Line #34 Videogame/AlienLegacy


1	[[quoteright:250:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/alien_legacy.jpg]]
2	A [[StrategyGame Strategy]]/SimulationGame from Ybarra Productions, Inc., released in 1994.
3
4	The player takes on the role of TheCaptain of the UNS ''Calypso'', a colony ship sent from Earth to the Beta Caeli system in the wake of a HopelessWar between humanity and the Centaurians as a last-ditch effort to ensure that humans survive in some parts of the galaxy. Upon waking up from a HumanPopsicle state, you receive messages from Earth sent decades (centuries? millennia?) prior, which inform you of another colony ship, UNS ''Tantalus'', sent to Beta Caeli 16 years later but, thanks to a more efficient engine, set to arrive 21 years prior to the ''Calypso''. Upon arriving to the system, you see that it is remarkably similar to the Solar System. There are also remains of the ''Tantalus'' colonies, with nothing but dead colonists.
5
6	The meat of the game is colonizing the Beta Caeli system while figuring out what happened to the ''Tantalus'' and her colonists - and then dealing with whatever you find. Colonization involves sending shuttles to scout planets for resources and viable colony sites, building new colonies, populating them, and constructing buildings necessary to make the entire colonial project self-sufficient. Colonies on different planets -- and space stations orbiting them -- serve different functions and must work together to provide materials, energy and other necessities to each other using a network of interplanetary shuttles. Meanwhile, labs must be constructed to produce different scientific resources, which are then used to fuel new technological discoveries and to analyze clues found throughout the Beta Caeli system.
7
8	The more clues you find as to the fate of the previous colonists, the more you begin to realize you're not alone in this system. As the plot unfolds, you face a series of increasingly difficult strategic challenges - while trying to avoid making the same mistakes made by the ''Tantalus'' colonists before you.
9
10	!!Tropes present in the game:
11	* AbsentAliens: Despite the {{backstory}} mentioning the Centaurians, you spend much of the game with no aliens in sight. Then you find the [[spoiler:Empiants and the H'riak sporeship]].
12	* AbusivePrecursors: [[spoiler:The H'riak, who program all their creations with an overriding urge to destroy all non-H'riak-created organisms. This explains the Centaurians' hate towards humans. Empiants lack their hate because they were created unintentionally — from waste]].
13	* AliensAreBastards: The first thing the Centaurians do after discovering humanity is to send a heavily-armed probe to the Solar System with missiles filled with a deadly virus. They then proceed to send fleets to attempt to wipe out humans. There does not appear to be a reason for their hostility, [[spoiler:until you discover that all races seeded by the [[AbusivePrecursors H'riak]] are genetically-programmed to hate all non-Hriak-based life]].
14	* AllPlanetsAreEarthLike: Averted, as only two planets in the Beta Caeli system are habitable. All planets, moons, and asteroids can be colonized, though.
15	* ArbitraryHeadcountLimit: The maximum number of colony platforms deployed simultaneously is only around 40, while there are 77 colonizable spots (47 sites on planets and asteroids, 30 orbital stations). The purpose of this cap is unclear -- extra colonies don't take much memory compared to the game's requirements, they don't affect game balance, but the limit forces the player to juggle resources frantically, if he invested in the inner planet and then decided to expand outward.
16	* ArtisticLicenseAstronomy: Beta Caeli is described as F0 yellow-green dwarf 55 light years from Sun and 2.5 times more luminous. Actually it is 90 light years away, and 6 times brighter (even though it's F2, which are cooler than F0). According to WordOfGod, the creators of the game knew that Beta Caeli is too bright and short-lived to have habitable planets but chose it due to its relative proximity and easily-remembered name. In reality, colony ships would most likely be sent to G-type yellow dwarfs, which would also have to be far enough away for the Centaurians not to find them and would, therefore, likely have a Henry Draper Catalog designation (e.g. [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HD_154345 HD 154345]]).
17	* ArtisticLicenseBiology: Despite having never encountered humans before, the Centaurians somehow manage to come up with a deadly virus that kills millions of Sudanese.
18	* BittersweetEnding: [[spoiler:The H'riak sporeship is destroyed and there is peace with the Empiants. Several colonists (both human and Empiant) manage to leave the system using the new FTL drive. However, all first-generation colonists are doomed to die soon thanks to the flawed process of turning people into {{Human Popsicle}}s]].
19	** This doesn't seem to be mandatory; a technology available early in the game should leave you with only sweetness.
