

It took me a bit to actually find it, initially thinking it would be either in the Story or Conquest part of the setup).

(The A’shiari story part of Cycle of Warfare is stashed in the Challenge section at game start. Do you use it on your ship by buying enhancements? Do you use it to start building a fleet, as you start without a single ship other than your own? The whole “Challenge” certainly takes a bit of getting used to. You start without a fleet but have five million dollars to spend. Have you ever passed up a derelict? Don’t! They are worth various amounts of money - and you will need a lot of that (some derelicts will net you a pretty good chunk of cash as well). You gain income from both destroying and boarding ships. Artefact Vaults then have to, and do, work differently as well. It’s a ‘scorched-earth’ (as it were) policy which is also quite hard-core! There are no skills or perks which, in itself, is a very different way to play, after all of these solar years relying on them. Instead, the sector becomes uninhabitable to everyone and it is eternally shut down. When you conquer a territory, you do not claim it like you normally would.

You are permanently hostile to every other race on the Starchart: no moving of the diplomacy bar here. There is no diplomacy or any kind of human interaction - only their destruction. You do not have a sector nor home planet, just a Mothership. They are ruthless aliens with a single goal: destroy everyone. This is, by far, the largest additional content of the three Starpoint Gemini games!Įxcited, my first choice was to play as the A’shiari. While this adds fathoms of additional hours and solar oceans of replayability, my main interest was in the five additional playable factions: the A’shriari, privateers/Pirates, the Iolian Pact, the Korkyra, and the Outerlands. After re-familiarizing myself with the controls, I finally got the opportunity to fly and try to do some serious damage in the new Starpoint Gemini: Warlords’ DLC - Cycle of Warfare.
