Please note that Fragmented Galaxy (FG) is in the early development stages. This information is simply a plan, not a description.
Genera and background
Fragmented Galaxy is a strategy game in the purest sense. The populations within the galaxy have become chaotically fragmented (see story), leaving a vast number of independent nations. You, as the player will be faced with the task of founding and managing and designing your nation, militaristically, economically, technologically and politically. You will have to work with and compete against all the other players scattered throughout the galaxy making Fragmented Galaxy a MMO. You will have complete control of all of these factors on a large scale, and optionally on smaller scales as well. Gameplay will consist mostly of designing and planning.
Your goal as a player
The goal of Fragmented Galaxy is to develop a powerful nation, what this means is left up to you. Generally the means of accomplishing this will be through optimizing your nation. It is a game of efficiency. The larger your nation grows, the higher the costs of maintaining it. There will come a point at which you can no longer continue to freely expand, and this will happen quickly. You will simply see your budget slowly get consumed by the various sectors of empirical maintenance as you grow and spread your forces and colonies across more colonies, planets and solar systems. To continue to expand, you will have to optimize, design your nation, and this is the strategy.
The strategy
Acquiring better planets with more abundant and more expensive resources resources is key, but these planets are most often found amongst other players and already under contention. Holding such planets can come at great military and political costs, and thus finding the balance of spending vs. earnings must always be in your mind; there is great importance to which planets you colonies or conquer, and when. Capturing and controlling the most profitable planets you can is key, and how you do so is up to you.
The military and space combat
Military, politics, or simply exploring and colonizing are all valid options. In addition to this, there is the underlying elements that allow it. You have full control of the military, should you choose to have one, and all other aspect of the budget. You can direct research spending, design ships, layout formations, and adjust military policy for your soldiers and commanders (using an advanced unit and fleet adjustable AI system intended to mimic the actions of commanders and their respective troops as intelligent individuals).
Ship design, formation design, and AI settings (as mentioned) will be important aspects of the space combat part of the game. You will not have direct control of your ships. You will simply get to design and configure every detail you wish, and generally direct the movements and actions of your fleets. In all likelihood, most of the battles will take place while you are offline anyway, though replays will be available to analyzing the merits of your strategy.
Ground combat, resources and Colonies
On the ground in colonies, there are also political, militaristic and economic strategy challenges. The placement, defense and conquest of colonies makes up the ground combat game, and is critical as the colonies are your sole source of resources (income) and production facilities. The ground combat game will consist of placing colonies on spherical planets where you think they will be most profitable, and defending and capturing colonies.
This will be done through a system of national boarders. You set your nations boarders, and should this anger your neighbors (such as in the case of overlap), battles will likely ensue. Your budgeting of spending in the involved colonies, along with their assorted resources will determine the the rates of loss or capture. If you choose to spend too little on military defense, you may get captured, but spend too much on it, and the colonies might have a net maintenance cost higher than their income, and be a burden on your nation better left abandoned.
Trade and the economy
The resources will be traded on a vast private enterprise market. While you have little direct control over this, you have access to all the resources at any location, though their prices will vary greatly, according to supply, demand and local shipping prices. You will also be able to impose tariffs on goods entering and leaving your colonies, and be able to attempt to boycott or embargo your enemies, optionally with help from other local allies.
As importing goods from far away is costly, such strategies can effectively drive your enemy's invasion to become far more expensive, and as efficiency is the key to maintaining a large nation, you can inflict economic doom upon one careless enough to become your victim. A nation with a net cost above their net income (resource gathering), will have to cut spending, and that means that they will have to choose between letting their ships fall apart, or abandoning and/or starving their colonies. When you can't pay your workers to gather the resources that give you your budget, your empire will begin to crumble.
Politics, diplomacy and the triggers system
Political agreements and reactionary actions will be managed through a unified treaty and trigger system. This will allow you to make agreements with other players, and privately (or publicly) configure actions to be taken under specific conditions. An example would be an embargo agreement, where a bunch of allies in one area could make a treaty to impose an embargo on any signer that attacks another signer's ships or colonies. There will however, be no requirement that you don't violate agreements, or configure triggers that violate or enforce them. Treaties can be public, or not, and can conflict, but you should be carful to not anger too many former allies!
Offline vs. Online in a persistent universe
When you log off, your empire will continue to work toward your design, and follow your guidelines. Whether of not you are online at any given moment should have very little impact, as what matters is the status and design of your nation, not specific actions in combat. Any immediate reactionary actions that may wish to perform should be configurable through the triggers system. Generally you may want to login occasionally and check up on your nation and make adjustments as needed, though you may see it as a valid goal to make a powerful nation requiring minimal attention.
Game Play Pages
(These are quite out of date!)