20	* ButWhatAboutTheAstronauts: Multiple instances:
21	** The [[AllInTheManual backstory]] is that Earth is losing a war against the AbsoluteXenophobe Centaurians and is sending out colony ships to remote systems with orders to maintain communication silence and assume Earth and all other ships are lost. You command one such ship, Calypso.
22	** The last messages indicate the destruction of the last Earth fleet and all off-planet installations and preparations for the LastStand. There are no survivors in the Solar system.
23	** The colony ship Tantalus was launched later, but [[LightspeedLeapfrog arrived some 21 years before Calypso]], though you see no traces of it. At least, [[LateToTheTragedy not at first]]. [[spoiler:Later it's revealed that colonists on habitable planets were [[DeathWorld killed by local animals]]. Created by the same xenophobic race who created Centaurians and remote-controlled from an automated seedship. For other planets see below.]]
24	** If you abandon colonies on Earth-like planets Gaia and Rhea, your people on other planets and orbital stations start to die slowly. Due to the damage done by [[HumanPopsicle cold sleep]] chemicals, Calypso passengers and crew now need some anti-toxins that can only be harvested on Earth-like planets. It is never mentioned whether Tantalus faced the same problem or if they used more advanced cryo-storage process.
25	** Later in the game you find ruined human colonies on most planets. Most of them survived destruction of colonies on Rhea and Gaia, tried to live on, to wait until Calypso arrival or to fly to meet Callypso, but everybody were DrivenToSuicide or got killed in seemingly random accidents. The last human died a year before your arrival. It is speculated that they could have survived if Tantalus wasn't dismantled, [[spoiler:and they didn't loose most of their fleet fighting the seedship. At least they managed to destroy the seedship defences.]]
26	** In the best game ending you get [[spoiler:[[FasterThanLightTravel FTL drive]], powerful alien allies, [[CursedWithAwesome near-immortality]], telepathy, "[[EverythingSensor transcendental radiation]]"]] and are ready to spread to other systems and take the war to Centaurians.
27	* CasualInterplanetaryTravel: Played straight on a government level, especially after several shuttle upgrades. Even the starting shuttle can travel from Alphas to Hades in a reasonable amount of time, if it deploys stopover colonies for refuelling and waits for the next planet to get close. Once you get a number of self-sufficient colonies going, you can start cranking out dozens of shuttles for your needs.
28	** Private citizens or companies don't have their own shuttles, and civilian travel seems to be restricted indefinitely, see EmergencyAuthority. But judging from recovered records, private shuttles weren't uncommon for Tantalus colonists and they freely roamed the system.
29	* CasualInterstellarTravel: Averted, for the most part. Building and sending interstellar ships is a major undertaking, requiring the combined resources of the entire world. Since humanity is engaged in a war for its very survival in the {{backstory}}, humans have to build interstellar warships, even though most get destroyed in the Oort Cloud. Some make it to Alpha Centauri and proceed to Tau Ceti. This takes decades, though. The ''Odessa''-class colony ships, like the ''Tantalus'' and the ''Calypso'', are equally funded by the entire world, as they represent the last vestiges of humanity. It is also mentioned that, while the ''Calypso'' is launched 16 years before the ''Tantalus'', the latter arrives 21 years before the former due to a better fusion engine. Given that Beta Caeli is about 90 light years away, it would take at least 180 years to get there at half the speed of light (even that is pushing it). This explains how a marginally-better drive allows the ''Tantalus'' to overtake her sister ship and arrive first despite the late launch.
30	** The Calypso travelled for more than 90000 years to reach Beta Caeli. Sounds like a lot, but keep in mind that the Tantalus took about 37 years less while only being 0.04% faster.
31	** Even the creation of FTL travel at the end of the game only allows for one ship to be fitted with it. The game also doesn't reveal what happened to the ship that jumped. Additionally, this FTL method requires the presence of [[spoiler:Empiants]] to punch through space-time.
32	* CryonicsFailure: A possibility (read: RandomEvent) for a large number of as-yet unopened pods to fail if you don't act fast enough to provide a lot of living space in your colonies. Furthermore, if many colonists die this way, your science advisor will grant him/herself a KlingonPromotion (read:NonStandardGameOver).
33	* CrystalSpiresAndTogas: We never see Earth architecture, Calypso bridge crew (whom you see most of the time) don't dress too unusually, but planet governors wear white robes with coloured stripes. Hard to notice, since they only appear twice other than for {{Random Event}}s.
34	* DeathWorld: [[spoiler:Once the biota wake up, the formerly peaceful, Earth-like worlds of Gaea and Rhea quickly become these.]]
