype: The prototype flagship the last Hydral steals to start the game was already a beast. Once Hydral weapons and abilities are added, it becomes capable of chewing through entire fleets by itself.
• Sweet Tooth: The "Confectionary" building increases a race's standings with the Peltians... and the Burlusts. The Burlusts also react pretty well to a bribe of high quality chocolate, of all things!
• Tech Tree: There is a rather extensive Tech Tree. Not all species can research everything, although player can do so. However, not all technologies provide any bonuses for the player, but are useful to the other species.
• Then Let Me Be Evil: Betrayal Mode in a nutshell. The Last Hydral renounces his desire for peace and embraces his people's ways after their destruction. He kills everyone on the planet of the race that captures him and takes it for himself. The rest of the system soon follows.
• Tractor Beam: Your ship has one of these during missions. They are used to dock with stations.
• Utopia Justifies the Means: Your end goal is to have every living species as part of the federation. What steps you take to achieve this is completely up to you, and judged only by the other races in the system. Even bioterrorism and attempted genocide can have a positive effect on a race's opinion of you, if your targets were on the verge of wiping someone else out.
• Vestigial Empire: The Hydral Empire is very vestigial.
• Video Game Caring Potential: Player can peacefully unite the entire system and rescue a planet from an economic collapse should they so wish.
• Video Game Cruelty Potential: Oh, it's there.... when a species suffers an economic collapse, you can do everything to make the said species hated by everyone, steal their technology, assist in attacking their homeworld and generally destroy their chance to live.
• Villain Protagonist: The Betrayed Hope DLC gives the player the opportunity to Take Over the Galaxy by eliminating the other races and reviving the Hydral Empire.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: That would be you. Besides the Utopia Justifies the Means version of the trope that exists in the base game, Betrayed Hope also introduces Invasion Mode, where you now have to eliminate the powerful Obscura by rallying the other races together into a grand alliance using the same shifty methods as before.
• Who's Laughing Now?: When the Peltians declare war, they talk with glee about how it's their turn to be the aggressors. In fact, they are so cowardly that they won't attack unless they're absolutely sure the victory is imminent. Which means that if they do declare war, their enemy will get obliterated without your intervention.
• Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: You, in Betrayal mode.

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