"It's your turn, Marvaine."
The young boy furrowed his brows in a cute manner. He looked as if he was struggling to make a big decision.
His choice of player group had a lot to do with his problems.
Frontier Warlords had only been out for a few years, but it had released so many expansions that players could practically pursue any development strategy!
Unlike Pirate Empires, the newer game tried to keep every game session short and fresh by imposing unique winning conditions for every group or faction.
Total annihilation of all other players could definitely lead to victory, but the digital game board was so large and intricate that it was unrealistic to eliminate everyone.
This was why players needed to race against time to complete their unique victory conditions as fast as possible.
For example, Ves needed to make his puelmer force plunder resources and acquire advanced human tech to complete the development of the first alien mech.
Andraste's goal was to evolve her sole leader unit from a lesser to a greater phase whale.
Lucky needed to tip the scales so that red humanity entered into an unstoppable decline.
Everyone knew what the other players needed to accomplish, so they could choose to take calculated risks to hinder each other's progress.
This time, Marvaine did not have the desire or the assets to intervene in the struggle between his father and his sisters.
The youngest member of the family only had one goal in mind.
"I bet half of my resources and all of my actions into developing the Ultimatum." Marvaine declared.
Yes, the Larkinson Clan was one of the more recent additions to Frontier Warlords!
Frontier Warlords already included a lot of states such as the Terran Alliance and the Colonial Federation of Davute.
However, the game also added in expansions based on the more notable and successful organizations in the Red Ocean.
The game developer joined the Larkinson Clan right after Ves managed to attain civilization-wide recognition during the infamous public inquiry on living mechs.
Naturally, the company first approached the Larkinson Clan in order to negotiate a licensing agreement.
Ves never received any reports related to this minor transaction, so one of his underlings must have taken care of this matter at the time.
It didn't matter. Ves felt flattered that he and his clan not only became a part of this popular digital board game, but also became a popular player choice, especially among other mech designers!
Unfortunately, Frontier Warlords focused so much on publishing new and pricey expansions that the game developers neglected to work on balancing the damn game.
This led to the unfortunate fact that the playable groups were highly unbalanced!
Many players developed a loathing for the Larkinson Clan in Frontier Warlords due to a unique and exaggerated gameplay gimmick.
The Ves in the game had some of the highest potential for innovation among any of the other named mech designers.
He also happened to be the most unstable one!
The exaggerated reliance on luck led to highly variable game sessions.
In some of them, the Larkinsons managed to climb their way up to first-class standards much sooner, allowing them to demolish every player by relying on superior capital and tech!
In other game sessions, the Larkinson Clan remained stuck in second-class society and lacked too much funds and troops to do anything meaningful.
In short, playing the Larkinson Clan was bound to be exciting, as people would either obtain extreme satisfaction or deep despair as Ves either succeeded or failed to develop a groundbreaking product!
The randomness of the Larkinson Clan reflected in the fact that three projected dice appeared in front of Marvaine. One of his small hands reached out and tossed them out again.
[1, 3, 5]
"Haha!" Andraste laughed. "You failed again!"
Marvaine made a frustrated noise!
"Why are you so bad in this game, papa?!"
Ves chuckled and leaned over to kiss his frustrated son in the head. "This is just a game. It is never meant to be an accurate reflection of reality. Frontier Warlords has done a good job at representing how much of the success of our clan Larkinson Clan is dependent on making a lot of calculated gambles. In reality, I have a lot of different ways to stack the odds in my favor. It is regrettable that this game doesn't include those options in order to maintain a semblance of fairness."
"So the game has to nerf you in order to keep it balanced?"
"Pretty much." Ves smirked.
Marvaine's failure to make the Larkinson Clan release a guaranteed bestseller in the form of the Ultimatum was a major setback. The loss of time and funding meant that the boy had to scale back his ambitions and focus on recovery.
"Mama, it's your turn now."
"I am aware. I choose to dispatch my Hexer mech force to the E3 System. I want to intervene in the battle over there even if I know that I may be coming too late to defend Aurelia's troops."
The daughter in question perked up. "I will do my best to hold out!"
"You don't want to save her." Ves accused his wife. "You just want to pick up the scraps for cheap and sell them for a lot of money."
That caused Aurelia to deflate again.
"Ves! Stop telling nonsense! I am doing my best to keep Aurelia in the game!"
The game session continued as every player encountered both successes and failures.
Due to the accelerated time progression of Frontier Warlords, a lot of years quickly went by. The Red War progressed way into the future, causing massive changes throughout the galaxy.
One of the ways that made Frontier Warlords so interesting was that all sorts of random factors determined the course of the Red War.
In some cases, red humanity successfully defended the border regions and disrupted the native alien offenses by conducting relentless deep strike operations.
In other cases, the native aliens managed to gain superiority and smash through one zone after another, thereby driving red humanity to an increasingly smaller corner!