R-Planet: Conquest Launches First Alpha

R-planet unveiled the first alpha of their Conquest game to a group of playtesters today. This is the long awaited second installment of the R-Planet universe. The journey to Mars has ended, and now the colonists must battle invading forces, and each other, to find a place to live on this harsh world.

It's been talked about for a long time. And now, it's finally here. The first alpha for R-Planet: Conquest has arrived! This alpha playtest is only open to a limited number of players. But those with access codes can now download the game and start building their base.

Players choose one of three factions to join when they start a game. A player's faction cannot be changed during a game season. Each faction offers a special benefit. Warriors start the game with two builders, so they can have two construction projects working at the same time right from the start. Renegades are good at robbing and hacker attacks, while Masterminds have the quickest transports around!

A match of R-Planet: Conquest supports 1000 players and runs until only 100 players remain. The team expects this first round to take 8-12 weeks.

Basic Conquest Gameplay

The basic gameplay loop is pretty standard for this sort of base building game. Players mine for resources, construct buildings, upgrade their Nexus, research new technologies, build units, and prepare their game strategy. Attacks on other players can be focused on raiding and taking their resources, or it can be focused on destruction.

Units come in seven types. Robots, slow combat units, Drones, fast combat units, Spies, Rams (for breaking the shield on enemy bases), Artillery for destroying their buildings, Hacker for capturing bases, and Settlers for taking control of bases.

Conquest includes four mineral resources, Waxon, Caponium, Enefterium, and Wecanite. Wecanite functions as robot fuel, while the other three are construction materials. Players can build a Terraformator and attach their Land NFTs to provide mining bonuses. Players can also import previously purchased packs of robots via the web interface. But be careful about dumping a horde of NFT robot packs onto your base as they will consume Wecanite!

The mining of R-Planet minerals outside of the game (ie, via the webpage), ended today with the launch of the alpha. Going forward, players will only be able to harvest mineral resources via in-game mining.

Each base has slots for eighteen buildings and nine mines. Every new player receives a 96 hour window before they become vulnerable to attacks from other players. Finding the right balance between infrastructure improvements and military spending will be an important key to victory.

First Impressions

The game is mobile only at the moment. Hopefully a web version will arrive soon. But overall, the game runs well and looks good. The graphics are crisp and the user interface is organized and easy to understand. As today is the first day, we haven't had any fighting yet, but I expect a lot of combat action will kick off once that safety window closes!

Since the goal of this game is simply survival, we could see a lot of turtling from players. And generally, these sorts of games tend to end up with a few large clans dominating the landscape. We'll see if R-Planet: Conquest can manage to avoid these potential pitfalls in their game.

This alpha comes with real prizes. The final 100 players will receive a special Hero NFT!