35	* EarthShatteringKaboom: If a certain TimedMission is not completed successfully, the Beta Caeli star will go nova, destroying the system. If the mission is successful, there is still an EarthShatteringKaboom but on a much smaller scale.
36	* EarthThatWas: Given that centuries (if not milllennia) have passed since the launch of the ''Calypso'', the fate of Earth remains unknown, especially since the most recent messages were erased or badly corrupted by a NegativeSpaceWedgie. The implication, though, is that the Centaurians have finally broken through Earth's defenses and wiped out everyone on the planet.
37	* EmergencyAuthority: Beta Caeli colonies spend the entire game this way. Due to the unknown dangers that wiped Tantalus out without a trace, everything is strictly controlled by the Calypso captain. People have to live where they are told, work where they are told, and be ready to move to another colony at a moment's notice. Good thing they are so long-lived. On the contrary, Tantalus colonists seem to had had no restrictions on where to go or where to settle.
38	* EverythingSensor: The "transcendental radiation" research allows shuttles to scan for things of interest on planets, moons, and asteroids.
39	* FirstContact: In the {{backstory}}, first contact with the Centaurians in 2043 involved their probe destroying a scout ship and bombarding Earth with plague missiles. It's not even clear if humans even met a live Centaurian. They do have Centaurian gene samples to compare to life on Rhea and Gaea, possibly collected in the Oort Cloud after one of the many battles there.
40	** The first contact with the [[spoiler:Empiants]] also results in a war. However, this is due to a misunderstanding, as [[spoiler:human brainwaves hurt the psychic aliens]]. Some players report that attacks get much bigger if [[spoiler:the player previously [[PlanetLooters syphoned hydrogen]] from gas giants]].
41	** What may count as the first contact with [[spoiler:H'Riak, or at least their machinery,]] was Tantalus colonists finding an ancient pylon on Gaia and trying to break it. [[spoiler:After that biota started attacking humans.]]
42	* FrickinLaserBeams: All shuttles are armed with lasers. During the conflict with the [[spoiler:Empiants]], shuttles can also be armed with missiles that increase their firepower.
43	* FTLTravel: Averted at the beginning, when it takes the ''Calypso'' over a century to reach Beta Caeli on sublight. Even the Centaurians and [[spoiler:the H'riak]] don't have FTL drives. At the end, though, the humans and [[spoiler:Empiants]] manage to build [[AppliedPhlebotinum psychic amplifyiers]] that complement the [[spoiler:Empiants']] natural PsychicPowers that, in conjunction with the ''Calypso'''s fusion reactor, tear open a hole in space-time.
44	* GaiasVengeance: Once [[spoiler:the biota are triggered and attack the colonies]], this initially appears to be the case, especially since one of the habitable worlds is named Gaea.
45	* GhostPlanet: A ghost ''system'', in this case.
46	* HarmlessFreezing: Zigzags. Originally expected to be harmless. Subverted early on, when your scientists discover negative side effects to being turned into a HumanPopsicle. If you research the cure, [[spoiler:you get the method to prolong human life manifold]], CursedWithAwesome of sorts. If you don't, [[spoiler:all first-generation colonists are doomed to die soon, but their children born after will survive]].
47	* HopelessWar: The war between Earth and the Centaurians began when a Centaurian probe entered the Solar System, destroyed a ship sent to scan it, and launched a volley of missiles filled with a deadly plague at Earth, killing millions. Since then, both sides constantly sent warships at one another, usually meeting up and fighting it out in the Oort Cloud. No human warships have ever returned, although some have managed to get to the Centaurian colonies in Tau Ceti. When the final, largest, offensive against the Centaurians has failed, the Earth governments have decided to pool all resources into defending Earth and building {{Sleeper Starship}}s, knowing that the Centaurians won't stop until all humans are dead. One of the messages received by the ''Calypso'' while underway claims that the final Centauri offensive had begun and, likely, succeeded.
48	* HumanPopsicle: All colonists and crewmembers spend the decades of travel in cold sleep. The crew is woken up first, including the first batch of colonists. Colonists are woken up based on need. However, a random malfunction can result in several thousand colonists dying in their sleep, when their cryochambers fail.
49	* InsufficientlyAdvancedAlien: [[spoiler:Empiants come close. Despite them being around for about a billion years, your advisors remark surprising inferiority of their craft. Unfortunately, their diamond hulls prove quite resistant to your lasers.]]
