The Fermi Paradox News

Hey everyone,

“The Fermi Paradox” is a space simulation game, so one thing should not be missing ...
Let's talk about spaceships!



Many space strategy games start with the discovery of some kind of faster-than-light travel and now a civilization finally can start to discover the stars around them. We were interested in slower travel methods. When you, as the galactic gardener, finally manage to bring a civilization to a technological age that allows the construction of an interstellar vessel, it can take hundreds of years for them to reach another star.

The astronauts, who boarded these generation ships, will most likely not see where the journey ends, but descendants of the spaceship crew will, if they survive the long voyage through deep space and reach the destination after many generations.



Also, the people growing up on a starship may develop different values, ethics and technology than the civilization back home. Mutiny, sabotage or the loss of valuable resources makes interstellar space travel a risky endeavour in “The Fermi Paradox”.

Communication is limited, so they may not even know about conflicts, catastrophes or fundamental changes in society that developed on their mother planet. In the worst case, a starship crew may be oblivious of the entire destruction of their home world.



Inspired by science fiction books like the Revelation Space series by Alastair Reynolds or The Forever War by Joe Haldeman, we want to focus on themes like the disconnection of a starship crew with their origin civilization or the life of people that are born on a starship but will never reach the destination.

Thank you very much for reading and I hope you’re eager to discover all the possibilities with space travel in The Fermi Paradox!.

We recently announced that we’ll be participating in the Steam Next from June 16th to the 22nd. Stay tuned then for a livestream of a gameplay demo!

See you up in the stars, voyager.

Jörg from Anomaly Games

Join our Discord server: https://discord.gg/n5bDJ7pRVM
Follow us on Twitter: @FermiGame

Hey everyone,

Today I want to talk about a unique feature in our Fermi Paradox. So let's talk about Radio Signals.



All our species start as Stone Age cultures and they evolve on planets many lightyears apart from each other. This means that in the beginning they can not interact with other aliens in any way because they have not the technology but even not the understanding that other life forms might exist and what actually a planet or a lightyear is.

Over time they will discover astronomy and observe the stars in more detail but still are bound to the constraints of their home. But when they finally reach the Industrial Age they are able to communicate via radio waves.Now, the new “Sending out Signal” event is unlocked for this species. It might happen that by accident or by intent this civilization is sending out radio waves towards another star. The content of these signals can vary. Maybe they are broadcasting mindless tv shows or maybe their scientists are trying to establish contact with a far away civilization.



But it will take quite some time until the inhabitants of a different planet can try to decipher these radio messages. Why? Because radio waves do not move faster than the speed of light. Let's say there is an alien civilization on Alpha Centauri ( the closest star to our Earth ). It would take 4 light years until a radio message from us would reach these creatures. In extreme cases, a message from one end of the Milky Way to the opposite side would take 50.000 years.



Also signals are still wandering through space regardless of what happens to the sender civilization. If they start a nuclear war and destroy their entire planet, the radio waves can still be captured by a society advanced enough. So if they start looking for the origin of the signal they would only find a radiated planet. And a civilization that sends out a very peaceful message could become a tyrannic empire decades later. You never know.

So what will happen if the signal is finally reaching a society with the technological ability to detect these messages? As soon as a civilization joins the Nuclear Age and a signal broadcast reaches them, a unique “Signals from Space” event is triggered. It is now in your hands as the galactic gardener to decide how a civilization reacts to the news, that they are not alone in the universe.



Will they become very excited that they have proof that they are not alone in the universe and this euphoria triggers a scientific research boom? Will their government cover this information so their people won't start to panic? Will they react with fear and despair, fearing an alien invasion and preparing for interstellar war?



Long lasting side effects can also occur to a civilization that found out that other aliens are out there somewhere. A new religion could evolve worshiping the sender of the strange signals as gods or a global war could break out over access to the valuable information that could lead to the discovery of alien technology.

The early phase of the game is interesting, because before even any starships are built to explore other systems, the different alien civilizations could receive messages from faraway stars and even send answers back even if this would take hundreds of years.



Generally, it is desirable to send as many signals out to the stars because a positive Signal reaction can really give each civilization a good development boost ...but beware if some of the civilizations grow into very hostile and dystopian society, maybe it is not the best idea to reveal to them where they can find a planet to conquer.

