Why the Hell Are These Bastards Like This?
> Time remaining until update completion: approx. 5 minutes
Somehow, after kidnapping and imprisoning tens of thousands of people's minds, the people in charge — whether the admins or the developers, nobody could tell — had still managed to botch the update. Across every gallery, every chat window, user outrage poured out in an unbroken stream.
[See extended maintenance notice]
This is actual legendary-tier bullshit fr
Of course, that particular firestorm only lasted so long. The moment a notification landed in front of every user announcing that the update was fully complete—
—everyone flipped their stance like nothing had ever happened and launched into a full-blown free-for-all, chewing up, tearing into, and devouring the newly unlocked Faction Join feature.
Not that every single user stampeded into a faction the second the update dropped.
[Official image attachment]
It's not complicated — once you join a faction, backing out is a massive pain in the ass. If you leave with only middling favorability, they'll sometimes decide you were just using them and send a fleet straight to your base. There's no penalty for joining late anyway, so wouldn't it be smarter to wait and see what the scout teams report?
A single veteran had spoken, and a surprising number of users settled in to watch how things developed. I was no exception. The four major factions had a habit of randomly shifting their alignment every season, which meant diving in on propaganda posts alone was a great way to get spectacularly screwed.
And then, at last, the advance team's reports started hitting the gallery.
"Oho. Here we go."
I finally reached for the popcorn I'd set beside me, crunching away as I opened the gallery.
Faction Sentiment (4)
[Confused toad image]
I joined the Earth Federation and these guys are NOT Great Crusade style?? I proudly yelled "xenos scum" and got chewed out for even thinking about it??? And the so-called Federation Hall has Kanf and other aliens and some monster-looking things just wandering around. What the actual hell is this
[Earth Federation propaganda poster]
Contrary to what the Great Crusade fanatics have been slandering — this version of the Earth Federation is closer to a rational Galaxy Trek / Planetary Fed-style state. What that means: unless a coup event flips the Federation's alignment from the inside, if a player starts xeno-purging, they can get their skull cracked open
[Female character with cat ears on her head]
Why are the furry bastards crawling out. Where the hell did the humans-only nation go?
The Earth Federation everyone expected to be chanting "xenos scum" and "kill the xeno" had instead spawned as the complete opposite — a xeno-neutral state. As a result, a chunk of the advance team who'd been hardcore xeno-haters were live-posting their meltdowns across the gallery in real time.
But "not what we expected" applied to everyone else too, so at the very least, the xenos-scum crowd who'd picked Earth Federation wouldn't be feeling lonely.
[Arrogant elf diplomat looking down]
Started off talking down to me from the jump, then said if I want to join their faction I need to go tear up a certain percentage of the neighboring factions' bases and fleets? Did I run into nomadic elves instead of civilized ones?