50	* KlingonPromotion: If you blunder spectacularly, one of your advisors will [[NonstandardGameOver kill you]] for incompetence and take charge of the mission. Usually this involves a task with a time limit and many people die. The failures include:
51	** Do not set up a self-sufficient colony on Gaea. You get plenty of time and multiple warnings here. You're killed by a ''science advisor''[[note]]at the beginning she/he is introduced as an Executive Officer and your second in command, but that detail is ''never'' mentioned again[[/note]]. Apparently, the military advisor just sits by and does nothing.
52	** Do not create enough living space on a short notice when several hundred cryo-chambers malfunction. Science advisor again.
53	** Fail to develop the blood filter. Science advisor.
54	** Improperly respond to [[spoiler:Fanatic's crisis on Hades.]] Military advisor.
55	** Fail to suppress a riot.
56	** Deplete energy storage too many times.
57	* LightspeedLeapfrog: A rare sublight example. Given that relatively slow speeds at which the ''Calypso'' and the ''Tantalus'' travel and the vast distance (90 light years) involved, it's not that surprising for the ''Tantalus'' to arrive to Beta Caeli 21 years before the ''Calypso'' despite being launched 16 years later with only a marginally more efficient drive. It still stings to wake up from cold sleep after such a trip only to learn that you're expected to provide "support" to people who you didn't know were supposed to join you. Had nothing bad happened to the ''Tantalus'' colonists, there would probably have been a lot of bitterness between them and the ''Calypso'' colonists.
58	* MacrossMissileMassacre: Averted, while you can research and build missiles to be put on your shuttles during the conflict with the [[spoiler:Empiants]], each shuttle can only carry one missile at a time.
59	* MeaningfulName: All planets are named after [[Myth/ClassicalMythology Greek gods]], which are equivalent to the [[Myth/ClassicalMythology Roman]] names for planets in the Solar system. The two Earth-like planets are named Gaea (earth goddess) and Rhea (mother of the gods). Interestingly, one of the ruins contains a mention of a movement among the ''Tantalus'' colonists to rename the planets to their Roman counterparts.
60	* MildlyMilitary: Your military advisor, technically, commands ''militia'' -- people whose main occupation isn't service. Your fleet is repurposed transports with weak lasers, [[spoiler:which prove ineffective against Empiant ships,]] and maybe carrying a ''single'' missile.
61	* NegativeSpaceWedgie: Several messages from Earth have been erased when the ship passed through a magnetic anomaly prior to the game.
62	* NiceJobBreakingItHero: Several notes found from the previous colonists reveal that the captain of the ''Tantalus'' had the ship dismantled to use the fusion reactor on Gaia surface as a power plant. After the [[spoiler:H'riak]] threat became apparent, many colonists cursed the captain for leaving them no option but to fight (they couldn't flee the system or even retreat to ''Tantalus''). A late note reveals that ''Tantalus'' colonists discovered a [[spoiler:H'riak pylon and tried to destroy it with explosives]], which may have been the event that triggered the [[spoiler:Biota attacks and seedship awakening]] that killed them all.
63	* NukeEm: Besides FrickinLaserBeams, shuttles can drop bombs that produce mushroom clouds and wipe out anything in the immediate vicinity on the planet below. The only limit to how many you can drop is the shuttle's energy/fuel, implying some sort of energy bomb.
64	* {{Panspermia}}: [[spoiler:The H'riak]] are discovered to have seeded habitable planets in several star systems with life programmed to hate any living thing of different origin. Earth is ''not'' one such planet.
65	* PlanetLooters: You can syphon hydrogen from gas giants to get cheap energy. [[spoiler:The Empiants, who live on Cronus, probably won't like it.]]
66	* PsychicPowers: [[spoiler:The Empiants are a telepathic species who are hurt by human brainwaves. They can also melt human brains]].
67	** "Transcendental radiation" was invented by ''Tantalus'' scientist and is rediscovered early in the game. It allows to [[ClarkesThirdLaw find places of interest]], by creating "a resonance between what the brain can conceptualize and what is physically on the planet's surface".
68	* PyrrhicVictory: After [[spoiler:the H'riak sporeship]] is found by the ''Tantalus'' colonists, they send their entire shuttle fleet to attack it. They manage to destroy all [[spoiler:its]] weapons but at the cost of 90% of the fleet. This also makes them unable to evacuate their colonies on Gaea and Rhea, [[spoiler:when the local biota attack]].
69	* {{Ramscoop}}: The floppy version intro shows an enormous web being folded, as the ''Calypso'' is entering the Beta Caeli system. A recovered video clip shows ''Tantalus'' linking up with a similar web bigger than Jupiter. The manual states that ''Odessa'' class ships indeed collect interstellar hydrogen with such net and burns it in fusion reactors.
