This week we’d like to show you the first result of the work we’ve been doing for the next Antarean force – the Panhuman Concord. This is very much an example of work-in-progress and scaled next to an Algoryn AI trooper. What we have here is a 3-D digital image – a screen render – so nothing is quite finalised as yet.
The Panhuman Concord is the largest and most powerful civilisation of the Seventh Age comprising almost a quarter of all human worlds of Antarean space. The ruling elite of the Concord is the race of tall, gracile human morphs called New Humans or NuHu. These aloof Mandarins are co-evolved with the Integrated Machine Intelligence, or IMTel, that controls human societies within the Concord.
The military of the Panhuman Concord is organised and directed by a branch of the IMTel called the Concord Combined Command – otherwise known as CoCom and often abbreviated to C3. The Concord responds to threats against it with logical ruthlessness, organising and dispatching heavily armed forces throughout Antarean space. C3 Strike Units are recruited amongst all the varied human worlds that make up the Concord. Most troops are of regular human appearance – although CoCom forces can also include human morphs – or Pans as they are often called. Concord Strike troopers are equipped with heavy-duty plasma weaponry and protected by hyper-light shielding, the most advanced weaponry in all of Antarean space. They are often accompanied by CoCom NuHu agents, and always backed up by the entire and considerable resources of the Concord IMTel.
The Concord is one of the two major human forces of Antarean space, the other being the Isorian Shard. Every army in the game has to have its own distinctive look and feel, and in the case of Concord Strike troopers this is especially important because of the pivotal role played by the Concord in the Antarean background. Finding a look that we were happy with has taken us a while, but the development of our Boromites and Algoryn gave us plenty of practice. The basis of the model’s armour is a flexible undersuit featuring padded areas and hard points that carry the hyper-light shielding – a kind of reactive force field that is the trooper’s main defence against attack. Rather than give the model a backpack or distinct shoulder pads – which would make it look rather old fashioned – we’ve provided our Strike trooper with an upper body harness that incorporates an environment generator and necessary physical components. The helmet features a series of nested frontal plates, which can slide upwards to allow direct visibility or close down to offer maximum protection. This means we can have closed or open head variants for our troopers.
Strike troopers carry plasma carbines as standard armament. Plasma carbines are duel function weapons that can fire either rapid bursts or a more powerful sustained shot. In game terms this means they can double-up their fire with some loss of accuracy and penetration if they wish. Strike leaders also carry X-slings. Support teams include crewed launchers as well as independent weapon drones. We’ll be showing off some more of these developments once they are ready over the next few weeks.
Sam Phillips