Why and what changes were made to The Sominium Stars (our first campaign)?
There are some features that play exactly the same, but a few things jumped out while I was reading the data gathered after a year of play, and they pointed at some very specific fixes.
The map was mostly dead. In the game log I saw, fighting concentrated hard on Shadrac, Helios, Desperation, Nostramo and Ragnarok. Meanwhile Thanatos, Nagrathar, Brerth 3FY, Ulmone, Shriek and Cromrake had zero games logged – they sat at 100% untouched. That’s a fifth of the campaign map that never saw a battle. The cause was structural: the attackers could pick any world anywhere, so there was no reason to go anywhere except where your friends already were.
The fix I created for is I call front lines. Now, you can only attack a world in a sector where your faction already holds at least one world, or that borders one. Suddenly the map has geography, taking an outpost world opens a door into a sector, and a fortress world becomes a genuine last stand rather than an abstract number. It also gives factions something to coordinate around beyond “everyone hit Helios again.”
Nothing decayed, so defence was theatre. You couldn’t lose a world nobody attacks, which means the correct play for a quiet faction is to ignore its own space entirely. So I added decay. Now time works against you, eroding a planet’s leading score by some percentage each round when no games are logged there. Worlds nobody is fighting over slowly drift back toward contested, which forces factions to actually garrison their space and quietly opens up those untouched fortress worlds over time. This solved the dead-map problem from the other direction.
The defence modifiers may be too punishing at the top end. To flip a fortress world from its founder you needed roughly 25 wins at 0.2 each just to reach parity, and that’s if the owner logs nothing in response. Sanctified needed about 17. For a faction with only three active players that’s not a hard target, it’s an impossible one – which is why nobody tried. I considered making these changes more aggressive, and as you gain ground now, the modifiers improve – so a siege builds momentum instead of grinding flat.
Faction sizes were wildly uneven. This is the big one, the players of the Imperium logged 220 victories across the campaign against Aeldari’s 34 and Tau’s 36. That’s not skill, it’s roster popularity, and it makes the small factions feel pointless to play. So I now scale around points by active player count so a five-player faction isn’t competing against a fifty-player one on raw volume. It all automatically balances out now. I also introduced a new faction “Raiders & Pirates” which combines several races based on how people want to play. Additionally, some factions can group several types of armies under them.
I don’t see my specific Army type listed, I play Space Marines of The Glowing Fist, what can I do?
Just shoot me a message on Discord or an email and I can add your exact faction!
Why is this only available to Patreon members?
A couple of reasons. First, I am trying to obviously drive more business to our Patreon. Also, this keeps people without an investment in the campaign from just flooding it with garbage.
Can I log games with people who are not playing in the campaign?
You sure can! In fact, it is likely most people will. But I hope some of us can get together in some places and play together. In particular at Adepticon.
Why would I log a loss or draw?
All games count! Losses and Draws count for a bit less than a win, but you are still making progress against your enemies, forcing them to expend resources in battle!
Was any AI used in building the campaign?
Yes. I utilize Claude at work, and at home for coding purposes. Additionally, some AI resources were used in the building of a few of the graphic elements. I know this is a controversial subject these days so I think it is best to be open about it.