70	* RandomEvent: Several research options become available only after random events (usually, tragic). For example, the idea to develop mass drivers for sending cargo between colonies comes after a manned shuttle engaged in a "pipeline" mission inexplicably blows up. If you only use automated shuttles (there is no advantage to be using manned shuttles, except occasionally ferrying advisors to colonies), then this won't happen.
71	* SpacePlane: At the beginning, the ''Calypso'' only has 4 shuttles with limited fuel tanks to go ferry supplies and colonists between the ship and the colonies. Shuttles can be either unmanned or manned (almost no difference). They can also be used to send your primary advisors to colonies for certain quests. Once you set up proper self-sufficient colonies, you can set your factories to build more shuttles. Additionally, you can research shuttle improvements such as a larger fuel tank, better weapons, larger cargo space, more efficient engine, stronger armor, etc. Once the conflict with the [[spoiler:Empiants]] starts, shuttles become your {{Space Fighter}}s (or AttackDrones if you send them unmanned), although you pretty much have to send them en masse in order to make a difference. Shuttles can be sent on a variety of missions: scouting planets, exploring regions, sending cargo and/or colonists, building space stations, establishing pipelines (automatic ferrying of supplies and/or colonists between two colonies), patroling, etc. Since planets continue to orbit the star Beta Caeli, distances (and fuel requirements) constantly change.
72	* ThatsNoMoon: [[spoiler:The asteroid Gamma 1 turns out to be the "sporeship" that brought life to the system.]]
73	* TimedMission: Several tasks must be completed within a certain time limit. Unfortunately, you're not told about the time limit. Fortunately, you do get a lot of time. Failing to perform some tasks results in a NonstandardGameOver.
74	* UnintentionallyUnwinnable: During the later part of the game, you can develop a [[EarthShatteringKaboom planet-busting bomb]] that is required to prevent a NonStandardGameOver ([[spoiler:which involves the H'riak spore ship colliding with the Beta Caeli star and causing it to go nova]]). However, during the war with [[spoiler:the Empiants]], you also have the option of using the bomb to [[spoiler:destroy the Empiant homeworld]]. Unfortunately, you can only ever build one bomb, so if you do the latter, the game becomes unwinnable. Then again, it's clear the designers of the game meant for the conflict to be resolved peacefully, so it can be assumed that not being able to win the game is a punishment for opting for the violent option.
75	** Actually, the game gives you another option: Death of a Hundred Paper Cuts. If you don't develop the bomb, you're given the task of sending Missile Mission shuttles to your target to attack a weak point in the armor. The number required is random-ish floating around 100. (This doesn't mean you need 100 shuttles; you just need to send shuttles on Missile missions 100 times. You do need 100 missiles.) Failing this task without the bomb eventually results in a game over. (The game has a grace period where you could use the bomb on the star to stabilize it if you failed the destruction segment.) You lose mostly by trying or being negligent, really. The game usually gives you options out of every story branch.
76	* WhatDidYouExpectWhenYouNamedIt: [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tantalus Tantalus]] was punished by the [[Myth/ClassicalMythology gods]] for killing his son and generally being a dick to be trapped for eternity in [[FateWorseThanDeath Tartarus]] constantly presented with food and water and never being able to reach them, as well a huge rock suspended over his head. So you decide to name a ship that is supposed to keep humanity alive with a guy who ended up this way. WhatCouldPossiblyGoWrong
77	** [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calypso_(mythology) Calypso]] is a character in ''Literature/TheOdyssey'' who forcibly kept Odysseus on her island for many years. Not much better. On the other hand, another meaning of "calypso" is "to conceal", which ''is'' appropriate for a ship that is supposed to carry the last humans away from a race of murdering aliens.
78	* WhatIf: Rhea is an Earth-like world whose position in the Beta Caeli system is similar to that of Venus in ours. It's not difficult to see that the creators wanted to show what Venus would be like as a lush, life-giving world. The main difference is the size (Rhea is slightly larger), the spin (Rhea spins much faster), and a moon. The theory is that these factors helped prevent the greenhouse effect that makes Venus a hellhole.
79	* WideOpenSandbox: The game is non-linear, which means you are free to do as you please, for the most part, in terms of building colonies and expanding. Certain events do trigger new missions, though.
80	* YourHeadAsplode: [[spoiler:Empiants]] can do that to your shuttle pilots with their [[spoiler:PsychicPowers]].

Context Videogame / AlienLegacy