Thank you very much for reading and I hope you find this interesting! Expect more updates soon as we continue on development and explore the galactic possibilities in The Fermi Paradox.

See you in the stars, voyager.

Jörg from Anomaly Games

Join our Discord server: https://discord.gg/n5bDJ7pRVM
Follow us on Twitter: @FermiGame

Hey, everyone !

Welcome to our first developer diary post! I am as excited as you are!

We often are asked to talk more into detail about our different alien species and I want to highlight our most iconic aliens: The civilization of the Prun. Have a look at a very early concept of them from our concept artist Anjn Anhut.



These aliens were one of the first creatures we thought of for the game. They evolved from horse-like animals and the are native to the red desert planet Gliese C. Unlike us human mammals they don`t have a biological sex or concept of gender and during their early social structure were wandering herds. This is an example of what we call a balanced species. These are sapient creatures that are interacting in a more harmonic way with their ecosystem before they evolved into a stone age society.



That's how it looks when an evolution event happens in the Gliese system and you decide that the Prun will be the lucky ones to become a civilization.

From then on, the path of this civilization is unclear and you (the galactic gardener) has to make a lot of decisions about how they develop. They could get stuck in the stone age forever, start a nuclear war when they invented nuclear energy or manage to travel to the stars one day.



Let's fastworld a couple of thousands of years into the future and show you into what kind of civilization the Prun could develop (and also explain some of the core mechanics of the game).

The dominant form of government of the Prun is called a Dominion. An important part here is that the aliens of the Gliese system are not ruled by an unified world government but there is potential of conflict and competition here.

The Prun made a lot of technological progress and reached the so called “Solar Age”.
What does that mean? They can build spaceships that can travel all around their solar system and even build settlements on their inner planets. Terraforming these planets can take a very long time and the spacestation that they live in are not very luxurious. Also, they are capable of building all kinds of robots to assist them in their daily life.

As an inspiration for that age we looked at TV shows like The Expanse or Cowboy Bebop and the famous Robot books of Isaac Asimov. This is how we imagine life in that era.



What else is going on in the Prun society? If we look at the population numbers we see that they are only 100 Million people. Compared, for instance, to Humanity, that's not a lot.
In their history, the Prun had several wars and the use of neutron bombs decimated the population and they never recovered from it. This means that any technical progress is much slower if they had enough people to support research, but also the society of the Prun could collapse quickly if something happened that drastically reduces their population, like a catastrophe or a war.

The Prun always lived in harmony with their environment. Growing up on a desert planet, their culture knows the importance of preserving resources and unsustainable growth can quickly lead to ruin. That means that resources for this civilization will not expire for many thousands of years because they are capable of harvesting the valuable materials of the massive asteroid belt of the Gliese system. If the population of the Prun grows a lot they also need more resources, but it is always better to decrease resource consumption instead of trimming down the population numbers.

Let's have a look at the Harm potential. This describes how capable the civilization is to destroy others but also to destroy themselves. A massive navy of powerful warships can fight off an alien invasion but also could blow up the entire planet with plasma bombs if a civil war would break out between the Prun. We measure this destructive power in potential casualties. In our example, the Prun have the technology and military means to kill 25 million of their own in case a global war would break out. That should be avoided …



And the last value that we see is the Ethic value. This describes how they treat each other, how the society uplifts the underprivileged and how they would judge other lifeforms. We describe this in a percentage on how far they are away to create a complete Utopian society or how deep they have already fallen to become a full Dystopia. The Prun in their orbital bubble cities try to build a fair and equal society. They abandoned the notion of money and competition is of no cultural value for the Prun. High ethic values determine positive outcomes to a crisis but also are the decisive factor in the outcome of direct contact with other aliens.


But the history of the Prun is not fixed. Depending on your actions, they could lose their technological advancement and slowly regress back to a medieval society, their robots could malfunction and destroy the peaceful Prun, or a tyrant rise to power and push the civilization to dystopia and builds invasion fleets to conquer the galaxy… All this will be yours to decide.



Thank you very much for reading and I hope you find this interesting! Expect more updates to follow as we continue on development and explore the galactic possibilities in The Fermi Paradox.

See you in the stars, voyager.

Jörg from Anomaly Games

Join our Discord server: https://discord.gg/n5bDJ7pRVM
Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/FermiGame